Did I really spend my Sunday evening writing this?

Well everyone, yet another week has passed and the Welling family remains alive and kicking. Here's the update for the previous week.

Um...uh...

Okay, nothing happened to us last week. Let's be honest here: our life is pretty mundane and ever-so-uneventful. Oh, we might have the occasional happenstance of unordinary when Aaron has to fly out of town for work and leaves Kim with the kids as she tries to cope with being a single parent for a few days. I forgot that happened this week. Okay, here comes the elaboration.

Wednesday Aaron left for Moline, Illinois to conduct a workshop with a client. He did a very nice job and made it home in one piece on Friday evening. While in Moline, he got to stop at the John Deere gift shop and bought his kids souvenirs: toy tractors for Everett and Daniel, a plush pig wearing a John Deere T-shirt for Madeline, and a T-shirt for Gabriela that says "I Love John Deere" with a tractor on it. She put it on immediately right after she got it. What a great kid.

Oh, here's another exciting front. Everett is still not potty-trained. Okay, that's really not the exciting part. The exciting part is our attempt at helping him become potty-trained. Now, I would like to warn the squeamish that the next paragraph may not be the most enjoyable or even most appropriate to read, especially if the details of fecal matter are not something you're particularly interested in, but unfortunately the state of our children's fecal matter is one of the most memorable things to happen this week, so I'm writing about it. Interesting? Doubtful. Stupid? Probably. Revolting? Most definitely. So skip it if you can't handle it. Don't say I didn't warn you.

So, Everett is still working on the potty training. He's got #1 down, although he still has some accidents which revolve around excuses like: "somebody was in the bathroom", or "I was too tired to get up" or "My pants were cold and I wanted to warm them up". Nevertheless, he can do #1. It's #2 that is causing the problems. The biggest reason for this is that Everett has what Kim likes to call "the clay poop". Now most of you might be asking, What is the clay poop? I'm now asking Kim to dictate while I type. She knows best anyways, since I absolutely refuse to change Everett's diaper anymore because, let's face it, I'm a pansy when it comes to changing poop diapers and I start to get the dry heaves when they smell really bad. These are Kim's words: "The 'clay poop' is poop that sticks to your bum and does not come off, so you have to shake your bum to get the poop to come off. That's the stuff that comes off. The rest of it just sticks there and won't come off. I can't believe you're writing this, Aaron." Her words, not mine. Anyhow, since the feces are fickle and most uncooperative, Kim's mom's dietitian's advice (can we get more convoluted) was to add probiotics to Everett's diet. The addition of the probiotics is supposed to balance Everett's bowels and make normally formed turds that should be easier to defecate and not linger from stickiness. We're hopeful that this will be the case and that we will turn a big corner in the potty-training. I'm sure you're all very excited to keep abreast on this front, so we'll you updated on how everything comes out.

Saturday was exciting for us because, after 8 months of living in our new home, Aaron finally dedicated some time to do some of the home improvement things that he has been successfully neglecting. We would like to report that the trim and the final shelf have been added to the bathroom closet. We are hoping to paint the inside and put on the baseboard next week and then add actual closet doors. Amazing, I know. Once this project has been completed, we will be focusing on the kitchen pantry and then the laundry closet. Given past dedication, we will probably have all that finished in the next 12 years.

Since it is becoming standard fare for the blog, I'll give a movie review. We borrowed a video from our friends this week: The Illusionist. I wasn't sure if I was going to like this movie at all, because it came out the same time as The Prestige and I couldn't imagine how it could even possibly compare with The Prestige because that movie just plain rocked. I loved it! And it had David Bowie in it, which was extra cool. Can't you totally see David Bowie, Hugh Jackman, and Christian Bale singing the soundtrack from Newsies during the breaks? Boy, would I have loved being a fly on that wall. Anyway, I was quite surprised that I liked the Illusionist. It was a good plot line and although I had some of the ending figured out before the end, I didn't have it all figured out, which is always an added benefit for me. My only problem was everybody and their accents. It takes place in Austria, but none of the actors really talked to each other beforehand as to what kind of accents they should use. I couldn't tell if they were supposed to have a German, English, or Swahili accent. That kind of annoyed me. But other than that, good show. PG-13 because of some gratuitous sensuality which we happily skipped over.

Last, but certainly not least, we got a call this morning before church. I looked at the caller ID and it said wellingra, which I knew could only mean one thing: Mom and Dad had figured out how to use Skype and were calling us from Kazakhstan. I talked to Mom for about 15 minutes and they said they were doing well, that the weather was just at -1 degrees today and, if it stayed that warm, they were going to try and get out of their apartment to see a little more of Astana. She said that it had taken them forever to figure out how to use their laptop and hook it up to their DSL connection. I reminded Mom it had only been 3 weeks and, considering their age and lack of tech-savvy that I thought they were doing a bang-up job between the two of them. They get to go to Sofia, Bulgaria in April for a humanitarian conference. I told Mom I was very jealous and that by the time they come home, they'll probably have more European stamps in their passports than I do. I'm very jealous and excited for them.

I believe that's it for the week. Keep it really real.