Day 17: Meh

My day today was exhausting in a long way. First thing this morning, I decided I finally needed to man up and sit Jack on the potty for the long run. I parked him on that thing with a pile of books, snacks, his "eye-yi" and blanket, and of course plenty of stupid human tricks. We were ready for what I was expecting to be a while, possibly up to an hour. Have you ever tried to keep a two year old entertained for an hour? Oh, and they aren't allowed to move, just in case holding their attention wasn't hard enough. As it turns out, that hour I planned for was really two hours. Do you know how hard it is to hold your ground on making a two-year old sit on the potty when he's been there for more than an hour already, you have a crying newborn baby that needs to eat, and you need to get everyone ready for the day before your visiting teachers come in 20 minutes, and you still need to clean up the birthday party mess in the living room and do the dishes?

It was a daunting morning. But after all the effort it took to keep him on the potty for that long, I wasn't going to just get him down without a successful trip. So finally after 2 hours and 8 minutes, Jack's bladder gave into me, and we had a successful visit. Lucy and I proceeded to celebrate in an over the top manner, in hopes to get the point across, and then we presented Jack with his well deserved potty treats. Jack was completely clueless about what he did to deserve this, but hopefully one more trip will help him connect the dots so our trips won't average two hours.

After that success, my day pretty much went down hill. Within a half an hour, Jack had pooped in his diaper, and any other attempts I made with the potty today ended in utter failure (not unexpected or a surprise in anyway, just annoying after such an extreme effort). Once I caught Jack dipping his cars into the potty that he is fascinated with, but for all the wrong reasons. When I got him down for a nap, I sat and read the Ensign for a good half hour or so, and what do you think happened? I got extremely tired. So I told Lucy that I was going to lay down with Alivia while she watched Wall-E. When I laid down, Jack woke up. Once I pulled myself out of my bed, I brought Jack downstairs to find that Lucy helped herself to a nice healthy snack. She pulled out the strawberries and took one bite of each one. I looked and that table and said to myself "Really?"

At this point I realized I had to have King Sooper's Tomato Bisque soup, and I needed to go to the store anyway, so I loaded up the kids and we took off. The grocery store wasn't bad, but then Shawn asked me to swing by Walmart and pick something up, and that's where everything went downhill fast. Jack was done with the cart, so to end the screaming, I let him walk around. Within ten minutes he found a small broom and was running around the baby section pretending it was a gun. We found his potty seat, and then started looking into the spice that Shawn wanted me to get. Yeah, after twenty minutes of Jack wandering away, and Alivia getting fussy, I learned this spice doesn't exist. So I packed up the kids and went to check out, where because of a coupon mix up I was charged double. So it was off to customer service where I found out I was charged for 12 boxes of fabric softener when I only bought two that were suppose to be free. It took literally 20 minutes to figure that one out, and you can imagine how done my kids were at that point. Then we headed home exhausted and already past bed time.As soon as I pulled up Shawn asked me how dance was, which as it turns out I had completely forgotten about, that was annoying. So pizza it was for dinner, right after I made Shawn man Alivia's blow out. Now I'm more than ready for bed.