Friday, February 27, 2009

1 day- 1 accident

I've been all potty talk recently. Excuse me.

Today was a great day as far as potty training goes. Adelaide hit her record so far-- peed 5 times and pooped once on the potty. It was an almost perfect day but there was on accident (a poopy one at that) during her "nap." I say "nap" because she never actually slept. She's been having a hard time sleeping during this potty training process. She doesn't want to poop or pee in the bed; I even hear her chanting it sometime when she's supposed to be sleeping. She's just not happy in her diaper anymore and she doesn't want to have an accident. She's been stripping herself completely and taking her diaper or training pants off at every nap. I'm sort of at a loss on how to just get her to chill and sleep.

I also don't trust her half the time when she says she has to go potty especially when she says she has to potty during something she doesn't like. I had already gone up once during her "nap" to bring her to the potty because I heard her asking to go, but she just sat there and wanted me to read to her. It's was a scam. So I assumed she was just crying wolf the second time she said she needed to go. I paid for that later obviously.

Tomorrow we're going to CBS, community bible study, in the morning so I don't anticipate quite as good of a day, but we'll see. She could surprise me.

Thursday, February 26, 2009

Potty Training Update

Since my last post, we've continued to work on potty training. I don't know what it was but something clicked in Adelaide and she really wants to use the potty all the time. Sometimes she says she has to go and doesn't do anything or just "beeps" as she calls it. Some days she is definitely more interested than others, but she so far has 19 stickers on her potty chart. That's over the course of a week. Considering we didn't stop life and stay at home all day and considering we may have forgotten some stickers like for when we were away from home, I'm super excited.

Yesterday she peed 4 times on the potty total-- 2 times when we were out and about-- and woke up from her nap clean and dry. When she woke up she said she had to go to the potty so I ran upstairs. She had already taken her training pants off so I thought she'd already done it, but felt around and everything felt dry. I rushed her into the bathroom and as soon as she sat down she peed alot. Awesome.

So far today she has peed in the potty 3 times and pooped once and has remained clean and dry so far. She is in bed now so we'll see if she can once again make it through a nap without an accident. I've been hoping she'd be potty trained before her brother comes and hopefully she'll be good at it by his May 19 due date. If things keep progressing like they have been, I think he won't have to share his cloth diapers with her which would save alot of money not to mention alot of headache.

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

An Unexpected Surprise

Today when Adelaide woke up she said, "I want to wear panties." She went over to her dresser and picked out the pair she wanted to wear. I didn't really feel up to cleaning up pee and poo all day so I wasn't that enthusiastic but I went with it. I told her we need to pick out a "potty dress" too-- a special dress that would make it easy to get her panties on and off all day. She helped pick out a dress with me. Then we set to work. I got out all her prizes-- gummi bears, stickers, and lemonheads. We also did the whole process with her dolly to remind her what we'd do. We started setting the timer for 30 minutes and I thought I'd continue it throughout the day. I'd put on her the potty every time the timer went off or if she asked to sit on it herself.

When the timer went off the first time, we headed into the bathroom pausing breakfast. We read all of Curious George but didn't see any progress. So we went back to eating. Almost as soon as we sat back down and got the bib on and everything, she said, "I have to go pee pee." I was not impressed. I thought for sure we'd go back to the potty only to have nothing happen, but no. As soon as she sat down again she started peeing. She was so pumped and so was I.

About 30 minutes later, she told me, "I need to poopoo." I once again was not confident it would happen but brought her in. About 5 minutes later, she had successfully pooped and peed. I was super encouraged. We sat on the potty several more times in the morning with nothing else other than a few drops of pee. We celebrated nonetheless.

She remained "clean and dry" all the way through lunch. So it was from about 8am to 1:30pm with no accidents. At nap I put a diaper on her and told her we used diapers at naps. About 10 minutes in to her naptime, I heard her saying "I need to go potty." I didn't respond right away but she started crying after a few minutes. Sure enough, I went up there and she had just peed. She was pretty upset that she peed in her diaper.

