Potty Training - Take 1

Potty Training – Getting Ready

Not too long after Hannah was born, Vanessa came home form work one day and told me about 3 day potty training. A guy at work had tried it and said it worked. We read through the instructions several times and it sounded great. I had heard from a couple of people that it worked for them as well. The internet is full of success stories. We followed the directions and did all of the right stuff leading up to the start.

Two weeks before starting, we took her to the mall. It was “Big Girl Day”. We went to 4 or 5 stores and had her pick out panties. She was very excited.

Potty Training Day 1

Well, I was in Pheonix the morning of day 1, but this is based on what I heard when calling home and once I got home. Vanessa had some sort of conversation which Hannah about being a “Big Girl ” and learnging to use her toilet. I called around 9:30 in the morning to see how things were going. Hannah helped throw out all of her diapers. She had on her first pair of Big Girl pantines and it was time to start. I called home aorund noon. Hannah had just gone pee pee in the potty for the first time. I was so excited! I was also in a suburban full of executives from work. I tried to convey as much excitement to Hannah over the phone without everyone in the car thinking I was insane about the potty.

During the day Hannah went through around 20 pairs of panties. Mostly just very small leaks where she realized she was going pee and then stopped.

I got home at 5pm. From then until 9pm Hannah went pee pee 3 times. She went in the toilet the first time. We clapped, jumped up and down, gave her high-fives, and called Grandma and Grandpa Chatigny. She had a little accident, but finished on the toilet the 2nd time. Then she made it to the toilet the 3rd time. Fantastic!!! This was going to be great.

Potty Training Day 2

The instructions say to wake them up a couple of times during the night and have them sit on the toilet. We opted not to do this. I set the alarm for 5:30 am. The instructions say to get them up a little before they normally wake up since most kids empty their bladder shortly after waking up. I woke Hannah up. She was dry! I was so excited that she made it throught the night without peeing! Yes! This was going great! She said she didn’t have to pee, so we sat on the couch and I gave her some juice. By 9:00 she still hadn’t peed. She was visably uncofortable and was holdinhg her panties saying, “peep, peep” while walking around on her tip toes. We tried a couple of different things. I then suggested we put her in the bath. Hey… it works for me. She was excited about the bubble bath, but then flipped out once she was inside. She started screaming and crying. She didn’t want to pee.

Sure enough a couple of seconds later she peed. We we very excited for her and told her repeatedly, “Good job!” and, “It’s okay!”. She was not happy. Still crying and screaming. We took her out of the bath. Throughout the day, she continued to hold her pee. She would sit on the toilet for 2 seconds and say, “all done”, but nothing was in the potty.

At nap time, she would lay down, say, “peep”, get up ,run over to the potty, sit down, say “all done”, then head back to bed. Then repeat it 20 times. She never did take a nap. Throughout the day she was walking on her tip toes, hold her pee, crying, and saying “peep, peep”. It was heartbreaking. We couldn’t get her to go pee.

At some point in the afternoon, she was running down the hallway (tiptoes, holding her pee in, yelling “ppep”). She peed on the floor while running, slipped in it, fell on her back and hit her head. No good. Big contusion on her back and a bump on her head. Follow that by lots of crying. The rest of the day didn’t get any better. When it was time to go to bed, it was a repeat of nap time.

By 11:00 pm we had had it. Too much stress. Hannah was freaking out. Vanessa and I agreed to put her back in a diaper. We still had 5 in a diaper bag in the car. She ended up falling asleep in our bed while Vanessa held her. We never let her sleep in our bed.

Potty Training Day 3 (aka Un-Potty Training Day 1)

Hannah woke up with the same dry diaper we put on her the night before. Hmm. The morning ws a repeat of the previous day. Holding pee, walking on tip toes, crying “peep, peep”, screaming, etc. The shower trick didn’t work this time. Nothing was working. I offered to take her to Disneyland if she peed. I even offered to buyer her a house. She didn’t take me up on the offer.

At 10 am, 11 hours after putting on a diaper and around 14 hours from her last pee, she finally let it go, although it was still against her will. She completely flooded through one diaper including covering my shirt, shorts, and the floor. I was so happy I could care less. We cheered and celebrated. She was not happy. 10 minutes later she flooded through a second diaper. Wow! That was a lot of pee.

