This post was originally going to be just about potty training, but with being offered a job this week it has taken on two meanings for me.

First the potty training.  Rylee and I started on this journey on February 24th.  At first it was pure hell.  Just ask my mom, I called her and informed her that being a person of no patience, there was no way I was going to be able to do this without a horrible outcome.  She talked me down off the ledge and away we went.

At first Rylee was excited about peeing in the potty, then she got lazy about it.  Then it was good again and so went the initial roller coaster.  After a month of accidents I’ve luckily managed on getting urine smell out of mattress and I watched a friend of Rylee’s for a few days due to some daycare issues for her mom.  I prayed that somehow Kayla’s time with Rylee would have positive potty results.  Well, let me tell you, we should have had Kayla spend time with us a month earlier.  Rylee would sit on her training potty and Kayla would sit on the ‘big’ potty and the two of them would have a great time on day one.  Then Kayla went home.  After she left Rylee informed me that she wanted to pee on the ‘big’ potty.  YAY!!!  That was the end of the training potty. I cleaned it up, put it in a closet and we’ve never looked back.

Yes, Rylee still wears a Pull-Up for her naps and an Overnite diaper to bed at night.  But we’ll take the small victories.  Like the fact that after being at this for only a month she started telling me when she needed to go.  This is just wonderful as it has put an end to many accidents.  Now we still have them, but most of the time I realize that it was my fault because I didn’t make her go before doing ______.  But it’s a learning curve for both of us.

Is she potty trained? Not by any stretch of the imagination.  But she is well on her way.  And after almost two months I’m pretty happy about where we are.

The other light at the end of a much longer tunnel is that after almost exactly a year I got a job offer.  Truth be told, it came not a moment too soon.  Last week was the last week of unemployment for me.  Talk about stress!  We all know that the money you get from unemployment is a big reduction from what your salary was, but anyone who has collected it is more than thankful it’s there.  That said, the money I got from it is money that is needed.  So looking down the barrel of that loaded gun wasn’t any fun for me at all.

I will be starting my new job on April 19th.  I will be working at a small pharmaceutical company in a support role that sounds exactly like what I did at Wyeth for five years.  I really like the company and the people I have met have been very friendly.  I’m looking forward to getting back into the work force for numerous reasons.

Rylee is also excited that Mommy got a job because she knows that it means that she will get to back to ‘school’.  She is ready to spend her time with kids her own age and I know she is ready to learn more than Mommy was able to teach her.  She’s also excited for Brynn to go to ‘school’ too.  I will say that Brynn won’t be nearly as excited as Rylee come the 19th.  She is very attached to me so I’m sure when I drop her off she and I will both be crying as I walk out the door.  But I know that she will stop and by the time Daddy picks her up she will be having fun with her new friends.