The Poop Scoop (again)

Poop withholding.  uggggg. It's a killer! Anyone heard of it or dealt with it?  It's pretty simple. Basically the potty trainee does not GO 2! EVER! Apparently 1 in 5 children potty training go through it. And lucky me Conner did it. It was crazy and hard and stressful and not awesome at all and included dr visits and everything. (he once went 7 days with out pooping an ounce! SEVEN DAYS!) So since 1 in 5 go through it I figured unless I had 6 kids (which I was sure would never happened since I never wanted to potty train another human being as long as I lived, let alone 5 more) my odds said I had served my sentence. Right? Right? WRONG! My sweet cute fun little Sophie is now holding in the stinks. and boy does it stink!

first day potty of training!!!

I did the 3 day potty training method (totally recommend!!!) mid January and she did beautifully with #1. It was amazing! But the 2...not so much. So I've been doing a lot of research of how to help her and let me tell ya, everyone's got an opinion. Here's what I've learned thus far: ahem

 Poop withholding is always about control. Unless the child is terrified to go. Poop withholders are always just scared.  Just ignore it. By you not caring the child will not be stressed about it and get over it. If you ignore it and don't nip it in the bud then it could turn into a life long psychological problem and they might become the rooftop killer. Tell your child that poop is stinky and gross and make a big deal about it being icky and yucky but don't ever talk about poop in a negative way. It will make the child even more afraid of it. Put a pull up or diaper back on them and let them go in it. Never put them back in diapers or pull ups once potty trained, it just confuses them. When they do poop have a party! Wear hats, do a dance, eat ice cream, throw a parade, ride a pony, buy them a car, but don't make a big deal about it because pooping is what is expected of them.
Give them mineral oil. Don't give anyone under the age of 12 mineral oil. Give them milk of magnesia. Don't give anyone under the age of 8 milk of magnesia. Give them Miralax. Don't give them Miralax. It's probably anthrax.

Thanks google search people.

All joking aside, I don't think anyone who has never gone through it can fully understand just how stressful it is. If I tell anyone about it most people tend to brush it off and say "oh. That sound's weird, I've never heard of that. It will pass I'm sure. She's gotta go sometime!" and I know it will pass, but people don't realize how hard it is to get to it passing (haha no pun intended. really!) First of all it is probably pretty unhealthy to keep the stinks inside so I stress about that, but the hardest is the pain that the kids have to endure. There's the waking up in the middle of the night crying that her bum hurts, or her tummy hurts, and wants me to fix it and I as a mommy have nothing I can do but tell her to poop. There's the sitting on the potty for 1 1/2 hours straight in the middle of the night while she tenses up straight as a board to hold it in every time she feels an urge. There's the bum rashes, and the hiding and shame when she finally can't hold it and has an accident in her kitty underwear. It kind of breaks my mommy heart. And it doesn't help anything that it's tax season so my tax accountant husband is non existent and I'm dealing with it as a single momma which  is pretty fun.

 

So wish us luck, say some prayers, send us some pixie dust and let's hope we can get this little girl over her big fear of the big 2! (and if you are a 1 in 5 who has gone through this and have any tips I'd be happy to hear them!)

Operation:FATTY and Sophie's big 2!

This adorable little miss of mine turned TWO last week! I can't believe it! Before we get to the ode to Sophie here are her stats from her Doc apt. Ready? Here we go!

 Length: 33.07 inches = 38%

Weight: 22.05 lb=3%

head 46 cm = 15%

 Doc was pretty ecstatic about her weight because she is now officially on the chart! awesome! Everything else about her check up was great!

Birthday Day!

her birthday was last Saturday, Sept 27. We are having a family party squished in with Landon's blessing this Sunday so we didn't have a huge party. But she still had lots of fun I think. We were going to do fun family things outside...but then it decided to dump cats and dogs all over the place THE WHOLE DAY so we ended up having a cozy crazy day inside.

Birthday breakfast! yummy yum.

Present time!

She got a new pink "ruff"

and a NEW BIKE! Which sadly she is a little small for. we thought she'd be ok since it was for 18m-4 years. Guess she's not 18 month size yet! maybe in the spring! But she still loved it and she can straddle the bar and kind of touch the ground.

She also got the movie Frozen.

She kept on laughing while she was trying to blow out her candles so she had a little help.

 

Ode to Sophie

I never realized it before looking back at pictures but Soph has changed so much this past year! So here are about a million and one pictures of her from this last year.

