Fun Ways to Potty Train

I know that many of my friends are potty training or attempting to do so with their young toddlers.  This can be a frustrating time for many parents, and the child too.. Here are few ideas that may help motivate and encourage your child to POTTY!!   

Make Potty Time a Celebration

There are few things that little kids love more than a party.  By adding a little song and dance to potty training time, your kiddo will be all to anxious to use the potty.  Create a special song and dance that is not used at any time other than potty time.  It should be silly and all about your child’s favorite things!  Create special lyrics:  ”MillerBug is a big boy now.  He used the potty, WOW!  Look how big he is when he goes!  It makes me want to tickle his toes!”  Yes, completely silly but by adding the toe tickle and acting it out every time, you’ll get squeals of joy!  Now add in a little hopping around (this mama can’t dance) and some silly moves and you’ll have a performance that your child wants to see over and over again!  Then, by only performing it when they use the potty, you’ll encourage your child to head to the potty any chance they get in order to have a celebration!

Create a Treat Bag

What’s a party without a goodie bag, right?  Well, same goes for a Potty Party.  Get a brown paper bag, glue a picture of a potty and your child on the front and add some ribbons to make it festive.  Then put treats inside – this can be something like fruit chewies, M&Ms, even raisins if that’s your kiddos favorite.  Then set the expectation that when they successfully use the potty, they get to get one treat out of the bag.  Put the bag somewhere that they can see it but not reach it.  **TIP – don’t keep it in the bathroom – ewwww!**  Then allow them to be the ones that gets the bag down and gets a treat out (with your help) once they have successfully used the potty.

Make a Sticker Chart

For some reason, children love nothing more than stickers.  I think it’s just ingrained in their little brains.  And while I try to avoid stickers in the car (they always end up on your windows, right), the bathroom is a fabulous place for them!  Take a piece of poster board and make a potty chart.  List each day of the week and then make a box for each time you want your child to use the potty.  Attach a plastic baggy to the bottom and fill it with stickers.  Then, each time your child successfully uses the potty, allow them to take one sticker out of the bag and place it on the poster board.  You will be surprised how long they will stand and longingly look at the board and once they figure out what it takes to put a sticker on it, they’ll be waiting for you at the potty each time.

Use Fun Training Pants

Chances are, you don’t want to go straight from diapers to cloth underwear.  If you do, you’ll likely end up with quite a few messes.  However, with training pants the way they are today, you can still give your child a super cool motivation to use the potty.  With different brand choices, you can find pretty much an character you want on training pants.  So find your kiddos favorite.  If you can’t, you can even use a sticker on the front of their pull up to make it super special.  Then store your fun big kid diapers where your child can see them.  Each time you put them on, explain that they are super special big kid pants and that he or she can only wear them while they are working on going to the potty.  The not fun part is taking them away if your child does not attempt to use the potty but you’ll quickly see that they want to earn the privilege of wearing the super fun training pants.

Make the Potty Party Ready

You want your child to WANT to potty in the bathroom, right?  So decorate that toilet!  Window crayons are a great way to do this and wipe off easily.  Draw balloons, their favorite characters and more.  Make it their special potty and put a potty ring on it that is bright and fun.  By making the bathroom one of the coolest places in the house to be, your child will run towards it instead of from it.  Allow your kiddo to help make make it special and get them in on the decorating.  Then explain that going to the potty is a special event and that they need a special place for it to happen.

Potty training is never simple.  But if your child is ready and you use the right techniques it can be a special time that both you and your child will enjoy celebrating instead of a frustrating time that will end with you and your child in tears.  So, stop thinking of it as a task and start thinking of it as a great reason to have fun and celebrate a super fabulous milestone!

Borrowed from jmanandmillerbug.com 

Turning Negatives into Positives

Negativity can sometime seem like an addiction. We begin thinking negative thoughts & find it hard to stop; before we know it, we are stuck in a new negative reality. The first thing that you need to do is trust that you can change your situation. Even if you don’t know how that is going to happen or how things will turn out, trust. If you intend to be positive, your world will become positive. 

