Some of you may remember this post, about how my daughter won't poop in the potty, and her excuse is because Danika poops in her panties.

So today I've been sick. Quite sick. Frequent trips to the toilet, sick. During one of those trips, I didn't quite make it in time. Guess who was there to witness that mishap?

"Mommy, oh no! You pooped in your panties!"

"Daddy, Mommy poops in her panties."

I want to cry. On so many levels.

Also, I'm behind in lj reading (due to illness). Not sure when I'll get caught up.

I am going to be going on a scrapbooking retreat this weekend - 3 days of non-stop scrapbooking (except for the odd massage and nature walk).

This is good, because it will be dedicated time during which I can work on my kids' baby albums, and other albums I've started, yet not finished. This is bad, because I haven't printed any pictures in oh, approximately 3 years, and in that 3 years, I've accumulated approximately 8,000 pictures. Give or take a few thousand.

I took today and tomorrow off work, so I could specifically dedicate my time to sorting through my digital photos, selecting those I wish to print, getting them in to get printed, and then packing up all the supplies I'll need.

I also got the kids vaccinated today - that makes one fully vaccinated household.

Between the vac time, and the procrastinating time, I AM SO FREAKING BEHIND!

I'm started to get stressed about going on a retreat! This is not good!

I NEED to get this done... I NEED to get organized!

Darn it I wish this was something someone could help me with!

She is totally aware she is doing it. She just plain out does not want to poop in the potty.

Recently, I asked her why she pooped in her panties. Her response:
"Danika poops in her panties."

"Just because Danika poops in her panties doesn't make it ok sweetheart. We don't poop in our panties. We only poop in the potty."

"But Danika poops in her panties."

"That's not good sweetie, that wasn't a good thing Danika did."

"But Danika's a good girl."

"Yes she is sweetheart, but it's not good to poop in your panties. We only poop in the potty."

"But Danika poops in her panties."

"Mommy doesn't poop in her panties. Mommy poops in the potty. All the school kids poop in the potty. The big girls poop in the potty. We only poop in the potty, not in our panties.

"BUT DANIKA POOPS IN HER PANTIES!"

I'm at a bit of a loss on where to go with this now. Also, I want to strangle Danika.

Please help me fix this sentence... I'm having issues with the possessive:

"Subjects will be recruited through the Principal Investigator's and Sub-Investigators’ regular practice or patient pool."

There is one PI and multiple Sub-I's.

That doesn't sound right - like there are too many 's. Is that right?

Also, in the event that there was only one Sub-I, I think I would want "Sub-Investigator's", but please correct me if I am wrong.

I'm craving sushi. At 12:30am.

What can I eat that might take away a sushi craving at this time of night?

X-posted to parenting101

http://community.livejournal.com/parenting101/5053599.html

( Parenting stuff - cut for those not interested )

What is your personal greatest challenge with parenting, or what do you think would be your greatest challenge, if you had kids?

For me, I find that coming up with relevant and appropriate consequences for inappropriate behaviour, is one of the hardest things about parenting. It's the thing with which I most struggle. That and patience.

In the weeks leading up to the anniversary of my dad's death, I started to have a lot of memories of what was happening a year ago. I started remembering really specific details of things that are probably best forgotten. We had planned on spending that day, and entire weekend, at the lake - my dad's favourite place. And mine. But Jason had some industry work that needed to be done at work. So I was left with a day off all alone, on the actual anniversary day. I thought about it for five minutes and just went to work. Fuck having a day off. I can't imagine a worse thing for me than to spend that entire day alone with no specific plans. Good decision to go to work.

We ended up leaving for the lake after work, and it was ok. Things got immediately better once I was there. Even though it was his place, and the place is filled with memories of him, they're good memories, and it's a happy peaceful place. It didn't hurt to be there, and in fact it helped. We had the most beautiful weather we've seen all summer, and it was absolutely fabulous with hardly anyone up there. We had the entire beach to ourselves for a while... it was a very private weekend. I'll post about the fact that our cabin was broken into, in another post. Suffice it to say that it didn't ruin my weekend. I hope I can spend every anniversary up there.

