Potty Training, take two

To be honest, I was really dreading this.  The first time was so frustrating that I just wasn't motivated to try again.  I also was really wanting to wait until after our Disneyland trip, but Kate was showing such an interest in it, that I just couldn't put it off any longer.  Lately she's been asking to go to the potty a lot, and yesterday she saw that her cousin Jaylee is potty trained, and I decided to just go with that motivation and momentum. 

So today I put her in big girl panties.  I was hopeful, but didn't expect much.

I just have to say that I'm completely SHOCKED at how well she did today.  She only had a few accidents, and they were little.  Other than that she's kept herself dry all day and even went #2 (what she calls "yucky snakes") in the potty 3 times!  I started out the day constantly asking her if she was dry and taking her to the potty about every 7 minutes.  Then I slowly increased it to about every 15 minutes. Then I just started to remind her to go potty, and now she's almost taking all the initiative.  I ask her if she needs to go every once in awhile, but she's been telling me when she needs to go now.  I just can't believe how easy it was (knock on wood)! 

I'm so proud of her!  She is so excited to be a big girl and to be wearing panties. Hopefully tomorrow will go just as well!

Countdown to Disney

On Saturday we finished paying off our Disney trip! Our hotel and tickets are now completely paid for. Now we just need to save up money for gas, food, and a little extra spending money :) Kate is sooo excited. She talks about going to "Disneywand" everyday. She is so excited to see "Flynn and Punzel", "spin in teacups", ride "umbo", see a "castle!", and meet "Tinkerbell". Yep. She is prepped and ready to go!

Part of booking your trip through the Disney site includes a "character call". It's just a recording, but it's so cute.  The characters of your choice will call your child and tell them how excited they are that they are coming to Disneyland.  Here she is receiving her call from Mickey and Minnie!

We are SO excited!  39 days to go!

Uncle Andy

Last week we had a special visitor at our house.

Uncle Andy!

I only get to see my brother twice a year, so for him to come and visit for an entire week was so much fun! My brother and I are super close and he's the main reason I was so excited for Kate to have a little brother!  Kate and Max are exactly as far apart in age as Andy and I.  It will be so fun to see them grow up together and I hope they become best friends too.

When Andy comes to visit it's usually in the cooler months, so this was his first time experiencing a valley summer! I don't think he was much of a fan. In fact I think his exact words were, "I don't think I've stopped sweating since I came here."  So, most of our time was spent lazing around indoors escaping the heat.

But we did make it out of the house a few times. On Wednesday we went to the Mills mall. I was excited to finally get to use my double stroller! I love it, it's so perfect for a toddler and a baby. Kate really loves the box. It's her "house".

That night after shopping we ate at the Rainforest Cafe. That place is expensive, but Kate's reaction to everything makes it worth it. She would cover her eyes and ears when it would "storm", and then laugh about it. She loved all the animatronic monkeys, elephants, and the alligator outside of the cafe.

 (I didn't tell her to do this, I swear!)

We went to this place a couple times! Bahama Bucks might be what finally convinces my brother to move back to Arizona.

On Thursday, after getting our shaved ice, I wanted to go on a drive and explore the land out here for different places to take pictures. We didn't get very far when we noticed a strange looking column of clouds in the sky. It almost looked like a tornado, but it wasn't spinning so we knew it wasn't. Andy, being the weatherman he is, said "That's a microburst." and we watched it hit and create a huge duststorm. We still needed some ingredients for dinner so instead of just going home like normal people, we drove to Frys. We parked where we could get a better view of the storm, hurried and snapped some pictures and then I went in the store with the kids while Andy took video. It was pretty crazy! By the time we had checked out the worst was passed and we were able to drive home safely. Crazy Arizona weather!

On Friday I decided to introduce Andy to Queen Creek's best kept secret, the Olive Mill. If you haven't eaten here, you must! It is a real olive mill where they brew wine and make olive oil. They have a little deli and store inside, and they use all fresh ingredients in their food. We ate some delicious sandwiches, and topped ourselves off with gelato.

I'm sure we did a few other things last week too, but mainly it was just so nice to have my brother hanging out with me and the kiddos at home! The week just flew by and I already miss him.  Come back soon!

1 month old

Little Max is 1 month old today. 

We took him to his one month appointment a few days ago and here are his current stats.

Weight: 10 lbs!
Height: 21.5 inches
Head Circumference: 15 inches

He's in the 75th percentile for height, and 50th percentile for everything else.  He is a very healthy baby boy!

I am loving life with two kids.  Most days I feel like I'm starting to get the hang of things around here.  But, I do have to say this:  I have never been so tired in my life!  Here's how an average night goes down at our house.

