#11 - The Potty Train Has Left the Station

We took a little different approach with potty training my younger son, Aaron. We used a basic reward system for our oldest, Alex, by placing a sticker chart on the wall near the potty. When he filled it with reward stickers, we'd give him a small toy. With Aaron, we used the "be a big boy" approach which was appealing to him for a short while, but when he was being weaned away from his pullups, he decided that he liked being a little boy. He's very articulate for his age and explained to us that "You can just change me." His preschool that he is starting this fall doesn't do diapers, so we've been holding that over his head. That has been a little more inspiring - he'll jump off the potty and shout "Now I can go to school!" He still had trouble going in public bathrooms. We were (mildly) panicking as the start of school approached. Then we stumbled on his key - Tic Tacs! His Papa would dole out Orange Tic Tacs when he saw the grandkids and they were immensely popular, but still small and relatively low in sugar. He bugged us about them, so we found ourselves saying, "If you go on the potty, you can have one." It worked. We rubbed our Diaper Genie one last time and wished its stinking self out of our lives and home.

#62 - Hitting the Beach

I almost wrote this post 2 weeks ago when we went to a beach adjacent to Saginaw Bay on the eastern coast of Michigan. The beach was nice, the water was fine, but the shore was disgusting with several feet of E.coli laden muck as a kind of barrier to the water. We could get to the water from a small pier, but it wasn't very enjoyable. This weekend we went to the western shore of Michigan near Grand Haven and played all day at the P.J. Hoffmaster Park beach. The water was beautiful, but a little cold. The sand was fun to seek shells and build forts with. It's not the same as the ocean, but a Great lake is as close as we're likely to get for a while. Getting to Disney World is on my list, so we may need to take a side trip to the Pacific again.