Adams Family News: BARON IS POTTY TRAINED!!!! And other July happenings. . .

This summer has been fast and furious, it’s really amazing how quickly it’s gone by.

One day in early July I kept a friends two boys for the afternoon and evening. So, I had 5 boys ages 5, 4, 3, 11 months and 4 weeks from 3 p.m. until 11:30 p.m. and lived to tell the tales.

Feeding sweet little barely 1 month old Joshua really made me miss the tiny baby stage.

As you can see, Lincoln was NOT impressed with me holding another baby. The entire time I held Joshua, Lincoln stood at my knees and fussed.

The boys had played outside on the swing set for a few hours so I let them watch one tv show while I fed the baby. The 5 kids really weren’t bad at all. I think 3 must be the tipping point. Either that or knowing that two of them were going home at the end of the night caused me to be super relaxed and not worry about anything. . .

One day in July we went to play at a new homeschool friend’s house. They have 5 acres with ponds with canoes and kayaks and a chicken coop. All kinds of fun stuff to do!

The boys loved roaming around on the land and even got to feed the chickens. I so wish we had a chicken coop. Organic eggs are insanely expensive and the boys eat eggs like crazy.

Jack was thrilled to find a little snake.

My heart in a target cart. . .

While Bear and Jay were in Beach City over the 4th, I got a call from our awesome pediatrician in Plano. Bear does indeed have a gluten sensitivity. I had suspected it due to some bumps on the backs of his arms and some digestive issues he was having. So, we are now 99% gluten free at home. Bear is 99.9% gluten free, he’s had gluten once since the Monday after 4th of July. His current favorite gluten free lunch is tortilla soup in the blender. It’s super healthy and I love it so it makes things very easy that he likes it so much as well. He also eats a lot of peanut butter and honey sandwiches-but we use apple slices instead of bread. Pretty yummy stuff!

Jackson drew a picture of himself holding hands with Amanda, his favorite babysitter from Plano. Now I just need to mail it to her. . .

And now for the most exciting news of this post. . .BARON IS POTTY TRAINED!!!!
So, as I may or may not have posted prior we have been trying everything to motivate Bear to potty train. He just didn’t care, not one single bit. He was pretty close before Lincoln was born and we moved but once we got here he just reverted, like 100%.

We had many, MANY versions of this conversation:
Me: Bear, do you want to use the potty and wear underwear like Jackson, like a big boy?
Bear: Nope.
Me: If you are a big boy then you’ll get to ride horses at pine cove. . .
Bear: Nope, I don’t want to be a big boy. I’m your baby. I’m gonna be your baby forever. Not Lincoln, me!
So-whatever, I didn’t push it. I had no desire to clean up poop or pee from my floor so I tried bribing him but never pushed it at all.

Then one glorious day our church started Backyard Bible Club. It’s our churches’ version of VBS. The teens run these clubs in the front or backyards of over 500 member’s houses throughout Austin. The thinking is that a lot of non churched families wouldn’t bring their kids to VBS but might let them walk a few houses down for a few hours a day for a week. Then at the end of the week there is a huge festival at church for all of the kids and their families. They have bounce houses, candy, face painting, etc. etc. etc. Tons of fun and it’s called SummerFest. So, back to the story. Jackson went to two days of Backyard Bible Club at the neighbors house and just raved about it. You were supposed to be 4 to go but it’s at a friend of mine’s house and she said Bear was welcome. Bear REALLY wanted to go, most especially to SummerFest. So, I told him he could go if he was potty trained. Basically the heavens opened up and rained awesomeness on my house that day because he went for it. That day, Wednesday, July 10th Bear said he wanted to wear underwear and go to Backyard Bible Club. And my tiny man has been potty trained EVER SINCE. YAY!!!!!!

I’ve been burned by toddlers before and I didn’t want this to be a 3 day stunt and then totally revert after SummerFest, so I made this sticker chart for him. I was going to look on pinterest to see what kinds of adorable charts they had on there but wisely decided against it. I knew if I looked at pinterest there would be some amazing potty charts done by descendants of Michelangelo and that I’d end up feeling like a talentless loser mom who couldn’t even create the perfect potty chart. And really, my kid is now using the potty-there needs to be nothing but celebration surrounding such an event.
So, here’s my lame but completely effective potty chart. He got to put 1 sticker on it each accident free day and each 5 days there was a prize. He loved it! And I’m happy to report, we hit day 20 a while back. Ahhhhhh, the sweet taste of diaper free victory!

Love that these silly kids love to dress up.

I forgot to take a picture of the boys dressed up for cow appreciation day (if you dress like a cow you get a free meal) at Chick Fil A but here’s Bear pretending to be a cow.

And onto the fabulous SummerFest. It didn’t start until 7 so I stayed home with sleeping Lincoln and Jay took the bigs.
The boys had a BLAST and Bear said getting potty trained was definitely worth it for the party.

They got to play in planes, helicopters and several different emergency vehicles. Jay said the party was super awesome and totally packed!

The next week Jack started Farm School Summer Camp (which he absolutely loved) and so Bear and I had a lot of one on one time while Lincoln napped. We did a lot of art projects. Here’s Bear creating a light house. It was all his idea and he made the sky with lots of stars etc. and then the light house and he taped it all to the window. I need post a picture of his final masterpiece.