8:00 put Kate to bed
8:30 put Kate back in bed
9:00 Dustin lays down with Kate until she falls asleep
10:00 Feed Max and he and I go to sleep
1:00 Feed Max
1:30 Change Max--go back to sleep
2:00 Kate comes in to our room, we make her sleep on the floor.  We used to let her sleep in our bed but she is the CRAZIEST sleeper ever, so now if she insists on being in our room--she's on the floor!
3:00 Feed Max again
3:30 Change Max-- go back to sleep
4:30 Max wakes up AGAIN-- feed and change and go back to sleep
6:30 Yet again, one more feeding for Max
7:00 Kate wakes up, we put on the tv for her and we try to go back to sleep until
8:00 Dustin's alarm

So you can see that I'm only getting about 6 hours of sleep at night, and it's very interrupted. Kate used to be such a good sleeper, but ever since we brought the baby home it's been a constant struggle.  Plus have I mentioned how NOISY of a sleeper Max is?  I don't know what it is, but he grunts loudly all night.  So if I'm not feeding him, his grunting is keeping me awake.  Whew!  My first baby was such a good sleeper, it figures that my second would be completely opposite!

Another way he's very different from Kate is that he's a bit of a crier.  Not so much that I want to pull my hair out (well, sometimes...remember how I'm super tired?) but if he's awake he's usually crying unless someone is holding him.  Which I love to do, but my house doesn't love it so much.  And Kate?  Most days she's really good, but other days she gets really attention starved and gets into just about everything in my house.

So there you have the honest truth about life in the Watson household.  An extremely messy house, a super tired mom, a sneaky two year old, and a grumpy one month old. 

But you know what?  I wouldn't trade it for anything!

I love my family and I love being a mommmy!

Siblings

I told you these kids looked alike!

Here's Max:

Here's Kate at around the same age:

Kate even pointed to this picture and said, "It's Max!"

I'm so in love with this little boy!!

Just a few...

These are just a few pictures I had floating around that I wanted documented.

My kids in their bouncers. Haha. I knew Kate would not want to give up her bouncer to her baby brother, and I was right! Good thing I went ahead and bought one for him. She did this all on her own. I did not pose this picture.

All the cousins. 

(EmmaLyn not pictured.  Sherice you need to move back!)

Playing dress up!

Oh my heck, I am SO excited to take this girl to Disneyland in October!

And these are just a few practice pictures I took.  I'm trying to get better at black and white images.

Life

My kids are both asleep at the moment, so I finally have a little bit of spare time to sit down and blog. So here's a general update on me, my kids, and our lives as a family of four.

Adjusting to life with two kids has been a tricky one for me. Not so much caring for two children, but the lack of sleep that it brings. I can be super cranky when I don't sleep and I lose my patience very quickly. But the past few nights Max has been waking up every 3 hours to eat instead of every 2, so it's been getting better. I'm also almost 3 weeks recovered from surgery as well so that makes a huge difference in how I feel too. I also can get the kids to both nap at the same time, which allows me to take a nap too, and I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be surviving without that.

Two Friday nights ago (July 29th), Dustin and I experienced the scariest night of our lives as parents. Kate woke up crying and struggling to breathe. She was having an asthma attack. I had always wondered if Kate had asthma, but this was her first full blown attack. After putting some vapor rub on her and trying to get her to calm down for awhile, I remembered that my neighbor had one of those breathing machines. So I called her at 11:30pm and I'm so glad she was awake! She brought over her machine and we gave her a treatment. Dustin called Jaron, and he came over and gave Kate a blessing. I'm so grateful for the power of the priesthood! Kate really calmed down after that and was able to sleep in her daddy's arms. Although Dustin didn't sleep much.

She is doing much much better now. We took her to the doctor a few days later and he said that although he can't technically call it "asthma" until kids are at least 5 years old, he did definitely hear some wheezing in her lungs. He gave us our own breathing machine to take home and a prescription for albuterol and we've been giving Kate treatments 3 times a day ever since. I can still hear a little congestion in her lungs, but she's back to her normal happy self and I am so grateful for that.

Max is doing good as well. He gained back all his birth weight and more. He weighed 8 lbs 4 oz when we went to the doctor. He is a very good baby and spends most of his time sleeping. He looks a lot like Kate did at this age (I'll have to post pictures later), but he's primarily Dustin's little boy. He definitely has Dustin's feet, hands, arms, legs and chin. He has my nose, round face and ears. His eyes seem to be getting a little bit lighter and bluer but it's still way to early to see if they'll stay that way. He is such a cutie! I love him so much.

Kate LOVES her baby brother. I really need to catch her interaction with him on video. She'll come up to him and say, "Awwww he's so TINY" in a high pitched voice, then she'll laugh and hug or kiss him. Then when Max moves she'll scream and laugh. She loves to hold him and "pet" (burp) him. She is a pretty big helper most of the time, although she does loves to steal his blankets.

So although sometimes I feel like I'm nothing but a diaper changing/baby holding/nursing machine, I'm loving life with both my babies. 

We are very blessed.

Video of Kate's Performance

Just in case the post below didn't do Kate's performance justice, here's a video Dustin took with his iphone.