My mother and my sister had a pretty rough time of it I think. In the weeks leading up to the anniversary, they started having dreams of his last hours. They also started to randomly see him lying in bed. Both of them are living alone. Both of them were also working the day of the anniversary. I am really grateful for having my kids and husband to help distract me in this past year. It's really made things bearable, and it's made the grief less sharp.

I still haven't been able to go back and visit his grave. I really need to do that one of these days...

I am really glad this year is over.

An hour and a half from now, it will be exactly 1 year since my dad died.

We went to a wedding this weekend. Sometime during the evening, I went looking for my three-year old daughter, Alex. I found her in the coat-check room.

She was hanging on to a vertical pole, climbing up scaling the wall like batman, until she reached the top of the horizontal coat-hanger-bar-thingy. Then she hung on and shimmied along the coat-hanger-thingy (which had no coats on it) until she'd crossed the length of the room - about 8 feet. Then she let go and jumped down to the ground.

I just stood there with my mouth hanging open.

What three year old child does shit like this? She frightens me a little.

In the Miami conference I attended back in June, I sat in on a session involving Phase I clinical trials. Our centre is trying to put together a Phase I unit in the not-too-distant future, and I thought it would be useful if I paid attention to some of the concerns.

This particular session involved an experienced Phase I research site talking about some of the things they had to do differently, as a result of the research being Phase I (as opposed to Phase II, III, or IV).

For interest, Phase I studies are the studies where the drug is tested in humans for the very first time. Drugs are tested on healthy humans specifically to look at how sick the people get with the drugs, what kinds of side effects they have, and in general, how toxic the drug is. Up until Phase I studies, the drugs will only have been tested in animals.

The thing that shocked me, was when the presenter said:

"Oh and if you have multiple research subjects, and you are batch dosing them, make sure you dose them at least 5 minutes apart. This way, if you have 6 subjects and they're dosed 5 minutes apart, in the event that they code and go into multiple organ failure 15 minutes post-dose, then you have time to: a) get the crash-carts ready for the subjects whom you've already dosed; and b) so you can stop dosing them and deal only with 3 dying patients rather than 6. One site had 20 subjects and dosed them 2 minutes apart. They all crashed at once. That's a lot to handle."

Noted.

For those of you that need some time to yourselves during the day:

If you fall asleep during your "alone-time", do you feel like you missed it? Or do you feel that you still got it, but just spent it in slumber?

Once upon a time, a long time ago, in a galaxy far far away, there lived a little girl named Alexandra.

Now Alex lived with her Mommy, her Daddy, her brother Baby Stephen, and her three cats - Kitty, Tigger, and Ziggy.

One day, Mommy decided that she, and Alex, and baby Stephen were all going to go for a walk to the park. They got in the Chariot, and away they went. They got to the park and at first they had a good time playing. Then all of a sudden, it started to rain. Alex and Baby Stephen and Mommy all huddled under the umbrella until the rain stopped. Then Alex wanted to keep playing.

"Alex, I don't think we can keep playing at the park today. It is toooo wet!" said Mommy sorrowfully.

"I can play!" Alex insisted.

"I don't know sweetie, but alright, you go ahead and try."

First Alex went on the monkey bars to hang, but she fell down. It was toooo wet!

Next Alex went on the tire swing to swing, but she slid off. It was toooo wet!

Finally Alex tried to go down the slide. She got halfway down, when she got stuck!

"Mommy help! I'm stuck!"

"Oh no! What are we going to do? How are we going to get you down?" Mommy said, throwing her hands in the air.

But Baby Stephen knew how to get Alex down. He climbed all the way to the top of the slide, and he came down right after her, and he pushed her down so she wasn't stuck anymore!

Hooray for Baby Stephen!

After Alex got unstuck, she gave Baby Stephen a big hug. Then she looked at Mommy and said, "Mommy, I don't think we can keep playing at the park today. It is toooo wet!"

Mommy said, "You know what Alex? I think you're right! How about we go home and have some chocolate milk and smoked gouda?"

Alex and Baby Stephen both said, "Yeah!". Then they got into the Chariot and went home, and had lots of fun dipping their gouda in their chocolate milk. After that day, Alex always knew that the park wasn't much fun after the rain; it was just toooo wet!

