Alli's New Bike

Alli got a big girl bike this weekend because she had no poppy accidents for a whole week. She will be the first to tell you that she got her bike because she poops in the toilet! We are very proud if her. And she kicked butt on the bike!!

Sorry about the bad image quality. Mommy took the picture with her camera phone...

New Years 2011

This year, we went to Mike and Jen Searle's to celebrate New Years. They have 3 sons, the youngest comes into Alli's class at Tutor Time, so all day we kept saying "we are going to Matthew's house tonight". Well, besides the Searle's, there were a whole slew of other families, so we had about 16 kids and about 16 adults. With all the commotion, Alli managed to stay awake til 11:30pm!!! She probably would have made it to midnight if Daddy didn't lay down with her to get her to go to sleep. (Mommy would have passed out herself doing that!)

We left the party around 2am and got ourselves back home in our own cozy beds. Alli did a good job sleeping in til 10:30. Yippee!!! So we had a very slow start on new year's day, but it was soooo nice to sleep in. We decided around 4pm to go out for a burger and call it dinner, so we went to a local restaurant and ordered. Alli wanted to wear underwear all day, but since she made no attempt at going to the toilet, I brought only pull-ups and a change of pants, just in case. And sure enough, she wet them almost as soon as we had ordered. So, I took her to the bathroom and there started the worst temper tantrum I think we've seen. We wound up leaving the restaurant and getting our food to go. We got home and wrestled with the tantrum until she fell asleep crying. She woke up 30 minutes later yelling again and crying and the trantrum continued. Finally, after 2-1/2 hours of this fit, she stopped and made peace with mommy, whose only sin had been bringing a pull-up to the restaurant, and then making the decision to leave the restaurant when we couldn't get her to stop crying. Bad mommy! ;)

So January 2nd officially started potty training again. We set a timer and every 30 minutes it would go off. If she went potty once and couldn't go 30 minutes later, we said it was okay. She did pretty good, except when mommy spent too much time picking up the house and not enough time watching Alli. I happened upon a puddle by the sliding door at one point, not knowing when it was created. Ugh. And then the poop. I'm not sure when or if this child will *ever* sit on a toilet and poop. :( Ok, one thing at a time.

We told Alli that if she went accident-free (poop and pee) for a whole week, she would get a new bike. (Ok, we've been storing this bike, which is a hand-me-down from Reegan, for 6 months already. I was just dying to get it out of the closet!!)

Day two was not quite as good on the potty front. She didn't want to sit on the toilet, not for stickers, not for the bike, and not for the timer. When she pooped her pants it turned into a tantrum because mommy changed her by the toilet and not the changing table. At least this time, we made peace within 20 minutes. Whew! So, today is still day #2 while I'm writing this, and we're about 50% of the time when the timer goes off that she'll sit on the toilet. I just changed the timer to go off every hour now instead of 30 minutes. But she just peed while playing under the kitchen table, so not sure any of this is working! :)

Life with a 2-1/2 year old

Kim and I are finding that life with a 2-1/2 year old is very spontaneous. Today it was soooo cold outside and yet she wanted to go out and play. So we bundled up and went outside to play. She rode her tricycle all over the backyard, including up and down a gravel hill. She played on the slide, only to find her hands were very cold. So we went in and got some mittens and then all things were good outside. :)

Our family sleeping has been much better since Grandma Rickey suggested that Bagheera sleep with Alli. It's been heaven since we made that switch - both kids in the room together and mommy and daddy finally having a bed to themselves. Ahhhhh!

Alli's speech is so complete I can't believe she has more to learn. She carries on conversations very well. And for any parent that doesn't think kids learn the most by example should be shot. We see everything we do someone echoed by Alli. Right now, she asks if she can do, well, anything. It just dawned on my the other day that this was because Kim and I ask her before we do anything - something we learned to do with her in our communication exploration during the terrible twos stage.

And during this Christmas break, mommy was terribly sick. But I had Alli taking care of me when daddy was out riding. She gave me stickers and fed me tea (pretend tea from her tea set). What more could a mommy want!!!

Christmas was also quite fun with her. She asked to open everyone's presents. And we gladly said yes (except for Bagheera, who likes to open his own gifts!)

We are looking forward to seeing more changes in our little angel during the new year.

How the Big Girl Bed has Changed our Sleeping

So everyone assumes that transitioning a child from the crib to something else makes bedtime more of a hassle since they can get out of the new bed so easily. Well, that's not really the case for our family.

