Ross

Do I even need to say how proud of this darling little girl young lady I am?

She was so excited! I mean, she was pretty excited about her trip with Daddy to Disneyland and her 5K run, but it didn't come close to how excited she was about being old enough to be baptized.



Poor Brett looked semi-shell shocked through the whole thing. He made her promise to stop growing up a few months ago, and she hasn't.
Lauren is growing up into such a fine young lady. She's very honest, hard-working, diligent, and self-sufficient. I couldn't enjoy being her mother any more. 

Thank you Lauren, for being my daughter!

I’m just going to say it. I have a bed wetter. I do.

For the last seven years I have changed bedding nearly every morning, washed soiled clothing and sheets/pillows/stuffed animals, even the dog on occasion. It’s not pretty, and it took me a long time not to feel angry at my child because of this issue. After researching bed wetting, I understood that a much larger percentage of kids, and adults, do this than anyone admits to. Parents are either embarrassed because their child wets the bed at night, or they don’t say anything because they don’t want their child to be humiliated. I’ve never said much for the later reason. I don’t want my son to feel humiliated.

I can’t tell you how much frustration I’ve felt over this whole thing. Anger, confusion, and feeling guilty for being mad at my boy, who wasn’t really to blame, have been hard things to deal with.

There are a few things that could be the culprit.

1. He is a very deep sleeper. He’s like the living dead to get him to wake up, so maybe his body just won’t wake up.

2. There is actually some physical defect that causes his bladder to release during sleep.

3. He’s a lazy bum and chooses sleeping in soiled bedding over getting up to urinate at night.

4. He’s a boy, and boys wet the bed more than girls by a large percentage.

I like to think that #3 is totally off the mark.

We’ve tried a lot of things:

Waking him up periodically at night. This was not entirely a success, but did help a bit. Problem? We were so stinking tired because of all the alarms and interrupted sleep! I have four kids, so waking one up on purpose, plus the others waking up for various things on top, made for some long nights. Not to mention I was pregnant for quite a lot of that time, or nursing at night.

Also, while waking him up periodically sounded like a good idea, there is really never any way to know when he will go. Sometimes it’s only an hour after he goes to bed; sometimes it’s early in the morning. He isn’t on a schedule and there’s no way to plan.

Limiting drinks at night sounded like another good idea. In theory, it sounds okay. Less water in the bladder, less to have an accident with, right? No. If his bladder is less full, then his body with give him a less urgent signal that he needs to pee, meaning he is actually less likely to wake up. And really, when we’re talking about pee in the bed, a little bit or a whole lot are equal in their need to be cleaned.

We’ve tried rewards. We’ve offered him all kinds of things to try his very best to not wet, with very little success. And if it truly isn’t his fault, is it fair of us to bribe him with things he wants in order to change a behavior he has no control over?

One trend I have noticed, though, is that the bed wetting is much more frequent during growth spurts. When he seems to be steadier in growth, he only wets a few times week. Presently he’s undergoing some major growing, and consequently I’m doing a load of his bedding every day for weeks now. I don’t have words for the monotony this brings to my life. It’s like someone dragging finger nails on a chalk board every morning when I wake up to hear him making his way to the bathroom for a shower. I’m not sure, but maybe I would feel a bit more compassion if I had been a bed wetter myself, but I really have no idea what that would feel like. I can imagine it would be pretty gross and embarrassing.

We have a family friend who is now in his 70’s who wet the bed every night until he was around 20 years old. He got into a car accident and never wet again. He was talking to his doctor after his accident when the doctor asked him if he had issues with bed wetting, and he said yes of course, and the doctor told him that he wouldn’t bed wet anymore, and he never did again. I need to get a hold of him and find out if he knows the exact cause. So now I’m really starting to wonder if he has something physically wrong causing the issue. I’m hoping we can get on the path toward finding out tomorrow at the doctor.

In the meantime, we’ll continue on with our present philosophy: he did it, and while it’s not his fault, he’s going to clean up after himself. He takes his clothing and bedding and puts it in the washer (because I HATE touching it), he showers himself, and he wipes down his bed with Clorox wipes. Yes, we have heavy duty mattress liners on his mattress and pillows. And, no, we don’t make him wear a night time diaper. I think the poor kid has mental issues enough from the whole, crappy situation.

Soooo, anyone else?

Cheri

Wow, haven't been on here for a while. I've been meaning too, but, well, I guess there's so much to do and so little time. Not that I couldn't find the time if I really wanted to; but, oh well.