The end.

1) I went to the lake with my mother and the kids. It's the first time I've gone anywhere with the kids without Jason. It wasn't horrible, thanks to my mother's help, but I'd rather he come next time. My mother and I had some really interesting parenting clashes. I might have to update more on that later.

2) I bought a few new clothes (I used considerable restraint), and I feel awesome in them.

3) I haven't been working out and yesterday when I went to pick up the child, my back seized on me. We will see if I can keep on top of the pain medication enough for me to be able to last the day at work. I've got a call in for massage, and hopefully that will help.

4) I love Mafia Wars on facebook, and decided to bite the bullet, sign up to the forum, and post on one of those "add me" threads to build my mafia to it's limit of 501. In less than 8 hours I have over 200 friend requests, with more coming faster than I can process them. Fuck.

ETA: I'm getting a friend request on average of every two minutes :X

So how's your day going?

I just can't concentrate today! I'm not getting ANYTHING done!

Stephen still isn't walking, but tonight he took his first step!

He was crusing along the furniture, and usually will drop down to a crawl if the next piece of furniture is out of reach. But tonight, in front of myself, Jason, my sister, and Alex, Stephen took his first independent step!

Posting this July 17 but backdating it July 05.

July 01, we headed off to the lake, and it was an emotionally charged event for me. This is the first time I've been to my dad's cabin since he's passed away. It actually went better than I thought it would. It did not have that sense of "presence" that I still feel in the house, and the vacation was completely enjoyable.

Saw lots of wildlife on the way up. Bunnies, lots of deer, a couple of foxes, lots of squirrels. Didn't see the bears, although their presence were everywhere.

We have bats nesting in the attic. At first we weren't sure it was bats, but we later confirmed it when Jason saw them flying in and out of the roof at night. They can't (or don't want to?) get into the main cabin, and honestly I'm not too concerned with them being in the attic. I like bats. I realize not many people do, but I think it's really cool we've got a nest up there. We could hear the babies. I also like that they keep down our insect population. We haven't had any trouble with wasps since the bats have moved in.

While there were definitely tons of squirrels, they definitely were well-fed, and not too interested in the nuts we'd put out. The Blue Jays and Whiskey Jacks, on the other hand, were delighted with our offerings. We had a hard time leaving nuts out for them though, because Alex would eat the nuts as soon as they were put out.

Both kids travelled really well considering it's a 4 hour trip up there. They both loved it up there. Alex has been talking for a full year about feeding the squirrels and going to the beach - both activities we've only done at the cabin. It makes me so happy to think that this cabin is starting to mean as much to my children as it meant to me when I was little.

Stephen had a great time as well. Jason and his dad have done so much work up there, it's made it so much easier to bring the kids up. I remember when we brought up Alex at Stephen's age, and it was a complete nightmare. It was so hard to contain her and keep her from destroying everything... but this year it was just not an issue. She was well-behaved, and Stephen couldn't physically get into the same kinds of things that were previously left out.

One more surprise... Alex decided, on July 01, that she was going to use the potty from now on. It wasn't an announcement she made or anything, but she just... started using it. She wouldn't even tell us. She'd just walk in, go to the bathroom, and walk out. Like an adult. It was crazy! Did not anticipate that at all. Now if we can just get her to poop on the potty, life will be fantastic. So far we've had no success in that arena, but I've got renewed faith that it will happen one day. Friends have assured me that she WILL be trained by the time she goes to school.

Anyway, the visit was fantastic, and I can't wait to go up again.

For the first year in ages, work had money in the budget for Continuing Education. Exciting stuff. This meant I got to go to Miami for a conference, and bring my family along with me.

We left on May 29th, at an insanely early hour. I didn't tell Alex where we were going (airplane) because she would have freaked out. When we went to get on the plane, she didn't realize we were boarding until about 5 feet from actually stepping onto it... then she turned around and ran away screaming. Of course we were the last people on, and seated at the rear, so we had to drag her screaming past all the other passengers and got these looks... just great. She settled down though, and eventually began to enjoy the experience. She has a vivid memory of the flight attendant bringing her some apple juice. Apparently that helped.

