Yay for my potty girl :)

The #1 thing I hate most is to be told that it’s time to potty train your kid, or it’s time to get them out of diapers.  The rule of thumb in my house, after learning from my first child, is that you don’t ever pressure a child into it, and don’t start worrying about it if they aren’t ready until after age 3.  They surely will do it on their own time.  If you push it, they rebel, I learned that the hard way.  What’s even better is when someone tells you that who has no kids, so they don’t understand.  So anyway, we have been more than patient with Caitlyn, who is now 3 1/2 years old to get interested in the potty.  We thought, well, she’s a girl, it’ll be easier than boys.  No, not at all.  I’d say she’s been “ready” for a good 6 months, starting right at 3, but every notion of the word potty until today has resulted in a “no” answer from her.  Lately she has started using the potty as an excuse to not go to bed though.  We’ll drag her off to bed and she’ll say, “But I have to go potttttty!” even though she’s never done it before.  Tonight, she tried the same thing, except Matt sat with her there for 10 minutes and to my surprise, she actually went #2, lol.  She seen how much she was praised and rewarded so we now officially start the “training” and hopefully in a week she’ll be fully trained.  What I learned is that parents who push it starting at 18 months or sometimes earlier end up with a potty training process that takes 2 years and they have children that have accidents at night and during the day.  If you just don’t push it, training takes a week or much less when they are ready.  So if I can say anything about raising a kid, it’s to trust me when I say not to push the potty training!  If I’m lucky, i’ll only have one in diapers, but really, Ava seems ready for the potty too.  I get the cue’s from her.  She hates a wet diaper and strips it off every 10 minutes it seems.  None of my others cared if their diaper weighed 10lbs or was loaded.  She is only just turning 2 in Oct. though.  I might gradually introduce the idea in a couple months, but again, not push it until about 3, or whenever she’s capable of understanding.  It’s just much less stressful on parents and child if you don’t push it.  Some parents are even into potty training infants, which is absurd and ridiculous.  It’s not “really” potty training them, it’s more like studying your baby and training yourself to take them and hover them over a toilet every 15 minutes.  They don’t learn from that at all and it’s not for me.  I’m a stay-at-home mom and I wouldn’t even want to devote time to that nonsense.
I still don’t think I’ll make it for the school year though.  I was hoping I’d get her into preschool this year, but it’s almost August, and I won’t even send them until I know they are completely potty proficient, so I think it will have to wait until 2013/2014 school year.  Who knows though, she could surprise me in the next few weeks and then I will enroll her if I can.
I can’t believe my little Ava is almost 2 already.  She’s such a little rogue girl!  She’s completely Andrew through and through, but sweet as candy.  Lately though, she has been practicing on purpose throwing herself onto the carpet to learn how to throw a temper tantrum.  It’s funny to watch, but then I’ve seen her act that out when she gets mad now too.  Right now Ava’s world revolves around food and drink, lol.  Every morning she gets up, walks up to me and throws her sippy cup at me, indicating that she’s thirsty.  Sometimes she hits me square in the face too.  That’s just her form of communication!  It’s cute, but owww!
I can’t wait for the kids to go back to school, they are driving me nuts.  If Chris and Andrew aren’t eating me out of house and home, then they are fighting over video games.  They never go outside and do anything.  Baseball season is now over with so that sucks.  I wish they’d be normal boys and go play cops and robbers or something like I did as a kid!  I mean, there are acres of land here to roam.  My kids are lazy leeches sometimes, so they’ve been grounded many times this summer.  Please school hurry up.  I miss my quiet peaceful days!
I’m putting down the crafts and I’m going to work on my photography again.  I still have very little control of my attention span, and i’ll probably get a medication adjustment or new medicine to try later this week but in the meantime, I have lost all interest all of a sudden in doing my crafting hobbies.  Of course, most projects completely unfinished too, which is unfortunate.  I need to get better photography gear though.  I need a couple good lenses, a really good tripod, an external flash, a light meter, and whatever else.  That small list is thousands of dollars though, so it won’t all happen at the same time.   If I had a spot to put a studio, I could make one for $500 or less, but I don’t have a suitable spot.  There is nothing I love more than photography.  It’s always been my thing.  I would like to add a Canon Rebel EOS to my camera bag too. I love my Nikon D90, but I read all these great things about the Canon equivalent as well.  I have plenty of books to read on the subject too.  I think I own every photography book on the planet.  There is a huge learning curve and my mind just can’t focus long enough to retain what I learn so I have to keep relearning stuff.  You don’t buy this type of camera to dare shoot pictures on automatic or the pre-programmed scene modes (portrait, night, action, etc).  I have a real problem with anybody that would do that.  The camera is meant to be semi-professional to even professional and if you invest in such a camera, you are just wasting that money shooting on automatic.  In a lot of cases, the picture quality is based on the person shooting the picture and their knowledge, and not the camera.  I have a regular point and shoot camera that takes just as good pictures as my Nikon on auto.  It’s fine tuning the settings that makes all the difference.  Measuring the light, knowing the calculations to input into the manual settings is where the real skill is and is what makes the photographer.  There is so much involved in a single picture that it’s amazing.  Some people think that buying a $1200 camera will result in awesome pictures, and while they will come out good on auto, they won’t be the best they could be if you knew what you were doing.
