Week 13, Q1 ends with a BANG!

Wow!!  What a crazy, busy, up and down, exciting week it has been.  This one week felt like it lasted an entire month, so forgive me in advance if this entry is massively long (and, somewhat scattered, as that is exactly what our lives have been this week!).  Okay, here goes...

On Monday, I woke up determined to get my car registration figured out--I was only 7 months late...<_<...anyway, I finally figure out that we were entering the wrong number online, and so it finally "recognized" my vehicle and put me through to the payment page.  So, I go out to my car to get my purse, and....WALLET IS MISSING...not only that, but my purse is literally inside out, soooooooooooo I'm pretty sure it was stolen.  I am LIVID for a number of reasons.  The first one is simply that someone had the gall to walk into my driveway, open my car door, and steal my wallet.  Secondly, after having made fun of me for locking my car doors on Sunday night when Davey went out to get my coffee mug, he left them unlocked.  And finally, it was already shaping up to be a busy week, and now I had to handle all that goes into having your entire wallet stolen....grrrr.  So, Davey was a dear and came home from work as I was a bit of a basket-case.  The "good" news from all of this was that we were able to take care of all of our weekly errands on Monday since Davey came home--blood work for Davey, 3 year well-check for Tommy, oil change for me, cancelling all of my credit and debit cards, finally getting my car registration, and getting a new driver's license.  Btw, Tommy did awesome on his 3 year ASQ survey, and he was 95% height and 90% weight!  Also, hilarious Tommy story relayed via Davey from the well-check.  Apparently Tommy was in some distress (any doctor appointment, no matter how tame results in this usually), and he broke out a quote from his boy Simba--"HELP!!  SOMEBODY.....ANYBODY.....HELP!!!!"  I could not stop laughing when Davey told me that one!

Anway, after Tommy's appointment, we dropped the boys off at Grandma's house so we could go to Becky's 30th birthday party at Kanki.  We all had a really nice time, and Becky was surprised with an amazing COACH bracelet from her boyfriend Steven :)  The first picture wasn't from that night, but it was too cute to pass up, and the second pic is of the awesome cupcakes Susie brought for everyone after dinner!

So, moving along to Tuesday.  Tommy had his first speech evaluation since he started going to Speech Therapy just after his 2nd birthday.  His therapist, Kelly, and I were both THRILLED that he is now in the "normal" range for both receptive and expressive speech--go Tommy and Kelly!!  On Wednesday, we started the day with OT.  Tommy has a new therapist, named Ms. Emily actually, and this was his 2nd appointment with her.  I feel somewhat sorry for his previous therapist, Ms. Leah, because I literally think she had the brunt of the hardwork, and she's no longer here to see most of the fruits of her labor!  Anyway, he had a great appointment--even tried some toothpaste on his toothbrush (which he has been terrified of for over a year).  He also is eating 4-5 new foods, they're not the most healthy things in the world (fish sticks, chicken nuggets, pizza, spaghetti, a burger that isn't from McDonalds haha), but it's still progress--and, normal for a 3 year old!  So, after the debacle of Monday morning, we seemed to be riding high!  We even went and met our friends Mrs. Leslie and Cameron at Chick-fil-a for a play date on the indoor playground.  The following day we met Mrs. Becky and Natalie at the park outside of Clubworx too.  I am proud to report that the boys were very well-behaved with no tantrums when it was time to leave!

Exit light...enter Thursday night.....we get a phone call from some lab in MA telling us that Davey's lab-work isn't covered by insurance, so it's going to be $1700 out of pocket.  I spend 1.5 hours on the phone between the lab, BCBS, and trying to leave messages with Raleigh Neurology.  I go to sleep stressed out and upset--needless to say, not the best night of sleep.  Friday morning was another good couple of hours on the phone, included 6 to Raleigh Neurology.  Supposedly BCBS suddenly decided that if the provider was out-of-state, they were also out-of-network.  This apparently was news, and bad news at that, to Raleigh Neurology (who had been sending these specialized tests to the lab in MA for years).  So, Davey's Neurologist, Dr. Bowman, was supposed to have an immediate conference call with the Medical Director of BCBS on Friday.  Davey's blood samples are currently being held at the lab in MA, by authorized request of Raleigh Neurology.  So, the bottom line for us is, we're not paying $1700 for blood work.  That said, we also might not get the results of that specialized test either.  I am hoping to hear from Raleigh Neuro on Monday.

