So, why did we buy the bunkbeds?

About a week ago, we got some new bunkbeds for the girls. My reasoning was that Bethany was getting too big for her toddler bed, and I figured they'd have more room in the bedroom if we got bunkbeds, instead of a single bed and Meagan's toddler bed. In theory, there'd still be room for crib, too, for future use (there isn't really--the bunkbeds take up more room that I'd thought).

Anyway, we've been looking on and off for a couple of months, and the girls had great fun climbing all over the beds at all the stores we went to. All in all, it seemed like it would all work out. So we bought some beds, and they were delivered last Wednesday. I could tell something wasn't going to work out completely as planned when Bethany refused to even climb up there the first day.

She's gotten over that, though, and both the girls climb up and down with ease. The problem is that Bethany absolutely will not sleep on the top. Right now, they both sleep on the bottom bunk, one at each end. I don't really get how they work it out between them. I've seen them rolling into each other and tangling legs, but I've never heard them fight about it. It's odd, but they don't seem to mind. It can't last forever, though. Sooner or later I'm going to have to get Bethany up there. Sigh.

So what do you do for fun on Saturday nights, go down and throw rocks in the lake?

Hmmm...it seems like that is exactly what we do for fun.

We've been cursed with a lot of bad weather this summer, keeping us inside a lot, so when it got sunny this afternoon, we decided to go for a nature walk at Glen Helen nature preserve, about 20 minutes away from us. It's a gorge with several rivers running through it, various springs and waterfalls, and lots of trees and wildlife. It's not a strenuous hike/walk by any means, except for in a few steep places, but it's the closest thing to real hiking that I've come across in Ohio. So anyway, Nate and I decided to get out and go enjoy some nature. Of course, we didn't think much about how muddy it would be, but we should have, considering all the rain we've had lately. Then Meagan didn't want to walk, but just be carried everywhere. For a two-year-old, she doesn't really weigh that much, but you try carrying 25 pounds--squirming pounds--uphill and down for roughly two miles. And always on the same arm. She likes to be held on my left hip, and when I try to switch her over, she gets mad. Ok, I didn't acutally carry her the whole way--Nate carried her for part of the way, but I got to carry Bethany's 40-pound weight up the killer (and wet) stone steps at the end of the trail, because she tripped and scraped up her knee and was crying.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. The walk did start out fairly nice. Not too far in is a beautiful

little waterfall in front of a small cave. We've been there several times before, but it was particularly pretty today, with the sun shining on it just right. Since it was our first stop, the girls, of course, had to throw rocks in and poke sticks in the water. It was hard getting them to move on.

I think the running water was affecting our newly potty-trained Bethany, because she started hopping up and down and making general I've-got-to-go-to-the-bathroom movements. She denied needing to go, though, until we'd made it to the second spring/waterfall. I knew she'd never make it to the end of the trail, so I took her off in the bushes to go. I thought she'd throw a fit at that, but she actually thought it was funny. I don't think I'll ever really figure her out.

Our third stop was on the banks of the river. This is where we had the most fun throwing rocks in the water. Even Nate overcame his boredom long enough to throw some in himself. He tried to show Bethany that he was skipping rocks, but she wasn't that interested. She just wanted to throw the biggest rock she could lift. It was actually kind of fun. I think the kids could've spent a lot longer there if we'd let them.

Both the girls were in high spirits at this point. Bethany was holding my hand, jumping and saying "Ribbit, ribbit!" I've never heard her do that before, so it was pretty funny. But it was not long after that that Bethany tripped and landed on a rock. Her knee got kind of scraped up, but she wouldn't really let me look at it. She's very protective of her wounds. It's a major battle just to clean and bandage small cuts. Heaven help me if she ever has something serious. We'll probably have to knock her out to treat it.

Her knee turned out not to be very bad, though I didn't know it until later, and she calmed down once we got home and she got some food in her, thank goodness. All in all, it was a fun trip, and we're glad we got out for a bit.

So who wants to watch TV when you can play with poo?

The title of this blog is from a comment Nate made when dealing with our little problem today.


Meagan has been letting me know that she is getting ready to be potty trained. How? Well, let’s look at today, for example. She was supposedly sitting on the couch, watching TV, when she came running up to me saying, “Yuck!” and I heard yelling from the other room. Apparently, she took off her perfectly clean diaper and pooped all over the floor. As if that weren’t bad enough, she decided to play in it, too. Yumm. It was smeared into the carpet, and a toy cup that happened to be in the room was covered in it. I have no idea what she was trying to do with the cup. Scoop up the mess maybe? I don't know, your guess is as good as mine. But I'm guessing it’s now time to direct her somewhere else when she gets the urge to keep her diaper clean.

She has done similar things before (i.e. take off a perfectly good, perfectly clean diaper, just to mess on the floor), but fortunately, not with poop. Just several wet accidents all over the house. She likes to sit on the toilet, especially at bedtime when Bethany makes a play for getting up out of bed by saying she needs to go to the bathroom. Well, if it works for Bethany, why not? Anyway, I did actually put her in panties for a few days about a month ago, but that was also when I decided to make another go at training Bethany, and I just couldn’t handle the dual mess-making machines, so I gave up on her pretty soon. Bethany is doing really well now, though, so maybe I should give it another shot. The truth is, the thought of potty training Meagan fills me with dread. I just really don’t want to botch it up with Meagan, like I did with Bethany. Bethany was just over two years old when she started showing signs of being ready. Several people said I should take advantage and go with it before she lost interest, so in January of last year, I tried it out. It didn’t go over very well, so I stopped. Then I tried again a few months later, and she was doing okay, but then we left home for almost five weeks visiting family while Nate was off at SOS. All the traveling and bouncing from place to place was hard on a potty training child, so I put her back in diapers. This was in April/May. When we got home, I gave it another go, and then she got a serious case of diarrhea, related to some antibiotics she was on, and I just couldn’t deal with the mess anymore, so we went back to diapers. Again. Sigh. I waited a few months more and tried once more. This time it seemed like it was working and she went a whole month with few accidents. Then practically overnight she decided she was done with the toilet, and refused to go any more. She would throw absolute screaming fits if I even tried to get her to go to the toilet. She didn’t care if her pants were wet or messy, and she didn’t care if she made messes all over the house. There was so much tension in the house because I was tired of cleaning pee out of the carpet five times a day that I gave up again and went back to diapers. This was somewhere around November/December. After that I would ask her every so often if she wanted panties or diapers, and she would often pick panties until I told her that if she wore panties, she’d have to use the toilet, then she’d change her mind again. I just let it go for a long time. Finally, about a month ago, I just put her back in panties. She had a lot of accidents in the beginning, but then she got the hang of it again. Now, I rarely have to prompt to her go—she actually does it on her own. Whoever knew that the sound of the bathroom door opening and the toilet lid being liften could be so beautiful? I was out running errands with just her today, and she even told me that she needed to go. It was wonderful.
So, anyway, it was a long and dreadful saga getting Bethany to this point. Part of it was her and her stubbornness, part of it was circumstance, and part of it was my unwillingness to just stick it out. But the whole thing was such an ordeal, that I’m afraid to mess it up with Meagan. But really, I guess all the messes Bethany made were not any worse than what I found smeared into the carpet this afternoon. Oh dear. I think I’m in for it either way.