Three months ago, in a fit of pique (or defensiveness, take your pick), I listed all the potty-training methods that were not working on Opie.

Today, I am happy to report that we are halfway there. As in, he is now a champion toilet-pee-er. OK, maybe not “champion” if we are judging on accuracy of aim; but in ability to not soak his pants, gold star. He even stays dry all night long which, to me, is nothing short of miraculous.

We are, uh, still working on what our former dogwalker called “the solid treatment.” The current incentive is a Cars skateboard, spotted at W@lmart, immediately coveted, and therefore immediately seized upon by the parents as a Potty Prize. The deal is he must go seven consecutive days without an accident. So far, seven days he can do. But seven in a row? Not so much.

I think the accidents happen when he’s just busy or distracted. So the answer should  be to remind him to go regularly, right?  But the catch is he absolutely hates to be reminded (and yes, we’ve tried the timer and his response is the same). He will swear up and down that he doesn’t have to go, then have an accident just minutes later.

But the difference from three months ago is huge, even though it doesn’t feel that way when I am washing out a totally gross pair of underwear. (Even this has been alleviated a bit by Swistle’s awesome commentary on the subject of throwing away undies: “I buy ugly cheap children’s underwear on clearance. That way it isn’t painful to throw away a pair that got pooped in, and in fact it can be a real pleasure. See ya, ugly stupid animated character I hate!”

Now that is an attitude to be imitated.

Does this smell blog-blasty? You’re right! It’s in support of the Pull-Ups Potty Project–which truly is cute. Worth a click if you’re in the throes.

For this weekend’s Mother’s Day blog blast, Parent Bloggers Network asked for posts about what our moms have handed down to us. I have an old post that sums that up perfectly, from back when my blog was very new. Here it is, if you’re so inclined.

(Photo from my mother’s retirement party in 2006 … two years before she unretired and went back to work.)

Isn’t that the sweetest face you’ve ever seen! That’s my girl. Ninety-five percent of the time, she is a lovely member of the family. She doesn’t shed much (just twice a year, and then it’s rather exciting to take her outside and brush her and be astonished at all of the fluff we send into the breeze, you’re welcome little birds for the ultrasoft nests). She tolerates kid antics, or walks away from them without a grudge. She makes me feel safe when I am home alone at night and keeps me company when I am home alone during the day.

Yes, she does steal food from the children, but she also cleans up all crumbs and spills for me, so it’s kind of a wash. I am still working on forgiving her for one particular incident, though. Our first Christmas in Mayberry, we decided to have a party for our new friends and neighbors. I was 6 months pregnant with Opie at the time. My husband (aka the hermit) had no interest in helping host this shindig so I had most of the food catered. But the one thing I made myself was a freaking TON of cookies. Now, not only am I not a very good cook, I am s-l-o-w. It takes me forever to do the simplest thing. I spent an entire week of post-bedtime evenings baking. Did I mention I was 6 months pregnant at the time? By the end of the week I could barely stand.

The day of the party, I put all of my precious cookies on serving trays. To keep them cool and out of reach of toddlers, I stashed them on our screened porch, which was closed up for the winter. Just before the party began we started bringing the trays into the dining room.

And then someone left the door to the porch open. Allowing canine access. Said canine polished off an entire tray of my baked goods. You can imagine my hormonally enhanced reaction.

Oh, you better believe I served all the other trays, even though there was no guarantee they hadn’t been contaminated with doggie spit.

Tell your own messy, naughty pet story–it’s a Parent Bloggers Network blog blast. I don’t think you’re going to beat the Great Baby Oil Caper, though.

P.S. You know that chair in the picture is covered by a sheet, right? That’s not really what my living room chair looks like? OK, just so we are clear.

Of the many things that surprise and please me about my children, their relationship with each other tops the list. They truly enjoy each other’s company, play together nicely, show mutual affection, and have each other’s backs.

Sure, they squabble, but Jo is remarkably patient with Opie’s 3-ish-ness, and Opie happily allows himself to be bossed around by his big sister most of the time. If he’s having a tantrum, she creeps up next to him and tries to calm him down. Then she runs back and forth between him and the adult on duty, negotiating a truce. Several nights a week, they sleep side by side in the two trundle beds in Opie’s room.

Jo recently brought home a worksheet from school called “My Special Feelings.” It’s a series of sentences that she had to complete: “I am happy when,” “I am good at,”I am afraid of.” My favorite: “I feel safe when … my brother hugs me.”

See, now this is why I wanted (still want? not sure yet) another one.

Extremely adorable photo filched from my brother and sister-in-law. Topic inspired by this week’s Parent Bloggers Network blog blast for the Life and Health Insurance Foundation for Education.

