Camping-isms

I've talked about our family camping trips before, but I don't know that I've mentioned too often that Ryan takes Sydney (and now Liam) camping about once a month with a bunch of other local dads and their kids.  The kids have an absolute blast and I am perfectly happy to sit at home with no one whining about the chick flick I've ordered from Netflix.  I'm fairly certain that what they love most about camping is the fact that there are no moms on the trips.  My suspicions have been confirmed by the following things I've heard the last few months:

Sydney:  "I only brushed my teeth one time the whole weekend!"

Liam (to Ryan while he was packing):  "Why are you packing towels?  We don't take showers at camping."

Sydney:  "Did you know that there is such a thing as powdered donuts?!?"

Liam:  "I like going pee pee outside!"

Overheard from another camper:  "I can tell no moms are there because there are never any vegetables."

And my personal favorite camping revelation-

Sydney:  "When you toot at camping, you don't ever have to say, 'excuse me.'"

Nice.

The Death of Me

Liam's speech has progressed so much in his new four hour a week speech program, that he was kicked graduated out of it and while I'm thrilled that he has improved, I am crying about the loss of the much needed break I get when he's gone.

This week is our first non-speech week in about a year and I'm guessing that I need to find a new activity to keep us busy because I'm about to lose my mind with him home more than I'm used to.  Just yesterday Liam managed to:

- pull all of the the books off of the kids' bookshelves.  I estimate that we have around 200 of them.
- empty his and Evan's backpacks.
- smear the hand cream that was in one of their backpacks all over the living room carpet.
- open a box of bandages and spread them all over the bathroom.
- open several tubes of trial sized toothpaste (thank you, pediatric dentist) and smear some on the bathroom counters.
- play with a really old baby nasal aspirator in the toilet.

It's not like I had them at home and bored all day.  We went to the store, got haircuts and had swim lessons.  Apparently that's not enough to keep him occupied.

If I was on the fence about his going to two day or four day pre-K next year, I'm sure as heck not on the fence now.

I shudder to think about the things he'll do as he gets older!

Some Horn Tooting

I might have to change the name of this blog.

The kids still like to dress up.

But as of this past weekend, I no longer have to change diapers!!!

I started potty training Evan on Wednesday (with temperatures in the twenties and rolling electricity blackouts - that was lots of fun, especially when it took me five hours to finish one load of laundry) and by Saturday, the boy had it down.

There were lots of wet Mickey Mouse underpants, lots of mini m&m's and more under-the-breath mutterings of "I hate potty training!" than I'd like to admit.  But, other than a few mishaps, the boy is in underwear during all waking hours.

We also started working with Liam on his night time potty training.  He woke up in a dry pull-up this morning.  Hurray!!

And, of course, since I've bragged a bit, they'll both regress overnight and I'll be washing a load of laundry composed entirely of teeny tiny underwear and sheets tomorrow.

But at least there won't be rolling blackouts that make the washer and dryer turn off mid-cycle this time.