It’s true, poo can be one of the most exciting moments of your day when you are a parent who is potty training. My 3 year old has been a little bit behind when it comes to using the potty due to some medical issues, but we are now able to jump in and get her going with it and it has been a tough road. I will completely and totally admit that I am a slacker when it comes to being diligent with her about it, I am just so tired during the day and so crazed that the idea of fighting with a very willful 3 year old to “PLEASE” sit on the potty is not very appealing to me. I have been trying to bribe her with things like chocolate and a stamp card to help her get more interested in doing her business and leaving it a plastic bowl instead of a synthetic pull-up, but she gets bored with my clever tricks easily and they usually only last a few days.
So I let it slide a lot of the time, but when daddy gets home he is excellent about it and tonight she did an amazing big girl poo on her potty, and not even thirty minutes later I am so excited about it I decided to get a quick blog post in to share my joy and happiness with the world.
I usually like to include a pictures in my posts, and it seemed that the right one for this should be the big poo in the potty, but then my brain filter kicked in and I decided perhaps just a nice generic fun photo of a potty would be enough to get the point across.
Hopefully we can get on a roll and get her potty trained by the fall when she starts JK. I am also just now starting the twins on their potty training adventure as they just turned 2 and are showing great interest in sitting on their potties. Its going to be a long naked summer staying close to home while I try and train 3 kids to use the potty…..Good Times!!!!
As this is my maiden voyage posting on my new blog PandeMommium, I thought it only appropriate to share a bit more of myself and how I became fortunate enough to be able to use the aliases GENdMOM and PandeMommium and blog about my crazy and wonderful life with 2 year old twins and a 3 year old. Every week I plan on bringing you my tears and jeers when it comes to raising my kids and about not just being a mom but also a woman who is trying to crawl her way back to sanity! The following is my story in brief …..
I am a mom who wanted kids, ached and pained, kicked and screamed, got poked and prodded and worst of all was told that at the tender age of 35 I was of an advanced age for child bearing. Holy Crow, I was pissed. I didn’t want to be 35 when I first got pregnant, I wanted to do it right out of the marriage gate when I was 28, but things did not happen that way and it wasn’t until years of trying finally found me sitting in a fertility clinic picking a suitable sperm donor and having my fibroids and eggs measured to see if I was still able in my now elder years to become pregnant and bear children. I was given a bleak outcome, small eggs, big fibroids, 35 years old, IUI with Sperm Donor, there was not a great deal of hope from the doctors side of things, but after so many damn years of wanting kids I was not going to be discouraged. I thanked him, signed the paper work to say I understood that using fertility treatments could increase the chance of multiples which for me sounded like a win, to a fertility doctor it is a loss, the government does not like multiples and doctors that help create them, as they are a strain on the health system with many medical issues early on in their little lives. I left high with hope and went to the pharmacy to fill my prescription for clomid and wait for my sperm to arrive and my monthly cycle to kick in.
The Last Picture I have of Tobee 15 weeks
Two tries and success was ours, PREGNANT! It wasn’t long until I felt like something was wrong, I just had this weird feeling and when I went to the gynecologist she told me that I was being a nervous mom and that she knew I would think something was wrong until I was holding a healthy baby in my arms and only then would I believe her. I thought she was full of shit and I was right. My baby was not ok and at 5 months into the pregnancy I gave birth prematurely on my bathroom floor and our little girl was stillborn. I was devastated and did the only thing I could think to do, jump back on the fertility train for another ride. I did not want to grieve or wait but as it usually does life and my body had other plans for me. The doctors did not want me to try until the autopsy came back telling us what exactly was wrong with our little girl. They knew it was genetic, but wanted to be sure I was not the reason for the genetic default. The other kicker was my body would not co-operate and I would not stop bleeding. For the next 6 months I had numerous ultrasounds, more poking and prodding… YAY! I was put on birth control pills, not what a women who wants to have a baby is going to be very happy about. At certain points I was taking up to 3 birth control pills a day to try and stop the bleeding and to get my cycles back on track. It wasn’t until just recently that I found out I have Von Willebrands Disease which means my blood doesn’t clot so I bleed and bruise more then someone normally should. I still think those 6 months feel like the longest in my life.
6 months later, we had packed up our house, moved back across the country from BC to Ontario, we missed home and our families. We bought a small cottage that had been abandoned for 3 years and started tearing it apart and renovating it. In that time my husband started having second thoughts about using a sperm donor, he wanted to go back to the specialists and see if anything with his diagnosis had changed. Our original infertility diagnosis was Male factor due to unexplained Azoospermia. I was so pissed…AGAIN! This is when my kicking and screaming came into play. I knew that if he wanted to go see the specialist, it would mean more time waiting to try getting pregnant. We had found out that the genetic issue did not stem from me and we were advised to use a different sperm donor. I had stopped bleeding, my cycles where back on track and I was now a year older, but still ready to get going and my husband who had finally gotten on board after a longtime digesting our infertility diagnosis and looking into all our options, was now back tracking. But what was I going to say? He asked me straight out in the middle of one of my rants “Don’t you want a baby we have to be created with my sperm?” WTF, of course I did, nothing in this world would have made me happier, but we were told rather definitively by the doctor, or rather I was told “You will NEVER have biological children with your husband”. But love is strong and I loved him and wanted him to have his peace with it all as well. I waited another 5 months so we could both hear the word “NEVER” again.
