Life, Living, Mom Life, Parenting, Picture Storage, Shutterfly, Sophia, Writing

My Silly Little Girl, Potty Training & a Picture Storage Solution – Finally!

I love being a mom. More than that, I love being a stay-at-home-mom. It’s definitely a FULL-TIME JOB. 🙂 It’s worth it. It is hard at times…but worth it. I have a 3 year old that has almost mastered potty training but it has taken a long time. I never pushed him or forced him when he wasn’t ready. I thought he would show interest but never did to my dismay. Finally after he turned 3 this June, and when I thought he would be in Pull-Ups forever, we got serious. We put up a sticker chart (I printed one I found online HERE) and I taped to it a small picture of a toy he had been eyeing for a while.

potty chart

I said if you just sit on the potty, pull down your pants, flush the toilet or wash your hands you get a sticker. (of course for making a pee or poo too but he wasn’t at that point yet) When the charts are filled up with stickers, you will get your toy! He wanted to sit on the potty. So he did and he helped me flush the toilet when I went and he started to get interested. I also had underwear ready for him to wear. Finally a couple weeks ago he went pee pee in his little potty! He was SO happy he made a pee pee. I praised him A LOT plus he got stickers and ONE M&M candy. After doing this for about 2 weeks he would forget about the M&M’s and sometimes the stickers, he was just excited to make something in the potty. We used 3 charts since he started to fill them quickly. We ordered his toy for him and told him that was for filling up his chart. After a couple days of a dry pull-up I put underwear on him. I also said if you need to make a poo poo just sit on the potty. He only goes #2 once a day so I thought if he has an accident it won’t be that bad. He only pooped two times in his underwear and you could tell he didn’t like that. The third day he went into the bathroom and came out saying he made a poop. I went in and didn’t see it. Uh oh…just like the Clorox commercial lol. I said where is the poo poo Wyatt? He said under the towel. So I lifted the towel and sure enough the poop was under the towel. I’m not sure how it got under there but I think he just squatted and went. (Clorox bleach to the rescue!) I told him next time just sit on the potty buddy. The forth day he didn’t go and in the evening he said my tummy hurts. I said well if you go poop in the potty you’ll feel better. The fifth day he went into the bathroom and closed the door. He came out and said I made a poo poo Mommy. I was scared to go look, but he said come see! I went in to find a very large poop in his potty! I was SHOCKED (at the size of the turd and also that he actually went in the potty). He was so proud of himself! I praised him and I said mommy is so proud of you! He has been pooping in there everyday and stays dry all the time. It’s been about 1 month since we started this! We just put a pull up on him at nap and at night (just in case) but usually he wakes up dry after his nap. Now we are trying to conquer going places and having outings in dry underwear. If you have any tips on that, please comment! Right now we have a little potty in the back of our truck. Not sure how to get him to use a public toilet. I might have to use cheerios and have him start standing up to go. This is the toughest thing I’ve encountered with raising my kids, but I said that about everything else with them! LOL! I’m sure I’ll look back and say, that was easy! hahaha

So that brings me to this picture of our little Sophia. Naturally she followed her “brah-brah” into the bathroom and was curious. I was picking up toys and came in not 1 minute later to find this! I just love how she was trying to hide. She’s a cute little stinker. I’ll be starting potty training with her very soon!

Sophia Potty

Sooo because these littles are SO cute, I have like 15,000 pictures of them. I decided I needed to find a picture organization solution so I can start putting albums together and scrapbooking them! I recently found This Life by Shutterfly! I’m loving it. I connected my phone, 2 computers, Dropbox, Facebook and Instagram and it automatically uploaded ALL my pictures, FREE! (it only costs if you upload & store videos) Apparently it will also delete duplicate pictures and organize them by date. I’m no longer overwhelmed with pictures on my computer and I can delete them to save space for other things. If you haven’t tried this, I definitely recommend it!

Thanks for stopping by!

Family, Life, Living, Love, Writing

Saying Goodbye…

On Saturday my family and I said goodbye to my Aunt Linda. She was my mother’s cousin and they were very close having grown up together and even had their wedding anniversaries only 3 years apart. Their children very close in age. She was my “Auntie” out of respect and love. It came as quite a shock when I found out she had terminal liver cancer only a few short weeks ago. Then we found out she passed away August 1st.

Me & Auntie Linda
Me & Auntie Linda (Feb 2015)
Linda's Memorial
Linda’s Memorial (Aug 2015)

Everything happened so quick. We are still in shock. I’m so saddened that we lost her too soon. She had so much life left to live. I made a card for the family using the Flower Patch stamp set and the Flower Fair framelits.

For Linda's Family
“For the Family”

While at the funeral reception I had the pleasure to finally meet Laura Vegas! Crazy small world that she is part of our extended family! It was neat to talk to her and ask her about her latest scrapbooking and designing adventures! Even though I felt silly I had to ask for a picture with her. After all, she is family 😉 We had a lovely chat with her, me and my sister, Caroline. We are both eager to get our blogs off the ground and she had some great insight! I’ll be following her blog for sure for lots of inspiration.

Me with Laura Vegas
Me with Laura Vegas

Even though it was a very sad day, it brought family closer together. It made me also start thinking. What if tomorrow was my last day here? Would I be ready? Would my family and children know how much I love them? I decided I must write letters to my children and my husband as soon as possible and tuck them away. Yes it is sad to think about it, but no one knows the hour that their time will come.

On the way home we had to stop at our old family favorite, King Eggroll. We used to frequent the Berryessa location in San Jose many an occasion for dim sum and eggrolls. If you live in the Bay Area and you have never had a King Eggroll, stop what you are doing and head there now. 😉 You’ll thank me. We got the usual dumplings (dim sum) and decided to take a fun family selfie because my parents and us siblings are hardly ever together with no spouses or kids!

Dim Sum

My Family
My Family

Here’s to my Aunt Linda and to anyone else that has lost someone….

It’s been a long day without you my friend
And I’ll tell you all about it when I see you again
We’ve come a long way from where we began
Oh, I’ll tell you all about it when I see you again
When I see you again
Why’d you have to leave so soon?
Why’d you have to go?
Why’d you have to leave me when I needed you the most?
‘Cause I don’t really know how to tell you
Without feeling much worse
I know you’re in a better place
But it’s always gonna hurt
Carry on
Give me all the strength I need to carry on
It’s been a long day without you my friend
And I’ll tell you all about it when I see you again
We’ve come a long way from where we began
Oh, I’ll tell you all about it when I see you again
When I see you again
How do I breathe without you
I’m feeling so cold
I’ll be waiting right here for you
Till the day you’re home
Carry on
Give me all the strength I need to carry on
So let the light guide your way
Hold every memory as you go
And every road you take will always lead you home
It’s been a long day without you my friend
And I’ll tell you all about it when I see you again
We’ve come a long way from where we began
Oh, I’ll tell you all about it when I see you again
When I see you again

Writer(s): Cameron Jibril Thomaz, Charlie Otto Puth Jr, Justin Scott Franks, Andrew Cedar