The last couple of months have been a bit on the crazy side for us. We moved, again, got kids into a new school, Brett into a new line in his industry entirely, I finished another semester of school. I also decided to take a semester off of school because A: I was getting sick of constantly juggling school work and kids during the day and B: I wanted to focus my attention on my kids and home. So I've been playing with Lily and Tyler a lot more and doing projects that I've had sitting around for a while.

The last week I've been getting excited about my degree again. It's amazing what a few weeks off will do to my enthusiasm. I've been making three year plans for Brett and myself. I figure at $48 a credit, we'd be stupid not to take advantage. So Brett's going back to school one class a semester to get his next degree and learn more about his current job in product development, and I'm continuing on my path toward becoming an RN and working in labor and delivery. I get so excited thinking about that!

In my planning I realized that I won't graduate until spring of 2016. That seems so far away! Of course I planned it all this way to begin with, so that I wouldn't have to leave my sweet babies until they were in school. By the time I graduate, all four of my kids will be in school. Lily starts kindergarten (FULL day kindergarten!) this fall, and Tyler technically can start kindergarten fall 2014, but he would be so young. California lets kids start kindergarten who turn 5 up until November 1st, which means Tyler would make the deadline at October 8th. I think that's crazy young to be thrown in Kinder, so Brett and I are talking about holding him back. I will hopefully be starting the nursing program here at that time, so I'm crossing my fingers I can get him into this preschool they do on campus.

On a side note, I have been taking steps toward becoming a lactation consultant as well. After the pretty much horrific experience I had with trying to nurse my first baby, I think it will be so rewarding to help other women, who want to nurse their children, know what is natural and to be expected. No mother should have to be in excruciating pain and be told it's supposed to feel that way. It's not. I'm sorry, but if your nipple is hanging off, that's just not normal. And bawling every time you know your baby's hungry, but you're terrified to nurse them because it hurts so much, isn't normal. I hope I can help.

I've got quite a lot of pictures I need to download and put up here and I'm determined to do this! I've been pretty low on energy lately, as in I don't have any, but I bought myself Turbo Fire for my upcoming birthday to try and give myself a boost. I'm looking forward to the next 90 days! Maybe I can even lose my last 8 Tyler pounds. One-twenty, here I come! Maybe…

I took a class recently where I had to go through exercises in either creating a new, healthy habit, or getting rid of a bad one. I chose to get rid of my bad habit of becoming insanely upset over my eldest sons lack of enthusiasm in doing his homework; spelling in particular, and taking hours literally to accomplish small amounts of homework. I had to write down small speed bump goals to lead me toward reaching my ultimate goal. Guess what! I let go of my anger. I've accepted that he is his own person and must be allowed to fail or succeed on his own steam. I've done my best to let go of my pride and simply show him love and encouragement, when what I wanted to do before was rant about him being lazy and a big pain in the butt. Don't get me wrong, I still get mad, but I choose not to show that now, or obsess over him reaching perfection in everything. I think we're both happier this way.

What was the biggest lesson I learned in that whole debacle? That he's almost ten and needs a loving mother more than an evil task master. I always have to remind myself that he's almost a teenager, meaning I need to make our relationship strong now so that it can last then. I need to remind myself that the only person I can fully control is myself. Was I happier when I was angry at him all the time? I think not.

Speaking of goals: Turbo Fire! I love Turbo Kick classes and I love the old Turbo Jam DVD's, so I'm really looking forward to this new series. I'm going into this next 12 weeks with the mindset of feeling better, eating a lot less sugar, and maybe losing a few pounds. Man I hope so. Either way, I hope that lowering my sugar intake helps me. I've had weird issues since I had my 4th baby, and I've decided to take some steps toward figuring out what's wrong. Does anyone else's head instantly feel fuzzy when they eat sugary things? I don't remember feeling that way before. My hair only used to fall out in large amounts when I was pregnant, and since I personally drove Brett to a very special doctor one day soon after Tyler was born, I am 100% positive I'm not expecting.

Anyway, I want to document our lives a bit here in So Cal. I have a lot to talk about: my kids awesome little Spanish mission style school on the prairie, the cockroach I obliterated in my backyard last week, my new calling as a Sunday school teacher for the 12 and 13 year olds, the beautiful valley we live in, and how my darling Lauren made the choice to become a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of latter-Day Saints. I also have one big issue I’ve been dealing with for the last 7 years that I’ve decided to be proactive about and, I guess you could say, come out of the closet finally. It’s definitely not what you’re thinking.

Cheri