Not quite potty trained

I knew something was amiss when I arrived at school to pick A.J. up today and he was wearing blue and gray camouflage pants.

He doesn't own any camo. Insert "but you live in Arkansas" joke here if you like, but no, he doesn't normally rock that kind of garb.

But let's back up a bit. The potty training has been going really well at home, and apparently at school as well. A couple of weeks ago, his teacher informed us that she thought he was essentially potty trained and was ready to wear underpants to school every day. He's pretty good with the #1 business at home, so we figured it was worth a shot. And it has been great...until today. Apparently he needed to go at school, so he headed into the bathroom to take care of things on his own. While this is great, the issue is that his pants-and-drawers removal technique still leaves a little to be desired. Hence, an accident, requiring a wardrobe change. We leave an extra pair of underpants at school but I guess extra regular pants would have been a good idea too, in order to prevent the need to go digging into the lost and found and come out with the camo in his size.

Right after school, we went to the grocery store. I opted for his preferred one, a Kroger that has a big, enclosed model train. He loves checking it out, even when it isn't running, which it hasn't been for months now. Ever the optimist, he doesn't see it as broken, but just "stopped at the station." He gets very excited to watch the train, motion be damned. This joy often leads to him running around, back and forth around the track.

Another time he runs around in a similar manner? When he needs to poop.

And you can probably sense where this one is going. I'm not sure why running circles around the dining room soothes him in any way, but that is now his go-to move when he needs to pop a #2. He hates the entire process, so much that he verbally just tries to will the whole endeavor away. "No poopy, no poopy, no poopy!" he'll wail, as he sprints around in a circle. This usually translates to "I need to drop a big deuce immediately." Today at the store, however, there was no verbal warning--just a big, annoyed cry after the fact that I was able to understand right away. We got him home and cleaned up, and it was not a big deal.

But yeah. In case you were wondering, that's how potty training is going.

Back at it

I went to the gym and got a quick workout in on Tuesday. It feels like I haven't been there in ages.

Because I haven't.

The short list of excuses/reasons: cold, weddings, knee.

The longer explanation: I got a really bad cold back in September. I'm not sure if the southern climate contributes to it now and I also have some allergy I'm unaware of, but ever since moving down here I find I'm much more prone to catching annoying colds that last a couple of weeks. Before, I used to get one or two a year, they would be bad for three days, and that was it. I now long for those good old bad days.

Anyway, I had that going on in September, and I certainly didn't feel like working out. And since I was laying around not exercising, of course I started eating garbage again too. This continued through early October, when I had good friends get married on back-to-back weekends. One involved a 2,000 mile round trip in the car, the other was just a quick weekend by plane, and neither one included exercise or healthy living.

Upon returning from the first wedding, my busted knee got really swollen. It bothered me so much that I went back to my specialist's office to get it checked out. The x-ray showed some small bone spurs under the knee cap and significant swelling, but nothing serious. I started taking anti-inflammatories and they helped a little, but the knee continued to feel really sore. It wasn't all the way better by Tuesday, but I was starting to feel really bad about myself so I went and worked out anyway. It was just a quick one, but like it does every time, it made me feel better after the fact. I've got about a month until AJ's baby sister arrives, so I'm going to get back into my good routine. I initially wrote "I plan to," and I actually backspaced and erased it. I can't keep waiting to do this, or finding reasons or excuses, even semi-valid physical ones, to not take care of myself. I'm not getting any younger, and the process certainly isn't getting any easier. But I am glad to be back at it.