Hands down, the game my family is most obsessed with plays most often is Scrabble. I’m not even sure when this habit got started, but anytime my brother, sister, and I are together it is ALL ABOUT the Scrab. Being the Word Girl in the family, I assumed I would have a natural advantage, but that is not the case. My brother, the visual artist (and in recent years, his wife–another artist) is the undisputed champ. I talked him up so much that two years ago, one of our neighbors came over on Christmas Eve for a game just to see Steve in action (and got his butt kicked for his trouble).

Steve and his wife:

• have memorized all the 2-letter words legal in Scrabble
• brought a travel Scrabble set on their month-long camping honeymoon and played nightly
• keep track of all the games they play on a spreadsheet. Data gathered includes total points scored, who played the Q and Z, any bingos, and probably more obscure information too.

I still play against them. But I go into it knowing that if I come within 50 points of their scores, I’ve done really well.

We also do have an alternate game in case we are all tired of getting clobbered. Syzygy is a fast-paced, board-free version of Scrabble. Each player creates her own grid of interlocking words using letter tiles. You start with 9 tiles, and when you’ve used them all you call “Draw!” and all players must grab another. You then continue to incorporate these new letters into your crossword; you are free to change anything you’ve already put down. The game is over when all the tiles are gone and one player has a complete crossword with no leftover tiles. (And then, half the fun is checking everyone’s work and arguing about the liberties they’ve taken with the English language.)

(Gift tip: If you’re shopping for someone Scrabble-obsessed, they must read Word Freak by Stefan Fatsis. Both a fascinating character study and a how-to manual for Scrabble nerds.)

If you smelled blog blast on this one, bingo! (50 points to you.) Post yours by midnight tonight and you could win a fat pile of fun video games from EA.

In eight days I’ll have a first grader in da house, and: a) I have done next to nothing to prepare and b) I’m pretty darn fine with that. It’s like having that second baby. For the first one, you spend 47 hours trying to pick out a stroller and another 47 washing all the newborn clothes (the ones my jumbo-size infant didn’t even fit in anyway) in that silly baby detergent. When the second one comes along, he gets the hand-me-down stroller and his clothes get washed next to the socks your husband wore the last time he mowed the lawn. And you know it’s okay.

Really, there are just a few basics that a new baby really needs, and the same goes for first-graders. Backpack? Last year’s is fine, and so is the lunchbox (actually, I think we ended up with about four of those last year). School supplies? Ordered through the PTA last May. Clothes? Her closet is overstuffed as it is. In a few months, if I realize she’s short on jeans or tights or long-sleeved tees, I’ll fill in the gaps. Underwear? Covered. The only thing left to do is replace the gym shoes we bought a year ago.

Occasionally I have a fleeting moment of “shouldn’t I take her shopping, make a big deal out of it?” Then I decide: Nah. There are plenty of other ways to celebrate the occasion, and most of them don’t cost a cent.

… today’s confession brought to you by PBN and Hanes Kids.

And when I say dating myself: I mean in the “omg how old am I” sense, not the “dinner and a movie” sense.

Moving on. Waaaaay back in the day, when I still used floppy disks and a cassette-tape answering machine, I used to go to Kate Spade sample sales. This must have been in about 1993 or 1994, because the Kate Spade brand was just taking off. It was only bags, not all this other stuff they sell now. (And with each successive sale I went to over the course of a couple of years, the crowds got crazier and the prices got higher.)

Anyway, that first sale was the best one ever. I walked out with 7 or 8 bags (some for me, some bought on behalf of friends, some for gifts) and I don’t think I even spent $100. I got at least three of the classic, short-handled, rectangular purses–a black nylon, a brown suede, and a cotton plaid. I got a small, drawstring evening bag. I got a larger black bag with longer handles. I could have died happy that night.

These days, I am a lousy bargain shopper. I am all about convenience and I am usually happy to pay for it. I wish I could be a good thrifter like these amazing women. Instead, I keep my old, out-of-style Kate Spades in my closet, remembering the thrill of that first sample sale and waiting for those boxy shapes to come back into fashion.

Thanks, PBN, for inspring me to take this little walk down memory lane!

When I saw the Learning Cents bank on Cool Mom Picks, I wanted it for my daughter immediately. The bank has three compartments, so kids can earmark their money for spending, saving, or giving (tzedakah in Hebrew). And at only $20, I thought it was a very good use of my own spending money.

Now, on those rare occasions when we remember to give Jo an allowance–and on the much more frequent occasions when she receives a gift of money–she cheerfully deposits it into all three parts of her bank. It’s such a simple, clear way to show her that we need to prioritize saving and giving just as highly as spending.