The next month was a whirlwind. I found a fertility clinic, purchased more sperm and signed more paper work. Got poked and prodded and again two tries and I was pregnant. This time a happy healthy baby girl was born. We were finally on the other side of Infertility, we had battled it, kicked it’s ass, punched it in the face, called it bad names and spit on it’s entire being. We were winners. At least that’s how I felt. I was 37 when she was born, 2 years after we first walked into a fertility clinic and 9 years from when we got married and I threw my birth control pills out of the window. I was so excited that we had this little bundle of joy, I couldn’t wait to have another one, I always wanted 2 kids and waiting wasn’t an option for us, you know because I was getting really old now. So when our little bundle was 7 months old I headed back to the clinic to use up my sperm, I had 3 more vials left and was going to deplete my stash trying for another baby. The first month I was told I couldn’t even try, my ovaries had been hyper stimulated and it would not be a good time to try… I at this point was livid and it was in those moments that I learned that I am not a very patient person. So the next month when they told me I should wait again because I was only producing two eggs and it would be a waste of money and resources, I refused to listen and demanded that we go ahead. I got my way! 3 months laterwe found out we were having twins, and a month after that we found out that they had both tested positive for down syndrome. I think my world stopped in that moment, but only for that moment. Did I want to have an amnio, NO the risk of losing them was higher with twins, and even if they did have down syndrome, we would be prepared to pull all possible resources and give them everything that was needed. I said it before, Love is STRONG and we LOVED them. I went to 38 weeks pregnant with them and was so big I couldn’t even fit behind the steering wheel to drive anymore. A smooth, planned c-section and there they were, Boy 5lbs 9oz and Girl 6lbs, and they were perfect.
Me Pregnant with THE BOY and SPARKY and I am not even 8 months along…..
So now we were done. I had my babies, I got to experience pregnancy and we became a family of 5. I had 3 babies all in diapers and over the next year I slowly lost my mind and had it reaffirmed to me that I don’t posses any great skill when patience is involved. I was put on mommy drugs to calm my anxiety and regained a great love for white wine. I am now 40 and my kids are all toddlers who never, ever stop. I am a SAHM, a Student, a Wife, and a Blooger and I am tired, frustrated and bored!… BUT as it is constantly pointed out to me when I complain about any of it, “isn’t that what you wanted??????”…
Recently my oldest girlfriend and I got together and we were talking about our kids. She has a stepson who is just wading his way through teenage land and she is right there going through all the trials and tribulations with him. The break-up with the first girlfriend, the new girlfriend, the sex talk, the drivers license talk! All of these things are mere mentions in my life right now as my kids haven’t even started school, but they certainly get me thinking back to the days of high school and the drama that it was, and the boys, oh the boys……
She gave him what I think is a solid piece of advice “The coolest guy in school is the guy who has the fastest car but drives it the slowest because he doesn’t have to prove anything!” I LOVE IT!!!!!
So what is it I want my kids to learn from my teenage life experience, my angst, my boy drama, my girlfriend cattiness, driving a car, field parties, skipping school, drinking, sex….oh my god, my head is spinning. I know I have a ton of time to teach them all this before they are at the stage to need the advice and my husband and I often just make the joke that as long as we manage to keep the girls off the pole and teach the boy to respect girls, we have done a good job, but in that glibness I think there may actually be some truth.
As parents we perceive who and what our children are going to be and how they are going to be formed by our upbringing. Before I had kids my husband and I talked endlessly about how we would always give our kids choices. They would never hear “No” from us. For example, they want to go to the Zoo today, but that is not possible, so we explain to them that we cannot go to the Zoo today and instead they can choose from one of two options 1) a walk in the park 2) visit with Grandma. This seemed perfectly reasonable to us as perspective parents. Let me tell you reality hit hard!!! Options don’t mean crap to a toddler who wants to go to the Zoo, all they want to hear is let’s go. I never dreamed that child having a temper tantrum could be so focus driven. So the options quickly become a non-option in our house, and the word “NO” became a familiar ring in all of our ears, and thus we slowly realized all those late night chats of how we were going to bring up our children and influence their lives had to be flushed and more reality based ones needed to be put firmly into place.
So the toddler years are in full swing and I once again I find myself chatting with my girlfriends about who my children will be when they are teenagers, the only difference is my head is no longer in the clouds but set squarely in place on my now sensible parenting shoulders. I have thought many times about the advice I wish I had gotten from my parents about being a teen and this is what I wish I had been told:
Girls: Don’t worry about him, if he doesn’t like you, believe me another will come along. Be a strong individual, be compassionate and never, ever judge anyone. You DO NOT have to go with the crowd or the flow, you are allowed to rock the boat, it doesn’t make you a bad person it makes you who you are, a Smart thinking person. You are beautiful, everything about is perfect, believing in yourself will allow you to believe that. All your thoughts, emotions, ideas, tears and fears are valid and real!
