The Circus and Crazy Weather

Last Saturday (Feb. 21) we took the kids to the Circus downtown at Philips Arena. We took Marta again since it was such a hit the week before. Jackson was entertained for all of about 10 minutes and then he started saying "It's time to go home." Drake sat with his Grandma Cersey and from what I hear he had a great time.

We were joined by Jessica, Andy, Megan and Alexis, Jana, Ta, and Anthony, Grandma Cersey, Brindi, Ryan, and Aiden, Thayne, Jones, and Lacey, Danielle, Andy, Brooklyn, and London.

The clown parts were pretty boring, and the animals were kind of a bust since the dogs failed to catch a lot of their frisbees, the tigers looked depressed and failed to do as they were instructed, and the elephants pooed all over themselves. But there were a few entertaining parts like the 7 motorcycles speeding around in the same cage. A few of the little guys slept through most of the show, but I think for the most part we all had a good time.

A week ago Jackson, Drake and I were reading on the couch when Grandma Cersey called to tell us a big storm was on its way and that we should turn on the news. When I turned on the TV it was evident that we were about to get hammered not only by thunder, lightning, and hail, but possibly by a tornado. There were Tornado warnings for our area all over the news and the radar indicated that the eye of one of the storms was headed right for us. Now, we get these kind of storms here in Georgia several times a year and normally I just go about my business and ignore the storm outside, but this time I'll admit I was a little nervous. Justin hadn't gotten home from work yet. He was on his way home, which was worrisome, but he was actually driving behind the storm so he was fine. So, I prepared for the onslaught by running upstairs and getting the mattress off of Jackson's bed. I set up camp for the boys in a little niche in the center of our house on the main floor with the mattress propped up to shield us from any potential flying debris (we would have been in the downstairs bathtub but on the news they said to avoid the west side of your house since that was the direction the tornadoes were likely to come from). The hail started to beat down on our house and it was so loud that I could have sworn that all of our windows were braking. The thunder, lighting, and hail crashed down on us for a good 10 minutes or so. Jackson was upset, but we said a prayer and that calmed him down. It turned out that there were no tornadoes in our immediate area (there were tornadoes in other counties that did a lot of damage) and the hail only broke some of our outdoor lights, which is surprising considering the size of the ice (Justin is holding a few pieces of it in the picture below).
The next day my mother asked Jackson about the storm and he told her about the loud banging and said that he had been scared. She responded by saying "but you were OK because your mommy was there to protect you" and he said, "No Grandma we said a prayer and Jesus protected me." Is that not the sweetest thing ever? I wouldn't be surprised if the faith of my baby boy saved the whole city from death and destruction.

Valentine's Day On the Town!

On Valentine's day last Saturday we decided to hit the town. I had promised Jackson that he was going to get to ride a train that day thinking that we would go to Stone Mountain to do this, but it turned out that the train at Stone Mountain was closed. So, we had to think fast. We decided to ride Marta instead, Atlanta's own beloved transit system. I think that Jackson considered it an acceptable substitute, after all taking Marta isn't just a train ride, it is also a one of a kind experience. My parents and my cousin, Darron and his Wife, LuAnne joined us on our excursion.

When we got downtown we were all hungry so we went into the CNN center for lunch. As soon as we entered we were crowded amongst thousands of prepubescent, scantily clad, make-up doused cheerleaders. Apparently there was some national cheer leading competition going on at the nearby Georgia Dome. The men were quite content in this new setting, but I was appalled by it for several reasons. First, it saddened me to see so many young girls trying to mature so quickly beyond their young years. Second, I was distraught by the fact that some of these girls considered themselves fit enough to wear such skimpy uniforms as they scarfed down buckets of fries, inhaled grease soaked pizza, and gulped down gallon sized cups of Coke (not diet). And third, I was mad because I didn't make the cheerleading squad in middle school and my residual shame comes hurtling out in the form of anger and disgust whenever I come in contact with young peppy cheerleaders. You stole my dream! But I digress. Since the females of our group were the ones carrying the cameras we conveniently forgot to get pictures of this distressing scene.
After lunch we walked in the bitter cold through Centennial Olympic Park to the World of Coca Cola. We had a good time there even though it was a little crowded (some of the cheerleaders followed us there). The boys enjoyed riding in their stroller through the exhibits (side note about the stroller: This ugly piece of hud was generously given to us by Carey Fox. Carey I really do appreciate you giving this to us even though it is the funkiest looking stroller I have ever seen. It has come in handy on many occasions. Honestly, thank you!) We got our picture taken with the Coca-Cola polar bear and tasted a lot of Coke's soda flavors from around the world. Drake fell asleep, and Jackson spilled coke all over himself and Drake. What could be better?!

