Wow!  What a title, huh?  First off….the most important thing going on right now.  This whole potty training thing.  How freakin’ exciting.  Going to the bathroom was never so exhilirating.  Paige is now on Day 7 or 8 with no diapers and she is AWESOME!  She tells us when she needs to go….and while it is frustrating to be out and about and having just taken her to a nasty public bathroom and returning to original location, her saying “more potty” can drive a sane person mad, she has not made a major accident yet.  99.9% of the time when she says “more potty” she truly does have to pee more.  I think she gets so excited when she sits on the potty that something is coming out that she doesn’t completely empty her bladder.  Oh well.  She’ll get it.  Yesterday she was at my mom’s and my mom was helping with toilet duty.  Reminder to self:  get a stool for Grandma’s house so P can be more self-sufficient like at home.  Anyways, she told my mom “need to poop” and sure enough released the hostages at my mom’s.  If that isn’t fully potty trained, I don’t know what is.  So on that note, and I do realize this is too much information…but I’m so thrilled, bear with me….she came home dry and in the clothes I sent her to school in on Thursday.  Yippee!!!  We no longer do chocolate for the potty.  One day I just told her no more chocolate, you get stickers, fully anticipating a revolt against the potty…but she was totally fine with it.  Then it got kinda crazy with stickers for a day or two, now she’s kind of over the sticker thing too.  Once in a while now she’ll ask for a sticker, but it’s not an every time thing.  She also (insert heavenly music here) is weaning herself off her Elmo potty and is using the toilet.  I think she feels more like a big girl and she gets the bonus of wiping herself and flushing on the big girl potty.  Rock on!!  Cleaning Elmo was not only a time burden, but gross.  Not to leave big boy out…but Cole too is sitting on Elmo with more regularity.  I’m really going to hit him hard after another week of Paige success. 

So we got these guinea pigs for the weekend from the kids’ school.  They are such cute little furry animals.  I adore them as pets.  All three kids are having a blast taking care of them and I’m really letting them run the show with their care.  They give them water, food, treats and love to pet them.  These guinea pigs are going to be sad when they go back to school tomorrow after we’ve spoiled them to death.  So I kept them in Cole and Paige’s room (since P and C were the primary caretakers) and two nights ago Paige had the worst night sleep of her life.  She was up crying probably every 45 min to an hour.  I wanted to curl into a little ball and never come out.  It was horrible.  Eric said it was probably the guinea pigs waking her up, and I thought no, they don’t even make any noise.  Ha!  Yesterday we moved them into our room and those little fuzzballs are LOUD!  They never sleep and bang around their cage ALL night!  Poor Paige.  Cole could sleep through a freight train smashing through our house, but poor Miss Paige is so noise sensitive….she must have been going crazy.

Moxie has cancer.  She has another severly large tumor growing near her hind region that looks incredibly painful (imagine softball size).  We took her to the vet last week and the lab results came back this week.  She has a bad cancer.  What this means we have yet to know.  The vet has referred us to a dog oncologist.  Hopefully we can get in to see this doctor this week.  She is on pain meds in the meanwhile.  As much as I say that life would be so much easier and cleaner if Moxie wasn’t around, it makes me sad to think of her not being here.  Every time we pull into the garage, the kids start saying “Moxie, we’re home, or hi Moxie” before we even walk in the door.  Granted, once we’re inside, they barely notice her.  I’m also aware that once she’s gone, they probably would forget we ever had her.  They have never asked me about any of our old therapists, even ones that were with us for over a year, now that our therapies have discontinued.  So I’m guessing that once Moxie is gone, they would miss her for a week or two then it would be out of sight, out of mind. 

Lastly, I’m pregnant.  I really am.  Eric’s last post was not a joke.  Even though sometimes I have to remind myself I’m preggers because I have no symptoms and I’m not showing that much either.  I still think this belly may be leftover fat from my little Drew.  Anyways…with Drew at this point I was so sure the baby was a boy and I had already starting calling Drew by his name when I referred to the baby.  This baby….yikes!  Not only do I forget I’m pregnant…I have no names picked out either for a boy or girl….and I have no “mother’s intuition” on whether it’s a boy or girl.  Poor kid.  I feel kind of disconnected in a sense.  We find out in 9 days (hopefully the baby’s position will cooperate during the ultrasound) what the sex is, so maybe I’ll feel more in tune with the baby.  Also that will help narrow down name selection.  I absolutely love love love the names of our other kids so I want to love the name of this new baby too.  It’s just hard because not only do we love P, C, and D’s first names, but they have pretty cool middle names too.  We (me) want to stick with the one syllable first name, kind of stupid reasoning, but it’s worked out good for us so far.  We’ll figure it out.  It’ll just come to us in the middle of the night one day.  I’m not worried about a name.  Worried about how I’m going to manage three kids (two of which just turned three a month prior) and a baby….that leaves me in cold sweats when I remember I’m pregnant!  Worrying about how I’m going to break up toy disputes with a baby sucking my breast every two hours.  Worried about how I’m going to be taking all these kids to public restrooms.  (Thank you reader for your suggestion for the potty with the bags, I’m getting it).  Lots of other future worries.  Nothing to worry about right now.  Now life is good.

Got to go.  Making blueberry pancakes like Piggyboo likes.