Monthly Archives: December 2010

Since I’m bored and depressed, I decided that the next logical step to combat my SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder) was to start a project: potty training Ari.

This morning, I informed him that I was going to change him.
“I don’t want to change!” He said, a familiar saying of his.
“What if I told you, you didn’t have to wear a diaper?” I asked him
“Huh?” He replied quizically.
“After I take off your diaper, you don’t have to put a new one on.” I said.
“No diaper?” He asked thoroughly confused.
“Yes. Would you like that?” I asked
“Yes!” He confirmed.

For the next several hours, he peed in corners, on his Thomas sheets, on the couch and each time he said one of the following:
“I went pee!” “I peed on my leg!” “I peed on Thomas [insert hysterical laughter].” “I pooped.” He didn’t, he just peed.

Wil and I kept putting him back on the potty at regular intervals and bribing him with food (cookies) or TV to sit/produce something on the potty. Okay, maybe the cookies weren’t such a great idea, but I was at the end of my rope with all the pee everywhere.

My great friend Donna was here, and in between drawing an elephant and two cats for Ari on his easel:

She read online that this naked method works best if you have the kid “help” you clean up after they pee/poop on the floor. Then take them to the toilet.

At one point after he had peed on the floor, I took him to the potty, and I had to hold him in place on the toilet as he was screaming:
“No, no no!”
Yeah, that wasn’t exactly a shining mothering moment for me.

Then something exciting happened- can you tell I have no life? Ari opened the bathroom door and, of his own accord, got onto the potty, and sat there himself! He didn’t really do anything, but it was a start!

Wil announced that he had an idea.
“I have an idea, I’ll be back in ten minutes, trust me.”
He was gone for 20 minutes and came back holding this:

“Ari, if you poop on the potty, you get this!” He said holding up the box.
Immediately Ari made a bee-line for the potty and gave it all he had.

But still nothing. To be continued…

I’ve never much liked the cold weather. I grew up here, in New York City, and my childhood winters were full of brutally cold weather and of course snow. Though global warming has changed the climate here slightly, winters in New York are still intense. What’s worse about them is that these days is that the cold comes on suddenly, like someone punching you in the face.

It’s warm here from the summer until November, then all of a sudden it’s 33 degrees and you don’t want to leave your house.

There isn’t much to do outside without freezing.

When Wil, Ari and I went camping this past weekend in Western New Jersey, we met a woman who told us that by March, she had to retreat to Jekyll island in Georgia to escape the “Winter Doldrums.” I’d never heard the term before so I looked it up. Apparently it means feeling depressed because of the cold weather, lacking energy, sleeping a lot, not eating or eating too much. All of this is caused by the lack of sunlight and cold weather.

There are some fun indoor things to do once you manage to get outside, like going to the library, or hitting up some fun museums. But it’s the “getting outside” that’s the issue. The cold can be intimidating. Ari hates it too. It’s hard to convince him to get dressed and go outside because he is aware of how cold it is and doesn’t want to deal with the icy winds. I asked him today:
“Do you want to go for a walk? Do you want to go to the library?”
He shook his head.
“Do you want to go outside?”
He shook his head even more vigorously than before.

Am I alone here? Is anyone else having a hard time leaving the house? How do you combat the winter doldrums?

Today was my 32 week ultrasound. Mint came with me to the appointment and witnessed firsthand that my baby girl is currently measuring 4lbs, stuck her tongue out, and literally put her foot in her mouth multiple times. Clearly she is genetically related to me.

At the end of the ultrasound, Mint commented that she was surprised that I didn’t ask more questions during the procedure, like what body parts certain images on the screen were. She wondered if it was because I was used to having ultrasounds with Ari. I told her this was not the case, but rather I’d been traumatized by an ultrasound technician in the past.

When I was pregnant with Ari, Wil and I went to the 20 week ultrasound so excited to find out if we were having a boy or a girl.

During the procedure, I was asking the technician questions left and right;
“What’s this? What’s that? Is that a leg?” That sort of thing. Finally she had had enough. She turned to me and said in a very thick Russian accent:
“Do not talk during procedure!”

Wil and I looked at one another shocked. Needless to say, I shut my mouth. At the end of the procedure, she handed Wil a picture of Ari’s penis and said:
“Congratulations! It’s a boy!”

Upon reflection, I figured that the questions were distracting this technician from doing her job, but I really wanted to know what I was looking at on the screen!

From that day forth, I haven’t attempted to ask what things were doing an an ultrasound procedure, but rather, I wait until the end to ask anything. Yes, I am the victim of PTUSTS: Post-Traumatic Ultrasound Technician Syndrome.

When you have two people telling you what to do all the time, as Ari does, life can be confusing. In addition to having different personalities, Wil and I also have different parenting styles.

I try to be consistent with discipline, particularly time-outs. Yesterday, Ari decided that he didn’t want to clean up his toy cars. I put him in time-out and he still did not want to do it. He was in time-out three times in a row before he actually did what I asked him to do.

It took every once of energy I had not to give up and clean the cars up myself.

Wil, on the other hand, does do time-outs with Ari, but he also gets frustrated and just cleans up Ari’s mess because a) he doesn’t want the house to be a wreck, which is fair enough and b) he is annoyed that Ari won’t do what he’s asking him to do.

I’m not always consistent either, sometimes, I’m too tired to deal with the screaming and the whining and I end up cleaning up after Ari out of sheer frustration.

However, I think it’s important for Wil and I to be on the same page with discipline. I want Ari to be able to have a predictable response when he acts up. But is this even possible? I remember as a child, if my dad said “no” to something, immediately, the next step was to ask my mom. I knew that I could divide them.

I’m afraid that Ari will learn to do the same.

How do you, as parents, stay on the same page?

Wil and I took Ari on a last minute camping trip this weekend. Okay, to be fair, it wasn’t true camping, it was more like staying in a cabin in the woods. This trip was important to me because I’m 32 weeks pregnant, and this would be the last trip that would include just the three of us. I wanted Ari to have some special time with me and Wil before the new baby arrives.

Here are some pictures from our journey in no particular order of importance:

I’d like to introduce you to my new best friend:

She’s really cool. Ari likes her too:

Well, to be fair, we first met two years ago, when I was pregnant with Ari. Maybe that’s why he likes her so much. But then we lost touch. We’ve recently reunited. Have you guys ever met?