Tomorrow Is Another Day & Things Change

I'm not sure what unhappy feelings feels like on an unborn, but I already feel bad for this child.  So many minutes in a day my kids are adorable, and we are gliding by & they are laughing. Two seconds later & they are screaming like someone chopped their arm off.  I wouldn't know when an ER visit is imminent because those lungs have already given me PTSD over nothing. Yeah, let's add potty training to emotional children & again, I feel bad for the unborn, and my brain. It takes a lot of energy to fuss too. I'm so drained & I hate that.  But their screaming has to stop. I'm pretty sure Lexi taught Dallin how to do it when they are excited and frustrated. I'm supposed to be calm, but firm back? Lexi already cannot hear. Literally, she is deaf to any sort of instruction or request. That will literally be her biggest challenge in school - how to follow instructions.  But make her a promise about a treat or let her retell a story from TV and apparently it's permanent long term memory. It's so hard to be patient. I can't say that enough. As a parent, I'm beginning to wonder if I will ever feel it during this phase in my life. I'm not sure I'll get there. I'm not sure I'm strong enough. I've said "what the hell" way too much this week. It's the season of keeping kids alive and it isn't always supposed to be peaches & cream, but I'd like to feel like I'm doing good in the world for a few minutes in a day.

Potty update: it totally depends on when you ask me. Before a couple of hours ago I would have said all is great & promising. We have had successful outings where he has peed in public restrooms by suggestion & on request. He goes poop in the potty all by himself. But apparently if I slack in the slightest and ask for my own space, he can't manage peeing alone. If we are present, he usually tells us or takes off his underwear to head there and we encourage him. Us being key to all this is still tiresome & I want to slowly back away from the process. I haven't had to clean up the carpet in weeks & day accidents are super rare, until this afternoon. And he is still peeing at night or at least right when he wakes up so I'm definitely not tackling that issue yet because obviously he doesn't pee on his own consistently. But he can hold it. And he can tell us in advance. And he now understands that if he does something, he can THEN be rewarded. And the fight usually doesn't exist if he realizes he does need to go. 20 days into potty training at this point. I felt like he was "trained" 2 weeks into it & at this point I felt like accidents truly were accidents (and we still had one each day even if mostly small), until today. Now I'm a little unsure. He also didn't take a nap today, and I feel like life is HORRIBLE for everyone when that happens. But yesterday was perfect. So as life is, tomorrow is another day and things change. I can't believe we got this far. I have to remind myself about how far we have come when setbacks happen.

The Pop Up Park at Edwards Greenhouse was a great break & one of our first outings post potty training. He did great. We had a good Saturday morning while Dad was at the temple. I'm overdue on an update on the kids, perhaps better than this one =)