We immediately put her down for a nap. While she was sleeping, we decided we would take her to Disneyland for the rest of the day. The idea was to get her mind off of the peeing thing. We went to Disneyland and went on Jungle Cruise. She loved it. Next we stopped to eat. That didn’t work out so well. She started holding, crying, yelling “peep”, and walking on her tip toes again. Vanessa took her to the bathroom, but Hannah didn’t pee. After she came back, we switched. I took her for a walk. She was so uncomfortable and stressing out. She wouldn’t pee in her diaper.
There wasn’t anything we could do. We kept taking her on rides. King Authors’ Carousel, Dumbo, Casie’s Circus Train, and Nemo. When we got to the front of the line in Nemo, she finally let go and filled her diaper to the brim again. Her diaper held through the ride. We changed her afterwards. Went on Small World, then headed home.

Thngs didn’t get any better last night. Still holding. Had to fall asleep in our bed. Woke up at 11:30pm, 3:30 am, and 4:30 am. Thank you Vanessa! You are the best.

She was still holding today, but it doesn’t seem quite as bad. Not sure where to go from here. We will see how things go for the next couple of days/weeks. Play it by ear.

Karma – 1 Page – 0

I stopped at a Carl’s Jr. this morning on my way to work. It’s a guilty pleasure I partake in about once every two weeks. I feel better when it isn’t the regular guy working, because I think he recognizes me now. Sad.

So, today I placed my normal order - Sunrise Croissant Combo with orange juice. The total appeared on the screen at $4.73. That’s correct. Trust me, I have it memorized. I already had my $5 bill ready to go. It was the same guy, so I’m trying not to make eye contact. I hand him my $5 and a couple of seconds later he hands me the change.

I could tell right away the change was too much. It should have been $0.27, but right away I could see two quarters, a dime or two and some pennies. He gave me back too much change.

For the next 20 seconds I think about whether I should tell him or not. First I think to myself, “I’m going to give it back. It feels good to be honest”. Then I think, “I’m sure I have been short-changed several times.” Then it’s “How come I always lose pens, but never find them.” This argument goes on in my head until he come to the window and hands me my bag of food.

I thanked him and drove off. As I get down the road, I realize I never got my orange juice. Sigh…

Halloween 2008

Ethics Survey?

Work has been better, although far from good. Last week we had to go to another ethics class It seems like we have 5 of these a year. At the end of the class there was an “anonymous” ethics survey. It turned out to be roughly 50 questions such as:

• Are you currently looking for another job? - No
• Do you think you will still work here in 1 year? - Yes
• Does your boss value your opinions? – No
• Do you believe in what you are doing? Yes
• Does your boss inspire you? - No

The “anonymous" part turned out to be not so anonymous at the end when we were asked to bubble in our level in the company, age range, department, and ethnicity. I answered everything honestly. They were placed in sealed envelopes to go to Corporate. We’ll se how that goes. The other Managers I spoke with said they filled it out honestly as well. Worst case is my boss finds out and fires me. Then I sue the company for millions and move to Thailand with Vanessa and Hannah. See you soon Dad.

By the way, Barney is back to work. He said the heart attack was caused by salmonella. I talked to a doctor and it is possible. Who knew?

Too legit to quit

Thanks Lollipop for giving me a little nudge to start writing again. Now is a good time since I am elated at home and completely miserable at work. Should make for some nice contrasts. Before I get started, I learned today that Barney, who worked for me when I was in my last position at my current employer, had a heart attack on Wednesday. He’s doing okay, but I wish him well.

I am really enjoying the house. The difference between renting and owning is more than I expected. Hard work and a lot of pride. I am spending a lot of time on the yard lately and have found the tan I lost when I was 12 and locked myself in my room for 6 years. So here is a list of things we have done so far…

Scraped all of the ceilings (primed, painted)
Installed 10 recessed lights
Replaced all of the doorknobs
Painted the bedroom
Painted Hannah’s room
Painted one wall in the fireplace room
Dug up 7 rosebushes and replanted 3 of them
Fixed the sprinkler system
Sanded and painted a roof support by the front door
Put-up new house numbers
Fixed the bedroom closet
Installed new showerheads
Installed childproof drawer locks
Pulled weeds
Mowed the lawn 20 times
Removed lots of wallpaper
Sanded and painted the front bathroom
Installed new bathroom hardware
Painted behind the fridge
Installed bathroom lights
Etc.

I adore Hannah. She’s 16 months now. She’s really tall (shocking) and the cutest happiest baby ever. She likes talking on the phone, but not if it’s real. She loves putting on shoes, but her favorite thing right now is books. One after another after another. She likes quacking like a duck and mooing like a cow. She loves showers and blowing kisses. Anyway… there will be other blog entries about her later.

Vanessa is doing well. She is teaching high school theatre again this year. It’s nice to see the excitement in her eyes, even though she won’t admit to it.

