Potty Excellence!

Potty training is here in full effect.  It seems it has happened so fast, I mean Ben is in undies during the day and no accidents? When did he become such a big boy?!? 2 weeks ago, daycare told us to quit putting him in diapers because it was only getting in his way when he would go to the toilet on his own to pee? WHAT? He was not doing that at home but apparently he was showing off at daycare with his potty skills. So last weekend we did the "need to go potty?" every 45 minutes to him and I created the fabulous fancy potty chart as seen below :) (yes Thursday is Thursay, oopppss).  He gets small stickers for pee and big stickers for poop. Not only does this encourage him to pee, but he is learning the days of the week - double bonus with this chart!
We went to dinner last night with the Forrest family and I think he visited both the women's and men's restroom about 10 times - 2 of those he actually did pee. wwooo  hoo! Ben is rocking this potty training, he pooped both Thursday and Friday night... I'm hoping we've passed the "OMG I'm terrified to drop my poop in the toilet" stage.  Cleaning up not only 1 but 2 poop undies on Tuesday was more than we'd like.... please please please let this pooping in the potty stick around :)  I'll tell ya, when Ben does decide to achieve a new goal, he puts his all in it and goes full steam ahead. I am so proud of the Stinkerman!!

John said this looks like one of those akward school pics
where kids wont' look at the camera :)

ZOO

I played hooky at work Monday to enjoy a Zoo day with my boys and the Gesell clan. So worth it! Allyson, who is my BFF, was in town from LA with her boyfriend Aaron (who is on his way to be a famous actor, seriously, I will for real know someone famous) so we joined them along with Allyson's sister and her 2 kiddos. Ruby is a year older than Ben, we laughed because they have the exact same coloring and same hair....by the end of the day, both kiddo's hair were curling up from the heat :) Ruby is a bossy lil thing and Ben loved every minute of it. He "made fun of her" when she cried because she didn't get her way. It is apparently his new thing because he did the same thing at the park Saturday. When a kid throws a fit (or in the park incident really gets hurt), Ben does this fake cry at them. To Ruby it was hilarious.... not so hilarious to the poor kid who got hurt. Partly our fault because we "egggg" him on to act for us. We had high hopes to see the new baby elephant but she was bonding with her mommy. Ben was not disappointed though - he got to see elephant poop - "BIG POOP MOMMY!" Could have cared less about the actual elephant, he loved the poop and the fans in the elephant room. He also was obsessed with the pig poop at the petting zoo. I will blog another day about his recent pooping habits, lets just say we have hit white trash status for sure! Back to the zoo.... we took our lunches, ate by the lake, and got cooled off by the lake breeze. Ben was great for the most part, a few meltdowns here and there but nothing a little kit-kat bribing couldn't cure :)

On a totally different note - to my friends out there who encouraged me to take action on my miscarriages, I did... I graciously donated 14 tubes of blood :)  The results came back yesterday and I have a "mutated" gene - Methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase (MTHFR) is the name of a gene that produces an enzyme. If a person carries the genetic mutation that inhibits production of this enzyme, its ability to absorb folic acid is inhibited - in short, I have a severe folic acid deficiency,along with blood clotting.  Not only do I carry one bad copy of this gene, but 2 bad copies :( My doc has never had a patient with 2 bad copies, fantastic news right? However, my doc is the greatest and already prescribed me what to take and is going to seek further answers from a specialist for me.  At least I now know why I've lost 2 babies and there isn't the answer of "we aren't sure why, just bad luck.. keep trying"!

Had to ride on the Panda!

Checking out the elephant poop :)

Notice the curly q's... this was at the end of the day

"E-L-E-P-H-A-N-T"... as always, he was spelling the sign to Ruby



Banging on this random door at the Chimp exhibit.. I told him the monkey's were sleeping in there and to stop.. his mind went to "ssshhh sleeping, MACHINES. He manages to bring machines, rockets, space in any sentence :)



Happy Zoo Clan!

after dinner

Each week Ben finds something to obsess over.  We hear about it over and over and then it fades out and something new and exciting enters the little man's brain.  However, spaceships and rockets are still lingering and I don't know if they will ever leave our topics of conversations.  All weekend this is how it went:
Ben: "Lets go bbbyyeee-bye"
Me: "Where you wanna go"
Ben: "SPACE"
Me: "We need a space ship for that and I only have my car"
Ben: "uuuuoooooooohhhhh ok"
And Ben will start talking, talking in what sounds like a foreign language, and then at the end you can decipher either... "spaceship" or "rocket".
But this past week, it was paint. Started with crayon coloring. Next night he found our "junk drawer" with the water color paint. And knowing what was coming the next night, the finger paint popped in my head and we let him go to town outside with it. Weed-eed-eater and mowing could be this week's after dinner energy buster, he was pretty attached to both this weekend... if only they were the real-deal to help out daddy :)  Good practice though!

Getting pestered by daddy-o

About to spew milk out of his mouth!

Fire station, yes please

We have experienced a few "neat" and exciting things lately...

1.  Peeing as he wishes in the backyard.  Our new neighbors probably think are "Dub-T".  I won't go into details but one night the neighbors have every right to think we are white trash, because they would have heard me say "Ben show Papa how you poop in the yard"..... long story, he isn't pooping in the yard...yet.  He is so proud of himself when he get his stream of peeing going in the grass.
2. Someone deposited "nuggets" in his Buzz & Woody undies... He has been back to fighting the diaper changes again, so we settled on big boy undies Sun morning.  30 minutes later, I see what looks like rocks in his undies. GAG. It was sick, but we threw the poo in the toilet and waved good bye as it went to the ocean :)
3. For many reasons, I try to avoid taking Ben to the stores with me.  Refusal to sit in shopping car, throwing items, you know... but on Sunday he went to BOTH Target and Wal-Mart! He was a champ! There was a rough patch during the Target trip  - chalk eggs were being launched on the floor but Cheez-Its saved the day. Ben loves Wal-mart. Since moving right by it, he knows where it is and always asks to go.  At both stores, he thrived on being Mr. Personality, saying hi to EVERYONE.
4. Ben befriended 2 firemen in the Wal-mart parking lot and ended up with an invite to visit their station after refusing to exit their firetruck in the parking lot.  I had to lie to my child, it was necessary.  There was no other way he was budging... "Ben, hurry, get out quick, they have to go put out a fire".  It worked. His eyes got wide and he hopped right out.  Upon arrival at the station, Ben received some sweet SWAG - coloring book, badge stickers and daddy's favorite - tattoos! Daddy of course had to try it out and looked so badass with this Edmond Fire Dept tat on his chest. Fortunately it washed off :) Ben prefered the brush and tanker truck to the actual real deal fire truck.  The firemen all came out to see us and were super nice... I foresee future trips back to Station #4.