So, now that we're both good and stressed out, me being "All or Nothing Emi" as Davey lovingly calls me (and also "All or Nothing Ethy" for Ethan--Davey thinks we're the same person!), I decide I want all the crap over with at once....no time to recover...time to potty train Tommy--tomorrow morning!  So, I stay up late on Friday reading "How to Potty-train in 1 day" and getting all of our necessary supplies.  I told you this would probably be my longest post ever :)

So, Saturday morning, we let the boy go through their normal breakfast routine.  Ethan goes down for his morning nap (yes, he still takes one when he can!), and we bring Tommy down for hyper-focused potty-training.  Well, that lasted about 5 minutes.  The boy is weird, but he is smart.  He knew he was being "forced" into staying primarily in one room and answering what I deemed in his opinion "stupid" questions.  He immediately starts to become closed-off, completely refusing to follow even simple instructions, and running away from us yelling "NO NO NO NO!!".  I won't lie, and you can certainly ask Davey, I was thrown off my game.  I was distraught.  This is going to be a freaking nightmare.  So, we're about 30 minutes into things, and I have to try something else. I revert back to my good ol' days as Room 6 co-teacher at Johnson Pond Learning Center.  What is Room 6 you say--potty training room.  That's right, I helped train 16 other kids, but it's so much more emotionally involved and difficult with your own!!  So, pretty much totally against what the book says, we basically go into a "normal" routine, but we're asking him if he has to go potty like every 5-15 minutes.  We started at 8:45am.  It's now 2:15pm, and we FINALLY have a pee-pee in the potty, after Tommy spending at least half of the morning naked/jumping around in the bathroom/climbing up and down from the potty.  Btw, here's the potty he is using...a Wal-mart add-on seat...not the $35 "Cheer-for-me" potty that I was convinced he would love (oh well, there's always Ethan!).

So, it's over an hour and a half past his usual nap-time, but there was no way I was putting him down when he hadn't even gone to the bathroom yet the entire day!  What got him to go that first time was the promises from Mommy and Daddy that "Goggi, Grandma, Gramps, Grandad, NoNo, LoLo, and Aunt Becky" would be SO PROUD OF HIM!!  And, isn't this too adorable--he added in his friends Natalie and Cameron all on his own!  Anyway, we put him down, and to our great surprise, he was dry when he got up.  I got him onto the potty, where he sat for 5 minutes, and nothing.  So, I let him get up, and within 10 minutes, we have accident #1.  He definitely wasn't a fan of being wet, but what he really hated was putting his wet clothes into the hamper.  Since he went down late, it was almost 5 at this point (I ran up at his first peep of noise!), we asked him to go potty one more time and then we could go over to Grandma and Grandad's for "SKETTIS!!!!".  We had put some fruit-loops in the potty earlier for him to "aim" at (even though he's currently sitting down to pee).  Obviously, he could care less about aiming for them, BUT what we didn't expect was how awesome he thought it was to flush the "circles"!  So, that ended up being our go-to move.  Pee first, and you can put circles in afterwards and flush it all bye-bye together!  He managed a little trickle before we left, and we headed over.  Uncle NoNo and Aunt LoLo were there as well, and instead of being more distracted by all of the excitement, Tommy thrived on the attention and praise (I know you're all shocked to hear that he enjoyed being the center of attention!).  He went 5 times over there with NO ACCIDENTS! 

Obviously, we're expecting either to be woken up in the middle of the night by terrified screams due to an accident or to find the same scenario first thing in the morning.  We were pleasantly suprised--totally dry this morning.  I took him into the potty, and he had a nice long pee--ahh, victory....so I thought.  About an hour later, he had 3 accidents in the span of about 30 minutes--NOOOOOOOOO!!!  What happened?!  Well, my theory is that he wanted to poop--he ran upstairs away from us all 3 times.  We followed him, because that is his usual poop time actually.  So, while he didn't have the "time" to get his poop out before we caught up to him, he managed to pee on himself 3 times.  Here's the damage (but, he does look so darn cute in his little undies!!)

He was completely distraught after the third accident, and as much as I tried to not sound angry or irritated, I know he could pick it up in my voice because I was.  Enter St. David--best Dad and Husband in the world!  As I'm having a panic attack and a "woe is me, I've failed him in the short span of 30 minutes" tantrum, Davey somehow gets him to stop being upset and return to normal life.  Note to potty-trainers out there--I am not a fan of having them carry their dirty laundry to the hamper.  I thought I would be--it makes total sense to me--and, I'm sure it would work for some kids.  That said, it humiliated and embarrassed Tommy, and he does not perform/act like himself when that happens.  For the remainder of the day, we decide to be totally normal about going through our activities as usual.  We set the clock timer for 30 minutes at a time--Tommy seemed to prefer answering the beep instead of us "making" him go potty.  We would ask after 30 minutes if he had to go potty.  If he did, he would run in there, and if he didn't, he said "No".  We also made him a potty chart, and he does enjoy earning those stickers!

Dry again during nap, and no more accidents the rest of the day!!  Let's hope we have the same success in the morning!!  Here was his specially requested treat for making it through the rest of the day with no accidents--"Say Hi Matt"...that's right, talking on the X-box headset with Davey's best friend Matt.  If Ethan is my son, Tommy is definitely Davey's!!

So, all in all, it was a CRAZY week, but it did end on a positive note I think!  By the way, I changed my weigh-in date to Wednesday, so I did weigh in this past Wednesday, and I was down another 1.6!  13 pounds in 13 weeks...I will DEFINITELY take a 52 pound weigh-loss for the year if I can keep this up!!  A little nervous about this Wednesday, because I have been stressed out this week!  Here's hoping for a loss of any kind :)  Thanks for sticking with me, if you've made it to the end of this gargantuan post!!!