I'm so excited about our progress and that she is wanting to do most of this all on her own. We'll see how the rest of the day goes. I'm keeping my expectations low, but know that she now seems to actually be capable of holding her pee successfully and knowing when she needs to go.

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Zoos Galore

(this picture cracks me up.)

We've got to go to the zoo twice in the past month. First it was to the Austin zoo with my dad and Rocky. Then it was to the San Antonio zoo with our friends the Ronks who happen to have sweet annual passes that got us in for free! Both times were so fun.

Adelaide was obsessed with the tortoises. She got so excited any time they moved. I don't know how many times she said, "He moved his head." Wow, kid. There are lions around the corner.

The petting zoo was still one of her favorite parts. He once again (like our trip almost a year before) did not hesitate to feed the goats or deer.

I think Adelaide's favorite part of the San Antonio zoo was having tons of her friends with her. Climbing on everything was a theme of the trip.

More climbing.

We didn't have change to get food for the goats at the San Antonio zoo so Adelaide had to settle for brushing them instead. Settle? No. She loved brushing their hair.

And hugging them.

There was one animal Adelaide was afraid of however-- the hippopotamus. She didn't want to go near it. She came up to me explaining why, "it's under water and big mouth!" I wish I could have captured her body language to show his big mouth. Now when I'm brushing her teeth at night I ask her to open her mouth like a hippopotamus. I get way better results than when I asked for an alligator mouth.

Sunday, February 15, 2009

It's Mom to You Kid

A couple of mornings ago, I woke up to Adelaide yelling "Sunee, Sunee, Sunee. . . get me out" instead of our typical "Mommy and Daddy. . ."

Friday, February 13, 2009

Dancing

I walked around the corner as I was making lunch and saw this.

She had pushed the ottoman over to the TV, had climbed on it, was dancing, and was watching her reflection in the TV. Cuteness. ABBA brings out the best in all of us doesn't it?


Sweet Deals

I've been feeling the need to nest recently but feel like I really can't. Baby Boy Conly will be in our room for the first few weeks at first of course, but his nursery isn't really going to be a nursery even when he does make the move. He's just going to be in the guest room and we won't even get his crib until probably after he's born (we're getting a hand me down from Rocky's parents). Adelaide's room is by no means totally decked out, but I did decorate some before she arrived. I put clothes in drawers, I put books on shelves, etc. Since I can't do any of that, my current way of nesting is buying little things here and there for the little guy. So today when Rocky wanted to go to Goodwill to look for some sweet threads for the Second Chance Prom we're going to tomorrow night, I checked out stuff for our little guy. The Goodwill by our house is super awesome. It's pretty well organized and I've always found really cute stuff. I got tons of stuff today for baby and for Adelaide, most of it name brand (Janie and Jack, Gymboree, Gap, etc.) and it was all $1.59 each. I put back about half of the stuff I orginally picked out, not because it wasn't cute or a good deal but because I had to draw the line somewhere. Anyway, I felt very accomplished today and I can't wait to "nest" some more and put all the clothes away somewhere.

Jumping with Both Feet and Other Things our almost Two Year Old Does

(like wear coffee filters as hats)

Most of Adelaide's developments these days are seen in what she says or learns. A few weeks ago though Adelaide started a new physical ability-- jumping! For the longest time her jumps or hops were pretty pathetic, not that they are Michael Jordan quality now, but she can jump with both feet off the ground. She is so proud of herself; she likes to show off her skills to anyone that will watch.

Another new development is that we've entered the "why" phase. Adelaide asks why or 'cause why to almost anything I tell her. I didn't expect it quite so early and after a few answers down the list I'm already wanting to say, "because I said so."

