A fantastic parenting book

As some of you probably know, I majored in Marriage Family and Human Development at BYU and so I am always on the look out for good books on family life, parenting, etc. because I love getting ideas and being 'in' on recent research. So anyways, that introduction brings me to this book: 25 Mistakes LDS Parents Make and How to Avoid Them. I'm about half way through it right now and it's great! I think all parents that still have kids at home should read this book, I'm sure I'll read it several times throughout my life as my children pass through different stages. It includes some great real life stories, quotes from prophets and scriptures and research that's been done. Many thanks to my Mom-in-law Angela for getting this book for us. Scott finished it about a week ago and he also really liked it and he doesn't usually read books like this, in fact I think this is the first parenting book that he's read. I'm not sure if you can check this book out from the library, but if you can't, I suggest placing an order at deseretbook.com, it's a good one to have on your bookshelf. Here are a few more of my favorites that have to do with families and relationships:
The Power of Positive Parenting
The Parenting Breakthrough
The Bonds that Make us Free
Strengthening Families

If you have any favorites I'd love to hear about them

20 month old twins?

I've decided that raising Charles must be like raising twins, or maybe even triplets. Over the past few weeks he has learned how to open the fridge, oven, dishwasher and all the doors, and besides that he's a terrific climber, a bit of a daredevil and has some how managed to get through (well, more like tear down and take part of the wall paint with it) things like baby gates. This has taken baby proofing to a whole new level. I'm not really sure what to do anymore, I might just end up buying a big cage for him to play in because otherwise I'm literally running around chasing him every minute of the day that he's awake or not strapped down in his booster seat eating. By the time Elisabeth learned how to do all that stuff, she was old enough to understand why she shouldn't be getting into them and the consequences if she did. Charles on the other hand doesn't seem to be able to control his curiosity, and doesn't seem to mind living with the consequences. I think he's just physically advanced for his mental age (a more positive way of putting it, eh? :)), hopefully a couple of months time will do the trick.

Ultrasound results

Thanks for all your input, it was fun to read your responses. The picture on the left just shows the legs close together in a cute position :). The picture on the right shows the bum and the legs, and nothing in between(which is hard to tell, those ultrasounds can be very tricky)...so yes, we are having a girl! Elisabeth is soooooooooo excited! She asked if the baby was going to be sleeping upstairs by Charles and Mommy and Daddy (Elisabeth sleeps downstairs, all alone, I know, sad, but she's doing well). I could tell she was hoping I'd say that she could sleep downstairs with her. I told her until she was one year old, I'd have her sleep upstairs really close to mommy because I need to feed her breast milk, even in the night. But once she had her first birthday she could go down and share a room with Elisabeth if that was okay with her. Elisabeth got the biggest grin on her face, jumped up and said, Yes! Charles likes to give the baby (my belly) lots of kisses, though I don't think he really understands. If you have some favorite girl names, I'd love to hear them. I do have a couple that I really like, but I'm always up for suggestions.

We're having a....

Okay, I want you to guess first. Here are a couple of pictures from our ultrasound today, only one is helpful.

Thanks Lemira

Thanks Lemira for posting that blog from the Today Show. After watching the clip I decided that I wanted to dedicate a blog to it as well. So sorry Lemira for copying some of your blog but I thought it was a fantastic idea:

Laura Ingraham talked about her new book, Power to the People, and how as a society in the United States, we are becoming more tolerant of pornography. She went so far as to condemn the interviewer, David Gregory, and the Today Show itself for allowing video of Britney Spears to be shown on the show. You can watch the interview video here. (You'll have to use Internet Explorer, and you can skip the first minute as it shows examples of the awful stuff around today.) Ingraham was very harsh towards the station, and I just wanted to congratulate her on standing up for herself.

Pornography is everywhere and it's destroying individuals and families. It's on the internet, television programs, the news, commercials, movies, magazines, books, billboards etc. We are being bombarded with these images and I just pray that more people will stick up for what they know is right so that we can make a change for future generations.

Rookie of the Year

We enrolled Charlie in a baseball class for 1- and 2- year olds at the Utah Baseball Academy. He's destined for stardom. They learn the basics: hitting, throwing, fielding. They even give them replica uniforms. The one he's wearing is an old school Phillies uniform. The coaches are ex-MLB players. One of his coaches says that he hasn't seen raw talent like Charlie's in a long time. $400 per month seems small compared to the millions that we'll get in return when he makes it big.

