A little good a little bad

I'll start with the good: My Jack has potty trained! I decided yesterday that we were going to do this, I knew he was ready and it was just a matter of us not going anywhere and being committed to encouraging him if he needed it, celebrating with him, and leaving him to his own thing! I asked him twice first thing in the morning if he had to go....and he had accidents then I stopped asking and he started going on his own! He was soooo excited pretty well every time yesterday and the kid can pee I'll just say that! LOL At least twice an hour he was going and he did the other duty a few times as well! He wore a diaper to bed, much to his dismay and arguments that "No, no diaper...I'm a big boy now"....but I know that night time is not about control, but about chemicals in his brain actually working and waking him up. My 5 yr old was about 3 or a little over before he started waking up at night to take care of business. So we've done a lot of the potty dance yesterday and today so far has been a success.



Now to the bad......our battalion lost 3 soldiers this weekend and another is seriously injured and on life support at Landstuhl. The memorial service was already this morning over in Iraq and it's this afternoon for all of us in Germany. I didn't know any of the soldiers. Please keep these families in your prayers. One soldier was married with children, another was married to a German national, they hadn't had children. The 3rd soldier was a single soldier, of course his parents are left to grieve.

Chad's hanging in. We chatted this morning already and said he was just glad it was over, they're hard to go through and for him it just brings back memories of close friends lost from our last unit in Kansas. This deployment in about every way has been gentler as far as things happening. For Chad though, he has memories that unless you've been over there and experienced true combat experience, we can't even relate. Many of the soldiers he's with, this is their first deployment to Iraq. One thing we were told the other night at our FRG meeting is that they have councelor's, chaplain, etc over there for the soldiers to talk to. If they were directly impacted (witness) to accidents it's mandatory, for those who didn't it's there for them, but they're not forced. I have my feelings on what should be done and what is done, but we'll wait and see until they're home and how they handle things.