Success

We had a big success in our house this morning! Let me give you some background first. I've been contemplating the potty training issue for Reed for some time. I found a great potty on one of the many websites that I like to watch, for a killer deal. It's the Boon Potty Bench. It's actually pretty neat. I made a big deal to Reed about the potty when I brought it home. I even went and got him a flip book about getting a potty and learning to use it. When I first showed him the potty, I had him sit on it and we read the book. Now, almost every day, he will want to get naked, sit on the potty and read the book. I figured that if one time he actually goes, we'll celebrate it and hopefully set ourselves a trend. This is not a scientific way of potty training, it's my half-baked idea until I figured out how to really do it. So for quite some time now, maybe a month, we've been sitting on the potty, reading the book.

This morning, we did the same, except he didn't really want to sit on the potty, he just wanted to run around naked (something he's been wanting to do for a few days now). I let him stay in the bathroom while I went and got his clothes ready for the day. I went back into the bathroom to get him and noticed he had pee'd in the potty! He also had an armful of toilet paper that he wanted to flush down the toilet. I'm glad that the door to the toilet was closed otherwise, I think we would have had an issue! Anyway, I kept telling him how proud I am of him and he is asking me to open the door so he can flush the toilet paper. I was so proud of that little guy! There is a little "boy flap" in the front of the potty and I know he actually sat down to pee because there was some on the boy flap. I dumped it in the toilet and let him flush, cause really, that's the best part!

He was getting proud of himself the more I kept praising him and we called daddy to tell him. He was excited about that too. I told him he was a big boy and then we got him dressed. He told me "big boy, pants on". That meant he wanted to put his pants on, cause that's what big boy's do. I hope this means we are on a path to potty training!

So I was going through my camera the other day and realized that I had a few pictures on there from like a month ago! I guess I haven't taken many pictures lately. Our adoptive grandparents (Reed's third set) - the Branch's - had their son, daughter-in-law and grandson in town mid-February. They invited us up to spend some time and let Travis and Reed play together. Their grand-niece was also there, Savannah Mae. Here is Angela (Travis's mom) overseeing kid dinner time:

I'm not sure what kind of faces Reed and Savannah are making but it's funny cause it seems to be the same face!

And here is Jason (Jim and Dianne's son, Travis's dad) showing Reed and Travis movies on his Ipad. They were watching some Cars clips.

Cheers for now. We've got lots of stuff coming up soon so I'm sure the blog will get busy in the next month or so!

How do you begin...

As you know (unless you live under a rock), Japan suffered a crazy big earthquake and crazier tsunami on Friday. After looking at pictures, one ends up putting themselves in question as to how these people move on. I can't help but wonder how I would physically and emotionally navigate the wreckage of what used to be my life. These people didn't have time to pick up family heirlooms or pictures. They didn't have time to pack an few days worth of clothes, food and water. And when they returned, it must have been hard to determine exactly where your house would have possibly stood. Streets were covered with cars, houses, and what would have seemed like an endless amount of debris and trash. I watched one video where a box truck was floating down the road and the back door opened. Boxes of what looked like mail or a delivery of some sort just spilled out. This would have happened all over the stricken areas. The amount of fear felt by these people would be hard to measure and understand. And now they have the task of not only cleaning it up, but also dealing with the growing nuclear problem that has resulted.

And as my title says - how do you begin? How do you begin to understand the complete destruction? How do you begin to sort through your new life? How do you begin to clean this up? Rebuild? When I look at pictures, I think, is there a body somewhere in this frame that someone must find? How long will it be? Will there be a health issue associated with how long it will take to find everyone? When I look at pictures, I think, how do you go about cleaning this type of thing up? Do you sort good material from bad material and try to rebuild using the good? Where do you put contaminated material on such a small island? How do you even get machinery through these areas when there is no distinction between a road and where a house used to be? How do you come up with the resources to rebuild such a large area? When I look at pictures, I think, how are those people coping with such a huge event? How do they stand not knowing where a family member is for days? As you can see, I have many questions.

I watched a program today. It was very informative and interesting. It was the 20/20 aired on Friday afternoon, mere hours after the disaster struck. There are some captivating images and video. It is worth a watch or listen - you can find it here.

