What I learned over a year of potty training

That's right. ONE YEAR. We started potty-training Jane about two months before Hank was born, thinking that if we got it done, we'd only have one kid in diapers. Jane was doing really great right up until he was born. She wasn't having any accidents, but I mainly took her to the bathroom. She very rarely told me when she had to go.

Welp, when Hank was born, she spent a few days with Grandma and Grandpa without Mommy, and her routine got interrupted, and she started having accidents. And... she ended up back in diapers, and about once a month I would try again only to decide that it was so much easier to just change her diaper rather than deal with gross-ness all over the house. We went back and forth like this for, I'm not even kidding, a year! Until one day my mom said she would take Jane to Disneyland if she would be potty-trained. That girl potty-trained herself overnight. Are you kidding me?

We leave tomorrow for Disneyland.

Here's what I learned.

• I never thought it was possible, but sometimes kids just don't care if their pants are wet or poopy. 
• The nice little "incentive" that Huggies puts on their Pull-Ups doesn't work if you've got a stubborn one. No amount of "Don't make the butterfly fly away" will convince her.
• Even brand new underwear with Elsa and Anna on it won't get a strong-willed child to keep her pants clean.
• My Jane will always do exactly as she wants
• We should have bribed her with Disneyland a lot sooner...

She's ready!!

Ummm... An update?

We lived in Missouri for 2 1/2 years. Jane was born there.

We moved to Oregon and lived with Cory's parents for about a year. Cory did an internship at Wildlife Safari. Hank was born. 

We bought a house in McMinnville. We love it and all its quirks and charm. 

We love McMinnville. It's such a unique little town and we already have such wonderful friends here. 

Cory works with monkeys (mostly macaques) and Kristen takes care of their monkeys (mostly humans).

Some pictures...

Back to blogging

I put off writing anything in here because I got my wonderful job at SirsiDynix and life got busy and I didn't really have the time or desire to blog. Now, however, we live in Missouri and I'm working for myself again, so I really want to keep all of you updated on how the Davises are doing, especially since we live much further away from most of you than we did in the past.

I never in a million years thought that we would be living in Missouri. It's been quite the change from Utah but we absolutely love it. We have the cutest house in the middle of the country and we recently adopted a dog, which has always been a dream of Cory's.

Cory has started school and is really liking his Master's program. We're going to apply for vet school again for next year and hope that he gets into the University of Missouri so we can stay here. We've made some great friends and just love it here.

I am now working as a health coach for a wonderful program that has helped so many people lose weight and stay healthy for life. If you would like to learn more about it you can check out my website HealthCoachKristen.com and send me a request for more detailed information. I'd really love to tell you about it.

I'm also going to start my weight loss blog again. There's a link in the side bar if you want to follow that.

Here's some pictures!

We had a lot of stuff to pack up, and my mom is so wonderful that she came to Provo to help us get ready.

Our beautiful new cabin home. This was while we were still unpacking so there's lots of empty boxes and other junk on the porch. 

Our new pup, Petra. She really loves Cory.

Updates

• I start a new job in a little over a week at SirsiDynix. They make the library database software that we used at the Harold B. Lee Library. I'll be a technical writer there, and will get to write their help manuals. It doesn't sound like much, but I'm super duper excited about it!
  
  
• The band I'm in, Milo, has been rocking it up lately. We had a show on the Saturday before Halloween, which was awesome despite my being sick. Most recently, we played in the battle of the bands at Muse Music last Tuesday, which was also totally awesome. There was a great energy there and we had a blast playing our music. If you haven't already, you should like us on facebook. (There's a link to take you to our facebook page-on the word Milo-but for some reason I can't get the color to change to be noticeable.)
  
  
• I started a new diet, and I've already lost 7 pounds in a little over two weeks. I'm hoping to be down 10 pounds by the end of the third week. You can read a little bit more about it in my health journey blog (link's right over there ----->). My goal for this diet is to have lost 40 pounds by my birthday at the beginning of March, and I'm thinking it's totally do-able. I only have 33 left to go!
  
