Balch Family Blog

Day: Carsten had a great day! We had a small outing in the morning to get Mark and go to the post office to send in for our passports. He used the potty twice in the car. He wouldn’t have anything to do with the big public potty. (My mission is to find a folding toilet seat that sits on top of big ones.) He played outside and would come in to use the potty. We had one main accident and a couple piddles while trying to get to the potty. He did great all afternoon and evening. He even went poopie on the potty! We had to go out again to pick up my car. That was fine!

Night: Well, we hadn’t heard back from the book lady so we thought we would do it our way and put Carsten in a diaper. BUT…he wanted NOTHING to do with it. So he went to bed in undies. Again at 11:30 he woke up, he was dry and went to the potty. He then got up 6 more times over the next 45 min. That got old fast so I told him we would use both the nighttime diapers and big boy underwear. He went back to sleep and didn’t wake up till 6:45 with a pretty much dry (maybe a few dribbles) diaper. I think this gave him security to go to sleep and not stress about waking up wet.

I did hear from the lady (30 min shy of the 24 hour response time). She said I should stick with it. I don’t want Carsten to be so stressed he can’t sleep at night so if one diaper a night will help, we are just fine with that.

I might brave the mall and play area today with the boys. We will see how that goes! I will take several changes of clothes just in case.

Carsten and I got little sleep last night. It was rough. We made a few bed changes but the worst was Carsten was comfortable. You could tell he was worried about wetting his bed and he couldn’t go to sleep easily after his first accident. I have submitted a request to the author and mentor of the book we are using to see what she recommends. Camden is still using pull ups and it is no big deal for us. I don’t mind night time diapers, I will just be thrilled with day potty training if that is all we get right now. I was a bed wetter and so the boys have a history with that. Today has gone as smooth as can be expected. We even had a small outing this morning to get passports and have breakfast. Carsten used his potty twice while we were out and about! I am very proud of him!

Well, we had a great nap and woke up dry and a fabulous afternoon. The evening was a little bumpy with a couple of accidents but a lot of successes too! He finally went poop before bed in his undies, but we got him on the potty and praised him for his successes. He has had a great day! Tomorrow should be interesting, but I need to make it through the night. So far, so good.

We are doing great! He has just gone down for his nap in undies! Hard to believe! The first three times he wet his undies but the 5 times since then he has made it to the potty by himself. He is really doing great! I am so proud!

We had a Christmas filled with family, fun, and food! The boys were both in awe with every gift and couldn’t wait to open the next one. They were adorable as they ran around the house wearing their Helmet Heros (Camden was the Police Man and Carsten the Race Car Driver). They would open a few and play and then come back to open some more. It was nice to have Grandpa Don and Grandma Betty here for the morning festivities!

Gramma TooToos and Papa Ken arrived around 11:00 and the boys had another round of presents to open. Then Gran and Grandpa arrived with more gifts. Can we say spoiled??? Actually all of us were! Mark’s parents are taking our family as well as Andrea and Mike on a Caribbean cruise in March! That was a big surprise and we are thrilled!

We had a Mexican Christmas meal complete with tamales and calabasitas. It was quite yummy!

Today we are going to Mark’s parents and having a traditional turkey dinner and tomorrow we are heading to the Reed’s for a ham dinner. The holidays are really all about the yummy food, right?!

Dad and Betty arrived last Sunday to stay with us through Christmas morning. I think they are very excited to watch the amazement of little boys on Christmas morning. We had a good visit Sunday as we enjoyed many Wii games dad brought with them. It was a year ago that Mark and I introduced dad to the Wii. Our favorite game is Playground and Camden can even do that one himself.

On Monday Betty and I took the boys to an open gym play at Rolly Pollies. It was full of children and loud but very fun for the boys! While we were out doing that dad headed over to Fry’s Electronics and he bought the store out with all new and high end computer gadgets to upgrade our very old (we were still running Windows 2000) computer. It is now amazing and complete with a 22 inch LCD monitor, Vista, and great graphics card that can handle anything we throw at it. Since we were doing all these upgrades we decided to join the technology world and increase our broadband from 256K to 3M. Boy I sound quite intelligent this morning with all my computer talk. (I am sure something I have written is incorrect…) Monday night Mark and I took them out to eat at a yummy restaurant.

Tuesday was mellow and lazy. We took our time getting ready and trying things out on the new computer. Mark and the boys played Wii and Betty and I did a little shopping. We had lunch at Joe’s BBQ in downtown Gilbert. That was good. Ty (my friend Nikki’s little boy) came to spend the afternoon with us. We went to the park and played and then came home and I made meatloaf for dinner. Then we all piled into the van for one last night of Cocoa and Christmas lights.

Today is Christmas Eve. Mark and I feel it is very important that we impress the true meaning of Christmas is about God’s gift to us and how special baby Jesus was and is! Tonight we will read about the Christmas story and open one present (always PJs, but we might let them open the gifts from Aunt Traci and Uncle Lee as well). My Grandma is coming over in the late afternoon to enjoy a lasagna dinner with all of us. It will be very nice to spend time together.

My mom came up so we could bake our Christmas goodies together. It was very nice to have her here. After we baked everything we made a big plate and went to the local Fire Station. We were greeted at the door by a Captain and he gave us a personal tour of the coolest fire station in Gilbert!

This evening I did a bunch of wrapping for the boys. We are going to need to sort through our toys and find some to donate. The boys are getting completely spoiled this year. Mark and I are both so excited about watching them on Christmas morning.

We are also preparing for my Dad and Betty’s arrival on Sunday. It will be nice to see them and they are very excited to also watch the boys on Christmas morning.

We decorated a Gingerbread Train today. It was a lot of fun! Camden came home on Friday with a Gingerbread House (Graham Crackers on a milk carton). We moved the house next to the train. I think it turned out very cute! The whole family had fun!

We have so many Christmas countdown items at our house it is hard to make sure we do them all! The boys are so excited! As I wrap presents and place them under the tree they each get so excited. Camden keeps thinking they are for him when they are actually from him. Funny!

We went to my friend Wendi’s house to watch the game. They are all ASU fans. We usually get a lot of smack for cheering for U of A, but it didn’t last long tonight! WoooHooo! Go Cats!