Out of the House, and potty training

Earlier last week, we discovered that Bryce was (unwillingly) raising spiders in his room. Handily, Courtney's boyfriend, Mauricio, was here the night Bryce found the spider nest. Mauricio raises snakes in his spare time; I think he enjoyed tearing down the web and killing over 50 spiders. But with Bryce sleeping on the chair-and-a-half, I called the property manager who promised this could be fixed more quickly than the oven (which was finally fixed on, if I didn't mention, after over two months without a working oven).

The exterminator was scheduled for Friday morning. Courtney, Bryce and I prepared his room. The instructions said to move all the furniture 2-3 feet from the room. Even after removing some of Bryce's things (his computer chair and clothes hamper), it wasn't possible to get everything that far from the walls. His room is small! But we did the best we could:



Bryce was at school, but Courtney, Kai and I had to be out of the house for at least four hours following the treatment. Did I mention that Courtney has been potty training Kai this week? It had gone well, but Courtney rarely left the house. As we planned our day, I mentioned that she shouldn't forget Kai's potty. She said that she had been tempted to do that, but worried it was weird. I don't think anyone with a toddler and a large vehicle would find this unusual. For those driving past us in the parking garage like this:



Well...who can say what they were thinking. We did try to keep it classy by giving Kai a little added privacy this way:



Kai did great! We were out of the house for closer to seven hours and she didn't have a single accident. There was only one false rush to find a bathroom. Unfortunately, we were at the Container Store at the time and their bathroom was out of service. Courtney and Kai ran down the street to the nearest restaurant, which was still closed. But a prepping chef let them in and unlocked the bathroom for her. Kai wouldn't actually go on the "big potty", but Courtney didn't tell the helpful man that part of the story.

We wasted over an hour at the Container Store (not sure how that happened) before our appointments at the Apple Store. Courtney got her phone replaced, but my technician neither fixed nor replaced mine. (Craig and I have appointments today to try again.) We stopped at a mall to make some returns, got lunch, and went to IKEA! I haven't been before. The store is enormous. We were looking for something for Courtney, but instead ended up with this:



It was a long day, but Kai did wonderful. At least until we got home, but that's another unfortunate story.