I'll have to post about the entire flight, because it has turned into such an event that Alex constantly requests me to tell it to her as a bedtime story. I'll have to post the story that I tell her, another time.

We ended up renting a car because we didn't want to deal with the whole carseat issue (we were able to just rent carseats from the rental agency). I'm pretty sure we won't be doing that again... while we budgeted correctly for the car rental itself, as well as the cost of keeping the car at the hotel ($28/day), we didn't appreciate that it was valet parking, meaning we'd have to tip everytime we got or returned our car. We didn't appreciate that parking ANYWHERE in Miami, at any time, was insanely expensive (a couple of hours was easily $10-$20. Finally, we didn't anticipate the crazy amounts of tax added on to everything. And I thought WE were badly taxed! Needless to say, we'll probably rethink the whole car rental deal.

We got there late on Friday (May 29th) and didn't do anything that day.

Saturday, we just hung out at the hotel, and took full advantage of the swimming pool. The kids really liked the hotel room since it had floor to ceiling windows. Stephen especially appreciated that he could sit by the window and look out/down. All that swimming exhausted the kidlets, and they slept extremely well.

Sunday morning, we went down to the Bayside Marketplace. Good experience, if insanely hot and humid. Should have brought more water for the kids, and chalked that up to lesson learned for the rest of the week. Bought some new bras at Victoria's Secret, which I've been dying to check out since there isn't one here. I have to say I'm disappointed and I don't think it's all they're cracked up to be. The rest of my afternoon was spent at the conference.

Monday was all day conference for me. Jason took the kids to the zoo.

Tuesday was all day conference for me. Jason took the kids to Parrot Island.

Wednesday was conference for the morning, and in the afternoon we took the kids to the Seaquarium. We managed to see most of the shows, and that was also a good time.

The whole work conference was a great experience... I picked up a lot of fantastic ideas and learned a lot. I really think they got their money's worth in sending us. I'll have to make a separate post just about that.

We left early Thursday morning, and the travel went well, except that Jason's travel agent had told him that children under 2 don't need tickets (since they sit in laps), but apparently they do need tickets when they're flying internationally. So we couldn't do our fast check-in, we had to stand in line and buy Stephen a ticket, which turned out to cost us nothing (apparently it's usually a small percentage of the adult fare... like 10%?). Thank God we were early... we could easily have missed our flights.

We got back late Thursday evening, picked up supper and then washed and repacked for Friday morning, where we drove to Edmonton for stuporstar's wedding. I figured I'd post the pics after the bride has approved them, so we're just waiting on her now ;)

I got to meet my longtime friend phaedie, her boyfriend Dan, and missioncontrol - someone I'd heard about but to whom I had never been introduced. Seriously a fantastic experience. The wedding was lovely, the bride was radiant, and everything was the way it was supposed to be :)

I feel a little bit awesome and evil at the same time that internet friends were the only ones who managed to make Marissa cry that day (in happiness of course!) >:)

That about sums up my Miami and Edmonton vacation... more posts to come!

Summing up the trip to Miami, from a note sent to friends:

Hi guys, we're in Miami! So the trip went extremely well. Alex was positively cherubic, and was so excited about the whole experience she fell asleep at 7pm our time! (that has NEVER happened before!) She was very excited about seeing all the airplanes, the moving sidewalk, the train between terminals/gates in Denver, the clouds, the turbulence, the luggage sliding down a slide and rotating around the carousel, and our hotel room with floor to ceiling windows. Stephen mostly just hung out, and was pissed off he couldn't lie down for his nap on the plane. Now that we're here, it's mostly rainy, which is unfortunate. Jason thought he heard something on the news about tornadoes, so that could be interesting. Especially with floor to ceiling windows. There seems to be quite a bit we can do here though, despite the weather. Did you guys know that the largest zoo in North America was in Miami? I had no idea!

Stephen is speaking so much!

His first word was "Kitty", followed closely by "Mama" and "Dada". This weekend he's started saying "there", "more", and "thank you"! The "thank you" is so cute!

Jason and my mother are also pretty convinced he's said "grandma" a couple of times too, but I haven't heard that one yet :P