It’s official. Zeke has made it 16 full days without any accidents. On 8/20, he simply decided to be potty trained and hasn’t looked back since.
In fact, Zeke has awakened every morning since my birthday on 8/30 with a dry pull-up. I wasn’t even going to tackle nighttime wetting till we got this whole daytime thing under control, but Zeke had a different plan.
Consequently, he has been wearing undies on outings and going swim diaper-less on wet playdates. Another by-product of Zeke’s accomplishments is finally earning that carrot we’ve been dangling in front of him for nearly a year now: a bike with training wheels.
The whole clan went shopping for it yesterday, but the store didn’t have the one we wanted in Zeke’s size. He was cool about the delay — I guess he figures he has waited this long, what’s a few more days — and Stephen plans on buying the reward this weekend.
Cousin Kara & Houston on the 16th-century replica English ship, the Elizabeth II, during our Outer Banks vacation in July. (Click to see Roanoke Island – Part 1 pics.)
Zeke, who can be mean as a snake sometimes, exhibited some genuine empathy recently during a nighttime prayer, saying that he wanted to ask God to help Gabriel be potty-trained so he can get a bike, too. It was very touching.
Interestingly, it was Gabriel who began the accident-less trend a day before Zeke and continued on for a few days, but then suddenly regressed. He up and unapologetically pooped when in pull-ups, peed on the floor while au natural and even took a dump in the living room.
But considering that immediately following the latter mishap, we found Gabe in the bathroom, attempting to wash the dooky off of his hands, I think it’s safe to say he knew he had done wrong and needed to try to make things right. Poor thing.
It was a back-and-forth struggle for Gabe, having accident-free spurts mixed with days of pooping-in-pull-up abandon. That is, until my birthday, when he decided to finally take a cue from his twin bro and give potty-training a genuine try.
Yep, our other reluctant potty-trainer hasn’t had an accident since then, so today makes six days for Gabriel. I’m getting him to wear pull-ups on outings for a few more days before making the switch to undies, but I do believe that G-man is on his way!
Gabriel checks out the nautical knots below deck on the English merchant vessel.
My birthday also provided another monumental gift: Houston saying, “Mommy, you’re always right.” Of course, this proceeded me warning him not to climb on the slippery equipment while we were at the spray-ground with Christie and crew, and him ignoring my instructions, ergo hurting his private parts.
Other than Houston’s minor injury, my 41st birthday was lovely. The 3 Amigos exhibited good behavior all around — something of a rarity these days for the twins — and Jessie and the boys surprised me with a yummy homemade cake.
“Double trouble” have earned their moniker being quite consistently disrespectful, whiney, disobedient, rude and unmannerly for a few weeks now. Like when the two of them sprayed Glade all over the bathroom, to the point that the sink and floor were drenched with air freshener.
This is a minor example, but it exemplifies their general mischief while they’re supposed to be doing an easy, everyday job, like washing their hands or eating a meal. This makes it all the more frustrating because these are simple things; they know how to do the tasks, so why not just do them properly and make life easier and happier for everyone?
Although Gabe and Zeke are normally great on outings, they chose our Classical Conversations orientation on 8/28 to have meltdowns. Luckily, it wasn’t until the last five minutes of our two-hour gathering, but it was in Houston’s class, in front of his CC tutor and his new classmates and their moms and siblings.
Zeke gets as low as he can go to ring the bell on deck the Elizabeth II.
Moreover, these are homeschoolers we’re talking about, so most of these kids are extremely well-behaved; hence, the twins’ antics stood out more than they usually would. Plus, our CC community meets in a church that is extremely echoey, so the whole pointless exercise was dramatically sucky.
Houston, however, gets major kudos for holding it together at the CC event. Not only were his bros exhibiting horrible behavior, but his best bud, Asher, was also leaning toward the naughty side. Way to go for not caving into the intense peer pressure, Houston!
Luckily, the twins were able to redeem themselves this morning at the first CC community weekly meeting of the 2012-2013 homeschool year. Although, they are in the Little Learners nursery, while Houston and I attended his Abecedarian class with six other (all-boy) students, their moms and the tutor, Ms. Murphy.