Discipline has been going really well for the most part. The corner (which is essentially time out) has been really effective. Sometimes Adelaide will even say, "I need to go to the corner" and will go on her own. It seems like it wouldn't be doing any good if she's so willing to go, but her attitude has generally done a 180 by the time she's done with her minute or two of silence. It's like she's needs a quick break to refocus or something. I have to say it's pretty darn cute to see such a little girl with her face buried in the corner standing still for that long.

When we're all done with the corner I ask her to come to me, tell me she's sorry (if her action warrants it), and explain to her what happened. We leave with her saying, "I will obey." The majority of the time when we're having our little talk, I ask Adelaide to look at me or look in my eyes. Well, Adelaide has definitely picked up on that part. When she is really wanting our attention, sometimes she'll physically grab our faces and pull them to look at her or she'll actually say, "look at my eyes." It's pretty funny.

Adelaide isn't always so compliant of course. The other day when we went to the San Antonio zoo with some friends is an example. We were leaving the petting zoo and all the kiddos were excited to wash their hands. I helped Adelaide wash hers and asked her to climb in her stroller. She told me she needed to wash her hands again. I told her they were already clean and that she needed to listen to mommy. She instantly bent down and wiped her clean hands in the mud, held them up, and said "hands dirty now." She did get to wash her hands again but shocked me with her defiance.

Adelaide's memory is off the charts. The other day I told her we were going to the zoo the next morning, and first thing she said when she woke up was that she wanted to bring a teddy bear to the zoo with her. Today we bought a travel booster from Goodwill and when I set it up for her lunch, Adelaide said "just like Seth." She was perfectly right. Her friend Seth has a booster that's identical.

"Just like" is something we're hearing a ton these days along with "same as," "both same," etc. She is making lots of connections and comparisions. She'll compare color, sizes, types of things, whatever. It's kind of cool. The other night at dinner I had the hardest time figuring out what she was asking for. As I was cutting up her banana, she kept saying what I thought was "like wheel." It didn't really make sense as I was putting it on her tray. She became even more persistent so I really tried to figure it out. Then it hit me. I asked her, "do you want mom to cut it like a wheel?" She said, "yes." So I cut the banana into circular segments and she was as happy as she could be.

I mentioned that Adelaide has her ABCs memorized, well at the beginning of last month it finally hit her one day that ABCs are everywhere. They aren't just for fridge phonics. We were driving around and she said, "Car has ABCs on it." Then she started noticing them on signs, her stuffed animals, everywhere. Connections. Awesome.

A little conversation can go a long way with our kiddo. If we prep her for something, she generally does really well. Now when we leave somewhere, sometimes if I don't tell Adelaide what's going on, she'll say "don't leave me, momma." Really? Have we done that?

Adelaide is quite good at getting herself dressed. She can usually take her shoes and socks on and off and pull on her pants. What she's even better at is getting naked. There have been naptimes and bedtimes now where we've gone in to find Adelaide completely stripped. It doesn't matter if it's a full footed sleeper with snaps and zippers or buttons or if it is two separates. She can break out. One day I came into her room and upon entering she said, "I naked momma and I cold too." I guess so. We've been putting sleepers on backwards to remedy the issue. I don't want her to be cold, but I really don't want to have to change the sheets all the time.

Anyway, that's a little bit about our quirky kid. She has a very fun and strong personality already. Rocky said she even borders on bossy at times. It's such a fun age to start and see more of who she is.

Tuesday, February 03, 2009

25 weeks!

I'm already tending to neglect posting anything about our little boy, but I went in today for the 25 week appointment. He seems to be doing quite well and is super active. The doctor kept commenting on his strength while we were listening to his heartbeat. He seemed determined to hit or kick the doppler thing they use to listen. Adelaide was an active kiddo as well but I don't remember her being quite so strong at this point.

I'm measuring right on target so the due date is still around May 19. I'm entering the third trimester next week! Things were moving along so slowly but now it's finally hitting me that we'll having another kiddo very soon. Next visit is in 3 weeks. It's the one where I get to drink the yummy orange drink and wait for an hour to see if I've got gestational diabetes. I don't think there's much to worry about there though.