2008

Due to the lack of napping in this house, I am not going to do a big ol' New Years post. But I will say that this year has gone by way to quickly. Zachariah has transformed from a baby to a toddler in no time. Its a very bittersweet thing.

Here he is this time last year...

And here he is now...

What a difference a year can make! *single tear*


Hope everyone has a happy New Year!

The Saga

The weekend before Christmas I finished the Twilight Saga. I really don't know what to say about it. Words cannot express how much I loved these books. The only thing I knew going into these books was that it was about a Vampire and a human girl that ended up falling in love. That's it. I almost wish I had been emotionally prepared for what I was getting into... but then again, it was super fun to not know what the next page would bring.

I don't think I could fully explain to you how emotionally involved with these characters I became. I stressed out about certain situations that Bella was going to have to encounter. I actually started to make myself sick over certain things. Yes, I know that is pitiful and ridiculous... but once I realized that I was becoming a problem I started talking it out with Daniel. And that made a world of difference in my moods.

ANYWAY. Each book took me about 2-3 days to read. I am so glad it didn't take me much longer, because I was NO GOOD when I was in the middle of a book. I seriously had to take breaks between the books because I would get so wrapped up in them that I would neglect house work, supper (I didn't cook for at least a week) and family time. There might have even been an incident where Zachariah dropped our laptop while I was reading the fourth book. But the details are a little foggy.

All of that rambling to say that I absolutely loved these books, and I am so incredibly glad I jumped on the bandwagon. :)

A Little Better

Yesterday was a better day for Zachariah. He slept wonderfully (which means we did too) and he seems to be more "himself". Dont get me wrong, he is still sick. Runny nose, congestion, cough, diarrhea. You know, the works. But I think the meds are making him feel better. So that's a plus. The only negative is that I am sick. Which makes it a bit more difficult to entertain the active toddler. BUT he has been oh-so-patient with me. He lets me lay on the couch for most of the morning, which is when I feel worst. Then my meds kick in and I can function for the rest of the day. So yeah. That's the update. We have been watching a lot of TV and eating an ungodly amount of soup and animal crackers (and by we, I mean Zachariah). Hopefully the days will continue to get better!


And in other news... after 5 long weeks in hospitals, our little nephew and his family were FINALLY able to come home last night!! They have been through a lot in the last few weeks, with their baby having heart surgery, and we are just so happy to have them home. I cant wait till me and Z get better so we can see them!!

Kill.Me.Now.

I am physically and emotionally drained. It feels like these last three and a half days have lasted for a whole week. Zachariah is still sick. His fever is down, but he has a bad cough and he cant breathe due to his stuffy/runny nose. He is on several meds, which I am sure is helping... but I want an immediate fix. I am functioning on little to no sleep with a clingy, fussy, and sick toddler. Did I mention that he is skipping his naps and not eating much? Yeah. My patience is gone. I need to borrow someones sanity.

We are going to try to go to the Doctor tomorrow or Tuesday. So I will have more info as to what exactly is wrong with my little man. One day I will get around to posting an actual Christmas post. Pictures and all. But that will have to wait until I get a few hours of shut eye.

Brief Christmas Post

This years Christmas was a bit off.

First, we had quite an ordeal with our Christmas cards. To make a long story short, we ended up misspelling our sons name on the card. We didnt realize this until two days AFTER the cards were sent out. So yeah. We are bright.

Then Zachariah woke up at 5:00 Christmas morning with a 101.6 degree fever. A few hours later it went up to 102. The on call doctor is pretty sure he has bronchitis. So that threw off Christmas morning a bit. He wasn't really into opening presents... just rearranging the bows and ribbons. On the up side, his temperature has gone down and he is acting more like himself (medicine works wonders).

Ah well. We will have a second chance at a more pleasant "Christmas" when Daniel's family gets back in town. So I will let you know how that goes.

Hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas! :)

Take Two

About a month ago I wrote this post explaining the differing opinions that Zachariah and I have on how the diapers should be organized. Well, we had another diaper encounter. This time, Zachariah took it upon himself to move the diapers from the organized basket back to the big box they came in.


So for his punishment I made him sit in the diaper box to think about what he did.
For three hours.
Just kidding. He was in there for like 5 seconds.
Needless to say, we had to go over the rules again.

Zachariah... Mommy likes the diapers like this:

I don't know why he has such a hard time remembering these things.
:)

This is Fun!

