Potty Training

Diaper service. This is what I do. I can't feed them. I can't soothe them on my ample bosom. And I am far to uncoordinated to rock them to sleep. When I rock, I rock! I have to say though, I am getting pretty good at the double diaper at 4 a.m. thing. Jackson is a different story...

The average age for potty training is around 2 1/2 years. Girls a little earlier (2ish), boys a little later (more like 3 - or 35 for some of us). When you review the potty training literature (oh yes, there is literature, I have read books, scholarly articles, and I am even on a tip-a-day email list...valuable tips with themes such as "inconsistency and how it can hurt you." I must digress for a moment, because I received the following email today, from the aforementioned email listserv...

"It's me Johanne again. Thank you for coming by today. Yesterday I was thinking about why you haven't ordered your copy of Potty training Made Easy, Simple & Fast. It hit me like a ton of bricks. Must be the price. So as a thank you for letting me take this journey with you I am going to let you try out the book.
Here is what I have in mind. As you know the book retails for $17 on the website. I will let you order the book for $7.95 and try it out for thirty days. After thirty days we will automatically charge the difference of $9.05.
This lets you review the book for a full 30 days before deciding if you want to keep it. If for whatever reason you decide the book is not for you just simply email or call me at 203-404-7178. You can ask for me or my husband Greg. Not only will we not bill the difference but I will refund the $7.95."

Yohan is creeping me out more than a little bit. What kind of high pressure sales school did The Potty Trainer go to? I would provide a link to the website, but I don't want to hunt you like they've hunted me. Pray for me. Hope that all is not lost. At least I have secured my genetic lineage...but what if they come for the children????? Damn you Potty Trainer....Damn you!!!!!But I digress).
Jackson has virtually no interest in potty training. He does understand the process, although there were some anatomy lessons involved (why does the pee come out my butt?), and he knows when he is going (he hides in the next room and shouts at you when you try to check on him). Where is the breakdown? Perhaps he is just too cognitively immature, despite his apparent vocabulary and reasoning ability. As an attempt at encouragement, we have insititued a couple of regular practices in the locker room of Team Church.

1) The Candy Policy - if you tell us you have to poop, you will get candy. This has morphed into if you even hint that you might think about pooping somewhere near a potty someday when you are older you get candy. It really hasn't worked. But he does really seem to like candy.
2) The Open Bathroom Policy - modelling. If he sees Daddy do it, he will follow. This really hasn't worked very well either. It has done wonders, however, for my self esteem. There's nothing quite like a two year old shouting "Wow!!!" at the initiation of micturation to make you feel like you have some great power. And when I walk from the bathroom with him telling me that "you did a great job" I truly know that I have talent. At least we have been able to train him to knock before he comes into the bathroom. Visitors to the Church household, please note: Lock the door.

All told, we haven't had much luck...until the other night. Jackson attempted to join Carmen, the two year old daughter of friends on her way to the potty. I was obligated to intervene (although I envied his chances of seeing the inside of the women's restroom) and take him to the men's potty for another failed attempt. Trou was dropped, the diaper unfastened, and I stood ther holding him, suspended about six inches above the floor, feet dangling, trying to point him somewhere near the direction of our porcelin target. We waited, and waited a little more, and just as I was about to pull the diaper back up, I saw a miracle. Drip, drip, he's was doing it!!! And then the dam broke loose, with me again trying to aim and both of us a little frightened about the whole process. My apologies to the staff who cleans the bathroom at the Dragon Inn. They will know it was us too. Nothing quite captures the joy of a two year old running through a restraunt shouting to his mommy that he pee'd in the potty. It was like Christmas all over again.

Anybody got $7.95 so I can get this monkey off my back? Seriously. I'm a little nervous.

Roofalanche

My apologies for the absolutely atrocious picture layout on the last post. Apparently I do not know how to operate the layout of this blog. I will hopefully be toying with the face of it all to give a new "fresh" look over the next few weeks. Please bear with...

Above is the picture of the house in which we currently reside. Please note all the snow on the garage roof next to our van. I was awakened by a thunderous clap that none of the other building occupants seemed to notice at 3 a.m. When we headed out to the car the next morning, we discovered that the heavy snows followed by the heavy rains had let loose an entire roof of snow into our entry way. This left about 3 feet of packed snow to wade through and narrowly missed out illustrious Chrysler Town and Country. Fortunately for me, the owner of the upstairs unit is quite pathological about his snow removal (he obviously lives somewhere that snow doesn't stick around all winter) and had it cleared out by mid morning. Good times, good times.

