Potty Training

How can I forget to blog about one of the most important accomplishment in a toddler's life? Bad Mommy (as my son would say). I'm happy to announce that our first born is 100% potty trained during his waking hours. Night time is another challenge that I will tackle at another time although he's been dry through out the night since he started potty training, and only have had one overnight accident so far.

I have to say potty training is not just about training your child to use the bathroom, but training us parents to be diligent and to get on some type of routine. You can't just get up and leave and not worry about when the last time your tot used the restroom, or not have a pit stop weaved into your schedule when you're on the go. In the beginning phase I've learned that you have to be diligent in reminding your child to use the potty, watchin for cues, and never keeping your eyes off of him during the training phase. Kind of like training a new pup.

I started his potty training on a Monday, and since my boy is such a creature of habit and resistant to new things, it was a very tough beginning. At one point he was sitting on his little potty crying and screaming "I can't go potty" and "NO POTTY!" for about an hour before he finally made his first tinkle in the potty. I'm sure I broke every rule in potty training, but I just knew if I let him win we would never get over that hump with him. Sure enough I was right. After that first real tinkle into the potty he was open to using the potty instead of going in his diaper. At first I put him in cloth training underwear but he kept having accidents in then, so instead (as many people have suggested) I kept him bottomless. He was only allowed to sit on towels for the first 4 days. With a lot of high 5's, encouragement, and praises he learned to go pee in the potty and he was allowed to start wearing underwear during the day. He also transitioned himself from the portable potty to sitting on the toilet, but I realized he still wasn't going #2 in the toilet. With a quick trip to Toys R Us, I incorporated rewards into his training. I bought his favorite toy (hotwheels)  and left it in the bathroom for him to see and told him that he could have 1 car every time he went poo-poo into the toilet. By the next day he finally did the deed.

Overall he did fantastic. By the end of week 1 he was using the potty probably 70% of the time, and by the end of week 2 he was 98% trained. Outside the house it was a hit or miss, but after a few accidents I think he finally gets that he needs to let us know that he needs to go. We also need to remind ourselves to make a pit stop every couple of hours when we're on the go, so we can't completely fault him for having an accident when we're traveling.

Last week was a good test since we had a 2 hour event to go to with a 2 hour car ride. After about 1 1/2 hour into the drive our son told us he needed to go potty, and was able to hold it until we could get to the nearest fast food restaurant. Then I took him to the restroom again when we arrived at our destination, and then he told us he needed to go towards the end of the event. No accidents! Yippee. I think it's safe to say he's potty trained, but we'll always bring extra underwear and pants, just in case for those uh-oh moments.

Great job Maddie! We're so proud of you.

Almost forgot to mention that Daddy showed him how to pee standing up and making pee bubbles. =)

Eat Real Festival

  Did someone say food fest?!! Of course we had to be there. This was our first Eat Real Fest so we didn't realize how big it was and made the fatal mistake of eating everything at the very beginning. We were too full to try anything else. Lesson learned, we'll have a strategy in place next time and print out the vendor map. =) For more information about Eat Real check out their website: http://eatrealfest.com/

Next week... BBQ Cook-Off fest here we come!

Here are some pictures that we took: 

		Some entertainment

  

Mason's Red Egg & Ginger Party

We had Mason's Red Egg party today at the local park. It turned out to be a very nice day, not too warm and not too cold, although we did get the bayshore breeze kicking in. The kids seemed to have a good time running around, playing at the water play area and the playground. Thanks to everyone for coming out and celebrating with us. Hope you had a good time.

For Mason's party we had a tiger theme since Mason was born in the year of the tiger. I've been collecting ideas since I pregnant, and had fun putting together the invitations, favors and party decoration.
Since I couldn't really find the card I've been imagining I decided to create my own. It's still not what I really really wanted, but I was able to get my tiger in a cracked egg theme on there. I used Illustrator to create the overall invitation. To create the lil tiger in a red egg, I found the tiger graphic from the ones included in the office program, and the cracked egg I had to create in Illustrator. It took me hours to do this since I'm such a newb to Illustrator and Photoshop, which is why I kept this very simple.

For the favors, I had put my request in to my aunt in Japan to see if she can find mini kokeshi boy dolls that were inexpensive. Instead she found me these. I forgot what these are called in Japanese but they wobble if you push them, which also has a nice meaning. Something like you'll always get up if you're ever pushed down. If I find the actual meaning/saying I'll repost this.  I put these into a clear 2x2 box, added some red shreds for a little color, slapped on a favor tag and tied a ribbon on it. I got all the packaging supplies from Michael's, although I did have a heck of a time finding the clear 2x2 square favor boxes.