I saw this fun little thing on Rachael's blog over at little bits of heaven. ( I stalk her blog on a pretty regular basis. She has some of the cutest triplets EVER. You should go take a peek.) Ok, onto the game! Here are the rules.

1) Choose the 4th folder where you store your pictures on your computer

2) Select the 4th picture in the folder

3) Explain the picture

4) Tag 4 people to do the same

NO CHEATING! (cropping, editing, etc!)

My fourth picture happened to be of my K3 kids! Well, most of them. Sweet little Camryn wasn't there. :( This was in 2007... my last year teaching before I had Z, and the picture was taken on Pajama Day! I had such a sweet class (with one exception. But he will remain nameless. hee hee) and I miss them a ton.*sigh*

Now time for some tagging.
I tag Amy, Hayley, Jamie and Tammi.

One Hernia, Coming Up

Zachariah is under the impression that he is the strongest one year old around. He will try (and most of the time succeed) to pick up heavy objects and tote it over to me or Daniel. He is so proud of himself when he "helps" by carrying things. His favorite thing to carry happens to be packs of diapers. He makes a funny little grunting sound and his facial expression cracks me up. Daniel keeps saying that he is going to give himself a baby hernia. *insert eye roll here*

So now, without further adieu... here is a video of the cuteness (Please ignore his messy room).

UGH

I just want to say how freaking tired I am of the weather down here. There is something that is just plain wrong about wearing capri's and a tank top a week away from Christmas. And you know what? It is going to be in the 80's for the next three days. UGH.

Any takers on moving to Hawaii? I hear the weather is fabulous there.

In Other News...

It has been a while since I have posted a "Zachariah update". Since it is long overdue, this will probably be a bit lengthy. So I apologize ahead of time. :)

Age- First things first. He is 15 months old today. I cannot believe he is this old! He has turned into such a fun little toddler. This is SUCH a fun stage! I absolutely love it.

Teeth- The official teeth count is now up to four. Yes. my 15 month old son only has four teeth. So that means that I still have to cut things up into smaller pieces than a typical one year old would be eating. Which is fine, because I have been doing this for a while now. But eventually we need some more teeth in that mouth! :)

Walking- This kid is EVERYWHERE. I am sure you have gathered that from some of my other posts dealing with toilet paper and diapers. So yeah. It keeps things interesting around here to say the least. :)

Communication- Z's vocabulary seems like it is increasing daily. I love it. The words that he says on a regular basis are: bye-bye, ball, momma or mom, dad or dadda, up, this, juice, and penguin (see the next paragraph). His occasional words are: thanks, Daniel (we think this is coincidence, but its still funny), bath, and squirrel (at least its very close to squirrel). He is still doing sign language as well (eat, more, all done, milk, please). And this is by no means sign language, but when he has pooped in his diaper, he will either pat or pull at it, trying to say poop... which is helpful. So between the words and signing, its getting easier to decide what he needs/wants.

Obsessions- Now on to one of my favorite things about my son. He is completely obsessed with penguins. And since penguins are my all time favorite animal, I love that he loves them! He has several penguin stuffed animals, but his all time favorite is Mumble from Happy Feet. Every time he sees it he gets the biggest smile on his face and gives it a huge hug. Its ADORABLE. Whats funny though, is that he calls penguins "ba". Yeah... I don't know. Our guess is that he is trying to say bird. Regardless, he will walk around the house looking for his penguin saying "ba". It cracks me up.

Well, that's about the gist of it. My kid is growing up way to fast. The end. :)
I hope everyone has a great weekend!

Sorry...

Our hard drive has screwed up. So we are waiting on Dell to send us another one (thank goodness its still under warranty). Until then, I am not able to get on a computer on a regular basis. Though my wonderful brother lets me borrow his laptop while he is at work every now and then. So that is pretty much a life saver. :)

Anyway... just letting you know that if I am a bit slack on responding to emails, blogs, or facebook stuff its because I am waiting on a hard drive. Hopefully I will be back to computer
land soon. :)

Jumping on the Bandwagon

Yes. This weekend I jumped on the bandwagon and read Twilight.

I am going to be honest. I never even knew there was a book called Twilight until after I had heard about the movie. And even when I did figure out what it was about, I wasnt really eager to read about a teen girl who was falling in love with a vampire. Things that are that far fetched usually dont interest me. Then again, I LOVED Harry Potter, and that doesnt exactly deal with reality either.

ANYWAY. All that to say, that I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I really wanted read it all in one day, but having a one year old craving attention kind of got in the way of my reading time. But I am glad it only took me a couple days to read it, because it consumed my every thought until I finished it. (I don't do to well with suspense.)