Work sucks! My boss has turned into a complete psycho. Unrealistic deadlines and no compassion. There are discussions of mass quitting. Out of the 6 managers in my department 3 are actively looking for other jobs. One tells me on a daily basis that they aren’t sure how long they can take it. One I don’t talk to. Then there is me. My plan is to wait her out. Sooner or later everyone gets promoted, fired, moves, or dies. Seriously though, if I didn’t have a massive mortgage and a daughter I would have quit 15 times by now.

In addition to my normal department, I also oversee the mail room. The mail room consists of 1 guy. My Normal department consisted of 3 people, plus me. I say “consisted” instead of consists, because two weeks ago I had to eliminate 1 of the positions. Fine. Friday another one of my employees resigned. AGH! I am already working 55 – 60 hours per week consistently, which means I get to see my daughter for 15 to 60 minutes each workday (not including the days I drop her off at daycare). What about the last employee I have in my regular department? Oh, I’m putting that employee on a 60 day notice next week to improve or be terminated. Great timing! So, I am going to go from being stressed-out with a wicked boss and 4 employees to being stressed-out with a wicked boss with a wicked boss and 2 employees. Me and the mail room guy. Crap.

More to come…

Buying a house

The thought of buying a house has been on my mind constantly since I was around 7 years old. I think that’s about the time my parents told me my Grandma Helen and Grandpa Grumpa had purchased a savings bond from the city of Long Beach for my sister and I when we were born. I figured by the time I was 25, it would be worth a nice chunk of money and would make a nice down payment on a house. A couple of years later the bond was paid off early by the city, so is was not worth nearly as much money as it would be if it had matured. My Dad put it in a money market for me to get good interest. That’s where it sat undisturbed for years.

Then, when I was 16 I got my first credit card. It wasn’t until I was 19 and dating that having a credit card became a problem. This went on for a couple of years with some stern talks from my parents (it was my name on one of their cards). When my parents got divorced, I was 22 (I think). They were going to cancel the credit card since it was in both of their names. One problem… I owed about $8,000 on that card. My only option was to cash-in the money from the original savings bond and therefore… the nest-egg that was supposed to eventually be my down-payment. You think I would have learned my lesson, but it wasn’t until years later that I finally did.

I have lived in 7 different apartments or condos since I was 20. I am happy to say my life of renting is almost over. After years of hard work by both Vanessa and myself, we are finally ready to buy a house. At the end of February, Vanessa and I decided to stop by an Open House on a whim. We talked about buying a house in the summer and wanted to get an idea of what houses in the area were going for. That’s where we met two Realtors. Stacey and Cathy for as a Real Estate Team. They were so incredibly nice, did not pressure us, and genuinely seemed interested in helping us get what we want. Did I mention they adored Hannah?

The next weekend, and over the next four days I think they took us through 20 houses. Vanessa and I drove past at least 30 by ourselves. Some were absolutely awful (we were looking in the absolute low price range for the area). A few were fairly nice. We finally stopped by a place that was on the market for 1 day. We had stopped by the night before, but the lock box wasn’t on it yet. We couldn’t believe the sales price. It was in better shape than 95% of everything we looked at, but it was also almost the lowest asking price. Ah… I love foreclosures! Within 2 minutes and after seeing only ½ of the house, I knew this was the one I wanted. Luckily, Vanessa felt the same way. We drew-up an offer that night.

The bank accepted our offer, despite getting 10 others. This month has been an absolute whirlwind of paperwork, bank records, W2s, home inspections, phone calls, carpet samples, paint samples, Do It Yourself shows, and internet research. Vanessa and I have also slowly started packing. That is going to be a pain. We have so much stuff. We close escrow on May 16^th and we have until May 31^st to move out of our condo. That gives us two weeks to scrape the ceilings, remove some wallpaper, paint, have carpet installed in the bedrooms, and move. No problem.

Wish us luck. I’ll keep you posted.

Happy Birthday Princess

Hard to believe a year has already passed. Tonight I put our 11 month-old down to sleep. Tomorrow morning she will be 1. What a great year and what an amazing little girl. She is walking a little now and says a couple of words. SHE’S SO TALL!!! So proud of her. It’s amazing to watch her learn new things every day. She gets so excited and claps her hands and giggles with glee.

Having a little girl has been an inspiration to me. It’s fun to see how excited she gets and how happy she is all of the time. One little smile from her and it brightens my day. Lucky for me, she smiles a lot. Over the last year I have taken well over 4 gigabytes of pictures. We’ve gone to the zoo, the aquarium, a 49er game, Santa Cruz (to see Great Grandma), South Dakota, and roughly 40 Wednesday Night BBQ’s.