I can’t believe we’re officially homeschooling Houston as of today! I will write more on all that later, as I have to wrap up this blog of older info and then need to prepare for tomorrow’s CC, phonics and math lessons: the first at-home kindergarten class for Houston, while brothers (hopefully) play merrily, yet quietly in the living room.
Sure, it’s going to be a challenge, but others make it work by taking it one day at a time. Case in point: Ms. Murphy is a single mom of four homeschooled boys. Can you believe it? She and the other veteran homeschoolers are such inspirations. They’re just normal folks who have a passion educating their kids and know God will equip them for the journey.
Gabriel leaves his mark while checking out one of the tents in the English Settlement Site. (Click to see Roanoke Island – Part 2 pics.)
Another inspirational story:Â While shopping a few weeks back, I struck up a conversation with a man on the pull-ups aisle. “You’d think after three kids, I’d know how to price these things,” I said with coupons and calculator in hand.
“I still can’t and I have six kids,” he replied, adding that his three boys and three girls range in age from 3 to 21. “Anyone who says it’ll get easier is lying,” he continued with a chuckle, as two of his young daughters frolicked about.
He left as I did my price-by-the-unit math, but returned. “Back so soon?” I asked.
“Yeah, I’m tired, man,” he said with a half-hearted sigh, picking up the forgotten item. “Well, next time I’m complaining about being tired, I’ll be sure to think of you,” I said. Amen to a little perspective, right?!
On 8/19, the 3 Amigos attended the church sermon, since their Sunday school teachers had the day off. They actually did surprisingly well. This vacation for staff was in preparation for Promotion Day, which took place the following Sunday on 8/26.
Gabriel and Zeke’s new room is about the same as their previous pre-school class, but Houston’s kindergarten class is drastically different. The Elementary Ministry focuses on Bible stories and how they relate to the kids’ lives, scripture memorization, and building rapport with their small group leaders.
Gabe, Kara & Houston battle it out New World-style.
I wasn’t sure how Houston would handle the more mature class setting — especially since his new room has no toys and the older kids gets no outdoor play — but he is enjoying it. “I can’t wait to go to my new class on Sunday,” he said excitedly before last weekend’s trek to church. So far, so good.
Houston is also involved in t-ball again. This was Daddy’s doing, as I didn’t want to bite off more than I could chew this fall with additional activities on top of kicking off official kindergarten homeschooling.
It has been a great opportunity for Houston and Daddy to spend some quality time together, and Stephen loves the sport to boot. There has only been a meet-and-greet and two practices, but Houston and his Oriole teammates have their first game this Saturday.
Our Labor Day started out a bit rough with Houston’s 5 a.m. nosebleed. Man, was it a gusher. He hasn’t had one in a while, so Stephen and I were out of practice with what to do, but Granny set us straight and we stopped the bleeding pretty quickly.
Before our history adventure on Roanoke Island, we enjoyed a seafood feast @ Stripers in Manteo.
- I took the boys to see The Adventures of Tin Tin for the last film of the free-kids-movies summer series.
- We made our first visit to the aforementioned spray-ground with Christie, Beth and the kids. It’s a beautiful, new facility and is only 15 minutes from home.
- Daddy, the kids and I attended Dixie’s 6th birthday party. It was a nice afternoon of neighborly fun.
- Daddy took the BB gun shooting in the back yard. Houston actually hit a can and the BB made its way clear through the can and out the other side.
Lastly, as many of you know, losers hacked both this site and gallery and used it for nefarious purposes, namely sending out unsolicited bulk email. Stephen “the computer super star” worked all day for two days last weekend to fix the problems. Not only did he clean up the code and upgrade our plugins and software, but he managed to protect all past blogs and photos, as well as beautify the site.
But if things look a little off or don’t work exactly right, please be patient with us and our growing pains. And in the meantime, let’s all give a hardy shout out to Stephen: THANKS A MILLION, BABY!