What do you guys think about the other books in the series? Are they as good as the first one?

Poll Time!

It has come to my attention that SOME PEOPLE are not particularly fond of the Trans-Siberian Orchestra. So that leads me to this oh-so-fun poll I have created. I would like to know if I am the only one out there who actually enjoys their music.

So here ya go. Have a fabulous weekend!

Christmas Music

Last Christmas Daniel and I got hooked on the Trans-Siberian Orchestra. And by hooked I mean obsessed.Their music is absolutely phenomenal. Most of their stuff is just instrumental (hence the orchestra part of their name), but they have some kick butt vocals too.

All that to say, I have changed my music player. Instead of the random conglomeration of music that I previously had, I now have some of my favorite songs by the Trans-Siberian Orchestra. Give them a listen. If you don't already, you will soon come to love them as much as I do. :)

Yes. I am Amazing.

If you know me personally, you know that I am not the perfect little housewife. I am not domestic. And I am a lazy slob.

Well, you bloggers might be pleased to know that I have started making homemade bread! Someone gave me a kick butt bread maker, and I love it. I am making Zachariah whole wheat bread and next I plan to try Cinnimon Rasin. I have a large recipie book that came with the breadmaker, so I have a lot of experiementing to do!

Cute videos of Z coming soon! I just wanted to let you know of the temporary domestication that has consumed me. But no worries. I am still lazy... and a slob. I am sure this will pass soon enough. :)

My Sweet Baby

This is a picture I took earlier today while Zachariah was watching TV. It captures a moment of calmness that has been very rare in our household lately.

Oh how I love this kid.

Pops and Z

Every year we have a massive Thanksgiving gathering at my grandparents house. Its basically a family reunion for my mom's side of the family. It is a bit overwhelming for adults, not to mention small children. Luckily, Zachariah handles crowds okay... as long as he is able to get away from everyone when needed.

So during the chaos I looked around to see if Zachariah was needing some "alone time", and low and behold he and my dad (aka: Pops) were off at the end of the driveway throwing rocks in puddles and watching the neighbors across the street. I couldn't help but take some pictures of them. Here are my favorites. Aren't they just adorable??


Thanks for entertaining him for me, Dad!

Yummy Dessert

A few weeks ago I stumbled across a recipe for a ridiculously yummy dessert. I made it for Thanksgiving this year, and I wanted to share my findings with you. Its called Swirled Pumpkin Cream Cheese Bars. When you think about it, you really cant lose with this dessert. Its delish, and pumpkin is an aphrodisiac. This is what we call a win-win scenario. :)

Swirled Pumpkin-Cream Cheese Bars

Ingredients

• 6 tablespoons butter, melted and cooled
• 1 3/4 cups sugar
• 3 large eggs
• 1 cup canned pumpkin
• 1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1 package (8 oz.) cream cheese, at room temperature
  
  

Preparation

1. In a bowl, with an electric mixer on medium speed, beat butter and 1 1/2 cups sugar until smooth. Beat in 2 eggs, pumpkin, and 1/3 cup water until well blended, scraping down sides of bowl as needed. In another bowl, mix flour, cinnamon, baking soda, baking powder, and nutmeg; stir or beat into butter mixture until well blended. Spread batter evenly in a buttered and floured 10- by 15-inch baking pan.

2. In a bowl, with an electric mixer on medium speed, beat cream cheese, remaining egg, and remaining 1/4 cup sugar until smooth.

3. Drop cream cheese mixture in 24 evenly spaced 1-tablespoon portions over batter. Pull a knife tip through filling to swirl slightly into batter.

4. Bake in a 350° oven until center of pumpkin batter (not cream cheese mixture) springs back when touched, about 30 minutes. Let cool completely in pan, then cut into 24 bars.

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When I cut them up, mine ended up looking more like a cake as opposed to a "bar". So I need to figure out how to fix that. Other than that, everything was pretty simple.

Click here to get the nutritional info and all that jazz. And let me know if you end up making it!

Enjoy! :)

Zachariah Patrol

Earlier this morning I was sitting on my bed talking to Daniel on the phone. Well, I wasn't really talking. I was more so whining/complaining/crying about how I cant find a receipt to some pants that I want to return. (It has been one of those mornings.)