I stumbled across these clear plastic with tin containers at Michaels and thought these would make a great centerpiece. They had ones that were all clear, but the ones with the patterns were on clearance. These also comes with a lid, which I didn't need for my purposes. I slipped in two photographs (one on each side) and the added colored paper as the background. I poured fish tank gravel in (since that's all I could find at home) to weigh it down, added the red shreds on top of that and then filled the remainder of the space with chocolates. I stuck some airfilled balloons on a stick in the middle and a few oreo pops all around. If I had more time I would have tied a ribbon around the balloons sticks to complete the look.  I forgot to take some good shots of the finished product, but I think you can see from these pics how they turned out. 

I decided to make Oreo cookie pops for fun, and the chocolate covered Rice Crispy treat favors for the kids. These were fun to make, but I definitely need to find either a different chocolate or a recipe/tip that will keep it from melting too much. Anyone have any suggestions/tips? Oh and note to self, make sure your creation fits into the packaging you selected. I didn't check to see if the double oreo pops would fit in the little bags I bought before making all the oreo pops. Since I did these the night before the event, when all the stores were closed, I ended up using saran wrap to wrap them up.

For the kids we got some buckets w/ shovels from Target ($1 bin) and foam animal shaped visors from Michaels (in the clearance bins) and left it on each table. There's a sand pit area on the playground so we thought it was fitting. I just wished we took pictures of the kids with their animal visors. 

And last but not least.....drum roll please..... the CAKE.
Our friend, who owns/runs Crazy Cake Company in Davis, CA, made this cake. She's a very creative and talented person so we left it in her hand to design the cake, and boy did she not disappoint us. It was so cute and cool that it seemed like a waste to cut it.

Last Day of Japanese Class

Maddie had his last Japanese class on Saturday, and I had to take both kids there all by my lonesome. I made sure I prepared myself since he never likes to sit in the classroom without his security blanket (AKA Mama or Daddy).

I first prepped the baby backpack the night before and on the morning of I woke up Maddie an hour before we had to leave so he had time to wake up and become pleasant. He's such a grump in the mornings. I gave him a pep talk all the way there, letting him know that he had to sit in the classroom with his friends without Mama because Daddy wasn't there and I had Baby Mason. But I think what really got him was I told him that this was last day of class. That really seemed to have perked him up. 

We arrived 15 minutes early giving him a chance to warm up and get comfortable with the idea of sitting in the classroom. I thought for sure I had to shove him in the room and leave him crying, but instead he held his own binder, followed the sensei into the classroom, and sat in his normal seat. He even went through the binder with the sensei until the other kids arrived, and I could hear him saying some things in Japanese and others in English. I was a proud Mama at that moment.

I have to say I'm very happy with his progress in learning Japanese, and it definitely gave me a new found determination to speak Japanese to him at every opportunity. I'll be enrolling him again sometime in January of next year. I would have enrolled him for the Fall (Aug - Jan), but he would have missed most of September and a couple in October that I thought it wasn't worth it. Plus it was really hard to get up every Saturday morning when your newborn was only sleeping for 4 hours at a time. I figure by January he'll be sleeping through the night and we wouldn't be so sleep deprived. So til next year.

"Gourmet" Food Trucks

OK I'm hooked. I don't know if this is a new thing or not, but there has been many specialty food trucks popping up all over the place. Or at least I'm beginning to notice it now.

In order for you to find where a specific food truck will be you have to be on facebook or twitter to find their route of the day.  I'm not quite sure how you find out about these food trucks or if it's just word of mouth, but luckily we have "Off the Grid" who organizes several food trucks to be at one place for a few hours one day a week. Check out their site for more information http://offthegridsf.com/index.html. This one is on Fridays from 5-8pm at Fort Mason. You can also find out who's in the lineup for Fridays on their facebook page.

We've gone a couple of times already, and going again this Friday. They add new vendors each week, which is what draws us back. Don't these look good?

	Kung Fu Tacos	Onigilly
	Curry Up Now - Burrito	Seoul on Wheels
Chairman Bao - Baked bun	Chairman Bao - Steamed bun

Our feast, and we had more coming.