Boys: Respect women, but do not let them walk all over you. Be a best friend and a buddy, and never judge. Stick up for the little guy and defend your thoughts and your voice, what you have to says important. You are smart, clever, sensitive and true. This world is here for you to envelope and explore. Never be afraid to cry, to ask for help, to show your true emotions or come to your mommy for a hug. All your thoughts, emotions, ideas, tears and fears are valid and real! Oh Yeah, and remember that “The coolest guy in school is the guy who has the fastest car but drives it the slowest because he doesn’t have to prove anything!”
I was first introduced to Cloud Dough from my momsgroup Momstown, and then I found the recipe for it on Pinterest and it has been great fun here in our house. Yes it is messy, but as far as I am concerned the bigger the mess the kids make, the longer they are occupied!
Supplies:
-8 cups of Flour
-1 cup of baby oil
Directions:
Mix the flour and baby oil together with your hands in a large container until the dough holds together when squeezed. It could take 3-5 minutes of mixing.
Momstown Barrie Event. MJ and Momstown Barrie Owner Karrie playing with Cloud Dough
MJ and THE BOY at a Momstown Barrie Event playing with Cloud Dough
My babies have turned 2 and all of a sudden they seem so grown up. I have really been observing them lately and how different Sparky and The Boy are form one other despite being twins. THE BOY is much more like his older sister MJ, they both like quiet mornings, have an extremely particular sort of OCD streak to them and are both very emotional and sensitive. SPARKY on the other hand, well she’s fireball in the mornings, could care less how messy the world gets and thrives off of stealing her brother and sisters things just to see them freak out and scream! It is no surprise then that this week, she started eating lemons and shoplifting.
The lemon eating was funny at first. I thought I would give her a taste, because most kids seem to want to try a lemon at some point. So I gave her a piece and her brother a piece. THE BOY reacted just as expected, he made a sour face while he tried desperately to wipe the taste off of his tongue. But SPARKY, she threw her head back, pursed her lips together in a joyful, smug smile and said “mmmmmmmmmm”, and we haven’t looked back. Every morning she runs to the counter and demands her lemon fix and the fun has stopped as I am not one to be fond of my children barking orders at me, especially at 6am…..the girl is weird!
THE BOY trying a lemon
SPARKY enjoying her lemon
The shoplifting really shouldn’t be much of a surprise, as I said earlier SPARKY loves stealing things from her siblings and gets great joy from it, but she also loves Dora and I now know she will stop at nothing when it comes to getting her hands on Dora merchandise. We went to the mall with Gramma the other day and and as we were walking down the hall we lost site of her for one second, and I mean a milli second. But before we even had time to panic, we heard her high pitch squeals of joy as she yelled “DORA, DORA”!!! We turned around to see her as she came running out of a store yelling and carrying, more like hugging, a Dora suitcase. In my moment of ‘thank god’ there she is relief and the second it took me to realize she had just stolen this right out of a store, I managed to get a picture, just like any good mom would do in this situation. I then looked around waiting for mall security to tackle my 2 year old, but none were in site. We quickly pulled her screaming and crying back into the store as we were trying to pry the suitcase out of her hands and return it. The sales lady was astonished, she did not even see or hear her as she carried out her criminal act! Everything turned out fine, she did not get arrested and my Mom and I tried hard not to laugh about it all because that would send the wrong message to SPARKY, and we wouldn’t want to do that, it would be irresponsible parenting
My name is Allison and I am a married SAHM of 3 kids. A 3 year old daughter and 2 year old boy/girl twins. I originally ventured into the online world with my blog several years back when we got pregnant for the first time with our daughter who unfortunately did not make it and was still born at 5 months. This was extremely devastating for us as we had been suffering from male factor infertility for the 7 years previous and had finally made the decision to use donor sperm to create our family. However, our hearts still so wanted a child and we moved on and eventually had the children we so desperately wanted. I start blogging in an attempt to find other moms/families who also had children born from donor conception and what I found was so much more. I discovered I had more to write about then just being a mom of donor conceived kids, I also found that I got great joy from interacting with others about being a Mom, A Wife, A Student (yes I am also back in school), etc. Most importantly I found an online world of friends and family.
The Gang!
I have been inspired to branch off from my first blog GENdMOM, which focuses on my life as a women who recently turned 40, being a student again, infertility, etc. and create another blog that is “all things mommy and kids”. I know, I know another mommy blog, but I feel that it is such a huge part of my life and I see this new blog as sort of a continuation of GENdMOM, the second half of the story. Its the blog that talks about my everyday life with kids. Its a place for me to journal about our experiences of finally being the family we so desperately wanted. Good or Bad PandeMommium will have it all!
Ask me anything, my life is an open book as you will see from my blogs. I am not shy nor offended easily. I love the personal interaction, so please feel free to email me about anything if you are feeling to shy to ask on the forums.
