The Hazard Chronicles

Happy Sunday everyone!  This week has been busy and fun at the Hazard home.  We are proud to say that the play room is finished!  I will let the pictures tell the story with that one.  Also, Jackson has been amazing this week.  He is very close to being fully potty trained, and we began the process last Monday.  Here is his story..

I honestly have been stressing about potty training twins for... hmmm... since I was five weeks pregnant and I found out that I was having twins.  I am going to put a little disclaimer here. I will be talking about potty training and things associated with this exciting phase.  If you would rather remain blissfully unware then you are free to stop reading.

Lets talk for a minute about my basic philosophy of potty training that I decided on when I potty trained Evelyn. I decided to give her all of the information that she needed and to let her do it completely on her own schedule.  This worked great for her. She went back and forth for a while, but finally was potty trained mostly on her own.  I decided to do the same thing with A and J.  Jack caught on pretty quickly.  When he was in the mood he could tell me when he had to go, and even go on command.  He was beginning to catch on.  Adalie, however, was not.  She is my amazing little 'tryer.' She will try when she feels like it, but up until this second in her little life she has only gone potty once on the toilet. I think it was a fluke.  There was another time that she went poop because I recognized she was going and in one fell swoop I had her on the potty.  I don't really count this, but I figured it would be good to give her that recognition as well.

I have been waiting for the time to begin the process with both of them.  As the holidays approached I made the wise decision to wait until they were over.  Traveling, family, craziness, messed up schedules, etc. are no good for potty training.  When we arrived home I made the wonderful decision to just take on the challenge of potty training Jack.  I thought that maybe Adalie would feel a little bit of competition and decide to jump on the band wagon (absolutely no luck with that one).  I still ask Adalie if she would like to try.  Every time I get the same sing-song 'no' answer.

On Monday Jack stayed perfectly dry in the morning and then had a few accidents in the middle of the day. That evening, however, he stayed dry until bedtime.  The next two days he only had a few accidents, and I am proud to say that he has had multiple days where he is completely accident free. We, however, are still working on getting to the potty on time when it is time to go.  Does anyone have any ideas for this one? Once or twice a day he will just be a tiny bit late getting there.

On Monday I asked him every 15-30 minutes if he needed to go.  I quickly realized that he knew exactly when it was time and my asking did no good.  I put it completely up to him and he is doing great!  At night time he still wears diapers (with underwear over the top because he LOVES them), but he has woken up dry two days this week.  Life is looking good!  Jack and I also went on a date to the present store (dollar store) and out for ice cream because he filled up his stamp potty chart.  We had a great time.  He informed me that he wanted to work at Paul Bunyan (a local fast food restaurant) and then become a lumberjack and load trees on big trucks when he grows up.  He did, however, tell me that he would rather be a dentist than work at McDonalds.  I guess that is progress, right?

Potty training stories are now over. You can resume reading if you were a little bit squeamish about the above topic.  You now know what has been on my mind a lot this week.

Some cute stories about the kids:
On Thursday I overheard Evelyn playing in the playhouse with Adalie and Jackson.  They were playing Scripture Scouts.  Evelyn is Sue, Jack is Skyler and Adalie is always the little dog named Boo.  Anyway, I overheard Evelyn asking Adalie and Jackson how we knew that Jesus loves us.  Then, she started listing a bunch of things that Jesus did for us.  After that she explained that there were many things WE could do to show Jesus that we love Him.  She listed a bunch of ideas and then asked Adalie and Jackson to brainstorm with her.  I could not be more proud of my kids!  Especially Evelyn.  She is SUCH a good example and a good big sister.

Tonight, after bedtime, Jack was completely pushing my buttons.  I heard his sweet singsongy voice calling me downstairs yet again.  I went down a little bit upset and I found him staring intently at his hand.  He was using his fingers on one hand to create the handshape for 'I love you' in sign language on his other hand. He held up his hand proudly and said, "This means airplane!"  Which is true, but not what I expected.  Then, he said sweetly, "It also means 'I love you.'" My heart just about melted!  He has been trying to get this handshape down for a few days.  He always asks me to make it for him.

I have been doing Signing Time with the kids and teaching them Sign Language.  I have been having a lot of fun with it, and they have too.  I should have began a long time ago, but secretly I was scared that I wouldn't know all of the answers when I felt like I should.  I finally got over that feeling and we are having a great time!

On to the playhouse pictures! It should be noted that Logan was amazing for this project.  He built this house in one day without any plans.  He did a wonderful job! We had all of the vinyl lettering done by a woman in our ward named Kerri Jackson.  She did a great job.


Welcome to our play room!

The dress up corner.  I love the fancy cowboy 'dress up' sign equipt with hooks to hang up hats.

We love this thrift store find!  We used it to create a toy box for brick block storage.
 

He wasn't smiling so we told him to at least make a face for the camera

Showing off the playhouse

The window sill is our 'truck center.'

Maren is posing to show the 'house' underneath the treehouse. Notice the stacking boxes with papa's wonderful home made blocks and the fun foamy 'wooden' bulding blocks with screws from Grandma and Grandpa Hazard

Proudly diplaying the bookshelf!  This is actually to demonstrate that this wonderful bookshelf is too high for some of our kids to reach!  Don't worry though, they all have access to plenty of books!  That is one thing they are not deprived of.

The closest we came to a smile! 

This is the view from the door.  The treehouse is obviously on the left, the toy box is on the far right wall, and the dress up station is in a cubby area behind the door.