A year ago my wife filed for a divorce, this was something I never thought I would have to experience; My entire world changed from that moment.  The months that followed the divorce were the hardest as I tried to find ways to cope with my feelings of hatred, negativity, depression, and anger.  I often thought what good could possible come from this divorce?  I could use my own experiences to help other people, and although my marriage was lost, I could possible help someone else.  Divorce really has been a learning experience for me, it's made me realize the importance of family, relationships, helping others, and making every moment of each day count!  So, thru my divorce, I have found a positive new way to live!  

Feel It

 Sometimes, for the time being, a negative is a negative. Sometimes we need to grieve, cry, scream, and shout. Sometimes we just need to feel it. We need to sit in the darkness of our emotions and truly feel the feelings. You will find that by not resisting your emotions, you allow yourself to fully enter the healing process, part of which is grieving. 



How To Turn Negatives Into Positives

• Avoid ultimatums 
• Think through obstacles 
• Speak positively 
• Reach out to those who think positively 
• Focus on what you are good at 
• Force or encourage yourself to smile and/or laugh 
• Engage in activities that decrease stress 
• Journal positive thoughts 
• Practice deep breathing and yoga 
• Replace a negative thought with a positive one

Just like the lonely princess in the fairy tale who was reluctant to lock lips with a warty frog and transform him into a handsome prince, something stops many of us short of attaining our dreams. Our negative thoughts, emotions, and attitudes can threaten to keep us from achieving all that we’re capable of.

Here are five great ways to defeat negative thinking:

1. Use breathing techniques:

After every few minutes, pause your work and just breathe. Concentrate on your breathing and feel yourself breathe. Enjoy the goodness of things that surround you. If you do this often, you will be more in touch with your inner self and feel tremendous energy, which will purify any negative thinking.

2. Keep a log about negative thinking:

Carry a notebook with you. Whenever you feel that you are experiencing a negative pattern, just note it down along with whatever thoughts you are having and the cause behind them. Then after a couple of weeks, sit down and go through that notebook. Try to find some common themes that encourage negative thoughts in you. This will make you more aware about yourself.

3. Do stuff that you like:

Take some time out from your schedule and enjoy your life a bit. Do things that make you happy. Everyone wants to be happy, but they mostly can’t find time for it. Take a vacation this weekend, go for long walks in the park, go out for dinner or movie, or get a relaxing massage. Just slow down the pace and give yourself some peace of mind.

4. Appreciate the little things:

Learn to see the brighter side of life. Be thankful for who you are and what you have. Keep in mind that no matter what happens in your life, it is still possible to gaze up and behold the magic that is around you. Acknowledge the simple joys of life, like feeling of cool breeze on your skin, or how amazing the universe is. When you appreciate goodness, negativity dissolves away.

5. Spread the joy:

Kindness never goes unrewarded. But somehow we all have forgotten this old saying. It is the greatest medicine that eases aching minds and hearts. When you make someone else happy, you get happiness in return. Generosity puts a sure end to negativity and generosity doesn't have to be always shown. Try leaving the best parking spot for someone else. Or maybe clean up the office lunch room someday, and don’t let anybody know who did it. Doing small things like these will wash away your negativity and you will start feeling good about yourself.

If you can be kind in this way, you release positive energy. Even if nobody gets to know about your generous acts, it will cheer you up and you’ll feel better from the inside. This will make you less negative and you will experience personal growth.  Follow these simple points honestly and you’ll find a huge difference in less than a month.

Thank you for taking the time to visit my blog, and I hope in some way I have brighten your day..  Remember, with the sweet, must come the sour, life will most always give you lemons at some point in time.. Its what you do with those lemons that matters the most!! 

Love & Peace 

Jesse 

Research Credits: tonyfahkry.com - creativeaffirmations.com, - "Kiss That Frog", author Brian Tracy.

Fireproof Your Marriage

When you look at your marriage, or relationship; how do you see it?  Would you say your marriage is weak, strong, or lost somewhere in between?  A few years ago a movie was recommended to me, "Fireproof" starring Kirk Cameron as a must see.  I blew it the movie off as "one of those movies" that was intended for feel good, but not really about real life so I never watched it.  Then in January of last year as my own marriage began to crumble to an end, I remembered the movie and decided to watch it, and so glad that I did..  Fireproof is a powerful movie, it's got action, and drama, love and humor, yet sends a message that YOUR marriage is worth fighting for, and the best way to strengthen and save your marriage is to include God in it. 