I definitely need the light meter though. The one I want on Amazon is $300.00.  If you ever struggle with getting over or under exposed pictures, a light meter can save the day.  It’s really the only accurate way to tell what settings to put your camera on.  I was playing with my camera yesterday taking pictures of myself using a phone light meter, but that just doesn’t work as well.  The pictures came out good but could always come out better.  I’ve also enjoyed playing with my camera now that I can tether it to my laptop and shoot remotely.  I like being able to see and adjust all the settings on my computer and just hitting a button to take the picture.  Sometimes entering the settings manually can be a pain the rear.
In general right now I’m pretty bored.  My days are long and boring and my nights go way too fast for my liking.  It seems just that nothing interesting happens in my life and if it does it’s medical related.  I’d like for that to end!   I got some decisions to make coming up soon, but I don’t think I’m going to get any further medical treatment.  I’m just done with it all.  I’m almost at peace with myself over it, so I’m putting some faith in myself a little I guess.  I have vowed not to complain publicly anymore, no more writing hugely depressing stuff, or anything.  Though it would be nice to look back on these blogs years from now and see how pathetic I was, it just makes me feel worse right now if I have to think about it and write about it.  I need to go back to the role of helping others and not needing anyone to talk too me about my problems.  I held that role for a very long time and did good at it 🙂  It’s a very bad feeling to have nobody around that can give me advice or help me, which is why I happily see a therapist, she can listen and she can respond.  What has been so depressing over the last 3 years is that I have nobody over here reassuring me, telling me it will be alright, giving advice, nothing.  I don’t trust what Matt has to say because even if it’s bad, he lies and makes you think it will be alright, lol.  He’s the person that would tell you “it’s not that bad”, “It’s not the end of the world” if you’ve just been told you’re gonna die, ha ha…but, yeah for me sometimes I want to hear it’s bad and be reassured that I’m not out of my mind and crazy!  So if I’m upset about a new diagnosis, don’t tell me it’s going to be just fine…. well all know that maybe someday it’s gonna be just fine, but right now I want someone to act like they know how I feel and cry with me.  My dear friend Julie is good for being scared about something if I am scared too, but she kind of freezes up on me too 🙂
I’m supposed to be in England this week for Matt’s sister’s wedding.  I guess that didn’t happen!  Ugh, my kids would end up on the no-fly list after a flight overseas right now though.  I’m still very upset and hurt over how the invitation was sent in the first place, but whatever, they don’t really care about what I think though.  Apparently we are being given the priviledge to watch the wedding on Skype, which is nice of them.  I just hope Matt has the common courtesy to make sure the rest of us can view it.  It really sucked that she chose the Olympics time to have the wedding.  It killed our hopes of affording the trip almost instantly when we saw flight prices.  The rental vehicle prices were extortionate as well.  I couldn’t believe it!  We will get there sometime, though, who knows if we as a family are really wanted there.  I think if we go over there they think of us as more of a burden since we have a huge family, than they do as a blessing that we could come.
Matt is interviewing for several positions lately.  Currently we are waiting for interview updates from Compuware and Amazon.  He interviewed in front of 8 people for Compuware.  He’s really hoping they get back to him. It’s in downtown Detroit at Campus Martius and the buildings has a Hard Rock Cafe and Texas de Brazil in it, so that’s a plus.  They have on-site daycare and a gym too.  The salary is just right as well!  I just want better medical benefits so that’s all I care about really.
Still no plans for a vacation yet this year.  I thought August we might go up north, but that is getting doubtful as well.  That’s ok, maybe Christmas we’ll go somewhere.  Next year I have a goal to go to Florida at least once and get overseas.  That’s my resolution for 2013, that, and of course, stay healthy.  That’s all I can do, that’s the only things I have to promise myself.    Well, I’m ending now because I need some time to browse the web, lol 🙂