Project Runway Here I Come

With a new box full of dress-ups a new topic has come up in our home: modesty.

Kayla now knows the difference between modest dress and immodest clothing. If I happen to turn on an episode of dancing with the stars Kayla will look at me and say, "Mommy she's not modest."

A neighbor gave Kayla an old Barbie doll. This particular doll was wearing only a painted on bikini. Obviously, as Kayla pointed out, she was not modest. So what else was there to do but make her some clothes.

Now I have limited sewing experience. I have a sewing machine, but I mostly use it to hem pants or re-do a seam that has come undone. I think I made a pair of pajama pants in middle-school, I dunno, I can't really remember.

So sewing Barbie a dress from scratch was no small feat.

First I tried just making a tube dress. I took Barbie's measurements and made something that should be big enough to slip around her. I cut a slit at the top for her head to go through, then folded back the edges and sewed them down to make a collar. The only problem was that the dress didn't fit. It was too tight! I couldn't get it on her. So I added triangular side panels.

The result was a cute little A-line dress.


















It may have taken me all morning, and it may not be perfect, but I must say I am pretty proud of the results!

Potty Training

Kayla with her first Potty Chart

I was terrified of potty training. Maybe Kayla was ready, but I wasn't. The idea of cleaning up the accidents or having to take a toddler to a dirty public restroom with a 3-second emergency notice was not appealing to me. It was a hurdle I knew we would have to jump at some point, but I just kept postponing it. Diapers were so easy and, when I thought of the alternative, I just didn't mind changing them.

Sure, we had a training potty, and Kayla would sit on it once in a while, but I wasn't really doing much to encourage it.

Then one day Kayla comes up to me and says, "Mommy I need to go pee-pee." So we went and sat her down on the potty and she just did it, like she'd been doing it for years.

Then she didn't do it again. She wouldn't do it again. I knew she could, she just wouldn't. We offered new coloring books or elmo movies to no avail.

Then came a big box of hand-me-down dress-up dresses. Nice ones. Disney princess ones. One look at that and Kayla was excited.

So we made a deal. Every time Kayla used the potty she would get a sticker on her sticker chart. When the sticker chart was full she got to pick one dress from the box. We started with 5 stickers, then 10, then 20. She wasn't too excited about doing her number 2 on the potty so we made a deal that if she did it once she would automatically get a new dress-up. A day or two later--success.

I've heard other moms say that you just need to wait until they are ready and the kiddos will practically train themselves. I guess that's what we did and it worked for us. And it wasn't nearly as hard as I thought it would be.

I still don't like public restrooms though. They are not designed with small people in mind. And who ever invented those self-flushing toilets...seriously who needs the boogie man when there is something that scary.