Anyway, during the phone conversation Zachariah had been in and out of my room and his room, switching out our belongings. But as soon as I hung up I realized that I didn't hear him bustling around anymore (That is NEVER a good sign). Almost immediately I realized where he was and went stomping down the hallway. I was already getting onto him in my best "You-have-no-idea-how-much-trouble-you-are-in" voice, and turns out I should have used my "Mommy-would-spank-your-butt-if-it-wasn't-for-that-darn-diaper" voice.
I was livid. And he was ecstatic. He has never been able to successfully unroll the whole entire roll of toilet paper. He has tried, but those darn parents have gotten in the way every time. So needless to say, he was in baby heaven. Until he saw how pissed Mommy was. (And I still haven't cleaned up that mess. I just piled the toilet paper on top of the toilet. Daniel is going to have a nice little surprise when he gets home. LOL)

Soon after the "toilet paper party" we were in the living room watching Elmo's World. I was sitting on the couch, apparently off in my own little world, when I hear a trash can tip over behind me. And yet again, I march over and find Zachariah enjoying a nice little "trash can party".


I am not pointing any fingers, but SOMEONE is falling down on "Zachariah Patrol" today. And if they keep it up this house may be a wreck by the time Daniel gets home.
:)

Collin Stone

My sister-in-law had her baby yesterday. His name is Collin, and he weighs 5 pounds 4 ounces and is 17 inches long. He was born 4 weeks early, so he is in the NICU right now so they can monitor him. But everything is going really well. I am so proud of Christie. She did a great job and has handled everything wonderfully. Daniel wrote a post about it over at his blog, so go check it out.

And now for a couple pictures...

Congrats Christie and Brian!! You have one adorable baby boy! :)

Bragging Rights

Bear with me for a bit, while I take some time to do a bit of bragging. :)

Zachariah got some Baby Einstein Alphabet Books for his birthday. He absolutely LOVES these books. Several times a week, he will bring them up to me and we will go through every single book (Each one only has three pages, so it doesn't take too long). I will start each book by pronouncing the sound of the letter that is on the front. Z picked up on that pretty quickly and he has been repeating the letter sound after us.

Well... now he has moved on to letter recognition! There are 8-10 of them that he knows. I will show him one of the books and he will actually make the correct letter sound! At 14 months old!! I don't know about you, but I was pretty darn impressed.

Below is a picture of the letters that he can recognize so far. I will try to get a video of it sometime soon. Its just too cute!

Can You Hula Hoop like this?

I saw this amazing six year old girl on Oprah last week. She was literally born into the circus and started hula hooping at 3 years old. Her name is Americus, and I think she is adorable. And she can hula hoop better than anyone I have met. :)

Click here to watch her preform!!

Birthday Shout Out

Just wanted to say HAPPY BIRTHDAY to my brother, Wesley! He turns 22 years old today... And yes ladies, he is available.

And these are the ghetto cupcakes I made him. Don't make fun. I was sick and I don't have any experience with decorating. So this is what I ended up with. lol

Happy Birthday, Wesley!

Wearing Daddy's Hat

I'm sorry... but I just can't get over how cute my child is. I mean really, I just cant get enough of the cuteness.

And I HAVE to find him a hat like this. Because it is just plain adorable.

The End.

Christmas Video

I saw this video on a friends blog this morning. I liked it so much I decided to be a copycat and put it on my blog as well. Thanks for the video, Tammi! :)
Enjoy!

Sick as a Dog

Some type of illness has been going around Daniel's office, and he has now brought it home. So needless to say, I feel like crap.

This is the first time I have been sick since having Zachariah, so lets just say it has been a bit different that being able to lay in the bed all day watching TV. Gone are those days....

First Hair Cut

Yesterday, I took on the challenge of giving Zachariah his first hair cut. (Though I would consider it more of a trim. He doesn't have a ton of hair to begin with.) He was a bit squirmy. He kept moving his head up and down, and then tried to swat at the scissors a few times. Amazingly enough, we managed to come out unharmed. At one point I thought I had accidentally given him a mullet though. But all is well. Hopefully the picture hides the unevenness of his hair. I still need to go back and get a few stragglers. But he had enough for one sitting, so I didn't push it.

Before:

After:

Honesty is the Best Policy

For the past seven months I have been struggling with depression. Sadly, I am just now starting to come to grips with that.

I thought that the depression would come immediately after having Zachariah. I had read up on postpartum depression, so I was prepared for it. Days, weeks, and even months went by, and I was just fine. But around his seventh month birthday, depression slowly started trickling into my life. I guess staying at home with virtually no adult contact during the day eventually got to me. I didn't want to admit that I was feeling depressed. I thought it was a sign of weakness. I didn't want people to think less of me. I didn't want people to think I was a bad mom.

