Monday, August 11, 2014

Random Sunday – Potty Training, Fitbit, and Vacations

I have to say – potty training has been quite an adventure so far.  Let me start by saying we kinda accidentally started potty training my son even though he’s not quite two.  See, he has this bad habit of basically planking every time he needs to do something other than pee.  The end result is that he really has a hard time going and ends up getting a little bound up.  So we started putting him on the potty in the hopes of getting him to relax the right muscles and make going easier.  It worked.  A little too well in a way.  Now he won’t do that in his diaper.  This leads to incidents like this weekend.  We were visiting a quilt shop in Marshall, MN when he yells about as loud as he can “Mommy!  Poopy!” in the middle of the store.  Not much other choice than to find the closest bathroom.  He did go, by the way.

I am really excited.  I’ve wanted an activity tracker for a while now.  For my birthday, my hubby bought me a Fitbit.  I am loving it!  It helps me keep a decent count of my steps and activity without much thought to it.  And it’s there just enough to remind me to get up and move a little more often.  I’m hoping it will continue to push me to keep moving so I can get into a little bit better shape – which is a goal I’ve had for a while now.

I love vacations.  Even just the weekend getaway type.  The part I don’t like is having to come back and deal with the mess.  Especially when I didn’t get back until late so all I really had time to do was throw everything in the door, clean me and my son up and go to bed.  Then I jumped back into ten hour days at work.  By the time I get home I am exhausted and don’t really feel like cleaning.  I know.  Talk about issues.  It could be worse.  Hopefully, though, I do get the last of my mess cleaned up soon.

Tuesday, August 5, 2014

Book Review: Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand

Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand is an interesting book.  It is technically a fiction book based on the true story of Louis Zamperini.  The story starts out with his life as a kid getting into trouble.  That trouble gets channeled into running which puts Zamperini into the 1936 Berlin Olympics.  He becomes an airman when World War II breaks out and gets shot down in the Pacific.  Zamperini and a couple crew members find the survival raft and end up adrift until being captured by the Japanese.  Their capture was both a blessing and a curse – a blessing because they would have died before much longer and a curse because they were POWs held by the Japanese.  Most of the rest of the story is about Zamperini’s time in the Japanese POW camps.

I really found this story to be fascinating.  Hillenbrand did her research in finding original sources that documented the true story of Zamperini’s life.  The writing was pretty good for the most part, though I would have edited a few things differently as there were a few spots that felt somewhat tedious.  In the end, it is a fictional account of this piece of history.  One cannot forget that aspect.  Do not expect a completely true story as that is not what this book is.  But, don’t pass it up.  It is still a good book in the end.

Random Sunday – Late Again, Insomnia, and Frogs

Yeah.  I know.  It’s Tuesday evening and I’m just getting Random Sunday up.  In my defense I was out of town all weekend.  Monday was rather nuts trying to clean up the mess and get back to work.  To give ya’ll fair warning, it’ll probably happen again this weekend as I’m leaving again this weekend.  It will be an adventure because I’m taking my two year old son half way across the state on my own.  Granted, my parents will be meeting us there, but I’m on my own for a while with him.  It should be fun!

I hate insomnia.  I’ve dealt with it some for several years now.  But last night really got to me.  What made it even worse was that about an hour after I finally fell asleep, my son woke up with a bad dream and couldn’t find his bear.  When I went and got him he didn’t want to lie back down in his bed.  Seeing as my husband now works overnights and I wanted to go back to sleep REALLY bad, I tucked him into bed with me and we both went back to sleep.  At least we both got a little more sleep that way.

I know a year or so ago I commented about how many tree frogs were around my house.  I found one this year.  He’s been hanging out on the light by my front door.  I’m guessing he’s having dinner most of the time when I go in and out.  He was missing tonight, though.  I’m hoping nothing happened to the little thing.  He’s a cute little tree frog.