Molar Bear

I HATE POTTY TRAINING! I mean, I absolutely, positively, beyond a shadow of a doubt despise potty training! The process at our house has gone remarkably slow with Dylan. Andi was completely potty trained by the time she turned 3, with not even so much as a nighttime accident since. This may sound like bragging, but believe me I have absolutely no reason to brag when you look at how poorly the process is going with Dylan. We're not talking 1 step forward, 2 steps back. It's been more like 5 rungs up on a ladder, only to lose your footing and plummet to the ground again so fast the bruise lasts for a month. Yesterday, Dylan came to me in a panic that he had pooped. I wasn't surprised; I was irritated, but not surprised. My irritation turned to outright rage when I saw that he was wearing big boy underpants. Not a pullup, but honest to goodness superhero underoos. He told me that Andi had given them to him. Of course! Why shouldn't Andi have the authority to give him big boy underpants? After all, she's the one that does all the laundry, and can operate the carpet cleaner, makes perfect sense, doesn't it? I dragged him into the bathroom (and yes I mean I DRAGGED him, because every time I told him to get in the bathroom, he looked at me as if 1) I was speaking a different language, or 2) like he had no idea that our house contained any of these alien things called "bathrooms".) and told him to hold absolutely still while I tried to shimmy these diarrhea filled underpants down his legs, without making too big of a mess. I don't know what part of "hold still" actually means "when I get these underpants almost completely off, I want you to jump out of them as quickly as you can, so that poo will cover everything within a 2 foot radius, including your mother" but apparently, I don't know much about such things. I get him cleaned off and in a diaper (yes, I was so frustrated, I reverted him back to diapers, until he's a little more serious about doing this again.) and sent merrily on his way. Then I clean up the bathroom, and set out to clean up the puddle he had left in the middle of the kitchen floor. My only hope for him is that he will be potty trained before he outgrows every size of diaper in the infant department. I would really hate to go to the store to buy him "Depends" and have people think that I'm the one with the incontinence problem. Okay, so maybe that's more a wish for myself than for Dylan, but I'm sure his wife would appreciate if he's potty trained at some point.

If there is anything that comes even close to my dislike for potty training, it would have to be TEETHING. Peyton has been working on getting his bottom molar on the right side, and has been letting us know it for several weeks. When Dylan cut his molars, he cut them all at the same time, so we had a miserable few weeks, and it was over. I don't think we're going to be so lucky with Peyton. I try to tell myself that he's in pain as he follows me around whining and crying all day. He is being really needy, which I understand, and would normally enjoy, but my maid seems to have gone on vacation and left utter devastation behind. I'm trying to get caught up, and just as I start to see a light, my laundry fairy up and quits. So, as much as I would love to cuddle a crying baby ALL DAY LONG, I just don't have the time.
I really need to stop having kids so that these two miserable stages will eventually be over and done with, for good. Aubrey and I keep saying that we're going to take a vacation without the kids. The only flaw in the plan is that one or both of us have been nursing babies the entire time we've known each other. Again, we need to stop having kids. Someday...

Pulling the Plug

A little while ago, my boss asked me to upgrade some software on a piece of equipment that we have. I went to the station where it was and started looking at it. I figured that I needed to move the machine to my desk so that I could hook it up to my computer. I got underneath the table to unplug it. I finally found the right plug, and pulled it out.

As soon as I pulled the plug, I hear an alarm go off and see a light start blinking. I thought "Oh my gosh, what did I do? All I did was unplug a power cord!" I immediately plugged the cord back into the socket hoping to stop the alarm before anyone noticed. "Oh man, I'm in trouble. What is my boss gonna do to me?" After another couple of seconds (I'm really quick some days), I thought about what was going on. Fire drill. The timing of the alarm going off couldn't have been more perfect. Someone must have been watching me that day trying to think of ways to freak me out. It worked.

For some reason it reminded me of an experience I had when I was a kid. I was probably about 11, and my family and I were at the local K-Mart. (Being from Star Valley, Wyoming, the local K-Mart is a 70 mile drive away. Not that that's important in any way.) I was looking at the cameras in the electronics section, doing stupid stuff that kids do like pushing every button and zooming in on my hand so I could see my fingerprints.

Because I was super observant, I noticed that the cameras were attached to the counter by a telephone cord. Because I was a stupid kid, I thought to myself "I wonder what will happen if I unplug one of those." Because I was a super stupid kid, I unplugged one. As soon as I did, an alarm started going off. "Oh crap!"I immediately plugged the cord back into the socket hoping to stop the alarm before anyone noticed. (Is it bad that I have the same thought process that I had when I was eleven?) Someone did notice the loud obnoxious alarm blaring because some idiot kid had unplugged a camera. The K-Mart electronics worker was nearby and came over to investigate what was going on.

Some kids in that predicament might have run. I was frozen in my tracks, unable to move. Being eleven years old, I was unaware of how the penal system worked. I thought the K-mart man was going to come over and throw me in a jail cell in back of the store. "No, K-Mart man! I didn't mean to! No!" Instead, K-Mart man just turned off the alarm and gave me a look, then went about his business.

I guess it was a good thing that I didn't unplug the camera and run away with it, then I might have gotten in some trouble.

Dylan's Birthday

Here are some pictures from Dylan's birthday.

He was pretty happy that it was his birthday.


Unwrapping is fun because it's destroying stuff without getting in trouble.


Cars stuff! Woo hoo!


More Cars stuff! This is a Mack truck that you can take apart and put back together. Whoever got him this is brilliant!


