Sunday, May 15, 2011: It's pee!

Gavin just peed. In his little potty. All by himself. He and Stacy were getting ready to get in the bath and Gavin announced that he had to pee, which is something he does every time he gets ready for a bath, often while he's in the bath so that he may be airlifted out onto the potty chair. It's always a false alarm. So Stacy didn't think much of it this time. Except that he did it. Stacy said a look of concentration passed over his face and sure enough he was peeing. He held his penis the entire time and peed all over his hand, but it all went into the potty. I got to witness him dumping his pee into the big toilet, very proud indeed.

We haven't been pushing the potty training thing. But we brought his little potty up from the basement and put it in the bathroom. We told him what it was for and told him he could sit there whenever he wanted, but we didn't make a big deal out of it. Well, we did tell him he had to stop taking out the bowl part and wearing it as a hat. And we also had to work on him keeping the bowl part in when he sat down. For awhile he was a fan of sitting there sans bowl. Since that kind of defeats the whole purpose we were against that idea. In any case, so far it seems like our hands off potty training technique is working. He should probably be done and accident free in a couple of days. Or maybe by the time he wakes up in the morning.

Lisa's son Brenden, who is just six weeks older than Gavin, is potty trained now. Already wearing "big boy" underwear and everything. Actually, I'm kind of excited to buy "big boy" underwear. You can get some really cute ones. But I'm also excited to let him pick them out (I strongly suspect he'll prefer drawers with trucks or cars of some sort on them). I realize it's a little soon for that, but still. I remember when my brother was little and started wearing underwear he had some with GI JOE on the butt and he would wear them backwards so he could see the picture. He probably still does that.

We've been eating dinner as a family, something Stacy and I really haven't done for years. We've always had differing schedules, not to mention we like totally different foods. But I think it's good for Gavin, and for us, if we have family meals as often as possible. I've even started to cook. On Thursday I made cinnamon apple quesadillas and they were really good. I got the recipes from The Garden of Vegan by Tanya Barnard and Sarah Kramer. I have a bunch of vegan cookbooks and up until now I've only ever really used them for cupcakes and other deserts. But now I've got to put food on my family so I'm busting them out. I've got another book by Barnard and Kramer, too, and I like both of them, but just about every recipe calls for onions and I hate onions. I hate onions more than almost anything. I know I'm not alone because there are no less than 10 I Hate Onions pages on Facebook. So far in recipes that call for onions I just omit them or I add some onion powder. I also hate garlic. Again, I can deal with garlic powder. Other foods I hate: peppers of any variety, mushrooms, tomatoes, black licorice. And I'm sure there are others. It's a rough life. So far Gavin doesn't seem to hate anything, though he does often refuse green vegetables.

Man, I have a headache right now. I'm tempted to put in my splint. Ha. I don't even call it that. I'm talking about my bite guard that I got from the dentist. It's pretty awesome, try not to be too jealous. I was grinding my teeth down to dust every night and waking up with a really sore jaw and headaches. Anyway, when I went to pick up the "dental device," as it says on the back of the "handy case," which it says on the card that came from the place that made it, the hygienist told me that she wears one and that she puts hers on when she has a headache and that it really helps. I don't understand how such a thing works, but she says it relaxes the muscles. What muscles I do not know. I didn't feel like I could ask for additional details, especially since she said, "Now, don't do that all the time," as if I would love wearing the thing so much I would never take it off for any reason. Also, if I had headaches all the time, I think I would probably be in need of something more serious than a dental splint, like maybe a doctor.