The adults had fun too. I ended up staying close to my favorite soda dispenser, Tab. My dad even bought me a hat so that I could emblazon my drink preference. LuAnne bought a hat too. We almost lost Darron once. He said that he was going to the bathroom, but we all know that he was trying to find a secret place to "wheeze the juice". We were all happy to see him again when some coke employees managed to find him and escort him back to the tourist area of the museum.

After leaving the World of Coca-Cola we made our way back through the park. Some of us, namely LuAnne and myself, were a little inebriated after drinking all of that coke and we began to act a little crazy as you can see in the pictures below. I was jumping off everything I could and LuAnne was fascinated with walking in slow motion. Eventually our sugar high wore off and we joined the rest of the family back in reality. We all had a really fun time. I would not have preferred to spend my Valentine's day any other way.

Love you all!

Potty Party!

Last Saturday evening we had a Potty Party for Jackson. Now, you may be saying to yourself "what is a Potty Party?". Well, that is a very good question. It is a question that we did not have a good answer for on Saturday and I can probably only feebly answer today, but I will give it a shot.

Years ago in anticipation of the potty training days Justin bought a book called "Potty Train Your Child in Just One Day". We all know how anal Justin is (pun intended) so it didn't seem unusual to me that he wanted to get a head start on learning the ins and outs (pun intended) of potty training. Well, as it turns out, neither of us ended up reading the book, but I skimmed through it once and thought that I got the gist of it. What I learned from my skimming was that we needed to have a Potty Party. Never mind the details of what a Potty Party consists of, I thought we could just wing it. We set the day for Saturday and invited the Grandparents. Saturday rolled around and we opened the book just to see what preparations we needed to make. Well, it turns out there is a lot more to it than can take place in one day, so I created my own version of the Potty party, which in the end has actually turned out to be quite successful.

I decorated the kitchen and the bathroom. We sort of had a Spiderman theme. When the grandparents arrived we opened gifts. Grandma Cersey brought a gift and then I had a special gift prepared. In our gift to Jackson was what I like to call the Potty Puppy (picture below), some big boy underwear, a calendar, and some stickers. After opening presents he decorated what we call the Potty Box (pictures also below). Then we had cookie cake. After eating I told Jackson that his Potty Puppy needed to go potty so we went to the decorated bathroom, which he was excited about. We set the Potty Puppy on the potty and waited, but the puppy wasn't able to go because he didn't know how, so we asked Jackson to show the puppy how to use the potty. To our amazement Jackson actually did poop on the potty! Then of course he expected the puppy to know how to do it, so we placed the puppy back on the potty and I sneakily dropped some Raisinets in the toilet. He totally bought it. He may never look at Raisinets the same way again, but I think it is worth it. Anyway, then we placed a sticker on his potty calendar to display his success, and he got to pick a treat out of the potty box. We have larger and more fun toys in the bottom of the box for poopoo treats (trains, whistles, bouncy balls, candy, etc.) and smaller treats in the top portion of the box for peepee treats (candy and stickers).

So far the whole con is still working. Jackson asks to go to the potty all the time and we always take the Potty Puppy (the puppy doesn't have to go potty unless Jackson needs some coercing), and he always gets rewarded afterward. Of course, he has still peed in his diaper quite a bit, but he has placed all his #2s in the toilet since Saturday. I am so surprised and happy that this has worked. I guess I should keep my fingers crossed so that it continues working.

Obviously, Jackson doesn't know the correct way to wear his big boy underwear yet, but we'll get there. Drake on the other hand is sadly too young to potty train. You can see the result of his most recent bowel movement below. At least his shirt was appropriate for the occasion.