Booty Camp

Man your stations.  Stand your ground.  Let the battle commence.  

It's me against Aiden and I'm determined that I'm going to win this one.  I've been dreading this for a long time, but that diaper's just gotta go.  I'm also running out of excuses to put it off and Brian is growing impatient.  I told him I'd do it once Riley could walk.  I didn't want her crawling around on the bathroom floor...that's a good excuse, right?  We'll she's been walking for almost 2 months now and I haven't found a new reason not to potty train.  Dern.  So this week I decided I would bite the bullet on this one and enlist Aiden in good old fashioned Booty Camp.  He better be glad it's getting warm outside.  All this boys' getting is a t-shirt for the next week!  If he's not wearing a diaper he won't pee on the floor.  I am 100% confident that he is smart enough not to.  Pooping on the other hand is a different story.  For a while now he's been hiding to poop and I figured this would not change this week.  I'm just hoping he doesn't hide and I end up finding it somewhere around the house.  I've been watching him like a hawk and asking him at least every 30 minutes if he needs to go.  Unfortunately, the fact that this is not my first time with potty training holds no precedence.  I don't remember what the rules are.  I'm beginning to think that threats are not the way to go about this.  That's too bad because I'm so much better at playing 'bad cop'.  He needs to be more positively motivated.  

So yesterday we took a little trip to the store.  I let him pick out his very own underwear.  I told him that he could wear them after he pooped on the potty.  He was very excited about this and so was Ella.  It's only been 2 days and we are both really ready for him to have some pants on.  The first day all she said was "Aiden's booty is touching the floor!  Aiden's booty is on the couch!  Aiden's trying to sit on me!"  I also had an unexpected visitor on Day 1.  I had the front door opened since it was so nice outside and while I was making dinner the doorbell rang.  Aiden of course went barreling down the hall before I had a chance to catch him.  All I saw was the whites of the mans eyes who was waiting at our door.  He was just trying to sell magazines.  I bet he's never gotten a greeting like that before!  I tried to explain that I was potty training, but I don't think he was buying into it.  He just said "Okkk" and tried to keep eye to eye contact with Aiden...who stood beside me the whole time of course.  I apologized for it being so awkward.  Oh, well.

So back to the underwear.  I was disappointed with the selection.  No bikini cut?  No hipsters?  No thongs??  He didn't even have the option of boxers!  Whitey Tighties, that's it.  I offered him the practical dinosaur pack of 7.  He wanted the 3 pack of Cars that cost the same price.  Grrr...  Alright, we'll get both.  If it's Cars he wants then it's Cars he'll get.  I'm planning on several accidents anyway so we're going to need more than 3 pairs of underwear.  He was so excited to open them and what's the first thing he does?  Put them on his head, of course! 

"Ho, Ho, Ho, what do you want?"  Wow, he's still thinking about Christmas?  Ella was getting into it too.  She's like my little cheerleader.  She's constantly asking Aiden to go potty so she can help him with his sticker.  Oh yes, I have a sticker chart...  With Ella it was mini marshmallows, but I'm taking the sticker route with Aiden.  I found this great little potty chart here.   

He gets a sticker each time he goes and at the end he gets to choose a prize out of the 'treasure box'.  I took them to Target last week and let them choose 5 things from the dollar section (or in Ella's case some of the half off Valentine's stuff).  Ella has a chart too.  She gets a sticker for every night she doesn't get in our bed.  We've been doing this for 3 weeks now and it's working like a charm.  So anyway, they put their Target stuff in a box...the 'treasure box'.  Ella has already gotten one of her prizes and Aiden is well on his way.  Just 2 days into this and he's already almost there!  He's gonna break me!  As helpful as Ella is though, I think she has an ulterior motive to wanting to help him so bad.  It's more like keeping tabs.  Each time he gets a sticker she counts down to how many he has left.  She then reminds him that he cannot get her ladybug or her sticker book.  That's her stuff.  It doesn't seem to matter that I reassure her that he won't.  She still doesn't trust him.  I kind of don't blame her though.  Aiden can be quite devious at times.

So I'm hoping that we can wrap this thing up quickly.  I forgot how much I hate potty training.  I'm ready for my little fairy to come down and grant me a wish now...*ZAP* Aiden's potty trained!  Can I open my eyes now?  Did it work? 

2 down 1 to go...