Aubrey made this really cool Dinosaur cake for him. It was delicious.

Constructicons

When I was a kid, I really liked Transformers. I watched the cartoon show all the time. I always asked for Transformers for my birthday. I would dream about having a toy that I wanted, then when I woke up and realized that I in fact didn't have the toy, it just ruined the rest of my day.

Some of my favorite Transformers were the Constructicons. They were all robots that turned into heavy machinery like a bulldozer, a crane, a dump truck and other stuff. Here are some pictures of them.

The Constructicons were especially cool because the six of them could combine to make one powerful, super destructive robot called Devastator. Here's a picture I found of Devastator.

Devastator is mean and nasty. Nothing is safe from his devastative powers. Over the past two weeks, he has done several destructive things like:

Tipped over the TV.
Tipped over the couch.
Took a black and purple crayon and drew all over the couch. (He must have soemthing against the couch.)
Dumped a whole bag of dog food on the floor.
Unraveled half a scane of yarn.
Destroyed two coloring books.
Torn a board book to pieces.

There are probably several other things that he's done that I can't think of right now. He is on some kind of rampage. There has to be a way to stop him besides locking him in a closet until he's ready for college.

Oh yeah, Happy Birthday, Devastator!

Video Time

I've been trying to load some video from the camcorder to the computer, but the two of them aren't communicating with each other. If I'm lucky, I'm able to get 20 seconds of video at a time. I was able to piece this together. Enjoy.

OK, it stopped working for some reason. I uploaded it again, so hopefully it will work now. If not, we'll just move on.

The World We Live In

I don't watch the news very much. I mostly just watch Sports Center and call it good. I figure if something earth shattering is happening, they'll mention it between the scores or something. I think I'd just rather not watch the news after seeing some of these headlines in the past week:

Man kills Good Samaritans on freeway. - This happened in Dallas. I used to not stop to help people on the road because I know nothing about cars and could provide no help except to say "Woah, that's bad." Now I have this reason too.

Wife free after 67 days for killing husband - Well, I hope she learned her lesson.

Playground spontaneously burns - I knew those things could get hot in the sun, but that hot?

Millions of toys recalled - I hope they recall that annoying Elmo thing the kids have.

Broncos 17, 49ers 13 - Aww, man.

So, to recap: Your kids can't play with certain toys, but you can't take them to the park to get them away from their deadly toys because the playground could spontaneously combust. Getting to the park is not safe because who knows when someone is going to shoot at you, and if that person is a good aim they may spend just over two months in the clink. On the bright side of all this, the 49ers are 1-0 in morale victories so far.

Cutting It Close

Last year on Dylan's birthday, I posted a list of goals that I had for him. One of those goals was for him to start doing this:

Finally, last night he went #2 in the potty! (You can tell you're a parent of small children when most of your conversations involve your children's bowel movements.) He has been going #1 pretty well for a few weeks, but last night he finally took the big step. Woo hoo! I gave him a handful of Skittles instead of just the three he gets when he goes pee in the potty. I also gave him a play phone that we got a month ago as a bribery to get him to start going. He was pretty proud of himself. I'm glad that he's coming around.

Of course today I've had to change two poopy Pull-Ups and he stuck his phone in the sink and it stopped working until it dried out. But hey, he's taken one step in the right direction. There is hope that he will be potty trained before high school.

Write Something, Carters!

It looks like Montse has been bombarded by those meme things lately. She didn't pass this one on to us, but I thought it looked fun, and since there is absolutely nothing else going on I thought I'd give it a go. Here it is.

Eight Facts About Our Marriage

1. When we were engaged, we realized we didn't have a song yet. We were in the car, and we decided that the next song that came on the radio would be our song. Our song is Enter Sandman by Metallica. Rock and roll, baby!!! Woo hoo!!!

2. Sam's brothers and her cousin sang/played our song at the reception, which was in a church. The missionaries who happened to hear chastised them for it.

3. At our wedding, my family outnumbered Sam's 15 to 1.

4. After two days of marriage, we almost got an annulment because I found out that Sam is a Dallas Cowboys fan. (Ok, that's not entirely true.)

5. We went on our honeymoon to glorious Reno Nevada. We didn't have a car. Do you know what there is to do in Reno if you don’t drink, don't gamble, and don't have a car? Not a whole lot. For some reason we ended up moving nearby four years later.

6. My cousin decorated our car for our reception in Star Valley using panty liners, sardines, vaseline, cheeze whiz, and some other stuff. It took eight dollars worth of quarters at the car wash to get it all off. His payback's coming someday, it's only a matter of time.

7. For the first month and a half of our marriage we lived in Sam's Mom's house. In that month and a half, Sam worked cleaning hotel rooms, and I was a successful stuntman turned superhero turned criminal. On the SIMS. On the SIMS I was fit, in shape, and the most popular guy in the neighborhood. In real life I gained 30 pounds and didn't bother talking to anybody if I didn't have to. Sam married a real winner.

8. Sam is legally blind and I am hard of hearing, so we can attest to the truth of the phrase "A blind wife and a deaf husband make a happy couple."

D'oh!

Burger King has a site where you upload a picture, and it makes a Simpsons type character out of that picture. Apparently this is what I would look like Springfield.

It doesn't really look like me, but what can you expect from something that's free? I've tried doing pics of the kids, but it doesn't like them. The computer must know that Sam doesn't approve of The Simpsons, so it's trying to not corrupt the children.