The Love Dare
What I loved about the Love Dare, is that it highlights the fact that it really only takes one person to dramatically change a marriage.  The problem with this is that it isn't always an easy thing to do.  In order to change your marriage, you must first transform your heart, and how you view your marriage.  When transforming one's heart is no easy task.  When anger, resentment, and bitterness have been building in a place that was once so full of love, changing one's attitude and humbly changing our own behaviors can be a big mountain to climb.  Transformation of the heart is not an earthly endeavor; it is of divine intervention.  It takes a power beyond our own selves.

Some of the simple, yet potentially powerful actions that were suggested in the Love Dare included things like refraining from saying anything negative to your spouse. The old adage, “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say nothing at all” still applies. Doing one nice thing today for one’s spouse or calling to check on how he or she is doing were some of the daily Love Dare challenges.

So many valuable pieces of successful marriage practices were seamlessly taught throughout the movie. Pray for your spouse. Listen to your spouse. Invest in your marriage with your time, attention, energy and even money. Study your spouse. Get a bachelor’s, then a master’s, then a doctorate degree in your spouse. Have a never-ending quest to know the heart and soul of your spouse and what makes them tick.

Love is an Action

Love isn’t solely based on a feeling, as Hollywood would have us believe. Love is an action. In marriage, sometimes one or the other or both needs to love even when the love is undeserved.

Love is something you choose to do regardless of the difficulty. In marriage there will inevitably be opportunities to test your meddle and see if you really meant what you said on your wedding day — for better or for worse.

Marriage is a promise. Marriage is a covenant. It is not merely a contract that can be canceled at will. Rich rewards await those who push through the pain of personal growth to overcome the challenges and obstacles that all couples face. Fire is a great analogy used in this movie for the refining fire of marriage.

In one poignant scene Caleb comes to his wits end regarding how he can possibly continue to love when his love is not received. How can he love when his love is rebuffed and rejected? It is then that he awakens to the role Jesus Christ plays in his ability to love his wife, as he must be able to within marriage. It is then that his heart is transformed and softened to a state that makes him capable of loving in the true spirit of love.

Somewhere in the midst of Caleb’s awakening to and acceptance of Christ, there seems to be a transfer of power, such that Caleb is now able to love more so as God loves. It gives new meaning to charity, the pure love of Christ, that suffereth long, is kind, and seeketh not her own. This love that we seek in marriage is the love that God freely gives.

The road to Caleb’s transformation is not easy. It is full of heart-wrenching pain. It is quite obvious that the process is excruciatingly slow. It is easy to see how such a marital journey is quickly abandoned by so many for the seemingly apparent “peace” that divorce deceptively promises.

Practicing What You Preach

For me the cherry on top of this movie is that Kirk Cameron, a committed Christian and obvious believer in the things he learns in the movie, had long ago made a personal pledge to never kiss anyone other than his real wife. That can be a real challenge for any actor.
In trying to beat the not-so-good marital odds that Hollywood offers, Cameron has committed himself to kissing only his wife, Chelsea Noble, who incidentally played his former love interest in “Growing Pains.”
In a scene where Caleb kisses his movie wife, his real wife seamlessly steps in for the smooch. There’s something sexy about a man who can stick to his principles like that. You've got to imagine the peace and the trust his wife is able to have in him even as he works in a profession that is maritally demeaning and downright dangerous.
Cameron’s personal commitment to kiss only his wife illustrates just one of those smart safeguards that keeps couples up on the mountain peaks enjoying the splendor rather than slipping into the ravine below where serious marital recovery is needed.

Fireproof Your Marriage

I encourage everyone to see this movie, and to encourage others to do so as well. Fireproof is great marriage education for our children too. Going into marriage with an understanding that successful marriages take effort, and knowing a few of the keys to marital happiness are a couple of great gifts that we can give our youth.

I hope we will all work to fireproof our marriages, and maybe even fire them up a bit as well! God bless us all to invite Him into our hearts and into our marriages.





credits: Strengthingmarriage.com