Alli before her first day of day care ("school")

Potty Training Attempt #1

Well, we weren't really planning on potty training Alli because she didn't seem ready, but the opportunity presented itself so we figured "why not".

If you take Alli to the toilet, she will go - even if you ask her if she has to and she says "no", she will typically manage to get something out.

So yesterday I went to pick her up at Marcie's and we wound up staying and swimming with all the kids. When we got out of the pool, Marcie said "oh yea, I forgot to tell you that I was running low on diapers, so now I don't have any." Well, there was nothing we could do except put her in big-girl panties, so we grabbed a pair of Reegan's (4T - a bit big for Alli) and told her "you have to go potty on the toilet now - you have big girl underwear on." We assumed this would work, plus we were planning on setting her on the toilet every 1/2 hour or so.

5 minutes after getting the underpants on, she pooped in them. Ugh. Okay, so I took her to the bathroom, cleaned her up, set her on the toilet (nothing came out), and got another pair of Reegan's underwear. "Alli, if you have to go potty, you need to tell Mommy or Marcie and we'll help you sit on the toilet."

10 minutes after that incident: "MOMMY!!! AHHHHHHHH". "Alli - your pants are wet..." Ugh. So, we cleaned up mess #2, sat Alli on the toilet again (and again, nothing came out), and grabbed yet another pair of Reegan's underwear.

20 minutes into dinner: "MOMMY - OUT!!!" "Alli - you went potty while you were eating??? Ugh..." By this time, Reegan was protesting us using her underwear and decided that what Alli needed was a pair of Gage's underwear. I surely didn't mind if Alli wore boys underwear, but Marcie said no and Reegan had to give up yet another pair...


15 minutes later, we went home. The first thing I did was put her in a diaper. :)



Today we decided we would just see if it was a fluke last night...

Alli has a little training toilet at our house that Marcie gave us and Alli likes to use (cause she can do it herself). This morning we dressed her in big girl underwear and before we left the house, I told her we had to go potty. She told me to stay in the hallway. She went to the bathroom, closed the door, and wanted to do it all herself. Well, she needed help pulling down the underwear so she finally let me in to help, and then shoo'd me out. She went potty in the little toilet and even picked up the little toilet and dumped the pee into the big toilet. Then I helped her get some TP and we finished the process. What a big girl!!! Surely last night was just a fluke...

Verdict today from Marcie? Alli wet her underwear twice in a 30 minute period! And then she wet a 3rd pair while standing in the garage, and instead of wanting to be changed, she wanted to ride a bike.

We're going back to pull-up diapers for a little while....

I Go Potty Mommy

Lately Alli has been going potty on the toilet more and more. Typically nothing comes out, but I never refuse her when she asks to go.

Yesterday I just sat her on the toilet a few times and 3 times for that day something came out. Hooray!!!

Tonight we were out to dinner and I went to the bathroom. When I came back she said "I go potty mommy" so I turned around and took her into the bathroom. I put her on the toilet and low and behold - she went! I was SOOOO excited!

Gonna go out and buy more pull-ups!!! :D

I'm Two!!!

Such a big girl. She turned two and had a birthday part at the McCormick-Stillman Train Park. We had lots of friends show up and all the kids (and adults) seemed to have lots of fun.

Our theme was Elmo.

Alli ate her entire cupcake (vanilla, with whipped frosting).

Things she is doing:
- Echoing *everything* we say!
- Talking in sentences
- Pretend play
- Doing puzzles
- Sorting (although I can't tell if it's by color or shape)


And one thing that I'm noticing is if I tell her "5 minutes and then we have to go to bed" or whatever we have to do, it avoids huge fights and tantrums. She just stops what she's doing and says "okay Mommy".

2-year doctor's visit not scheduled yet, so weight/height stats will be coming later, but based on our scale, she is tipping a huge 22 lbs. :D

No More Bottles!