  
• We have the Davis's coming down for Thanksgiving tomorrow. It's going to be a blast having everyone here. Although, I'm a little wary to cook a whole Thanksgiving meal in my uber-tiny kitchen. We'll see how that goes.
  
  
• Derby's been sick with a sinus infection for the last two months. We've taken him to the vet and he's been prescribed antibiotics, but it just doesn't seem to go away. I wish it would, because I really want to have him fixed so he'll stop being a stinker and peeing all over everything, but we need to wait for this to clear up before we can do that.

Happy Birthday Nicoley!

My baby sister turns 20 today! Weird... Sometimes I still think of her as being a little 8-year-old, mostly because I tried to mother her when we were younger. I'm only about 3 and 1/2 years older than her, but for some reason that makes me feel a lot older and responsible for her.

Growing up, it was just the two of us, and boy, could we fight. I was not a nice sister. I attribute this to two things. First, our radically different personalities, and second, the lack of another sibling to go to or to also fight with. Two was just not a good number in our house.

I'm happy to say that now Nicoley and I are the best of friends. She's the one I want to talk to when I'm bored. She's the one I want to hang out with when I have free time. She's the one that I can talk to about pretty much anything. Not living together has been great for us and our relationship. It's funny because when we have to be in close proximity to each other for extended periods of time again, we fall right back into our old habits. We took a three-day trip this last summer to go back home for my cousin's wedding, just the two of us, and we had a blast for the first two and a half days of it but after a full day of driving, a busy wedding day, and another full day of driving, we were mad as hell at each other. We spent the last almost five hours of the drive in absolute silence. It was weird.

Anyway, happy birthday Nicoley. You are the best sister in the world, and I love you so much. I'm so glad that we're friends now and that you laugh with me over the stupidest stuff. We really do need big neon signs on our foreheads to proclaim to the world that we're not crazy, just sisters.

Oh what do you do in the Autumn time?

I love the fall. I love the crisp cool air and the clear skies. I love the stormy days. I love the bright colors and the crunchy leaves. I love getting out my scarves and hats. I don't really love wearing real shoes, but I can get over it.

Last weekend, Cory and I went to a corn maze with my sister and Brianna and Michael Chambers. It was way fun. We went to the big corporate one out at Thanksgiving Point because I had a coupon. They charged extra for nearly everything, but the stuff we wanted to do was free so it worked out in the end. We went through a ton of mazes and got lost and went on a hay ride and watched a pig race and pumpkins being shot out of a cannon. There were way too many people there, but it was absolutely worth it.

Pictures!

It was a pretty good day.

I really should be over this by now

But I'm not.

My due date for my lost pregnancy was November 3rd. I know so many people that will be delivering right around that time. I can count six just off the top of my head and I'm pretty sure there are more. If you're one of these people I really am happy for you, really and truly. It's just hard to see my friends growing bellies and knowing there's a fresh new baby inside of them waiting to see the world. And knowing that should also be me.

It's hard. It's been about six months since I miscarried and we haven't been able to get pregnant since. Plus, now it's looking like we'll have to postpone the baby making so I can get a job while Cory finishes school. That's a hard realization to face when all I want to do is be a mother.

I'm sorry for being a whiner. It's just how I feel...most of the time. I'm getting better at controlling these emotions but they're always there, lingering under the surface. I don't know why I felt the need to share this with the blogging world again, but I did and I am.

I talked to my mom this morning about this. When I talk to my mom I always regress just a little bit and I complained about how it just isn't fair. She wisely told me that of course it isn't fair. We understood that before we came here. We knew life would be hard and that things wouldn't always work out the way we want them too, but we chose this anyway. Deep down I know this. I know that life is meant to be full of trials and that we are supposed to grow from them. I just wish this trial wasn't mine. I know I'm strong enough to handle it and that I'll learn something from it (and if I'm being perfectly honest with myself, I've known most of my life I was going to struggle with this), but I still don't want it.