Alli has done a *great* job of staying in bed she goes to sleep at night. We rarely have a problem. But.... she gets out of bed when she wakes up in the morning - no matter how early. She doesn't come into our room, instead she stands in the hallway just outside her room and lets out a little cry. It doesn't matter if we tell her she can come into our room, she just stands there. So, daddy usually climbs out of bed and brings her to our bed so we can get just that extra 15-20 minutes of snoozing in.

But lately it has gotten a little worse. Now she's waking up in the middle of the night, like 2:30am and standing in the hall and letting out her little cry. We usually don't bring her to our bed if we have hours of sleep left, so one of us, usually me, takes her back to bed and if necessary, lays with her until after she falls asleep. But this has also progressed to just going to bed with her in her twin-sized bed (hence the reason it's usually me.) While it's adorable to roll over and see this beautiful little girl sound asleep, it's also, well, not such a good night sleep. When she changes position, an arm usually goes out to make sure I'm still there. Stinker! :D

Baggy Loves Alli

After putting Alli to bed and finishing chores, Jenny and I couldn't find Bagheera. On a wild guess, we went into Alli's room and found him laying on her bed. It's ridiculously cute to think that Baggy missed Alli while we were in Texas for Thanksgiving.

-KimG

Bye Bye Underwear

After 3 months of potty training, lots of disgusting laundry, I convinced Alli's teacher to just put her back into her diapers until Alli decided she was ready to try to be a big girl. The last straw (for me) was when she peed 3 times in 30 minutes at preschool and sat in it without any care. Ugh. She just doesn't want to do it, and I'm tired of fighting it.

On other notes though, she is excelling. Everything is by color: "Mommy, what is that?" "No, it's 'blue'!" :D

We found out that she likes some of Britney Spears' songs. It's really cute to see her shake her bootie, which she is doing quite a bit these days.

She understands so much about everything, and she wants to do everything that mommy does. She helps me cook meals, do laundry, etc. She also wants to wear similar clothes - if I have a jacket on, she needs a jacket. If I take my socks off, she takes her socks off. It's really cute.

Happy Halloween!

This year, Alli started understanding Halloween a little better. She dressed up in her little kitty cat costume and I tried to explain trick-or-treating to her. We had our candy bowl, and I told her to say "trick-or-treat" and then I gave her some candy. All was looking promising.

We went to the first house and we knocked on the door. I told her when the person answered she should yell "trick-or-treat". She did - without any prompting. We were quite impressed. Then she handed the lady the candy from her own bag. We laughed. It's nice that she was ready to give!! :) The 3 of us helped her with the candy and then we went walking to the next house.

This house however had lots of people sitting outside, and Kim and I knew the parents. With all the commotion, Alli got shy. So up in my arms she went and wouldn't say a word. Unfortunately, she never got over it. So we hit 4-5 houses total and then just went back home. She was much more talkative there - hanging out with us and the neighbors out front with a fire in the pit beside the driveway.

Alli's First Night In Her New Bed

She picked out the red sheets and Lightning McQueen (Cars) comforter.

Alli's First Haircut

Alli's hair has finally reached the point where we thought we could cut it without having her look like a little boy. And since Kim and I both had haircuts scheduled at the same time, we thought it might be fun to have a whole-family haircut day. Stacy did an awesome job on Alli's hair, and Alli was such a big girl, sitting nice and still in the chair the entire time Stacy cut it.

And, in typical Guerrette style, the camera and video camera were going the whole time!

Alli's Getting a Bed

We've know for several months that Alli could climb out of her crib. The first few times she did it were out of frustration, tantrum really, when we put her in time-out in her crib (a bad practice that we stopped shortly after starting). We weren't too worried, however, because we stopped punishing her by putting her in her crib, and she stopped climbing out.

We knew it wouldn't last. For the past couple of nights, Alli has been climbing out of her crib because she wasn't ready to go to sleep. Jenny and I would put her to bed, then a couple minutes later we'd hear her door open and hear her walk into the kitchen to tell us something. I think we both laughed a litte, regained composure, and told Alli that she wasn't allowed to climb out of bed. That didn't really work as she's been getting out of bed 2 or 3 times per night. She asked that we keep her door open when we put her in her crib. We obliged thinking that would keep her happy enough to keep her in bed. Sometimes we'll check on her after 5 or ten minutes only to find her standing in her doorway, listening to us.

This morning, the girl who normally wakes up at 6am-ish, walked into our room at 7:30am. She's so cute. Jenny and I both said, "Good morning, Alli!" She ran to me at the side of the bed closest to the door and said, "Daddy, I poopied." Jenny and I laughed.

-- Kim