So I kept ignoring it, thinking it would get better with time. Until just a couple weeks ago when a friend called me out on it. For the first time, I actually admitted I was suffering from postpartum depression. Talking with someone who has gone through this before has made a world of difference. For the first time in months I went a whole week without having an emotional breakdown. I enjoyed myself and my time with my family immensely. It was great to be myself again.

Don't get me wrong... I still have my moments. And I am sure it is not going to be smooth sailing from here on out. I am really going to have to work at this. I may eventually even need medication. But for now, I just need to talk about it. And so far it has helped.

So yeah. That's what is going on in my life right now. And if you guys don't mind, I think I may try to post about this more often. This "being real" thing is actually really satisfying. :)

1 800 SafeAuto

This is one of those commercials that I love to hate. It is really is a horrible commercial. But I just cant look away.

Diapers

We have a basket for Zachariah's diapers located on the first shelf of his changing table (picture below). The basket holds approximately 40 diapers, and I usually re-load the basket once a week. Sometimes I can go a bit longer... just depends on what he has eaten that week. :)

Unfortunately, since Zachariah has been walking, he has discovered the diaper basket. That being said, it is not uncommon for me to walk into his room and find this:

He LOVES to take the diapers out of the basket. He will stand there and throw them over his shoulder while mumbling something in Japanese (which is downright hilarious). Luckily, he has started helping me pick up the diapers. He will usually hand them to me one by one while giggling, but lately he has decided to put them in the basket by himself. Here is the problem...

Mommy likes the diapers to look like this:

Zachariah likes the diapers to look like this:

Ah well. Whatever works. :)

Portable Washing Machine?

I was watching The Today Show this morning, and heard an interesting segment on shopping carts. There was a study done, and it turns out that shopping carts are more dirty than toilets. I guess when you think about it, that makes perfect sense. I mean, hundreds of people touch the handle a day. A butt load of kids sit in the seats, and some might slobber, spit up, poop, or pee on them. Then there are the groceries that actually go into the cart! What if the uncooked chicken has a hole in the packaging? All of that, and grocery carts are not washed regularly... if ever. Gross.

So I guess it wasn't to far fetched for someone to come up with this product:

A washing machine for shopping carts. How smart is that? It has a 5 minuet cycle and over 300 washes per gallon! I guess I will be wiping down my grocery cart handle from now on... at least until I see one of these here in town. :)

Welcome to the Jungle

Confession time.
I always have to have the TV turned on. Even its just to have on in the background as I get stuff done, it is on... constantly. The kicker is that we only have one channel. We have not been able to justify getting cable, but luckily we live right down the street from a TV station, so we get NBC. And as long as I have The Office, I am a happy camper.

Often I will watch whatever show happens to be on, regardless if I like it or not. That being said, I started watching Lipstick Jungle last season. I didn't think I would like it, but watched it because I had nothing else to do. And before I knew it, it was added to my list of "regulars". There is nothing special about this show. Its not cleverly written, its doesn't have good morals, and it doesn't have the best acting. But it has good clothes and scandalous women. So I cant stop watching it. Sad isn't it?

So that is my Television guilty pleasure. What is yours?

My Boys

Like father, like son...

Immunizations

Zachariah's 15 month shots are coming up. Naturally, that has caused me to do some thinking about vaccines. There is a good bit of controversy going on about vaccines now days, and I am just now starting to do some research about it. So in the meantime, I want to know what all of you think about children getting vaccines. Do you think it is a good thing? Bad thing? Have your children been vaccinated and have you had any negative results from that?

I will post info as I do some more digging. But I really do want to hear what you think about it!

My jumbled thoughts

I have been quite depressed today, and I cannot seem to shake it. I blame most of it on the fabulous postpartum depression that has decided to run my life for the past 7 months... but I think part of it has to do with the election results. I have no idea what is going to happen. I do know that the world will probably not come to an end the day Obama is sworn into office. What I don't know is if he will be the downfall of this country, or if he will actually improve the way things are going. Don't get me wrong... I have a guess. But I just don't know. And apparently I have a real problem with the unknown.

I probably need to work on that.
Anyway. Those are my thoughts, jumbled as they may be.

My Little Toddler

He has been working at this for a couple weeks now, but I think it is safe to say that Zachariah is (for the most part anyway) walking more than crawling! It took him 13 months, but he has really gotten the hang of this walking thing. It is very bittersweet... to see my baby confidently walking down the hallway with a HUGE grin on his face. He acts as if he had been doing this his whole life. Its just the cutest thing.



