Here are the rules for this competition:

1. Write great articles between now and at the end of Mother's day (May 10, 2009).  The articles do not need to be Mother's Day related, but they do need to be parenting related (See RachelCook's Minti's Editorial Guidelines advice).

2.The articles must recieve at least 10 votes to be considered.
 
(Should there be multiple articles that have the same score, the article with the most votes will win. If the articles have the same scores and the same amount of votes, then the Minti Team will have to chose the winners.)

3. The top 3 rated articles win m$10,000!!!!

4. Write multiple articles to boost your chance of winning.

5. Articles must adhere to the ToS and CoH and free of copyright issues.

Good luck!

-Minti Team

Armed with 2 potty chairs, pull up diapers and lots of big girl undies, I've started the twins' journey to potty training 2 days ago. On Day 1 I used big girl undies and say them on the chair for as long as they were willing (which wasn't that long). So they went around on their undies and made a few puddles. They definitely didn't like being wet. Thing 2 would freeze on her track and say, "eww. Poo poo." and point at the pee. By the end of the day, it was a bit frustrating to clean up the puddles so I decided to just use the pull-up diapers until they got the idea of the potty chair.

Day 2 was a vast improvement in that they sat on the potty longer, but still no success. Thing 1 was definitely harder to keep on the chair though. On Day 3, I decided to concentrate on Thing 2 instead. I sat her down and she willingly stayed sitted for about longer than 5 minutes but she doesn't do anything. And a few minutes after putting her pull-up back on, she does her pee pee. Oi!

We just need one "hit" and I am confident Thing 2 will be on her way to going back to using big girl undies for the rest of her training.

I urge everyone who are directly involved to keep their conflicts and disputes private so that they don't draw any on-lookers in and make the issues bigger than they really have to be. As for everyone else, I suggest leaving dispute blogs alone so they are not kept at the top of the activity list. If you want a simple nudge to end the conflict, a private message reminding those directly involved to keep their discussions private would suffice.

Minti Conflict Resolution:

1. Keep private via Minti mail or private group.
2. Try to resolve the issue among the parties that are directly involved.
3. If the issue is not laid to rest, or gets out of hand and spills to the public areas of Minti, I will have to intervene. (Please don't let it get to this point as there is only a few things I can do to intervene and they are not pleasant - i.e. warnings, account time-out and account deletion (after repeated warnings).

Regards,
Izzy
Minti Community Admin

Dear Minti,

Please bear with me. I am very busy so I am not up to date with Minti goings-on and I am behind. We have been living with my in-laws for two weeks. During these two weeks, we are remodeling their family room, which will be ours to use along with the basement which is our current bedroom (it's tough to sleep with all the kids and us in one room!). The remodeling has so far included ripping up the shaggy carpet, washing, sanding the walls, priming the walls and now painting. All these are one mainly by my husband and I at night. My in-laws work and so we can't do work during the day....we're simply too busy watching the kids in a home that is just too interesting with lots of breakables and cabinets full of breakable things. Then on Sunday night I make the 3 1/2 hour drive (which I cut down to 3 hrs by speeding) up to our house and more cleaning there by myself to get it ready to sell, hopefully by the end of April. I stay there for 1 day, 2 nights (to also go to my knee physical therapy) and then I drive back here to the in-laws. It is very tiring.

But 2 days ago, my physical therapist has released me. Yay! Though not completely. I still need to do excercises but I will see if I can do it alone. In about 3 weeks I am seeing the sports medicine to possibly get one more cortisone shots and keep doing strengthening exercises.

Anyway, I see your emails... I just haven't been on the computer as much I usually do.

Regards,
Izzy