It rains here too

I find myself in my third week of work here in Juneau. The clinic has slowed a little as the flu has begun to pass us by. Having never worked in a urgent care type situation, I have never really had the opportunity to see the xpassing of temporal illness. It was quite fascinating, but the desire to put fifty stuffy, fatigued, myalgic, febrile people in a room and scream "YOU HAVE THE FLU! GO HOME, TAKE SOME IBUPROFEN AND SLEEP FOR A COUPLE OF DAYS. IT WILL PASS." persisted for several days. That said, I have never had the flu (knock on keyboard) and hope that I will stay at home suffering silently when I do. At some point most people need to realize that we can't do much for a virus, and a virus is what you got 90% of the time. (swooning, she said "What a sympathetic doctor I have")

A little bit of cynicism has carried me well in life. If I were truly bitter, it would be no fun, but when you see sick people all day long, you've got to do something to break the mood. Every once in awhile I get to play detective (the case of influenza B in an immunized patient last week)or actually fix something (the shoulder I put back into place this morning) but most of the time it really is work. I am glad they pay me, I wouldn't do it for free.

These days, I am looking for a job. I have a standing offer and will be interviewing in communities like Kodiak, Sitka, Homer, and of course Anchorage. The family thing has made it tough. Anchorage gives us the best possible set of resources (family, therapy options for Jackson, brew pubs, etc) but the worst option for practicing full spectrum family medicine. The smaller communities had great medical opportunities but lack much of the infrastructure we need (although most seem to have brew pubs as well. Alaskans like their beer.) My main concern is getting Jackson the therapy he needs and that will likely dictate my job choice for the next couple of years. Fortunately there are lots of jobs out there in my long educated profession and my family will not likely go hungry. My other concern is the twins, and the benefits of the grandparents for babysitting/support services. We truly would not have survived the past two months without them.

Jana and the rest of the clan leave this weekend. The two weeks of snow (2-3 feet) followed by another week of 37 degrees and rain combined with a small apartment has not set as well as hoped. That said, with the twins, even if we were in Hawaii for work, I would still be exhausted and inside on the couch rocking the babies and reading to Jackson. I caught a few pictures on the two days of sun we have had, so they will hopefully leave a favorable impression of Juneau.

No Fear

I suppose I should put up some pictures or video of the twins, but they aren't very talented yet (except in the crying and vomitting department). Jackson has regularly risked frostbite to stay out in the snow, sledding, sliding, and swinging, regardless of the temperatures. This is a thing that has always puzzled me as I watch the middle and high school kids wait for the bus in the winter. At what point did I realize that it was cold outside, and I needed a jacket/long pants/shoes?



On another note, I forgot the piece de resistance on my last story...after Jana, Mom, Jackson, Jonathan, and Ella piled into the rude cabbie's van, without appropriate restraints, the complications continued. The driver complained all the way up the hill about what a woman with two young kids was doing living at the top of downtown in winter, he asked that we "throw in a couple of bucks because I helped with the car seats," and they were all locked out in the cold after the cabbie left and I had the housekey at the tire shop. Jana had to beg the neighbor for a warm place to nurse her children until the landlord could rescue them. All along, I was sitting warmly in the tire shop eating popcorn and reading all about Matthew McConaughey's pregant girlfriend.

It has snowed here nearly continuously since we arrived - nearly 8 inches last night- so we have a lack of good pictures. I will try to post some soon.

The No Good Very Bad Van

Does anyone remember Shel Silverstein? He wrote silly, absorbing, brilliant children's poems (the only kind I have ever truly understood) and I was thinking that he had one as entitled above. But, as fate and my three a.m. writing jones may have it, it was another book from my childhood that was mistakenly transposed. The story I was thinking of was Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, by Judith Viorst.

Not that either of them has anything to do with this post, other than we had one of those days. Or, maybe it was a few of those days. Most of the issues centered around the ol' Chrysler Town and Country, a minivan of which, admittedly, I have become quite fond. As part of my time here, and as a selling factor, a minivan (said CT&C) was provided for me and I was sold on the rotation due to the ever growing size of my family. When I arrived at the airport, it had been parked and was waiting for me. A crust of wind blown snow coated its frame and the inside was well travelled. The rear seat did not latch, the doors were frozen shut, there was numerous road trips worth of trash (a Tim Horton's cup...someone had made a run to Canada), but free is free. The tires, however were a different story.