We are oh-so-proud of this little man!

LOL

As of late, Zachariah has been having a little to much fun with our toilet paper. In hopes of putting a stop to the toilet paper unraveling, I went on a search for a cover.

I found this...

Every time you take some toilet paper out it makes a fart sound. I realize I shouldn't find this quite so comical... but sometimes I cant help myself. I guess that's what I get for being married to a middle schooler.

A Year Ago

Halloween last year...


Halloween this year...


My gosh he has gotten big.

Happy Trick or Treating everyone!! :)

LOOKY!

My friend Tammi came over today and took some pictures of Zachariah in his Halloween costume. She just posted some of the pics on her biz blog... so go here and look at my cute little monkey!!

Seriously... This is Amazing

Saw this video on my friends blog and couldn't help but share it with everyone over here.

I honestly don't even know what to say about this video. So feel free to untie my tongue. :)

Get the latest news satire and funny videos at 236.com.

Another Video

Over the past few days I have been going through my video footage of Zachariah. I have videos from 5-12 months that I haven't done anything with yet. I am trying to tackle at least one a day. Sometimes if I get real ambitious I can knock out two or three. So I apologize if all I post within the next week or so are videos. :)

Here is way to much background information for you:
One of Zachariah's favorite Baby Einstein DVD's is called Baby da Vinci. Its a 6-9 month DVD, but he still loves it. His favorite part is when two hippos are on the screen and they start to yawn. All of a sudden they make the elephant noise instead of a yawn. (Zachariah thinks this is hilarious.) At the end of the "scene" you see the hippos walk off all confused and the elephant pops out from behind some brush. Z tried to mimic the elephant sound constantly. He is much better at it now, but this was taken a couple months ago. It is just so cute I couldn't help but share it with you all. :-)

Cuddle Bug

Over the past few weeks, Zachariah has been very loving and cuddly. At any given moment he will crawl up into my lap to hug me, or just lay on me. Just this morning he reclined himself in my lap for 20 minuets watching T.V. (He hasn’t been that still since he learned to crawl). Sometimes the cuddles only last for a few minutes, and sometimes it only lasts for a few seconds. But no matter how long it lasts, I am loving every little bit of it. I cant get enough of his cuddles!!

For your viewing pleasure...

Zachariah got a riding/walking bus from his Mimi and Poppie for his birthday. He LOVES this bus. He will push this thing around the house all day long. And he thinks it is the funniest thing. It is absolutely adorable. So I wanted you to share the cuteness with everyone.
(And for the grandparents, I have already added this video to my Vimeo page. So you can watch it there as well.)
Enjoy!



By the way... I need more comments on my potty training blog down there! Even if you don't have a little boy, tell me what you think about potty seats. Common people!

Potty Training

My mom recently asked me to get a Christmas list started for all of my family members (You have to stay on top of me about those things, or I will wait until Christmas Eve to make a list.). So I have been putting together a list for Zachariah. Daniel had the fabulous idea of putting a potty training seat (or whatever they are called these days) on the list, that way when we get ready to take the plunge (hee hee), we wont need to buy one.

Then my research started. I have found several that I like, and they have gotten a good combination of positive and negative reviews. And seeing as how I haven't potty trained a little boy before, I was wondering what all of you recommend. I am all about getting the "three in one" deals. Most of the potty's I am looking at has a seat that can be put onto the big toilet AND it converts into a step stool. My favorite thus far is this potty, because it plays music when pee or poop hits the toilet bowl. But people are saying that the splash guard comes off easy. Then again, people have raved about this one, because it is simple and sturdy and doesn't have any bells and whistles.

So let me know what you used when potty training your kiddo. Did you love it, hate it? Wish you had purchased another one?

Sequence of Events

Yesterday morning Zachariah and I were playing in the living room, when all of a sudden he crawled to the window and started yelling at the squirrels in our yard. (Which I swear, if I had a gun, I would shoot every single one of those things. But that's a totally different post.) I said, "Do you see the squirrels outside?" To which he responds by squealing and crawling as fast as he can to the front door. Which prompted the following sequence of events:

(As usual, click any picture to enlarge)

Crawling to the door.

Trying to act cute enough to get me to open the door.

Realizing the cuteness is not working, he
moves to Plan B... trying to do it himself.

Pouting, because Plan B failed... miserably.

Accepting defeat.

Ah... the life of a one year old. :)