Last weekend we took a trip to Houston for my oldest nephew's confirmation. In all the hustle and bustle of packing and trying to get out the door, we left Alli's bottles of milk in the fridge. So, we decided it must be the weekend we break her of bottles. I've suggested a few times in the past that she drink her milk from a cup, but it never has worked - she always chooses to skip milk and I was never ready for her to stop her milk intake. Now however, she's almost 2 and it doesn't seem like that big of a deal. So hence the decision to use this mistake as our opportunity to break the bottles.

It was a little struggle in Houston, but she did pretty good. When she asked for milk, I told her she could have it in a cup because we didn't have any bottles. She always chose water instead. Coming home was a different story. I ran into the house before we unloaded her and I hid every bottle we had in the house. When she asked for milk and I told her it had to be in a cup. She started digging through the drawers to find a bottle. It is now the weekend after Houston and she is rarely asking for milk, but she also doesn't raise quite the fuss when I tell her it has to be in a cup, she just moves on to water.

Success!! Now if she'll only start drinking her milk again...

My Best Friend

Ovajita. No doubt. That little lamb goes everywhere with Alli now. We try to keep her at home as much as possible, but sometimes she rides in the car to our destination. Alli feeds her (and then eats the food herself), she helps her color. Tells Ovajita when it's Jita's turn and when it's Alli's turn. It's quite cute, and we are glad to see her imagination start to blossom.

Swimming

Today we decided it was time to heat up the hot tub and go swimming. After all, the hot tub is our "kiddie pool". So we did. And we took Alli in expecting to go over quickly all the things she could do at least year's end and then play. But....that didn't really happen. She didn't like going under water. She didn't like the water in her ears (or her ears hurt - hard to figure out). But every time she went under, she came up and put her hands over her ears. Huh. That was odd. She wouldn't float on her back either. And so she eventually go to the point where she just wanted to sit on the top-most step and splash the water. Well, okay, if that's the way it's gonna be....

Daddy and I kept trying, slowly. But we didn't want to push her. So we stayed in the hot tub for about an hour - throwing the ball for Bagheera who is currently the only one in the family brave enough to face the cold water in the swimming pool. (He's also not allowed in the hot tub, so that probably has something to do with it.) By the end of the hour, Alli was comfortable enough to walk along the entire outter seat of the pool, and even kneel down until her mouth went under water. We figured that was good enough, and we also realized that we had better take her "swimming" every weekend now, and possibly once a month through winter so she doesn't lose so much between seasons.

March is Eventful!

Just wanted to note a couple of things...

Last weekend, we were in the ER for Croup again. Ugh. Alli was fine - no sign of anything and then woke up at 11pm wheezing and coughing. The wheezing was bad so off we went to the ER. It won us a 3.5 hour stay (because they wanted to monitor her until the steroids kicked in). Boy, we knew when that was because she had the wonderful reaction of GETTING ENERGY from them! Yes, a bouncing baby at 4am. Yikes. When we got home, she just wanted to play with all her toys. She finally dozed off at about 6:30am, but then woke up promptly by 8. Needless to say, the whole family was a bit out of sorts the next day. She's doing fine now - a lingering cough but nothing much else.

And today was hectic, not because of Alli, but because of Bagheera. Earlier this morning Alli and I went outside. We were in and out of the house and garage, no biggie. So then I decide we should have a snack and go to the park before I drop her off at Marcie's. So she sits down and eats some oranges and I realize there is no dog. So I go looking for Bagheera and I found he had inadvertently got locked in the garage. Apparently, he decided that this was his golden opportunity to EAT THE DIAPERS IN THE POOP trashcan that we keep in the garage so Alli's room doesn't stink. There were diaper remnants, dirty wipes, and poop smeared all over the garage. I actually started gagging as I was trying to clean it up. Needless to say, we didn't make it to the park.

After I dropped Alli off, I came home and decided the whole house smelled like poop so I bathed the dog, opened all thewindows, and lit a bunch of candles.