Now I was led to believe that Juneau is a rather temperate place, with rain likely throughout my stay. Such has not been the case. The day I arrived, temps were in the single digits and following a melt/thaw cycle, many of the roads were impassable without studded tires or chains. One of those roads was the path to our apartment. After nearly an hour of trying various methods and route, I had to give up and park several blocks down the hill from our domicile. This was fine, and I needed the exercise, but with Jana, my mom, and our minions joining us, that wouldn't do. As we approached her arrival, the roads only got worse. I talked my workplace into springing for a set of chains.

These allowed me to travel at sub sonic speeds in a three mile radius and make it up the pinnacle upon which we lived. This solution worked reasonably well until I pushed the limits to 40mph and lost one of the chains. Remarkably we were still able to make it up the hill, but safety then became something of an issue. Nobody wants their budding young family and mother jerked off the road by their one chain. So, then came the studded tires. A jubilant solution that allowed us to travel at normal speeds, visit far-flung places, and not risk death on a daily basis. Seems like a good idea until the tire place installs a hubcap incorrectly and you wind up with a flat along a busy highway in a blinding snowstorm. We actually had to be towed off the road on the rim. A great excitement for Jackson. Following a good chunk of my day off spent in the tire shop (again) we were once again mobile. This time it seems to have actually worked out.

I suppose this somewhat extended story was more traumatic than it now sounds, but I have to say the combination of weather and van issues has sadly jaundiced some of our stay here in Juneau. I think even the best of environs would probably be trying on our lack of sleep and the ringing in our ears of crying babies and an energetic two year old. There is another snowstorm blustering as we speak. The radio said 10-18 inches today followed by more over the next two days. Wish I had my skiis.

Super Tuesday

When you are anticipating that a Tuesday will be 'super', it's a bit of a stretch. Friday, Saturday, now those are 'super' days. But, when you combine the current election season, Mardi Gras, and my birthday, February 5th seemed pretty darn 'super' this year.

We have had a bit of a rough stretch here in Juneau (I will expound in the next day or so), but things look like they are turning around. Tuesday was mostly work as usual for me, but I found myself sadly excited by the fact that I had a patient test positive for influenza B despite having his flu shot this year. I felt a little bit like a medical investigator, as my suspicions were confirmed and then followed up with the manditory State of Alaska infectious disease reporting process. Jana, my mom, and our fleet of children were actually able to get out of the house and go for a ride in the seemily doomed Chrysler Town and Country, easing some feelings of cabin fever and adding some variety to the day. This was all followed by well wishes and birthday cards from the family over a nice dinner at the Hangar, a local joint here in Juneau (don't get the Halibut Taco, I know it seems like a good idea, and it wasn't horrible, just a little unfulfilling).

The exciting part of the night was unfortunately wasted on me. As Jackson and I fought our way out into the snowstorm to bring our car to the front door and ease the transport of the babies, a young girl came up to Jana to ask if she could see the baby (most people surprisingly only notice one at a time, the unexpectedness of twinning, I guess). Jana kindly introduced the babies, and as her mother commented on their beauty and angelic presence, Jana realized that she was introducing the to Sarah Palin, yes, ladies and gentlemen, America's Hottest Governor.


Juneau is a funny place like that. It was also conveniently the night of the Democratic and Republican Caucus which brought all sorts of creatures out into the night. The Governor's house is just a few blocks from where we are staying this month. It is on a small, yet busy street. There is no gate, no fence, a trampoline in the backyard, and you could actually walk right up and ring the doorbell to sell your subscription to Grit. It is truly nice to live in a place where politics, no matter how oddball at times, is so accessible.

Anyway, the night was topped off by yellow cake with chocolate frosting. It doesn't get any better than that.

PS-Thanks to all of our friends who have replied with love and sympathy from some of my past few postings. It really hasn't been that bad, and again, none of this (except the arrival of the twins) is really new or sudden to us. We have adjusted fairly well, but I grew weary of the piecmeal explanantions when we had therapy, doctor's appointments, or questions about what I will be doing for work in the next few months.

Weddings and rice

Congrats to Dave and Leslie today, celebrating their nuptials in Tucson. Wish we could be there to join you, and glad we were able to spend some time in Brighton with you guys last year. May you have the good fortune and blessings that Jana and I have had. To celebrate, give rice to the world's needy at FreeRice.com and expand your vocabulary at the same time. This also prevents the theoretical explosion of birds after consuming the rice thrown at weddings.