(Opie gets an E for effort for his suggestion, during a recent discussion about giving away gently used toys: “I don’t really like my piggy bank anymore. We can give that to children who don’t have one.”)

Typically Jo uses her giveaway stash for the fundraisers that she participates in at school and child care (and we match whatever she contributes). But after her recent hospital stay(s), I’m going to suggest that we make a donation to one of the charities that helped her, or a similar one that benefits sick kids. On her first night at our local children’s hospital, her bed was made up with a quilt from Project Linus and a teddy bear from the Starlight Children’s Foundation. These small touches really helped an institutional room feel more friendly, and she snuggled up with that quilt every single night.

You know I had to participate in this Blog Blast from Parent Bloggers Network: It benefits Generation Cures, an online community for tweens designed to teach them about altruism and about medicine and science. The site was created by Children’s Hospital Boston.

Yesterday afternoon my kids really wanted to go to the pool. Since I was already feeling peevish and whiny I refused. We actually have a really nice community pool here. It has an enormous shallow end with lots of fountains and sprayers and other fun stuff; it has two water slides, a huge grassy area, a big sand play area, a snack bar, and halfway decent locker rooms. It’s a five-minute walk from our house. Of course, the kids love it (anyway I think that’s a Little Kid Law, to love any and all swimming pools).

But yesterday I just wasn’t up for changing the clothes and slathering the sunscreen and packing the stuff and blah blah. And I especially wasn’t up for the post-pool herding of two children into the showers and back home (where I’d immediately have to move right into Dinner-Books-Bed mode).

So I brought out all my home-based water ammo: Let’s play with the volcano sprinkler! How about you guys can spray each other with hoses! I’ll blow up the little pool! They grudgingly agreed to the little pool. Which I then spent TWO HOURS trying to inflate with a bicycle pump. (Two hours, because I had to keep stopping to a] prevent myself from keeling over and b] check what mischief Opie was up to wandering around the house/yard by himself. Apparently, according to my husband we do have some kind of electric pump but all I could find was its tormentingly empty box.)

Of course the kids lost interest way before the pool was ever inflated. And my arms fell off and now I really don’t look good in a bathing suit even if you do overlook my stretchmarks and smushy belly.

And so the moral of the story is I should have just taken them to the pool that didn’t require inflating, mommy suit and all. Especially after last weekend’s visit to The Waterpark Capital of the WORLD (where people wander all over wearing next to nothing and believe me, some of them need just a little more something), I have come to terms with my tankinis and swim skirts. When I go to the pool, I accessorize my post-kid body with a couple of cute kids and that means a lot.

This post was written for Parent Bloggers Network as part of a sweepstakes sponsored by BOCA.

And no I’m not referring to these upper midwestern climes we now enjoy. Actually, summers here are beautiful, with sunshine and temperatures in the 80s for much of July and August. After winters that go on, and on, and on and on, we enjoy and appreciate our summers and spend as much time outside as we can. Mayberry has a totally kid-pleasing community pool, with a huge shallow end, two water slides, a sandbox, a lawn, and the all-important concession stand. We’re also not above ruining our new grass with a blow-up kiddie pool of our own and even one of these monstrosities (purchased on end-of-season clearance thx). Yep — we are big consumers of the Little Swimmers ’round these parts.

We have fun. But it’s nothing compared to the adventures my husband had when he was a kid. His aunt and uncle had a lake house (a 20-minute drive from their … non-lake house) and he and his brother and cousins would spend every day of every summer there, just generally goofing off and having a good time.

My favorite lake story is this, and it’s totally of the moment because we are currently obsessed with all things Star Wars in this house. (Tip, BTW: Pool noodles make excellent, cheap light sabers.)

Anyway (get to the point young Jedi) one day Jeff and his brother and his brother’s friend Marc found this big piece of styrofoam. They immediately decided that it would make an excellent iceberg and it should go on the lake. The next time they came to the lake they brought every single Star Wars figure they owned — i.e., hundreds — plus a bunch of spacecraft and airplanes. Then they spent an hour painstakingly setting up a huge battle scene on the styrofoam iceberg.

Their masterpiece complete, they floated it onto the water.

You know what happens next, right?

It floated too far out, and Jeff’s mom wouldn’t let them go after it. They threw rocks at it, trying to shift the current to send it back toward their dock. Instead, they ended up breaking it and sending all their guys to an even swifter watery death. Some clung to the edge for awhile, but with no rescue crew in sight eventually they succumbed to the inevitable drowning.

For the rest of that summer and all the next, Jeff and Mike and Marc hoped against hope that Luke or Han or Lando would wash up on shore and be returned to them. It never happened, but the story lives on.

Tell your summer story for this weekend’s blog blast. May the Force be with you.