Shape Sorter

This weekend, Alli was sick with Croup, as well as some allergies (I think). Anyway, we had a lot of indoor play, so she was pulling out toys from her closet that she hasn't seen in a while. One of the toys she pulled out was a Tupperware Shape Sorter. You know the one - it's a ball where half of it is red and half is blue and you pull it apart to get the yellow shapes out of it, and then you have to put them in the right holes to get them back. You remember? We all had them when we were kids... Anyway, she pulled it out and asked for help. So I pulled the halves apart to get the pieces out, and then we put them back together. I would show her the hole for the shape she grabbed and she would put it in. The next day, she saw it on the floor and asked for help again, so I dumped the shapes for her, but I was putting laundry away so I figured I would help her further when I was done. To my surprise, she had 5 shapes already in the ball by the time I returned to her. And now, one day later and only about 2 additional tries at the toy, she can do them all herself except for the trapezoid and the pie shape. For some reason, she can't figure out how to hold the shape to get it in the hole (maybe because these are the only asymmetrical shapes). I was pretty impressed!

February Stuff

I have decided that maybe a recap of the month's events would be a good thing to put on the blog. Let's see if I can keep that going for a while…

So February events for Alli:

We went sledding in Forest Lakes over the weekend of Feb. 12-14. There was a *ton* of snow! We were so excited to take her down the hill, after all, she loves going fast in the wagon and every other thing she does. But the snow gave her a different want. OUT! She wanted nothing to do with the snow. She *hated* it. Don't set her down in it. Don't put her hand near it. Don't make her sit on a sled on it. Ugh. What a bummer. By the end of our two days of snow play, we got her to go down the hill with us a couple of times (about 10 feet of total travel distance each time) and she cried the entire time down every trip! We also made her walk in the snow, which she cried the whole time as well. Maybe next year she will see the fun of playing in snow…

The one thing I've noticed as a big change for her is she's starting to wake up happy. Instead of crying to get us to grab her, she's finally yelling "MOMMY". We enjoy that much better. And every now and then she just stays in her room quietly and we realize she's awake because Bagheera wanders in and we hear her talking to him. :) That is an *extra special* morning.

We have had to learn a lot about discipline lately. She definitely is hitting the 2's and wants her independence. There are choices we don't agree with though and since she doesn't seem to listen to reason (yet), we have to discipline. We do try to tell her why - she's a smart kid, so at some point she's going to understand it.

She plays several different video games on her iPhone (daddy's old phone). "Itsy Bitsy Spider", "Wheels on the Bus", "Hatch", "Peekaboo Barn" and "ABC Animals". But now we don't start the games for her, we just hand her the phone and she knows how to turn it on, get into the interface, and pick the game of her choice. Yikes!!

Alli is also quite the parrot. And now that she's reaching 2, we hear "no" a lot more. It's really cute though. You say something like "Alli, do you want to kiss Bagheera?" And she'll say "No, no kiss Bagheera". It's always "No, no" whatever you said. I've had her say some ridiculous things, so I know she doesn't mean "no", she's just reciting. It does get a little trying though if we are trying to figure out what she wants!

Oh, one other thing that I would love to document. Marcie's youngest is a year older than Alli. His name is Gage. The interaction between the two of them is just adorable. Gage answers the door in the morning when Alli arrives and he is always very excited. Likewise, Alli is always excited to see Gage. It's so cute to watch them talk to each other in the morning. The other day, Alli was at home playing with a phone. Her standard phrase when she plays is "Hello? Hi. Blah, blah, blah. Ok, bye." Clearly my conversations must take that pattern. But then she threw in a new one… "Hello? Hi Gage. Blah, blah, blah. Bye". Awwwww, she's calling Gage!! :D

And as for the toilet thing? Yea, that was a fad. She doesn't even want to sit on the toilet anymore. Oh well. When she's ready...