Whew, okay. I'm done. Please forgive me. Happy things next time, I promise.

Labor Dabor

I miss Homestar Runner. Anybody else?

Labor Day was fun!

We took Nicoley, Brice, and Nicole's boyfriend Travis and went berry picking!

I love blackberries and the farm we went to had tons of them. It was great because the bushes didn't have any thorns and we got to go diving into them to find the really big ones that everyone else had left behind.

I now have ten pounds of berries hanging out in my fridge and freezer!

Here's some pictures!

That afternoon Cory and I went shopping to buy me a pair of slacks I could wear to an interview I have today. Wish me luck!

Sunburn

This Saturday was super fun. Nicole and I ran the Wasatch Wellness 5k and didn't do too bad. It was fun having her with me and I'm really proud of her for doing it. It's something she'd never done before and I think she enjoyed the experience.

 

We got discounted tickets to Seven Peaks for running in the race so we spent the afternoon there getting ridiculously sunburned. It pretty much hurts to move. So much for my trying really hard to not burn anymore. I swear one of these days I actually will get skin cancer.

 It was a really fun and rewarding weekend. 

Sorry I haven't been posting much lately. I think I might have burned myself out with that last post. We'll see how things go from here on out.

Garbage Sales!

So, I missed my Friday post didn't I? I have a legitimate excuse. My parents were in town for the weekend and we were spending lots of time with them and I just never got around to writing anything. I try to have my posts prepared at least a few days in advance but I never did get anything for last Friday. Well, I guess there was a little bit of a reprieve for you to enjoy, but I'm back now. You know you missed me.

And...time for another weekend update. Cory and I went garage sale-ing with my aunt and cousin on Saturday. When my mom and I would do this she always called it going to garbage sales. That's really what it is if you think about it. Someone else's garbage that they're trying to pawn off on you for a quick buck.

It was great fun. We got lots of stuff for minimal cash money.
We bought:
a pet igloo for Derby,
two baby gates to keep Derby confined to certain parts of the house,
a set of stainless steel mixing bowls,
a liquid measuring cup,
a spatula holder thingy,
a set of nice colored pencils
a set of stainless steel tupperware dishes,
a sweet-looking skirt,
some free bracelets,
electric curlers,
cute wall decoration things,
cute calendar blocks,
a sciency book for Cory,
and way too many movies.

The only reason we keep a VCR is for the cheap movies we can pick up at garage sales, ok well that's a lie, I guess we do have to run our cable through it. But, we're not picky. We don't need blue ray in order to enjoy a good movie. And we got some killers:
Oliver and Company
The Little Mermaid
Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory
Fantasia
My Fair Lady
Mary Martin's Peter Pan
A Christmas Story
What A Girl Wants
Superman
Much Ado About Nothing
Pete's Dragon

We sure did get a lot of kids movies, didn't we?

One of these days when we decide we don't need all these movies, or we replace our VHS versions with the DVD version, or whatever, some lucky schmuck is gonna hit the mother load at our garage sale. We have soooooo many movies. If you ever feel the need to watch something obscure please feel free to ask. We probably have it. That is if you have the ability to watch our old school technologies.

Meet Derby, the cutest rabbit ever

Remember Friday, when I said I would like a fluffy bunny?

Well we went out and bought one. Yep, we now have a cute 9 week old mini rex rabbit. We call him Derby but his full name is General Derby McBunbun-Davis, and yes, I did name him. He is super cute and we love him bunches. And he seems to be pretty happy with us so far.

We let him have his run of the house (basically) but make sure to spray him with vinegar water when he starts digging in the carpet or peeing in the corners. He's still pretty young and we haven't had too many accidents so far. We're hoping to get him trained well enough that he'll know he's only allowed to go in his cage. He is so sweet and honestly, I don't mind cleaning up after his messes.

Here's some pictures for your viewing pleasure.

He makes me happy and now I have someone to play with while Cory is away at school and work all day.