Happy Days

It's been really great having Danny home (though the paychecks have been missed). We've spent a lot of time together as a family; these are days we'll never have back once they're gone. Over the course of the past week, we've had a number of adventures. On Saturday, we went to the Downtown Marketplace where Dominic got to pet a macaw and we had Dominic and Noemie's names painted for free in Chinese characters...though come to think of it I can't remember where I put them.

On Monday we went to visit Magdiel, Lisa, and baby Lucas. (My mother and Magdiel's mother have been friends since girlhood. Magdiel is one of the many people I've come to consider quasi-family. ) Lucas is the tiniest baby I've ever seen (5 lb!). He's very, very cute.

Tuesday we went to the library and to the post office. Wednesday, Danny got his hair cut and then we had Bible Study. We even took a trip to the pumpkin patch with our photographer friend, Sarah, and watched the VP debate with Mike. But of all our endeavors, the most arduous has been to potty train Dominic. Thursday morning was the second morning in a row we woke up having to change his bed sheets because the diaper had leaked. They were not ordinary leaks but what could only be described as poo-juice. I will spare you all the details but suffice it to say that I had no intentions of ever cleaning another such mess and decided that that was the day that we would potty train Dominic. He soiled his underwear (and the carpet) 8 times that day. Finally, in the evening, he peed in the potty. It was an incredible triumph. We praised him and let him dump it and flush. We clapped and danced and sang songs and gave him cookies. But our victory was short-lived. He refined his strategy overnight. This morning he woke up with a full diaper which I changed as soon as he woke up. He went the whole morning without peeing. We put a diaper on him for naptime. He woke up from his nap very wet. He then managed to go the next six hours without peeing or pooping. Unbelievable. I promise he was drinking water and eating popsicles. We put him in a diaper for the night and sure enough he peed within a minute and pooped a minute after that. UGH. Potty training is debilitating.

Danny will be in Ft. Lauderdale until Friday, taking some physical agility tests and interviewing with an agency. This means two very important things. The first is that if Dominic doesn't suddenly embrace potty-peeing by tomorrow, I'm going to postpone training until he's older. Like say...5. Second, there's a very real possibility that we may have to sell our house! To prepare for such an occurance, I sold our giant bean bag chair for $25 today and turned around to use that money to buy an extra Lantana, some fall blooming daisies, and another big bush to put between my sparse, sickly plumbagos. God might have to work a little miracle in order for us to sell our house. We'll just take it one day at a time.