things i didn't expect

It's been a little over a month since we've transitioned the kids out of their cribs. I thought for sure it would be a crazy disaster with children jumping on their beds, running around their rooms and creating mass havoc.

Instead, bed time has been transformed in to a relaxing and beautiful experience.

Carolyn and Elizabeth are sharing a double bed and although they'll sometimes wrestle each other for several minutes before falling asleep - they love sleeping in the same space.

But then again, they always have.

If one of the girls wakes up before the other from a nap or for the day, they will carefully climb over the one that is still asleep so as to not disturb them, and then either play quietly at the toy kitchen in their room, or stand at the baby gate across the door and scream at the top of their lungs for me to come get them.

This, inevitably wakes up the one that is sleeping.

It usually also wakes up the baby, the dog and the partially deaf neighbor three houses down.

William is in his own room and he thoroughly enjoys going to bed. The primary thing that I have to worry about with him is that he'll stay up too late flipping through books. Although, he also manages to contort his sleeping body around the rail on his bed and will fall out every so often. After several loud "THUMP!" and "wah!!"(s) at 2 AM, we've put pillows on the floor so the landing isn't quite so hard.

Since the kids have been transitioned to big beds, they are sleeping considerably better. Reminiscent of the days before they were climbing out of their cribs ... every day, they take a solid nap that ranges from an hour and a half to three hours, but typically hovers around two hours - from 1:00 until 3:00. They also go to bed at night around 7:30 or 8:00 and sleep in until 7:00 or 7:30, each morning.

It seems that recently, a lot of people have been telling me that once their child turned three, they stopped taking naps. And, they started waking up earlier in the morning.

Yeah, well.

That whole "drop the nap" phenomenon isn't going to happen in our house. Even if our kids stop *sleeping* in the afternoon, I am still going to insist that they go to their rooms for an hour of quiet time. And the rule here is ... no one gets up before 6:30 AM.

Unless of course, it's Christmas morning.

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Once I took the pressure off myself from PTBC, Carolyn and Elizabeth have asked to wear underwear almost every day. Even if I put them in a Pull-Up or a diaper, the vast majority of the time, they'll run over to the potty chair and do their thing. Neither girls have committed to going poo-poo on the potty, but I know we'll get there. Eventually.

Earlier this week, we went for a walk around a nearby lake and during our trip, Carolyn who was in a diaper because I didn't want to inconvenience myself take the chance of bringing a potty-trainee out in public unprepared, informed me that she needed to go pee-pee on the potty. When I told her that I didn't have a potty and that she could go in her Pull-Up, she instead decided to hold it for an entire 45 minutes, until we got home.

I may have unlocked the secret for a child who typically takes 10 minutes to get out of the car because I don't think I've ever seen her move so fast as she did running inside to plant herself on her little potty.

Reminded me a lot of myself.

William on the other hand, has absolutely no desire to do anything with, in, or near the potty. For him the potty chair is merely an object to stand on to better reach things that I purposefully put out of his grasp.

My son is proof that the whole notion of "potty training peer pressure" is a crock.

For now, he is content in a Pull-Up and even though it might be so saturated it hangs down to his ankles, he will fight me tooth and nail to change it. In the past few days, I have resorted to holding him down with one arm whenever I need to change a particularly offensive diaper - because otherwise, he will get up and run away.

You haven't experienced life until you've held down a 30-pound child to change their dirty diaper. You also haven't wished so fervently that someone else would be there to do it - so you could instead do something useful like ... eat a donut.

Since the girls have started to grasp the concept of using the potty - I have had to take a travel one with me everywhere we go. When the urge strikes - it is important to be prepared.

Even if that means we're on a sidewalk 1/2-mile from our house on the daily stroll.

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When I went in to see my ophthalmologist two weeks ago to remove an ingrown eyelash from my eyelid, I dropped in on the podiatrist, who is in the same building, to see if they could squeeze me in before January.

I had all four children with me.

I'm not sure if they thought that I really was in bad shape and decided to get me in sooner, or if my threat of coming back every single day, with all four of my children, until they found an opening was enough to persuade them. Regardless, they got me in the very next week.

Last Monday, the doctor cut out three ingrown nails, which he told me were in fact, the result of pregnancy edema. It hurt like H.E.L.L. Not the whole cutting thing, but the liquid nitrogen spray that he numbed my foot up with, beforehand.

Holy cannoli, it was almost as bad as my c-section.

Thinking that everything would be dandy once the nails were cut back, this week I have an abscess on one of my toes and the joint is so stiff and swollen, I can't bend it. Not to mention, Charlie keeps reminding me of his great-uncle that died in 1920'ish ... just before the invention of penicillin ... from an infection that started from a blister on his heel that he sustained while playing tennis.

Like I've been saying, my ingrown toenails may be the end of me.

And to think people say I exaggerate.

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My neighbor called me today and asked if I liked country music. When I told her that I knew all the words to "Coward of the County" and "The Gambler" I think she assumed I did.

It's not that I don't like country music, I just don't listen to it. Even though I received an "A" in a square dancing class I took in college and enrolled in a line dancing class through our community center a few years ago.

It turns out my neighbor has tickets to go see Tim McGraw in concert on Sunday night and wants me to go with her. When I enthusiastically said "Oh, yeah!! I saw him on Dateline the other night ... he recently divorced Renee Zellweger!" my neighbor clued in that I know not the first thing about country music.

Which would explain why I told the man standing behind me in the security line at the Oklahoma City airport a few years ago that I recognized him as a quarterback in the NFL. Apparently, I'm not very good with recognizing sports stars, either - because the man laughed and then clued me in that he was actually a musician.

He said his name was Garth Brooks ... something or other.

Ever heard of him?