Hiccups

Ethan has the hiccups right now. I love feeling him move around, but when he has the hiccups it makes me feel all "squirelly" inside.

Joey has started including Ethan in everything; it's quite sweet. He will say, "Me, Baby Nick, Ethan and you should go out and blow bubbles." He is also very possessive of Ethan; "When my baby comes out I will hold him. When I am all done holding him, Mommy can have a turn. You can hold him too if you want, Baby Nick."

Needless to say, we are all getting very excited for his arrival; me most of all! I am 33 weeks along today, which means I technically have 7 weeks left, but I don't think Ethan will wait that whole time. We will see. In my head I keep thinking I am 37 weeks, because once I hit 32 weeks, I started thinking ahead to being 36 weeks, and it kind of got stuck in my head....and now my timing is all off. I have to constantly remind myself that I am not as far along as my head thinks I am.

We had a fairly busy weekend. We didn't go anywhere or do anything.....except work on potty training Joey. Since Nick and I were both home, with no plans, (not that I ever have plans), we decided it was past time to start concentrating on the task and not just leave it up to Joey to tell us when he was ready. So, starting Saturday morning, we put him on the toilet every twenty minutes. He stayed dry all day, and only wore a pull-up during nap and bedtime. Sunday was more of the same. Since this weekend was the church camp out - and we had tried the camping in Alaska thing last year (never wanted to do that again) - there was no church in town, so we were able to use the time to continue potty training. With only one accident yesterday, he still did a great job and we are exceedingly proud of him. He is not at the point yet where he will tell us that he has to go...I still have to take him to the bathroom every 20-30 minutes. That is why it was such a busy weekend. But my hope is that through the repetition of the action, he will catch on soon enough to telling us when he has to go, so I don't have to spend every 20 minutes of every day in the bathroom.

I think Nick was feeling a bit left out, because if he is not invited into the bathroom each time Joey goes in, he throws the hugest fit (which he has started doing lately when he doesn't get exactly what he wants). For those of you who have been here, you know how tiny that downstairs bathroom is. Can you imagine how difficult it is to fit two kids AND a very pregnant woman into that bathroom? It's hard enough for me to fit through the door. Nick also wants to sit on the potty, but is much too small for the big toilet. So we got the potty chair back out and let him sit on it each time Joey went potty. I think he just likes to feel the fresh air on himself, because he never wanted to get off the potty...he would stand up and sit back down as soon as I would suggest it was time to get up. Each time I forcibly removed him for the potty, he threw another big fit. But we were pleasantly surprised on Saturday night, when before getting ready for bed, Nick actually went potty in the toilet! I know it was a fluke happening, but we were very excited and made a big deal of it for Nick's sake. We think he will be fairly easy to train once Bubba is going regularly on his own, because he is very much "monkey see, monkey do" right now with Bubba. The biggest goal, of course, is to get Bubba out of pull-ups before Ethan is born; and if Nick is not quite ready to complete potty training before the birth (especially since he is still hardly talking) he will be ready soon afterward. That way, we will only have one in diapers. Wouldn't that be great!

Well, I suppose it is time to pay more attention to the kids. They want to dance to music right now, so I will dig out the CD's from the closet and watch them dance around the living room. Don't worry, Mom, Dad, Josh, and Aubrey, they don't dance like I did when I was little!