Search for a lawnmower

Owen came to the realization that Daddy will need a new lawnmower next summer to take care of the lawn. The push mower will not be enough on a 2 acre lawn.

Obviously we need to bring his expectation in line with reality ... below is the big guy's recommendation.

But Daddy, it will only take 5 minutes to mow the lawn!

From House Trained to Potty Trained

It has been a long road, but Owen is nearly fully potty trained. He still wears pull ups at night and has an occasional accident (sometimes I think he's just being lazy and doesn't want to bother walking to the toilet) but is well on his way.

During the summer we struggled for weeks until we introduced him to "outside peeing". As all guys know peeing outside is far superior to peeing inside. Owen quickly picked up on this. This led to the first breakthrough - "House Trained". Just like a puppy, Owen knew to go outside. This was for number 1's and number 2's. So Melissa spent a fair amount of time walking behind him with a plastic bag. The house trained phase was fine when we were at home, separated from our neighbors by half a mile of corn ... public places was a different story. Several instances we had to whisk Owen away after he pulled down his pants in the middle of a park, or busy zoo.

After a few inappropriate public displays we moved on to bribery. Owen quickly racked up an impressive collection of matchbox cars, toy farm machinery, and Cars paraphernalia. Luckily we were able to use some of Nick's old toys to supplement or this endeavor would have been quite costly.

Today Owen is down to one or two accidents a week and has even gone in public restrooms. We figure another month of nighttime pull ups and we'll be all set.

Who is training who exactly?

First Day of School!

It was the first day of school for Mommy today. Owen and Cole have been braving their new daycare for several weeks while Mommy "gets ready for the school year".

Mommy tries out a new teaching technique she is excited to try out on her students.