PT 5 & Family Fest

Today was a big day for Maggie. In the morning, she went to the barber shop and to Bellingrath with Daddy and had a great time! Then she took a nap in her underwear without wetting the bed... yea! Then we went to Family Fest at church. Maggie went as a tiger (Tigger?) and Ben and I went as Tiger Keepers. I had my old zoo vest on and the pockets stuffed full of all the things I needed for Maggie - change of undies and pants, sippy cup, leftover hamburger, epipen. . . :-)

The best part of the day was that Maggie was accident free all day!

PT 4

Maggie wakes up now and says "I no ax-dent today" so she is trying to not have any accidents which is exciting to see. She gets easily discouraged when she has one - doesn't want to use the potty after that, but we push through and so far things seem to be going well. Yesterday she wanted to nap with her underwear on so I was willing to try it - but she never napped. Oh well. Today Maggie is at Bellingrath with Daddy so we'll see what happened when they get home.

Potty Training (PT) part 3

Today Maggie went to church for about 5 hours today and managed to stay clean and dry. . . until 5 minutes after I picked her up. :-) Oh well. She WAS in a playground which can be pretty distracting. Then she had another accident shortly after we got home a few minutes later. Life lesson: Make them sit of the potty after an accident, to make sure they are done.

So after her traumatic afternoon she was ready to throw in the towel and go back to diapers ("I wan diaper!!") but I was able to convince her to give it another go with a bribe of Chocolate Milk. No, I'm not above bribery to get out of changing diapers. It worked for the time being.

An encouraging note: Maggie woke up from a 3 hour nap with a dry pullup! Yea!!!!!

Potty Training (cont.)

Today she was so upset at the thought of taking off her underwear and putting on pull-ups for naptime that she didn't want to take her nap. But I convinced her that it was ok because she could but her underwear back on when she woke up. oi.

Maggie was going to a birthday party tonight at FiFi's house (a neighbor) and wanted to use the potty at her house! She talked about it all day. As the time drew near she got excited and decided she would NOT use the potty until she got to FiFi's - which was about 30 minutes from then. So she ended up having an accident about 10 minutes before we left. oh well. I thought it was kind of cute that she wanted to show off for FiFi.

Today Maggie was playing with my hair - she grabbed two big fistfuls and lifted it up and said "you angel!" I said "You're an angel!" She said "No, I daddy's girl." I laughed!

Potty Training

Maggie did such a good job while we were on our trip with her, um, movements, that we decided (ok, Ben told me) it was time to step up the potty training! So we decided to have an intensive week of training starting today. Thankfully I bumped into my friend at Walmart who told me that the trick was to NOT use training pants (they're too absorbant) and go straight to "big girl underwear". So I took Maggie to the aisle to let her choose. . . I was certain she'd pick the princess pack but she surprised me with Dora 6 pack instead. To that I added a 12 pack of good ole Hanes. Then we found some wonderful Thomas stickers which I decided would make a lovely incentive for her.

We arrived home and I told her the plan: after lunch and her nap, she would get up and go potty, then she could put on some underwear and everytime she used the potty and kept her panties dry she would get a Thomas sticker (oh Joyous Rapture!). Well, apparently that was a little too much excitement to handle because she decided to skip the nap entirely. oi.

But we had a good day - 8 successful trips to the potty and only 2 accidents. I had set a timer to go off every 30 minutes and she had a little trouble making it to 30 so I backed it up to 25 and that helped. So we'll try 30 minutes again tomorrow. So I decided to keep a potty training journal (see side bar) to track our progess for the horde of you who are interested in such things (oh Joyous Rapture!). :-)

Keep us in your prayers. . .

Pumpkins and Balloons

Today Daddy took Maggie to a pumpkin patch! They had a lot of fun. They surprised mommy with some very pretty mums and a bouquet of sunflowers!! How cheery!

Tonight we went to Bellingrath Gardens for a special annual event - Balloon Glow! Kids come in costume and trick-or-treat along the garden path and then there are 3 hot air balloons set up in the Great Lawn - it was so neat! Maggie was scared of the noise the balloons made (kind of a whooshing sound when they fired up the flame) but was fascinated and kept saying she liked the red one best.

Maggie's been reading a Pooh book lately and likes Tigger a lot, so we borrowed this tigger costume from a friend and added our Auburn tiger tail... viola! Instant Cute!

Fall Vacation 2008

We just got back from our annual Tour d' Parents and Leaf Peeping! It was a lot of fun and very relaxing.

First we went to Ben's parents where we were able to take an a football game, which was fun. . . would have been more fun if they had won. har har. ;-)

Then we spent 5 days with my parents. We drove on the Blue Ridge Parkway, hiked up to Sam Knob, and took long walks around the mountain neighborhood. It was lovely and relaxing.

Then we back through Opelika and Montomgery, stopping at the Montgomery Zoo which was very interesting. Maggie loved it - her favorite animal was the "elfan!" (elephant).

I'm trying to get a slide show of those pics posted.. . if that doesn't work I'll do it the old fashioned way. :-)

I know it's fall in Mobile when. . .

we have cold tap water again! Yea!!!

When I first moved here I thought something was wrong with our plumbing because I couldn't get cold water from the faucet - just tepid water. I even asked a plumber about and I think he thought I was nuts. But apparently the ground temp just keeps the water in the pipes from staying cold.

Anyway, I'm glad it's back. It's the little things that make me happy. :-)