 

How to Bake Bacon

My day begins and ends in an apron.  Don't be fooled though.  In no way does this indicate that I can cook.  I mean, I can follow a recipe, but I am no chef by a long shot.  There is no a little here and a dash there.  I need step by step instructions and exact measurements.  I simply wear the apron for functional purposes.  For starters, it has pockets.  I don't think I even own a pair of pants with pockets.  Secondly, I can't even count the amount of times that I am washing my hands due to wiping snotty noses (can't wait till winter's over), wiping booties, changing diapers and cleaning who knows what off of who knows where.  For instance, I reached behind the TV the other day looking for something and it was all sticky back there.  What in the world?    I reached a little further and found a sippy cup filled with apple juice.  Well that explains the sticky.  I thought those things were supposed to be spill proof!  Anyway, it's just easier to use the apron to wipe my hands on.  It's more economical that way too, less paper towels!  It also saves me from the kids wiping their gnarly fingers and noses on me.  I'm not saying that I wear nice clothes or anything, but come on...nobody wants to walk around with food and sneezes embedded in your clothes!  By the end of the day I actually do use it for cooking.  I'm not a fan of grease stains either.  I'm sure Brian loves coming home to me looking all domestic.  Especially since he got me a new snazzy apron for Christmas.  But he's not fooled either, he knows the truth.

It's only been a year now since I've been in charge for cooking dinner.  Before Brian was getting home in time to cook and now it's up to me.  I miss the good old days.  I do however have a new found appreciation for Google.  I've Googled how to bake chicken, how to cook hamburgers...how to boil water.  Nah, I'm just kidding...I know how to cook a hamburger!  One of my favorite Google finds is how to bake bacon.  I love that terminology, bake bacon.  I even found a comment that some guy had left about crinkling up aluminum foil so that the bacon grease has somewhere to fall.  It comes out perfect every time.  Nice and crispy.  One of my cooking accomplishments that I can be proud of!  Big deal right? 

So last night I decided that we would have bacon, egg and cheese biscuits for dinner.  It sounded good at the time, until I realized that the oven would be occupied and let's face it...nobody likes to eat a cold biscuit.  I guess I'll cook my bacon the old fashioned way.  The Stove.  Que "dum dum dum" music.  You see, the kitchen and I have sort of a love/hate relationship.  I love the oven, but hate the stove.  We are a work in progress.  Well for some strange reason, I thought that I could wing this whole stove top bacon thing.  How hard could it be?  Apparently, very hard because this is what it looked like:

 Are you laughing yet?  Maybe you need a closer look:

I bet I don't have to tell you what our house smelled like.  Brian was walking in just as I was taking the last piece out of the pan.  Judging by the first piece I knew that I had done something wrong.  He looked at it and I burst out laughing.  "What temperature did you cook it on?"  No response.  "Medium?" I shook my head.  "High???" I nodded.  "You know you're not supposed to cook anything on high except water."
Hmm, you would have thought Google would have mentioned that little tid bit of information.  "I know."  I told him.  "I don't know why I did."  And then Brian (and this is one of the reasons I love him) ate a piece of the burnt bacon!  "Yummmm" he said nodding and grinning back at me.

But my battle with bacon did not stop there.  My next attempt was to microwave it.  Brian said he'd heard of people doing it, but never did it himself.  Despite his skepticism, I nuked it anyway.  Besides the fact that the paper towels were flooded with grease, the bacon was a color that I had never seen before.  It's like the bacon had one of those really bad spray tans.  You know that orangy tan? 

This does not do the bacon the orange justice it deserves.

Brian boldly popped a piece in his mouth.  I nibbled at mine.  It was awful.  It tasted like a thick, crispy paper towel.  Literally like eating cardboard.  "This is just bad"  I told him.  "Let's just eat sausage instead and you take over from here."  So he scrambled some sausage in with our eggs and we piled that into a biscuit.  Which by the way, turned out nice and fluffy.  Like I said, the oven and I get along just fine.

After dinner Brian carried Riley upstairs to give her a bath.  About half way up he hollered down to me, "Hey, who ate all that bacon?"  I sprang up from my chair and rushed to the plate of the spray tan bacon only to find 2 pieces left.  "I cannot believe you ate that!!"  "Neither can I, but I just couldn't stop!"

In case you are interested I will share with you my culinary secret on how to bake bacon.  This is something that only the pros know how to do!  http://busycooks.about.com/od/quicktips/qt/bakingbacon.htm