It’s Memorial Day in the US, a holiday dedicated to men and women who died serving in the armed forces. The three-day weekend is also the unofficial start of summer. How are you spending the day: cooking out with friends and family, shopping for bargains, chilling at the pool? I’ll be relaxing on the patio, like Aspen.
What activity, food, or beverage says summer to you?
So far it has been listening to Ramsey Lewis while drinking Ellie’s tarted up coffees
Tarted up coffee and jazz piano. You Blacksmiths are more sophisticated than me. Sounds like a good way to start the day.
I made a French toast bake with pecans and I’m waiting for it not to be the temperature of molten lava so I can eat my damn breakfast!
I had vegetarian sausage and toast. I’m obviously living my life wrong.
I’ve spent the better part of this morning catching up on my FYCE posts. Now I’m going to go outside and plant a fuckton of plants. It finally stopped raining after three straight days and it’s overcast and cool so perfect planting weather with nice, wet dirt.
The sun was out here today too. Fanny and I took an extra long walk. After our regular route we walked to the local Vietnam War Memorial to pay our respects.
I am doing the opposite of relaxing today by starting the 3 day potty training bootcamp. Lil is a few months away from 4 and still resisting the potty, so we decided it’s time to put some pressure on it. He uses it sporadically, so at least we’re not starting from zero, but at the moment it’s almost entirely prompted by us. Today we’re one accident in, let’s see how many more by the end of the day…
Good luck! What tactic are you using? I shamelessly bribed my kiddo with tiny plastic toys calls Shopkins. I bought a bunch at Goodwill and let her choose one every time she peed in the potty. If she pooped, she got a toy and a cookie.
Is it your kid who is big into space? Maybe you could hang up a map of constellations and provide star stickers that they can add everytime they use the potty?
I can’t hear about Shopkins w/out thinking of Sacha Cohen punking Sherrif Joe!
He weirdly doesn’t respond that well to little gifts or bribery. We offered doing a sticker chart and he was like “no”. We just praise him when he uses it and then let him flush the potty which he enjoys.
The 3 day potty bootcamp is a whole thing that I’ve read up on a little. I didn’t bother buying the book – plenty of people have summarized it online along with critiques of the parts that don’t work. But the basic idea was building up to this day for a week (“Monday we’re going to start wearing underwear”), then doing a full transition from the pull-ups to underwear. Then watching him like a hawk, reminding him constantly to tell me if he needs to use the potty, and putting him on the potty the second I notice an accident starting. And keeping calm and neutral language. So far we’re 4 accidents in, but we’re getting to the potty quicker and the last two times he notified me instead of just me noticing.
My reading comprehension is low right now. Just realized that the 3 day boot camp is what you’re going with. You are brave! I bow down to you and your partner.
One of mine was easy, we just told her she needed to be using the potty before grandpa’s visit and one week before he came, she was trained. The other took way more encouragement. This book and video helped but your mileage may vary…
I both have and remember Once Upon a Potty, but it wasn’t our favorite. He really enjoyed the book I Use The Potty: Big Kid Power, but it never really inspired much.
🤞🏼
If it’s a boot camp, then you should make him drop and give you 40 every time he fails to use the toilet.
Does he have a favorite candy?
Bootcamp + a candy every time they *successfully* go when asked/requested (demanded😉) by their grownups has gotten LOTS of kiddos into the idea of “going on the potty”
That method was the go-to for a former neighbor of mine, who regularly used it for all the kiddos who came through her in-home daycare. She’d find out what the favorite treat was, get the kiddos’ guardians’ consent, and get them out of diapers within 2-3 days.
If the preferred treat was skittles, she’d offer one for the attempt, 2-3 if there was a go. The candy–NOT an option at the daycare at any other time–was a huge motivator😄😉
Yeah I know m&ms are a popular strategy. I’m the sort of ridiculous mom that doesn’t give him much sugar, so he doesn’t have a favorite candy. He does love berries though. 😂
My husband is pretty anti bribery strategies, and they generally haven’t worked very well with him anyway on other issues.
Today was exhausting but we did pretty ok. I think I’ll give an update over on the NOT.
We are doing a family paddle once the teens wake up, so could be a sunset paddle. We also have to agree on a body of water.
Nice! I’m going to finish my chores then spend the rest of the day drinking margaritas on the patio.
Making sourdough baguettes, made a batch of ginger scallion sauce [thanks, @ManchuCandidate!] 1/4 inch left to knit on my sweater, watching baseball, eating leftovers and rummaging around the basement for items I can repurpose into home decor. I never use my dining room anymore so I’ve been trying to think of an alternate purpose for it. Summer office, maybe, the kitchen gets really hot in summer.
Summer to me is roses, palomas, roadside vegetable stands and the mexican food truck.
We don’t have roadside vegetable stands here but there is a Farmer’s Market every day of the week at a different location. I’m ready for watermelon!
We have Farmer’s Markets but they are over-priced and the stuff is not always local, which is very weird. The roadside stands are where it’s at. There is this one guy who put up a sign last year apologizing for the price increase, like vegetables 2 for a dollar instead of 3 for a dollar. Everytime I went there I felt like a bandit so I would just stuff cash in his tin. Last year, when people were staying away from grocery stores, his stuff was selling out before I could get there, because I wasn’t stopping on my way to the office. One year I went past this farm that was selling winter squash for a dollar each, full size butternut squash, I bought a bunch, cut them up and froze them.
I see that sometimes too – the non local stuff at the farmers market. Bizarre. I eventually learned which stands to skip.
im having a cornetto
but yeah..no day off here..so its just been work for me…now that im off work im mostly just waiting for the sun to set so my bedroom cools off…there are some drawbacks to having the bedroom on the southfacing side of the house..the dutch fondness for huge windows doesnt help either
I had to Google cornetto. I’m not a big fan of ice cream but I hope you enjoyed it. I did make some strawberry shortcake to have later today.
i thought cornettos were universal O.o
i did enjoy it 🙂
They were a luxury item around here during the 1980’s–you’d see commercials for them which were similar to the Grey Poupon ones–“fancy but silly, with a little bit of schmaltz”
The reason we most likely don’t have them anymore, is because not folks here just go with Drumsticks,or the store-brand version of those.😉
…if you googled cornetto & one of these ads didn’t come up you need a refund from google
…they were well known enough in the 80s that a decade or so later you could still expect people to get the reference
…I kinda miss when ads for beer & smokes were funny…it used to be a thing…”bet he drinks carling black label” …some of them might have dated poorly…but they can still make me laugh?
…or this one…for which it helps to know that “treasure hunt” used to be a tv show where a lady called anneka rice pretty much did the sort of thing the lady in the yellow jumpsuit does in the ad
It does d not, took me straight to Wikipedia. Damn Google! Thanks.
Ha!!!!😆😂🤣🤣🤣
We got SUCH a different version of that Carling Black Label commercial over here!🤣🤣🤣🤣
They even used the SAME footage…
But *ours* was a Levi’s ad😉😄
…oh, the levi’s ad came first…the carling black label thing just re-ran it with the punchline tacked on the end…no idea how/why levi’s were cool with it…maybe they paid a lot for the privilege…or maybe licensing was cheaper back in the day…I mean how else can you explain reebok getting away with the nike airs in this one?
Daaaaaang!!!!
I’d forgotten ALL about that commercial!🤣
And YEAH, that’d toooootally be a lawsuit today… yeesh!🥴🤣