I hear ya-

Small victories.

1. Emma has, dare I say it, mastered the art of being a big girl, and using the bathroom accordingly. Read-doing all of her "duties" in the appropriate place. After a (very long) morning of a battle of wills a few weeks ago, she adjusted her attitude, and it has been getting easier each day. For a week or so, I had to remind her that she could choose the bathroom, or choose to sit in time-out. She tested us one time, and then began to choose the bathroom. Now, I don't have to say that anymore. I do tell her to go, and she toddles off and listens.

I must rip on the new trend of parenting for a moment. Everything that I read while searching for answers told me to wait until she's ready, one day she will just decide, and you can't make her. Just be patient, they all said, and take it in stride. Heck, you'll miss these days sometime in the future. Well, my patience ran out.

I admit that there is some truth in the advice. A year ago, I agreed. But, the girl is about to be 3. When you google our "problem", there are pages and pages of people complaining that they are cleaning underwear, and their little person just doesn't want to stop using underwear instead of the bathroom. Well, of course not!

What my little Emma needed was some old-fashioned, tried and true, hard nosed parenting. She fought. After an hour and a half of her crying in the bathroom I wondered if I had made a big mistake here, and wondered if getting into a battle of wills was really a good idea. Oh, how those internet doctors would shun me. But, we stuck it out, and we won. My tidbit that I want to pass on to you, is don't start a battle and not finish it.

2. After a round of antibiotics, my dear son is sleeping through the night, finally. No more 3 a.m. wakings. A night of solid sleep is doing wonders for all of us.

Growth Spurts

1. Emma has begun to call me "mom" on a regular basis. It took me a couple of days to realize it, but one day, I suddenly stopped and it registered in my brain. I think it is a different kind of mothering. "Mommy" vs. "Mom".

Mommy roles include cuddling, soothing, offering security. Mom seems to be more of get Owen out of the way, fixing annoyances, cleaning up spills and washing favorite clothes. Not that the roles are not interchangeable, they are. It just seems like our relationship is growing into something bigger.

2. Owen is changing all the time. He has decided that maybe baby sign language isn't so bad, and is beginning to talk more. The frustrating part, for me, is knowing that he is capable of saying words, he just isn't very interested. He would rather grunt, cry, point and lunge after what he wants. He communicates very effectively, but I get really exhausted after hearing him be so loud all day long. He really likes to look at books, watch the washing machine start (hey, I like that too0, play with things he shouldn't (that is how the dryer light bulb broke) and walk around when we shop for groceries, rather than sit in the cart. He is a baby at some moments, and fiercly independent and a toddler the next. *sigh* I miss my baby, but am enjoying the ease that comes as he can do more things for himself.

Little joys

I am now the proud owner of a pair of brand spanking new Gingher G-8 8 Inch Knife Edge Dressmaker's Shears.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/images/B000UU6SR4/ref=dp_image_text_0?ie=UTF8&n=284507&s=kitchen
They are pretty amazing. They arrived in a very shiny metal case, with a "holster" for the blade. I was too excited not to try them out. I recruited my husband to help me trace onto fabric to cut, and then took them for a spin. I think that I instantly became a better seamstress. My old 8 dollar pair of Wal-Mart craft scissors were pretty pathetic, and when I used them, the edges of my fabric were embarrassingly jagged. No more. I decided that I like to sew enough to invest a little bit of green, so now I am ready for more projects.

Little lamentations

I realized how much we are paying a year for health insurance. For some reason, most likely denial, I never realized the yearly rate, just the monthly. When I realized the dollar amount, my body did an involuntary shudder and my intestines flipped over a few times. WHAT! THAT IS ABSURD!

The incident that steered me towards this unpleasant revelation began with Owen having an ear infection. The doctors usually, in the past, have urged me to make a follow-up appointment for 10 days after the initial appointment, to make sure the antibiotics have done their job. The kicker is that this requires another official office visit.

Read between the lines, $$$$.

I finally got bold enough to ask if we could just have his ears looked at, and of course, they basically laughed at me, and asked if I wanted to make an appointment. An office visit is at least $100. Checking a child's ears takes about 24 seconds. Now, understand, that I am not an economist, a nurse, a doctor, or an insurance agent. I am merely a mom. Little old me can't understand how anyone can be asked to give you 5 twenty dollar bills for less than 30 seconds of service. This, in my humble opinion, is a system that is really broken. The part that got me even more riled up is when we realized that not having insurance is just risky enough that we don't dare try it. But, what if we saved our monthly premiums in a savings account, and managed our own dumb health care. What if we paid for all medical costs out of pocket? We would save a ridiculous amount of cash, and have an account that should be sufficient for any medical costs in the future.

On the flip side, if God graces us with another child, or we have a serious but rare incident that requires any emergency service, we are in a lot of trouble. Being a home owner is scary in that sense, because if the deck becomes stacked against you, you lose your house. So, we pay thousands of dollars for assurance that a night in the hospital won't leave us homeless so we can then pay the equivalent of 360 dollars an hour to make sure that the last doctor visit, for which I spent 100 dollars, ten days ago, was effective.

Of course, I have little else to complain about. In the grand scheme, I have healthy kids and a wonderful life. That is why I titled this section "Little lamentations".

Big Hopes

Spring comes early.

Hey, big head...;)

This is proof that the kid does smile! It is on his terms though, no smiling for the camera just because I ask him nicely. He is an outdoor kind of guy, really enjoying our trips outside.

This has got to be one of my favorite pictures. The kids are buddies. I have watched Emma treat her brother very nicely. Of course, there are the moments when she gets frustrated with him too, but we've all been pushed around by our siblings, and survived.

Today I took Owen to the doctor. Among the other findings, we learned that he is in the 5th percentile for weight, and 70th percentile for his head size. In height, he is in the middle.