Mom Remembers

It can be really hard to live with a toddler (not to mention two!).  In a not-so-recent The Onion article, a "reporter" teased that toddlers have been found to be bi-polar.  I certainly feel that way about my kids sometimes.  One minute they are dancing and laughing and playing happily by themselves; the next minute they are screaming "I kill you!", throwing themselves to the floor, screaching, sobbing, or lashing out aggressively.  This kind of behavior is undesirable.  It drives me crazy and is really embarassing in public.  It is not the way mature people handle themselves.  It won't make them any friends.  I definitely want to help my children grow out of temper tantrums. In my zeal to eliminate temper tantrums and all "excessive" displays of negative emotion, I used to have mini temper tantrums myself.  I would haul the offending child by the elbows to his room (screaming louder than he was) and chuck him unceremoniou...

I spent two weeks with Carl on the "proven Three-Day Potty Training method". For most of the time, it seemed like a couple of fruitless weeks of staying home and rushing to the toilet every thirty minutes while my incontinent son peed straight through his undies and across the carpet.  But just when I was about to give up, something clicked and he (finally) had his first dry day on the second-to-last week in April. This was fortunate for me, since it was a critical week. My parents and my grandparents came and we all went to Provo for my brother's graduation. I had intended to give up when my family came to town but I just had this feeling that we were so close. I decided to be brave and keep Carl in underwear. So scary. But, then: elation! Let it be recorded: April 21, 2011 Carl was dry all day. He was so proud of himself, asking me to use the toilet everywhere we went: at convocation, at the restaurants, at the hotel, and all over the campus. And I was so proud of...