Potty Training

I have been dreading this day for awhile and have been procrastinating.  Matthew was SO HARD to train!  He knew he should be going pee in the potty and got the concept of the potty super quick, but could have cared less if he pooped or peed his pants.  I had to constantly remind him to go to the bathroom and he had poop accidents quite a few times for about a month. 

I knew that Isabelle was either going to be stubborn as a mule or act like a big girl and catch on quickly.  I should have started potty training her a few months ago, but we were all sick and then I had sinus surgery and then we were all sick again and I didn't want to deal with all the messes when I wasn't feeling well.  Out of the blue on Saturday without discussing it with Jordan, I decided it was the day to start training.  Here was my thinking:  Isabelle's diapers were running out (I mean like less than 10 left), Isabelle was liking her diaper less and less when it was wet or poopy, we had pull-ups ready to go, and Jordan was going to be around more the next couple of weeks to help out with the messes.

We tried a few things with Matthew that didn't work and then did the straight to underwear method that worked better than anything else.  You just put them in underwear and set the timer for 15 min. and have them go to the potty every 15 min. until they have success and reward them for that success.  If they have an accident then I set the timer for 45 min - 1 hr. to give them ample time to build up more fluids.  Matthew's first day, I swear there were a million accidents and I don't even know if he went to the bathroom on his own once for the first week or so, but would go when I asked him to.  Isabelle is a super potty trainer.  She had 3 accidents on Saturday, none on Sunday and had a dry pull-up after church, and had just a couple of accidents yesterday and today when she couldn't get to the bathroom in time-BUT WAS trying to get there.  She has gone on her own so many times and after Saturday I haven't even set the timer once.

We do use a little potty that you can dump and she even dumps it herself and flushes the toilet and I have never asked her to.  She is running around in Matthew's old white underwear until we think she's really ready for sure and then we'll move her into her new princess underwear.  She's been dry after her naps and nighttime the last few days and then will take herself to the bathroom once she wakes up.  We've found that it has to be her decision though.  She doesn't like to go to the potty right after she wakes up, so we just change her out of her pull-up into underwear and once she's ready she'll go use the bathroom.  What a smart girl and we keep looking at ourselves in disbelief as this time around is a million times easier than last time.  It holds true in our household that the boy was way harder to train than the girl.

Isn't her white boy underwear cute and hilarious!

...and she loves to do puzzles and can do 24 piece puzzles by herself.  Not that it has anything to do with potty training, but her little brain is so smart!

Halloween Crafts

I was so NOT in the Halloween mood this year until WAY LATE!  I made my costume at the last minute, when I was inspired by devil horns I found.  A super easy RED tutu later and I'm a she devil.  I realized I didn't have a ton of Halloween decorations so this was thrown together SUPER last minute, but here are a few fun things I made this weekend.

Trick or Treat Banner

I cut out 4 different pumpkins from my pumpkin carving Cricut Cartridge and my Cricut Expression.  I used my mini monograms cartridge to cut out the letters and xyroned those onto the pumpkins.  I attached eyelets and tied the pumpkins together on the back with ribbons and then attached cute polka ribbons to the end pumpkins.  I should have aged the pumpkins and monograms with paint and maybe added some glitter.  Maybe I'll do that this week before it goes into the box for next year.



Halloween Frame 



I had this wooden frame with broken glass inside sitting on my craft shelf and decided to make a quick Halloween frame.  I painted the edges and inside of the frame purple and then modge podged a piece of 12x12 scrapbook paper onto that, let dry and then modge podged the front.  I cut out the beware and the bats on my pumpkin carving cartridge and adhered the Beware onto white cardstock.  I found some velvet stickers I've had for awhile and put those on and then tied leftover tulle and ribbons onto my frame.

Super easy!

First Day of School

I can't believe our baby is in school.  Well, really I can because he was so ready to go.  School begins after labor day here and his school starts so early in the morning - the AM class starts at 7:45.  Geez that's early!!!  Matthew has a lot of friends in the afternoon, but I wanted him in the morning for 2 reasons.

