Potty Training!

I have been busy this week potty training Ammon. It's been interesting (as potty training always is!). He's doing alright with it. An accident here and there and still haven't had any success with getting #2 done in the potty, but we are sticking with it.

Monday I walked into the kitchen to discover Ammon on the counter, peeing on the countertop. Later that day we could be found in the pickup line at Abby's school with Ammon in the back of the car sitting on a potty seat while we waited.

Tuesday Ammon informed me, "(he) pooped in my (his) clothes". He then stuck his fingers in it and ran has hands through his hair.

Thursday he said he wanted to "poop on the grass".

We had a bit of a backslide Wednesday when Ammon decided it was no longer fun to have to get up and go to the bathroom all the time. I prayed about what to do with him and got the inspiration to have him 'target practice' with fruit loops in the potty. Kole showed him how it was done and Ammon has been doing great since! He has even tried to do #2 at the fruit loop too, he hasn't, but he hasn't done it in his undies either...
Last night I had a nightmare. We were somewhere public and I took Ammon to the potty and his urine hit inside the toilet and sprayed right back onto my pants making it look (and smell) like I had wet myself! So I had to take off my pants and wrap a blanket around myself. I was hoping people wouldn't notice my lack of clothing, but everyone did and I was humiliated. Pretty bad when the mother is having nightmares about potty training!

Here are some recent pics!

Dinner at our new house!

 We are officially home owners!

Backyard

Pretty girl!

Abby lost her first tooth!!

Sleeping on the floor while waiting for our furniture to arrive.

Abby started 1st grade!

Unpacking!

Oklahoma

A lot has happened since I posted last! We have moved to Oklahoma! We bought a house and we love it here! We don't want to leave! Abby is going to first grade and Kole does preschool at home with me. They are both doing well! Abby had a bit of a difficult start in first grade but she is catching up now.

Here are some pictures!

Abby has learned to swim all by herself (with water wings)!

We went to a carnival! (Roger and Ammon in the back seat of the pink elephant)

(Abby and Kole in the back seat of the gray elephant)

(Abby in the second car in a white shirt, Kole and Roger right behind her. They both hated it.)

Daddy wouldn't let them ride the horses cause he couldn't be with both of them. It didn't occur to him that he could stand in between two horses.

Emma's Birth

Well, it's only taken me 3 months! Here is Emma's birth!

 I had been having pretty regular contractions for 24 hrs but I think 11am on the 13th is when my water broke and contractions REALLY got painful. The midwife and her assistant told me that the size of my contractions were the kind of a woman dilated to a 9 (so basically as big as they get) the entire day although I wasn't dilated at all (I believe it, they stayed the same size from water breaking till the end)! I didn't do ANY dilating at all until the evening after my midwife suggested Roger give me a blessing. She had pulled him out of the room and told him if I didn't start dilating they were going to have to take me to the hospital. After the blessing things finally started to progress. I don't think I've ever seen Roger cry so much as he did that day watching all the pain I was in. I didn't hardly even feel the contractions. It was just the pressure from Emma's head on my non-dilating cervix and my old "birth battle wounds" (AKA c-section scars). Once my body finally figured out what to do and I started dilating, I went from 0-10 in about 1.5 hrs! It was SUCH a relief from all that painful pressure to finally be able to push! I had her out in about 30 mins! She was (and still is) perfect!

Just ignore me in this picture. I look terrible (who wouldn't after very long, natural labor). Plus, I was unclothed and wet since I had been in the tub when the midwife said, "Get to the bed NOW! She's coming!!" But I'm posting this picture because I LOVE the look on Roger's face, he just looks so proud!!

Since she was born at 11:15pm the kids were asleep and got to meet her the next morning when they woke up.

Chance was happy to meet her too. He was really concerned the whole time I was in labor. He somehow knew when I was pushing too (not sure how he knew cause I had been in the bedroom all day and I wasn't even making any noise while pushing, no screaming like the wimpy women on tv, Ha! During pushing anyway, I'm ashamed to say, I did a bit of yelling "OW!" during labor. I apologized to everyone afterward for being a whiner but they all assured me I had done fabulous and had good reason to yell.), he sat outside the bedroom door and whined really loudly.

Update!

A lot has happened since I last posted! We have been super busy!

First of all, Roger's jobs up north didn't work out and we couldn't afford rent anymore. So we made a deal with Roger's aunt to move into a 4 bedroom house on her property and instead of pay rent, we would fix the house up. It has worked out well and given us a nice place to call home since Jan.

 

Abby turned 6 this Jan! Kolob turned 4 this Feb! Ammon turned 2 this March! They are great kids and we are blessed to have them!

 

Roger is gone right now to tech school in San Antonio to train to be a AF recruiter. He graduates from that on July 3rd and will be leaving there on July 4th to go set up house for us in Muskogee, Oklahoma! The kids and I will be joining him there as soon as he has a place for us to live.

 

And now, the best news for last!

Beautiful, Emma Lee Gale was born April 13th! She was born at home in a amazing VBA3C! It was a long, hard, all natural labor but we had a great, very experienced midwife. Once I finally started to dilate I jumped from a 1-10 in about 1.5 hours and then pushed for a half hour and she was born at 11:15pm. She was 8lbs. 20.5 inches long. And perfect as can be! It was so great to finally be able to remember the birth of my baby instead of being so drugged up that I don't remember a thing except feeling like I was dying and not being able to breath because of my bad reactions to the drugs. It was great to finally hold my baby right after she was born instead of like Abby's birth where I was the last person to hold her and I had to wait for all our extended families to pass her around before I even got to have her, or like Ammon's where they took him away from me for 12 hrs and didn't even check on me all night right after I got out of surgery because they "thought I wanted to sleep" instead of see my brand new baby. We did what we felt was best for us and Emma and that was a home birth. No more C-sections for me! I was told with Abby that my pelvis was too small to ever be able to fit the size of babies my body grows through it and that the baby and I would die if it weren't for C-sections. Shockingly, I delivered a baby naturally (and the pushing was super easy, might I add!) and she was the biggest baby so far! And we plan to do it again! And maybe again and again! Ha! We are so glad we found the worlds best midwife, Valerie ElHalta!

Emma was blessed May 4th at my parent's house in Santa Clara, Utah.

The kids and I are going to be in The Mormon Miracle Pageant in Manti next month! We wanted to do it as a family, but since Roger isn't here I'll be doing it with the kids. I've done it before in the past and remember it is hard walking across that steep temple hill and I'm nervous to carry a baby across it with three young children to help across too! This ought to give me a little taste of what the pioneers went through!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here are some of the pictures we had taken by a friend right before Roger left.

 

 

 

 

We are a very happy family and can't wait to join Roger again!