We have had a good two days.

Yesterday, Nathan had a big accident at Lunch Bunch. But we made the best of it. I drove straight to Starbucks afterward and then enjoyed my caramel macchiato in silence while I worked on edits and on book three of the Paige series (yay!) during naptime.

Then Jon came home and life was happy again.

This morning I woke up DETERMINED to have a great day despite me using the word “poop” and “potty” like an obnoxious parrot. May I just say that I have NEVER in my cognizant life used words like that so frequently??

Right then is when I got an invitation to have lunch at Chick-Fil-A with my dear friend Eryn and her girls. We went to meet them, I broke all of my potty training rules and put Nathan in a pull-up because I don’t care what the blogs, books and random mothers in Target say about that ruining potty training, I do NOT want to be that mom who has to drag her sopping wet kid out of the play area, simultaneously informing the staff that someone peed all down the slide while we make a run for it. I told Nathan that they were “training pants” and he was going to have to keep them dry and clean just like undies if he wanted to get his prize today (we’ve been offering prizes for keeping his pants dry until naptime).

And guess what?

HE DID.

We went to the bathroom three times and left there with a totally dry pull-up. I am so proud of that child I could just pop.

 We also had to stop and get a picture with the cardboard firefighter cow because Nathan was wearing a shirt with a fire truck on the back and THAT WOULD BE SO COOL, MOM.

He’s like two going on eight. The picture is blurry because goodness knows we couldn’t take this picture with all of our stuff sitting on the table. No, we had to decide to take it right when I was loaded down like a sherpa on my way to find the Yeti on some godforsaken expedition.

We got home, I got him in his jammies for nap and we were going through our normal ritual of discussing how much we loved each other while he giggled nonstop:

Me: “I love you more than cupcakes!”
Nathan: “I love you more than…applesauce!”
Me: “I love you more than milkshakes!”
Nathan: “I love you more than…cookies!”

Then he stopped short and his eyes got real big and he said, “HEY MOM! I have a great idea! Let’s go get cookies after nap!”

That boy is straight after his mama’s heart, I’m telling you.

So, we are in the middle of potty training. Which means that I spent this last week in sweatpants, listening to Robin Williams sing “PRINCE ALI, FABULOUS HE” while I tried cajoling, enticing and all-in-all begging my child to please just try and use his muscles to poop IN THE TOILET and not in his underwear.

Which is when he flexed his biceps for me and said, “Well, I have big muscles.”

I don’t have much to report this week. Not that I have much to report any week, but especially not this week because we are potty training.

Just in case you missed that.

We’ve been using a toilet seat insert thing because there was no way in the WORLD I was going to clean a plastic stand alone thing. So, the other day, he’s sitting there on it, talking a million miles a minute about how he’s little and he has to use the baseball potty thing. And then he says, “You’re a big kid, Mama. You have big legs and a big tummy.”

Well. Thank you. Needless to say, I spent some time working out that afternoon.

Since we stayed home pretty much a week straight, I think we both reached our limit of being cooped inside. Even when he was very tiny he still thrived on getting out of the house and going places. Which works great because I am the same way. Thursday night, Nathan and I were so starved for any kind of human interaction that we drove to Chick-fil-A, ordered dinner in the drive-thru and then both of us just sat there and watched all the happy people through the windows playing and eating their food inside.

We are pathetic.

This week, I’m hoping to take him a few places and be that annoying customer who is constantly asking where the bathroom is. The good news is he is doing better. Yesterday we went the whole day without a single accident. And we weren’t even home the whole day.

A few weeks ago, Nathan got on this kick of saying words that he thinks are bad when he’s upset or just to get a reaction out of me. (Anyone else getting Ramona and Beezus flashbacks here?) His favorite phrase?

“NEVER MUD.”

There were a few times this was uttered as I dragged him to the potty and we had to have a few chats about how we need to have sweet words and talk sweetly and be kind because words are important. So now, he usually plops down on the toilet and looks up at me and says, “Good morning, Mama! How you doing today?” no matter what time of the day it is.

Wish me luck.

Today, I just had to share one of my favoritest pictures EVER.

😉 Hope you are having a lovely Thursday evening!!

Winter used to be my absolute favorite season. I loved everything about it. The snow. The cold. The sitting by the window drinking hot tea and wearing my sweaters.

Now, though, I am starting to get to the point where I don’t even like it a little bit. Nathan is constantly sick and when he’s not sick, I am. It’s so cold that it is hard to go do anything because we have to bundle up to walk to the car, unbundle to get in the car seat and then do it all over again. We all miss playing outside.

Today was one of those days. Nathan woke up with a fever and so we spent the whole day in our pajamas on the couch in-between bathroom visits. Then he threw up at dinner and we ended the day with a terrible case of diarrhea. Never, never, NEVER a fun thing when you are on Day Four of potty training.

And y’all. We watched Aladdin two and a half times today.

I will never get the “Prince Ali” song out of my head. Ever. Especially since Nathan keeps singing it.

The only plus of having a sick kid (if there is a plus), is that he’s always  much more snuggly when he’s sick. I never mind spending the day cuddling on the couch with my baby.