1-We live too close for him to ride a bus, so I would have to take AND pick him up.  By sending him in the morning Jordan takes him to school on his way to work. 
2-Isabelle takes her nap in the afternoon.  I would have to wait until we picked him up to get her to bed and that is stretching nap time late every day which I didn't want to do.

It was in the 90's which is unheard of in September during the first week of school so Matthew got to wear shorts for a few days.  It has already started cooling down, but I'm hoping to squeeze in a few more shorts days before we run into full-blown yucky weather.

So handsome!

Like usual he wanted a silly pose.

We all went to school with him and of course Isabelle wanted in on the picture action.

Matthew has a hard time not talking and he is a wiggle worm, but for the most part I think he's doing really well.  They get either green, yellow or red smiley faces everyday.  He had a job chart at home and every day he gets a green sticker at school he gets to add a sticker to his job chart at home.  If he gets all 5 green smileys for the week then he gets a bonus sticker too.  He got all green last week except for yellow on Friday (for poking someone with a pencil) so we'll be working towards a bonus sticker this week.

We started the job chart as a way to reward behavior and get him to choose good choices, help out easier around the house without fighting, going to the bathroom without us reminding him and to earn money.  Every chart is worth $ (we still have to decide how much) so he'll also be learning about saving money and paying tithing.  The first chart he finished was used towards a plants/zombies game he wanted so that was a good incentive and worked really well.

He's so cute everyday when I pick him up after school.  It takes a little prodding some days, but then he blabs like crazy about everything they did at school.  He has a gym teacher named Mr. Twig - cool!  He also went to music time and LOVED it.  It's so cute hearing about everything and about all the things he doing and loving.  I will experience brief freedom next year when he's in school all day and Isabelle goes to Preschool 2 days a week.  I'm on the cusp of freedom!  I really think another baby is NOT in the works for us.

Facepainting fun!

We have been so busy this summer and with the start of school.  I can't believe I haven't blogged for so long.  I'm hoping to get some more pictures posted soon from our summer fun!

I am having a few moments here and there to myself with Matthew being in kindergarten - really 7:45-10:35 doesn't give me much time.  I decided to scrapbook some cute pics this morning that we took at Jordan's summer work party.  His group had a family picnic/BBQ in August.  It was at a lake and had facepainting, BBQ food, bingo and a jumpy house...and other things that we didn't participate in.  It was really fun and we got there relatively early and decided to take advantage of the face painting (free!) before the lines got too long.

Matthew knew he wanted a batman face right away.  All black is a little complicated to see any features so I suggested the batman mask and he was all for it.  For a pretty wiggly kid he sat perfectly still and did whatever she asked while he was getting painted.  He looked so awesome and I cracked up everytime I looked at him.  He loved playing bingo (he thought just five squares total was Bingo and so yelled Bingo 1 time and I had to yell he was just kidding) he was seriously so cute looking to see if either of our boards had the right numbers.  He loved the jumpy house and was so disgustingly sweaty and dirty by the time we left.  I wiped off his whole mask before we drove home.  He looked like he had eyeliner on, it was so cute!

I have the say that the face painter artist was so amazing!  She could create anything.  There were a lot of little girls that were getting butterflies, unicorns and other girly things so of course Isabelle wanted a butterfly.  I was so impressed that she stayed completely still while the girl painted her face.  A lot of the bottom portion of the butterfly came off while she was eating so I wiped off the rest of the bottom off and she wore the top part the rest of the time we were there.  She was a sweaty mess by the end of the day from jumping in the castle so I wiped off the whole thing before we drove home.

All in all a really fun day spent together and a good day for Jordan to be out of the office.

Downtown Portland

Jordan has a co-worker that invited us to come hang out with them downtown and we finally were able to coordinate to go on Saturday.  We went to a couple of parks that were within walking distance from their condo and then we went to a little Italian bistro that was SO GOOD!  It was so fun and they were cool and easy to talk to.  It's also great to have insiders that live in downtown Portland and know the best places to eat.  All these pics are with our new lens - love it!