Vanessa has been an amazing Mom and I think I have done a pretty good job as a Dad. I thought about it on the way home last night and I figure I have given her roughly 30,000 kisses since she has been born. Still not enough. I look forward to seeing her every morning when I wake up and every day when I get home from work.

Happy Birthday Hannah!

People Suck!

So last week I was on Spring Break! It was a pretty boring, but good week. I spent a lot of time with Hannah we went out to lunch, played on the swings and went to the library twice. I spent a lot of time in the Pomona library growing up and have a fondness for libraries. I hope Hannah can one day appreciate libraries for all they are worth. She did have a lot of fun when we went, even picked out some good books to take home and read.

Our great friends Ed & Tiffany gave us passes to the San Diego Zoo for Christmas, so the 6 of us (their son, Liam included---he's 1 1/2) met for breakfast and then all piled into their Hummer and headed south. We got to the zoo and walked around, went to the sad excuse for a petting zoo, all the kids could pet were goats and went for a bus tour. It was a great time had by all! Liam and Hannah liked the animals and we got some good walking exercise.

Last thing we decided to do was to go on the Skyfari. Now for those of you who don't know, I hate heights. The Skyfari looks like this: Yeah a big bucket on wires. I wasn't too excited about going on this, but I did. So we went from one side of the zoo to the other, got off, went and saw the polar bears, got back on the torture in the sky and got back off at our original departure. We decided that it was time to go home, it was about 5. So we went to get our strollers where we left them at the drop off with all the other 50 million strollers that were there.

Well we found Liam's stroller, but Hannah's stroller was no where to be found. That's right! PEOPLE SUCK! Someone took Hannah's stroller and left the park. How do we know they left and that we were never going to get it back????? Because we called today and still no stroller! Not left abandoned, with all the stuff in it that I hope it would be. But gone, forever. Here are the last pictures we have of Hannah and her stroller. One with Hannah and mommy and one with Liam pushing Hannah.

Score is tied in the bottom of the 3rd inning

On the eve of my 33rd birthday (no sympathy Happy Birthday wishes please) I find it only natural to reflect and take stock on my life. I guess reading www.noiseinsidemyhead.com might have something to do with it too. I guess I am pretty much where I thought I would be at this point. Not the job I thought I would have, but then again I'm not sure what I thought. I’m happy with what I do and the pay I get, but I wouldn’t say that I love, or even like my job right now.

Not the nice home I was hoping for, but I'm happy with my neighborhood (not my neighbors). We are hoping to buy a starter home this year. We’ll see how that goes. I love my wife and adore our daughter. I just can’t believe someone could be so happy all of the time. She must spend 90% of her day smiling. We are so lucky.

I do have dreams of moving to another state, but I am realistic that although it looks like St Andrews from here, there is bound to be dried-up dog poop on that lawn too. “Hold on, Voltaire”. Still might make the move though. Traffic is getting worse and I don’t ever see it getting better.

I was in Phoenix Sunday through Friday of last week for systems training. New program we are rolling out nation-wide. Pretty dull stuff. It was nice to see other people form other divisions that do what I do. Bounce ideas off of each other, gripe, compare. I missed my family a lot. I learned it is difficult to smile at little kids in an airport and at the same time project to the parents and others that you aren’t a creepy pervert. I didn’t sleep well while I was gone. I sure slept like a baby when I got back though.

Anyway… I’m rambling and it-s getting late. Time to go upstairs and rub my cold feet on my wife’s legs.

Over the river and through the woods...

Hello to my one last reader. I haven’t been doing a great job of posting, but I think I have been doing a good job of spending time with Hannah and taking lots of pictures. Of course I don’t have any on this computer to post right this second, but I will add some in the next few days.

Hannah is now 7 months old and is quite entertaining. She now has 6 teeth with one more coming in. She can stand as long as she is holding onto something. She crawls everywhere (started on Thanksgiving), and can climb the stairs. She has only made it to the third stair before we get nervous and pull her back.

She spends most of her days smiling and melting our hearts. For Christmas we are all traveling up to see my Grandma. We stopped at Vanessa’s Mom and Dad’s house to visit them today before we continue our trip to Capitola, Ca.

Work is going well. I am stressed most of the time, but I am working on a system conversion in my department that at this point appears it will take a full year to complete. Corporate is working out the bugs as we move along.

My dad and his wife came to visit in November. They were here for two weeks and spent some time with us as well as traveling around California and Vegas. It was great to see them and great to see that my dad had lost more weight. Go Dad!