January 25, 2011

We’ve been packing up our house for what seems like forever, but now we’ve finally approaching the finish line. Or would it be the starting line? The start of the next leg of our lives together.

Jesse has started his Terminal Leave. I’ve had my last lunch with the lovely ladies from CLB-6. The babies I tended to have moved on to their new daycares. Almost all of my house is in boxes. There’s no turning back now.

Today we started putting things into the trailer. My husband is playing the ultimate game of Reverse Jenga. Turn this here, lay this on its side there. An end table with a cubby? Stuff crap in it.

It’s not all fun and games, though. We have too much stuff! How do we keep accumulating “things”? I thought that we had gotten rid of quite a bit of our possessions, but apparently not enough. Ugh, how do you fit four lives (and two furry lives) into a truck and trailer?

The moving experience just keeps reminding me how much I love all of my friends, and will miss them dearly. Only my girlfriends could come to help me pack, and leave me crying tears of laughter.

Put on Your Big Girl Panties!

How do you get a child that doesn’t want to potty train to cooperate? You let her decide whether she wants to be a big girl or a baby, and make her live with the decision. My child decided that she wanted to be a baby, so we took it to the extreme. We didn’t allow her to be a toddler. Oh no, we treated her like she had just started eating solid foods. Quite the step back for her.

There were so many things that she couldn’t do, that being a baby lasted less than twenty-four hours. Poor thing was only allowed to play with a handful of toys. Could only eat oatmeal and bananas. And wasn’t allowed to play on the stairs. Yup, we did it hardcore.

Lo and behold, the next morning my daughter was ready to shed the pull up and don her big girl panties. Since New Year’s Day we’ve had only two accidents.

Oh, the joys of toddlerhood. We’ve been potty training this princess for about a year. It was hit or miss while Daddy was deployed. I take responsibility for that. But, after Daddy came home we realized that maybe there was more to why she wasn’t catching on.

Then we realized that she’s just stubborn like her father. I babysit a couple babies during the week, and she would see the attention they got when I changed their diapers and got jealous. And sometimes, pottying in your pull up when you’re playing is just easier than taking time to sit on the pot.

Ugh, some days were like hitting my head against a wall. Thank goodness those days seem to be behind us. One more check mark on our list before we hit the road back to Iowa.