When we first arrived at the second (one with the bear) park Matthew said "this is boring, there are no toys (slides, etc.)", but then made a friend in about 2 seconds and didn't want to leave when it was time to.  I don't think city life is for me, but I can't wait to hang out again in the city when it warms up a bit.

Matthew loves to have his hood on and it was a little chilly so it was zipped too.  This pic cracks me up.

His "friend" he made.  When we were walking back after dinner he told me it was fun meeting new friends.

There was this marble bear at the park and he loved climbing on it.

We went to this "park" first that had little walk ways and a pond.  It was really cute, but I was getting so nervous because the kids trip all the time and I could see them falling in the super cold water.

There were 3 ducks that the kids kept watching.

The park where the bear was, was pretty big.  Isabelle was loving running back and forth.

I love her wind blown hair and great smile.  You know she's having fun.

Whenever we get the camera out she says "cheese", but doesn't look at us. 

Happy Birthday Isabelle!

I can't believe it's already been 2 years.  It seems like yesterday we were at the hospital having her.

More Isabelly

I am determined to get caught up with my scrapbooking.  I think Isabelle's 2009 is almost complete.  Here are some more layouts I worked on this weekend.  Conference is perfect to scrapbook to!  Can't wait to scrapbook her birthday.

Right at about 5 months.  These were her first days of rolling over.  It's amazing the change they go through in just 2 short years.

I made a ton of these knock-off baby legs (tutorial here) out of women's socks for Isabelle.  They are easier to put on than tights and you can change a diaper while they are wearing them and they are really easy to make.  I found some larger socks lately and need to whip up some more as the ones
I made are mostly too small now.

Isabelle is such a climber!  She has no fear - opposite of Matthew.  See that little twenty-ten?  I wrote that!  A friend of mine let me borrow their tablet where you can doodle and draw and write electronically on your layouts (it's really for artists).  It's easy to use, but harder to get the smoothness of writing down.  I swear that was about my 20th try.  I'm going to keep on practicing though.

I actually did this layout awhile ago.  Matthew got this visor at a preschool outing and Isabelle loved it because she could get it on and off so easily.  I caught her wearing it all the time. 

Isabelle is ALMOST two!!!

In honor of Isabelle's 2nd birthday coming up in a week from Sunday here are some layouts of her!  Most of my elements come from http://www.designerdigitals.com/ and Ali Edward's words are a favorite of mine.  I am hoping to borrow a wacom tablet soon so I can make my own sayings to use on my scrapbook pages.  After 3 years of scrapping only boy stuff it's so fun to use pink and girlie things.

So you don't think I forget about Matthew I'm including two layouts I did today of him.  Conference is great to listen to and scrap at the same time.



These are all pics from each month in 2010

Isabelle was such a cute baby!  She's always loved food and out eats Matthew at almost every meal.  How she is still so tiny boggles my mind.  She is almost two, doesn't even weigh 25 pounds (Matthew weighed that at almost 1) and wears 18 month clothes.  This layout was based on the free template here that I tweaked quite a bit and the free kit here.

Matthew can make Isabelle laugh like crazy and here is a cute moment I captured.  My friend Kris had this layout linked  from from her blog that she took inspiration from for a layout.  I loved it so much that I took inspiration too and whipped this up in less than 30 min.  Easy Peasy!



Isabelle playing peek-a-boo on one of those nights I had the camera out for my food blog.

I really can't believe I hadn't scrapped these pics yet.  I need to look back through my blog to help me remember who was all there and what happened.  Layout is based on the free template here that I changed quite a bit.  Almost everything on my page is from Designer Digitals.



For some reason we went to the park this day.  I need to check my blog for any mentions of this too.  I think that we might have gone there before meeting up with Jordan at one of his family work get togethers.  We definitely rode the train and it was a beautiful October day.  The layout was inspired by this layout, but by the end it looks so different!