I also have been struck by many images over the past few days. I have copied them and included them below. I believe that the saying "a picture is worth 1000 words" is very true after viewing these. These are the images that spurn my questions above. They are heartbreaking, sad, overwhelming, and some are even full of hope. These are all from msnbc.msn.com. I cannot verify the chronological order here, they were just crazy images.

The tsunami, a mere 30 minutes after the earthquake

Here is some of the aftermath:

This is a before and after shot of the same area.

I thought it interesting how it cracked along the road lines.

That boat doesn't seem to belong there.

A completely intact house floating in the ocean.

How do you move that?

This man was floating on his roof and was rescued 10 miles out to sea days after the tsunami hit.

Oh my.

This was the most amazing image to me. That boat is much larger than that building and it somehow got perched on top of it. It is balanced perfectly as to not tip one way or another. It's like that wave was playing a game with humans. What do you do about this?

I have one more thing to share. My good friend Maggie's brother has his family in Japan. Luckily, they were safe and her brother is on his way to get them and bring them back to the US. The family is looking for donations to help them with travel expenses and helping his wife and children get clothes and other basic supplies. If you are interested in donating, let me know and I'll get your their contact info. Maggie's brother had to go about 24 hours without hearing from them.

Keep this country in your prayers, they need it right now!

Life

Life is really busy. It doesn't matter if you get through the current "busy" time, there is always another one lurking around the corner. Fogg and I also like to fill up every spare moment with something. As if working and raising a toddler aren't time consuming enough, we have second jobs, many enjoyable activities, fulfilling volunteer positions, and commitments with friends. Each Friday, I think, next week, that's the week I'm going to catch up on everything. And every New Year's Day, I say, gosh, I'm going to do really good this year at remembering people's birthdays and sending them cards and gifts. And my house project list grows and grows each day, and without actually accomplishing them, nothing gets checked off. And when it seems you have got a nice schedule and routine going, something gets added to change it.

I say all this cause we have A LOT of stuff coming up in the next few months. We have visitors, birthday's (all three of us!), anniversary, holidays, and general life must still go on. I look forward to March and April when I can do a nice spring clean. Open the windows of the house, dig deep into the grime of the house, cleanse it of all germs and yucky's, make it smell fresh again. Fit that into a full work week, teaching skiing, spending as much quality time with little buddy and the hubby as possible. I'm trying to get ahead on gifts and preparations for trips and visitors.

For those of you that crave the pictures of the little man or current adventures, hang in there for me cause there will be a lot coming up, but until then, I gotta start cleaning!

Cheers~

This morning

I have to share with you about my morning.

After I got myself all ready for work, I went in to see if Reed was awake yet. Most of the time he wakes up before I finish getting ready and he will join me while I dry my hair or put my makeup on. Anyway, this morning, he was quiet as could be in his room. I peeked in to see if he was still sleeping or what. He popped his head up and said "hi mommy!". I went and got him out of his crib, not before he grabbed not one but two dee-dee's (blanky). I sat down in the chair with him to just sit for a minute to allow him to drink some of his milk before I went to dress him. I sat him on my lap facing me. He indicated that he wanted the stuffed moose that was in the stuffed animal basket next to the chair. I handed it to him. He also wanted two doggy's, the buffalo and two reindeer. I put them all up between us. He then took his sippy cup and proceeded to feed each animal, making sure he had the sippy right up to their mouths. He then made a little sucking noise for each one as they drank. Then he would pull the sippy away and say "ahh". On to the next animal. Then we put them all back and said "night-night".

After getting dressed, we went downstairs (after he insisted on closing all of the bedroom doors upstairs) and I told him we needed to put our shoes and jackets on. He grabbed a pair of shoes (not the ones I intended to put on him that day) and ran off. He was trying to put them on by himself. He quickly realized he couldn't so he reached down and put a shoe on each hand. Then he "walked" around with the shoes on the ground. It took him a minute to figure out how to move one hand then the next in front of it, while moving his feet to keep moving forward.

It was a bit sad to drop him off at daycare today, I wanted to keep watching him do things like that all day.

Cheers~