24 hour bug

Elisabeth had her first tumbling class on Monday, we went but just watched from the side because Elisabeth had started throwing up at 230 that morning and kept going throughout the day. Poor thing. Also, on my Doctor's website it said not to give them any food for 8 hours (though they're supposed to have a Tbsp. of water every 10 min.) and then only bland foods for 24 hours after that. It was hard because after throwing every thing up she was pretty hungry, so I just tried to distract her the best I could. She's all better now, and even yesterday she seemed back to normal, I'm glad it went by fast.

Night time potty training

We've been working on night time potting training with Elisabeth for a long time. We tried working on the night time thing for awhile on several different occasions starting around 2 years of age. She was wearing a pull-up at night and would wake up in the morning and be soaking wet. So I decided to just stop with the pull ups and have her wear panties at night hoping that she wouldn't like the feel of being all wet and start to either hold it or get up and use the toilet. We did this for a couple of weeks but about every other night she had an accident, sometimes she'd just sleep through it and other times she'd wake up in the middle of the night and I'd have to quietly go into her room (Charles and her were sharing bedrooms), take all the sheets, blankets, and pillowcases off, wipe her bed down, put on clean linens, take her clothes off, wipe her down with a baby wipe(I was way too tired and lazy to give her a bath at 3am), put on new clothes and get her back in her bed. Scott was working and doing his 9 month grad school program at this time and so I didn't want to ask him to help, but I was getting extremely tired. So after a couple of weeks of this we just stopped for awhile. Also we don't let her drink much of anything after dinner, and always have her go pee just before bed, so I was a little confused as to why she was having so much trouble.

We tried again a couple of times and had the same results. I decided to wait to try again for a few months because maybe she just wasn't ready, or maybe her bladder needed to grow. Then we started a sticker chart. She still wore her pull up at night but if she woke up dry she could put a sticker on her sticker chart and if she got so many stickers in a row we'd have a party. It was going okay, she'd go two or three days dry and then she'd have a wet night. This was the case for a few weeks and then all of a sudden every morning she was wet again! I couldn't understand it. One night I put on her pull up at the usual time, around 730 or 8pm, and within about 5 minutes, even before she got in bed, it was wet! So I had to sit down and have a talk with her and tell her that this pull up was only for emergency situations and she wasn't supposed to go pee in it if she could possibly help it. Well, she didn't want to do that so I decided to wait until we moved and she and Char had their own rooms. So that's what we did. After we got settled in we started doing only panties again, and now Scott was done with school so he could be of more help. She has been doing okay, she'll be dry a couple of days and then have an accident.

I've noticed that usually when she gets up in the morning and she has wet the bed (she never gets us up at night, she just sleeps through it if she goes pee), she's soaking, and it's obviously just happened. So about a week ago I started reminding her every night just before she goes to bed how it feels to be all wet and stinky and how we don't want her room to stink, and her clothes and blankets to stink and so when she has to go pee to just jump out of bed and run for the toilet. I also told her that if she can be dry for 5 days in a row, which she's never done, that we'll go to an ice cream shop and she can have any kind she wants. On her fourth dry night I reminded her again that if she was dry tonight that when she got up in the morning we could go get ice cream at the ice cream shop! We were both very excited about the idea, we were jumping up and down, saying, "yay! ice cream tomorrow!" I think I got her a little too excited because this morning at 4am I hear her little footsteps coming into my room. She gets really close to my face and then whispers with a huge smile on her face, "Mommy I'm dry, we can have ice cream now!" We talked for a few minutes and finally I got her to go back to bed for the time being, and when she finally did wake up in the morning a few hours later she was still dry...so we're going to be getting some ice cream today after lunch! I just hope after this whole ice cream activity is over, that she'll still decide that she prefers to be dry in the morning and get up to use the toilet.

Bellevue friends

A couple of our close friends from Bellevue, WA have also recently moved, Jeri to Utah and Monique to Arizona. Monique was in town for the week so yesterday we got to have both of them over with their kiddos to play and visit. When I told Elisabeth they were coming over she got so excited she started jumping up and down and chanting, "yay! yay!" She misses her old friends, she's starting to make new ones, but that always takes time. The kids had a blast just playing outside.



P.S. My belly is HUGE already and I'm only 16 weeks! In fact someone asked me(and not someone that I'm really close with) when I was expecting when I was only 6 weeks, I decided not to be offended and just take it as a compliment that I must have that pregnant 'glow' that many women get :)