The good news is that he made it to lunch time without any accidents AND had a dry Pull-Up when he woke up from nap, so he got a special chocolate milkshake.

Who else is ready for spring??

Today is many things:

* Day Three of potty training. I think all three of the people who live in this house miss diapers at this point. Nathan is doing well, but this is a lot of work. However, he does enjoy showing off his big boy underwear occasionally:

* The end of my birthday weekend. We went out for a great dinner on Friday and then I was spoiled rotten by my family last night after a fun afternoon of getting out and shopping with my mom. It was a great birthday!

* My would-have-been due date for our little one who we lost this last summer. In some ways, I can’t believe it’s already here and in other ways, it seems like it should have been here a long time ago. So much has happened and yet, so much has not happened.

I’ve worried for the past many months what today would be like. Thankfully, it hasn’t been as bad as I was dreading – I think it was good for us to be so caught up in potty training today.

We continue to wait. And pray. And hope.

And make the short trek to the bathroom every ten minutes to check someone’s underwear…

One of Nathan’s new favorite words is “impressive”. He’s always coming over, doing some little trick and then saying, “See? I impressive, Mama.”

This week was definitely impressive – sometimes for the good and sometimes for the bad. I started the week with a cold that quickly progressed to a bad cough. On Wednesday, my computer crashed and so I immediately booked an appointment at the Apple Store for the first available appointment which wasn’t until Thursday. It’s always a little heart-stopping to think about your unbacked up manuscript sitting there completely unaccessible in your computer.

Heart-stopping might be a little bit of a tame word.

Anyway, I went to the Apple Store on Thursday and they tried a few different things, decided it was my hard drive and then came out with possibly the best news I had all week: yesterday was my LAST DAY of Apple Care, so I was able to get a brand new hard drive for FREE.

Needless to say, there was a great deal of happiness at that moment. It was a great birthday present because yesterday was also my birthday. 🙂

Mom, Nathan and I hung out the whole day. We went to lunch, we watched a movie, we did a little bit of shopping. We met my dad, brothers and my dear friend Shannon for dinner at Paradise and then Shannon came over to my house and kept me company while Jon was in class. It was a good day.

Tonight Jon and Nathan are having a little family party for me. 🙂

And TOMORROW begins two very feared words in my vocabulary now…

Potty. Training.

Oh my…pray for us!!

I’ve been battling a cold for a couple of days now and ugh… today is the day my brain has decided to stop responding. Which is why I should be writing on the third novel in the new Paige series coming out this May, but I keep getting distracted and staring at the blinking cursor.

Mucinex. How I loathe you and your effect on my daily word counts.

So, it seemed like a good time to share this video from last night. I never knew my name was so funny. 😉 I’m hoping to write again tomorrow with pictures from the rest of our Disney trip – Nathan was in absolute heaven. And considering it was eighty degrees there and it is SEVEN degrees here, I would go back in a heartbeat too.

Post Dinner Goofiness from Erynn Mangum on Vimeo.

Hope you are having a wonderful day!

We just got back Friday afternoon from a fantastic week in Disney World with my family. 🙂 We have been looking forward to this trip for MONTHS and as usual, it went by way too quickly.

Nathan had SO MUCH fun. He was so so so excited to go. Our flight left at 6:30am on our way out there and when we woke him up to leave, he looked at us and said, “Is today when we go to Disney World?” and then had the hugest smile on his face the rest of the day.

We went to Magic Kingdom our first day in the parks!

Nathan kept saying, “Is this Disney World? We are in Disney World!”

The whole gang. 🙂

Me and my baby in front of Cinderella castle.

I love this picture! Ha! My two outlaws.

It was so hot there. We kept getting weather reports from home about snow and single-digit temperatures and meanwhile it was in the low to mid eighties almost every day in Florida and probably in the eighty-plus percent humidity too. My hair was just gorgeous. 😉

Pops and Gammy with Nathan before his very first roller coaster. He LOVED it!

Goofy’s Barnstormer from Erynn Mangum on Vimeo.

He laughed the entire ride. So fun!

And they rode with him on Small World. I love this picture. 🙂

The middle seat on Small World. Bryant, Caleb and Cayce were good sports to go on most of the kid rides with us. 😉

Nathan’s face right here just cracks me up. Ha!

Meeting Tigger! We got him a little autograph book the first night at Downtown Disney and he got it about halfway full of signatures – he was SO excited. He kept saying, “All of my buddies are here! All of my friends are here!”

We have been BUSY this week, but I had to share some pictures from New Year’s Day.

This is my brother Caleb’s dog, Joey. She’s huge and slobbery and pretty much an all around mess, but I will give her this: She is AMAZING with Nathan.

Not that Nathan is amazing with her.

That poor dog.

We went to Panda Express the other night for dinner and Nathan is quickly learning that the main reason you go to fast food Chinese places is for the fortune cookies.

Jon and I ate our cookies and read our fortunes out loud. So Nathan then broke his cookie open, pulled out the paper, cleared his throat and said, “It is a new year, Nathan. Go to Disney World.”

Sounds like a great fortune to me! 😉