Mission completion!

I submitted my thesis to my advisor last night (Friday night).

Technically it was 2:00 am on Saturday morning (just as the Alamo was closing)). 

Technically I had until Monday, but Andrew encouraged me to finish up sooner so that I wouldn't have to worry about it all weekend. And that was probably a smart move because it did feel nice to wake up this morning knowing that I didn't need to touch it.

Now, I'll still have to make edits on it (and I'm not completely looking forward to that process), but for right now all I can do is sit tight.

My kids were all excited for "when I'm done with my thesis" because I've been saying that for so long, putting off all the things I couldn't do before because I had to work on my thesis. 

Turns out the first thing on my list of things to do "when I'm done with my thesis" was to make the kids help me deep clean the bathrooms and organize the storage room, so they were all like, "Ugh, can't you go work on your thesis some more instead?"

But too bad for them—I already submitted it! We cleaned those bathrooms better than they've been cleaned in weeks (months?) and put away things in the storage room that had just been chucked in there for weeks (months?). 

And—because I'm apparently a glutton for punishment—I started potty training Phoebe today as well.

Here's the thing:

Yesterday (when I was working on my thesis), she came upstairs and started trying to take off her diaper and asking if she could sit on the potty. So, I told her she could. She sat on the potty and, as far as I could tell, had done nothing.

There was no pee in there, and she was bored, so I told her she could go. 

She stood up, took two steps away from the potty, and a big log of poop fell *plop* onto the floor.

"Oh!" I said. "Do you need to do poopies!? Let's do poopies!"

So I sat her back on the potty (while I cleaned up that big ol' log from the floor) and she proceeded to make her first ever poopy on the potty. I was very excited about this because this was her first poopy on the potty. She's pretty good about going pee on the potty (at least first thing in the morning, and right after she gets up from her nap), but I had never succeeded in coaxing her to poop on the potty. 

But we've talked about it a lot. How uncomfortable it is to have poop in your diaper and how much better it would be if she would just...be proactive about things and do it on the toilet.

So, that happened yesterday.

Today she woke up and went pee in her potty. And then she went grocery shopping with Andrew...and came home dry...and in desperate need of a nap (because she was a monster last night and was up from 2 to 5 or so). I tried to get her to go potty before her nap, but she just could not even.

She stayed dry during her nap, and went potty when she woke up.

So I put her in underwear. And she didn't have a real accident until almost bedtime!

She still managed to go through three pairs of underwear:

1) She got wet from the outside in when she played at the neighbour's water table, which doesn't really count as an accident at all, but did require a change.
2) She had a similar poop experience to yesterday's, but didn't tell anyone and just tried to pull down her own undies to use the potty. That was difficult...so she wasn't quite quick enough and...*plop*...more poop on the floor (and a skid in her underwear). But she got her pee in the potty!

3) A full blown pee in her underwear...while Zoë was giving her a wild piggyback ride around the house (Zoë was not pleased when I explained to her why her back was warm and wet; Zoë had to change her pyjamas, which she was annoyed about because she was in coordinated pyjamas and so had to change her shirt and her pants so she could still be coordinated, even though only her shirt was soiled).

Really, that's not bad for day number one of potty training!

Aside from potty training Phoebe and making sure the bathrooms were decently clean, I also spent the evening watching a movie from start to finish with my big kids—something I haven't done in a long time (because I was always sneaking away to get some writing done)! 

I've had the music from Calamity Jane stuck in my head since driving through South Dakota, so that's what we watched. Rachel worked on her crochet project (she's a solid month behind), and Miriam and I worked on untangling the yarn for her knitting project (because holy moly she had that yarn in a mess—it took us the whole length of the movie (1.5 hours) and then some to work it all out). Benjamin just sat and enjoyed. 

Phoebe went to bed super easily (which I'm sure will bite us later in the night, considering we're still up), Alexander did as well (but that's par for the course for him), and Zoë was also sent to bed (which she was a little bit angry about, but considering she woke up at 5:00 in the morning...she was due for some sleep). 

And that's how I spent my first day of not having to work on my thesis!

(Though I have a couple of other papers that I need to edit and submit to journals...and an entire book to edit (not mine—my friend Laurie's book), but I figured all that stuff could wait for a day or two while I took a much needed breather). 

(And for those of you saying, "Breather?! You just took a three-week vacation!" Wrong! I just took a three-week trip; it was not a vacation. Andrew was still working the whole way across the country (furiously answering emails at every pit stop), and I was still working the whole way across the country (feverishly writing in dark hotel corners and while balancing the laptop on my lap while on the road), and even Reid was still working every morning we were in Utah. It was a trip...and it was lovely...and fun...but very tiring...and on "borrowed" time since we had to be working to keep/get caught up every spare minute we could find, so yes—a breather!)

A view of my computer...and the road ahead of us...in the middle of the night