Halloween 2013. She couldn't even walk yet. but she was close!

November 2013

December 2013

Feb. 2014

First piggy tails

The day after we found out Landon was a BOY.

March 2014

First day of nursery

April 2014

 

May 2014

 

June 2014

 

July 2014

Aug 2014

 

Sept 2014

She accessorized herself! she did a pretty good job!

 

Here are some things I know about this little girl....

She can say a bunch of words. mama, dada, quack (duck), fruff (dog), sches (Shoes, cheese, or fish depending on the context) Ca-ca (Conner) cook (cookie), treat, baby, poot (poop) and a whole bunch more but I don't want to bore you.

She sure loves her daddy! if she had any choice in the world of people to hang out with it would be him.

She is such a little mommy! She is always taking care of her dolls, and changing their bums, telling us to be quiet when they are sleeping, etc. It is so cute!

and her hair is forever and always in her face like this if I don't clip it back. Good thing she loves bows!

 

She loves walking around in my heels. I have had to start putting them up high so that she can't get to them and they aren't strewn all over the house.

Which leads me to my next point that she is such a GIRL! She loves all things pink or purple (every time she picks out her plate to eat on it is one of these colors) she loves necklaces and bows and Hello Kitty. "that" as she calls her. because she used to point to Hello Kitty and say "that" because she liked her and it just stuck I guess.

She loves fish.

this is her most favorite book in the world. We barrowed it from the library and went through all of our renews before finally ordering it online. We read it every night.


While she is such a girly girl she still loves to play with Conner's trucks and boy things. Conner doesn't love it so much though...

while she is mostly sweet, she sure is getting a temper! She is very opinionated about what she wears (mostly she wants to wear her church dresses everyday. it's kind of our daily battle) Must be the 2 year old talking.

Happy Birthday to my sweet terribly two year old! Love you baby girl!

No Boys Allowed!

Conner and Rusty went camping with Rusty's fam this weekend. (hence me having time to do TWO blog posts in TWO days. unheard of!) As much fun as it sounded to go and sleep on the ground in the cold and then ride around on a bumpy wagon pulled by a mule all the next day while being 8+ months pregnant, I kindly had to opt out. There was no way that I would send both of the kiddos with Rusty. I'm not THAT mean! I don't think that I would even be brave enough to go camping by myself with both of them and I'm a professional mama! So Sophie and I have had a fun girls weekend just the two of us. And let me tell ya, it has been AWESOME! I have never in all of Sophie's life had so much one on one Sophie time and it's been a blast to not have to worry about anyone but her. Plus only one kid is so easy! Why did nobody tell me that one kid was such a breeze when I had only one kid? seriously! I'm sure I'll be saying the same thing about 2 pretty shortly though. Today after her nap we painted the town red! or actually pink.

First we went to the duck pond/lake thing by our house. This proves that I love her. Because ducks kind of freak me out. The last time we went to this park I was probably about the same point in my pregnancy with Sophie and it was just me and Rusty and Conner and out of nowhere all of these crazy geese started chasing me. Not Rusty. Not Conner. ME. Like it seriously was 7 or 8 of them honking and running and I was waddling away as fast as I could screaming but they just kept chasing me until I got to the parking lot. Then they magically stopped. hummm. My only guess is that they saw a fellow waddler and wanted to be friends? Maybe? That or they knew that  I was slow so they could eat me easier. I don't know but it was pretty darn scary.  But I decided to give it a go with Soph and she had so much fun! "Duck" was her first word after "mom" and "dad" so she kind of really likes them.

She got really excited about this fish sign. We had to look at it for like 5 minutes.

She liked the white ones best.



watching the ducks eat her bread she threw.

it was kind of more of a seagull pond than a duck pond today. There were tons!

 

Saw this big pelican thing flying over us. Pretty cool! (especially since it didn't dive bomb my head. I was kind of worried.)
 

 So anyway, it was really fun! Sophie had a blast seeing the ducks and feeding them bread (well, feeding them whatever didn't make it into her own mouth) and we didn't get attacked by any feathered friends so I call it a success!!

When we got home we each got matching pedicures and manicures. Sophie's first nail painting experience and now I know why I waited for so long. Because I knew it would be crazy!! But mostly it was so crazy because she was so excited and couldn't contain it. Her toes look ok but her fingers.... not so much. We'll practice that one.

I have seriously loved getting to spend some good quality time with my little miss before life gets even more crazy. Such a great weekend!!! Hope the boys are having just as much fun with their male bonding as we are!