Spoonful of Imagination

Add it to a Family for Something Beautiful

Miracles do come in the form of POOP

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My J pooped in the toilet today!  I can’t tell you how thrilled I am!!  You might already know of my joy from a text or tweet.  Yes, @beyondinspired I never thought I would tweet about poop.  I never thought I would be praising God for it either!!  I had five comments back to me today via twitter about my J pooping.  You know this is such a milestone and I feel so loved others are sharing in my excitement!  Potty training has been such a hard road for us.  I know it’s not over, but today was a HUGE milestone.

No incentives/rewards have worked for J.  The ONE thing we have had going in our favor with this stubborn, adorable boy is he has only wanted to poop with something “ON”.  For example, a pull up, underwear, shorts, pj bottoms had to be on his butt for him to want to poop.  He can control it and hold it for days, so the boy has been ready.  It’s just been a defiance of the wills.  What we had to do was literally remove all of those from him!  He has been pants-less for about a week 24/7.  We didn’t get very far the first two days.  J just held his poop for literally almost 72 hours.  We than had company for four days.  I tried to let J be pants-less as much in there as I could.  When our company was sitting on our couch, it just didn’t seem right to have my naked son doing the same.  So, that was a slight set back to this tactic, but today there was success!!  Running around pants-less was hard on my OCD, and having a son grab his penis and then give me hugs and grab my face was hard, but we have gotten somewhere!

Haha I am still laughing out loud at how sad/cute it was when he was saying “it hurts soooo bad” as he was fighting to hold it in this morning.  He literally couldn’t any more and it came!  The pride on this boy’s face was priceless!

He was so proud!  I’m hoping and praying that any fear he might have had has a notch in it now, and soon that wall completely crumbles!  I don’t know why peeing was “gotten” like over a year ago and this is a battle we are still facing, but I’m hoping we are on the up and up!

The incentives and rewards never worked, but don’t you know he remembers them all now!

Right after he pooped, I was in the car headed to Target to get him more Legos as promised.  When we got home from Target, he got to play with my Iphone (which that and Matt’s Ipad have been off-limits till he pooped in the toilet).  We had a poop party tonight.

He got to play Matt’s Ipad tonight.  The surprising thing was how he was MOST excited about getting his pants back for the day:).  I love this boy!

He is currently in bed with his pants BACK off, so I’m hoping for another success in the morning!  If he keeps this up he gets a beach trip this summer!  Ha ha that incentive might be due to my desires as well 🙂.

Battleship

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I remember playing Battleship as a kid.  I loved it!  It was all about guessing and  throwing bombs that you hoped hit your opponent’s ship.  You could come up with secret ways to try to attack, but so much of it was luck.  Sometimes, I feel like parenting is that way as well.

As a mom, I want my kids to feel loved, supported, accepted as they are, and know they are masterpieces created by God.  Living that out everyday is hard.  In moments where they are all crying and I feel pulled in so many directions I want to curl up and escape.  Since it’s not always possible to physically “escape” my parenting issue, I find I do that in other ways.  I pull out and create distance from everything/everyone else in my life.

I pray I’m instilling certain things like grace, love, patience, gratefulness, and joy in my kids.  So often it’s a guessing game on if I’m doing the right thing, so they see these truths in me.  I feel like I am always questioning my parenting skills, which makes it such a sensitive issue.  Advice is needed in life, but it can be so deflating as well.  Much like battleship, it feels like I’m throwing things out there that I hope sticks.

My current parenting issue, is potty training.  I’ll tell you something, potty training is THE hardest parenting issue we have encountered.  Even as I type that and open up about it, it’s hard to admit out loud.  I feel myself being vulnerable and want to take the truth back.  Many of you know we have gone through a lot with our little J from allergies, eczema, asthma to developmental delays.  It has been a hard road to get to where he is today.  I praise God for the blessing he is and all that we have learned and overcome with him, so to say potty training is the hardest…it’s really telling.

One part that is hard for me is the comparison.  What has been the hardest for us is one of the easiest things for others.  I’m jealous.  I don’t understand why that is the case, or how it is fair.  Life’s not fair-I know!  We went through this with Caleb and again now with J.  I know every kid is different and I have to hold on to that, but I have had two really hard ones!  I would say J is even harder than Caleb.  We have tried every tactic.  Literally everything.  Even the newest tactic I have heard…and it didn’t work.  I could list them all, but I feel that would be defending myself and not healthy.

Going through J’s allergies, so many opinions came our way….from doctors, specialists, therapists to friends and family.  Everyone meant well…but it was exhausting and I feel like I am there again.  Emotionally I am toast from this single element of my life and the exhaustion is overflowing into every area of my life, and I can’t do it all.  Since I can’t do it all, and I have to do this…everything else is like put on hold?!  The life of a mom.  I have to choose to lean on Jesus and know he knows what J needs and will lead us…and give me what I need in the process.  I pray I will not have a child in kindergarten still pooping in his pants.

Potty training is my current battle.  I pray I don’t stay in this dark “hole” for long, and there will be a day when I literally don’t have to stare at my child all day, everyday and try to keep him from hiding and pooping in his pants or literally peeing on my floor from having no pants on (trying to prevent the pooping in the pants).

Until that day is here, I pray God gives me the grace to be patient and the strength to not compare.  The truth I am trying to embed into my children, I need to believe myself.  I will accept J as the little masterpiece God created.