Potty training saga continues....

OK so this morning I go in to find that somehow Kaylin has spilled her pee pee all over her bathroom floor and is proceeding to "clean it up" with a wet wipe and her bath towel:) She kept telling me "I clean it up Mommy, I clean it up". My guess is that she has seen her Daddy take the little toss out pail from her potty and put it in the sink to rinse it out and she was trying to copy that. So somewhere between the potty and her climbing her stool to the sink the pee pee ended up all over the floor, and her and her stool! Oh well, the floor needed a good mopping anyway.
Then as I said yesterday my fear was that our next call was going to be to a plumber, right?! Well after cleaning up her bathroom mess I headed into the study and caught a quick glance out the window of water just pouring out of the ground down the sidewalk and into the street. This of course sent me into a complete panic and I ran to get Chris to check it out. My first thought was "what did Kaylin put down the toilet"? So after assessing the situation, Chris comes in and calls our utility district people to come take a look but his guess is that it's on the "city" side and not "our side" so we shouldn't have to worry about it or repair anything. Well, the guy gets there a half hour later and I go with him outside to see what is going on. He asks us to turn off all the water in the house, so we do, and yet water is still gushing all over the walkway. At this point, I am about to panic and am so afraid at what he is going to tell us is wrong now. But then.....he says that it must be the neighbor's side!!! Hallelujah! While I feel bad for our neighbor, I was so happy and relieved that finally something breaking and costing lots of money wasn't happening to us this time! (After the hail damage to our roof and truck, the microwave died, my brakes are going out, we've maxed out all our health insurance deductibles AND our property taxes just went up - I couldn't handle one more thing right now!) Sounds like it will require a plumber but I just feel like we dodged such a bullet this time and I'm just so elated! And, what's even better, it means Kaylin is still minding her Mommy and didn't put anything down the toilet! Yay!!

Potty training

Oh the joys of potty training! As I said in my last post, I wasn't quite ready to start it having a newborn at home right now but our fiercely independent child was and so she has, so I am just along for the ride it seems. We're at a point now where if it's quiet in the house, Kaylin is probably in the bathroom on her potty ,or unrolling a roll of toilet paper, or flushing goodness knows what down the toilet, or playing with her toothbrush in the sink which I am afraid will join the ranks of what gets flushed down the toilet very soon.

Her ritual at this point is to pee pee in the potty (just a couple of trickles), then empty her potty into the big potty, wipe, flush. Then go back to her potty for a couple more trickles, empty into the big potty, wipe, flush. And repeat at least 2 more times! The waste of water and the inefficiency of her routine is causing me to pull my hair out so we are now trying to work on staying on the potty until you think you are done, and then do NOT flush the potty unless Mommy says it is OK. I think it's going to take a lot of practice! She also decided the other day after her nap that she needed to get the poopy out of her pants so she came in, stripped down, and pulled off her poopy diaper inadvertently smearing some down her legs and goodness knows where else! Then as I came running in screaming "Kaylin put the diaper down" she threw the whole thing into the big potty which created quite a splash b/c it was a pretty full diaper. Thankfully I caught her before she tried to flush the whole thing down the toilet!! I'm sure one of my next posts will be how we've had to call a plumber out.....

It is just amazing how grown up she is becoming. Very, very sadly the nap has gone by the wayside. Once, maybe twice a week we can get her to take a good one. Otherwise it has become a time for her to "play" in her room which consists of taking every single toy, book, instrument, stuffed animal and see if she can cover every inch of floor space with them! She amazed me on Sunday at a birthday party where she literally bounced in the bouncy house for 3 hours. Other parents were even commenting on what a "bouncing maniac" she was and I thought for sure after 3 straight hours of bouncing - literally only stopping to hit the pinata a couple of times and to eat some cake -she would take a great nap when we got home. To no avail of course!! So after an hour in her room, she came out and proceeded to fall down and run into things all over the house because I think she truly was so tired. Then she was ready to eat by 5:15 which is about an hour earlier than normal so I made her dinner, sat her down, and after a couple of bites she literally started head bobbing at the table and basically fell asleep sitting up. I came over to unstrap her and she said "hold me" and immediately fell fast asleep in my arms for the next 30 minutes. She just can't seem to stop herself and just take a break unless her body just totally gives out on her. You would NEVER know this child has any cardiac issue! In fact, I'm wondering what in the world happened during the last cath and does she still have some of those drugs in her system because she is just out of control and active as ever!!

OK - gotta run and get Brayden. He doesn't seem to like to sleep past 5am these days. Ugh!

Welcome to our new blog!!

Welcome to our new blog! This will be our new home for updates on Kaylin (& Brayden too) and her continuous journey through life as a child with congenital heart defects. We hope to bring further awareness to the fact that CHDs are the #1 birth defect and that they affect 1 in 150 births in the US! We also have struggled with 2 premature births (28 weeks and 31 weeks) and want to bring awareness to that as well. Please look for the March of Dimes March for Babies near you because the money raised goes to research why premature births are on the rise and how we might be able to prevent premature births in the future.

Now to the latest with us.....We had a great Easter and hope all of you did too! (It's hard to believe we actually got a pic with all of us looking at the same time and at the same camera.) Kaylin really got into Easter eggs this year. She helped me put them together and fill them with fun stuff and then she played with them for at least a week! I am still finding halves and parts and pieces of plastic eggs all over the house! She also helped us dye some eggs and even made some for her baby brother. We had to do an indoor egg hunt at our house due to rain on Easter, but later that day the weather turned beautiful and she had an outdoor hunt at her Gram and Papa's house. It was somewhat of a slow process though because every time she opened an egg she had to sit down and eat whatever was inside. We finally convinced her to fill the basket up with the eggs and then sit down to open them all at once - she stuffed herself with candy, fruit chews, and goldfish for the rest of the day. The day was wonderful and we just celebrated the many blessings in our life

Since our last trip to Houston, life has been pretty hectic but we can't complain because both kids are healthy and doing really well. And the cath must have given Kaylin renewed energy because since our return she only takes maybe 2 naps a week!! Ugh! Such a killer for Mommy because I basically don't get a break all day between her and Brayden, so when Daddy gets home the poor guy gets the "dump off" of kids as I collapse on the couch for a few minutes before Brayden's final feed of the night and our nighttime routine ensues.

Kaylin is also beginning to potty train herself (since Mommy is too tired and brain dead most of the day to focus on it!) and goes a couple of times a day in her "big girl" potty! She wears pull ups with big girl panties over them for part of the day and is just so proud of herself when she goes. I'm not pushing her to do it all the time - just whenever she wants to do it but at least we are moving in the right direction. She is fiercely independent these days and has pretty much figured out how to pull every toy, chair, stool, or piece of furniture in the house up to a counter or tabletop to get to what she wants. Nothing is safe from her anymore! She might be small, but she has certainly figured out how to get what she wants!

That's it for now! Gotta go and get ready for the day. Will update again soon and thanks again for all your prayers and well wishes for our family!