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.

The Zoo

A few weeks ago we went to the Woodland Park Zoo with some friends. It was Kayla's very first trip to a zoo. We saw...

Gorillas

Penguins

ElephantsKomodo DragonsGiraffes and Zebrasand a TapirKayla especially loved the petting zooand spending the day with her buddies.

Big Girl Bed and Pai Pai Bear

One day when Kayla was first starting to talk, she started asking me for "pie." She looked at me with big eyes and asked "Pie pie? Pie pie?" I thought, she's never had pie. Does she even know what pie is? What is she asking for? Finally I realized that she was asking for her pacifier. So in our house we don't have a "binky" or a "paci" we have a "pai pai."

When Kayla turned 2 we've made a rule that the "pai pai" was only allowed in the crib. She would use it to fall asleep during naps and at night. Sometimes during the day she would climb into her crib, suck on her pacifier for a few minutes, then climb back out and keep playing.

We knew that the time was coming that she would need to give the pacifier up completely and we wondered how to do it. One of the biggest issues is that Kayla is a fabulous sleeper, taking a 2 to 3 hour nap pretty much every day. I was worried that taking away the pacifier would cause sleeping problems, or, if nothing else, cause her to give up her nap (a much needed break for mommy). I knew I wanted to wait at least until after Grant was born to deal with the pacifier issue.

In the mean time, Kayla was out growing her crib.

We finally decided it was time to get a big girl bed. We went shopping and had Kayla help us pick out the mattress. We let Kayla pick some fun sheets (she picked Tinkerbell). We brought the mattress home, set it up in Kayla's room and let her lay in it. We had been talking about it with her, so she knew, pacifiers were not allowed in her big girl princess bed. She said she wanted to sleep in the bed so we took her crib out of the room. We did our regular bedtime routine and put her to bed in her new bed, closed the door, and waited.

And what do you know? She fell asleep! Boom. No pacifier.

After two days, we knew she would be fine. So I brought Kayla and her pacifiers to the mall and she got to pick any Build-A-Bear she wanted and we put the pacifiers in the bear. It was a nice send off. And now she has a nice teddy bear she can sleep with.

Here is Kayla on her big girl bed with her "Pai Pai Bear."And yes, she picked the Little Mermaid outfit for her bear, complete with a flowing red wig.Kayla, of course, wanted to try the wig on.And then she wanted to see what the wig looked like on Grant.

Fabulous!

Our Garden

When Grandma and Grandpa visited after Grant was born, Seth and Grandpa built a raised garden bed. Our previous garden experience consists of mini herb gardens that we forgot about and let dry out. So, basically we are first time gardeners who don't know anything.

We decided to try this year and we have used the principles found in the book All New Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholomew. We've watered and battled slugs. Here are the results:

Lettuce:Carrots:Peas:Tomatoes:Zucchini:Bell Pepper:

We've eaten a bunch of the lettuce, some of the peas, green beans and most of the carrots and they have been awesome. We're still waiting on the tomatoes, zucchini and bell pepper. It has been a fun first attempt. We'll tweak it next year, plant a little more maybe. We're pretty proud of our little garden. And let's be honest, Seth has done almost everything so he deserves all the credit.

UPDATE: Today's harvest. Yum!

Our Home, the first year.

We have now been homeowners for just over a year. Here is what the house looked like when we bought it.Here is what the house looks like today.Lets take a look at how we got there.

The first major project we took on was painting the house, which we actually did last summer. The paint was in really bad shape and it required a lot of scraping. Seth did everything pretty much by himself. Last summer, as soon as Seth got home he was outside scraping the flaking paint.Our wonderful neighbors let us borrow their paint sprayer and Seth did the painting himself. Here is the house with all the windows taped off and the first coat of paint.Then finally the finished project.This summer we replaced the roof. When we bought the house we knew that the roof would need to be replaced in the next 2 or 3 years. Our insurance company however, decided that our roof needed to be replaced right away. They initially gave us 3 months before they canceled our insurance. We fought with them a bit and they agreed to extend our insurance coverage to the end of the year. At that point we either had to have a new roof or a new insurance company. Luckily, we qualified for the big new-homeowner tax credit and we earmarked that money to go straight to the roof. They completed the job a few weeks ago (it only took 3 days) and we are very pleased with the result.
There is some landscaping work that needs to be done before we are "finished" but it still makes a pretty good before and after.