family weekend

We had a great great great weekend. We really didn’t do much but spent a lot of family time together. It was really nice. Everyone was in a good mood and got along great. I love weekends like that. It is amazing how one little 3 year old can dictate the mood of the weekend. If she is being difficult it puts us on edge pretty fast. I know my good mood is still from Avery being potty trained. I just can’t tell you how proud I am of that little girl. She is amazing. It took us a long time to get there but once we did she never looked back. She was even pretty sick with a weeklong case of diarrhea. Poor thing. I felt so badly for her. Most of the week she had to go big potty 8 or 9 times a day. She did it though and for the most part did it in the potty. She has not had an accident in a few days and she can pretty much go all by herself. I don’t even have to remind her anymore. She will tell me/go no matter where we are. We have had to work on the hand washing part but that is the easy part. She knows the term “skid marks” hehehehehe it is very funny how she says it.

The below video clips of her jumping are pretty special too. For a kid with low muscle tone jumping is a huge milestone. She couldn’t jump until now. During the school year last year her class would have circle time and at the end they would sing a song that involved all the kids taking a turn jumping. Av would just sit there and not participate. She knew she couldn’t do it and so she would not try (she is so much like me, embarrassed to look silly in front of others so she does not try things she thinks she cannot do). Her wonderful teacher Miss Beth kept encouraging her and finally got her to go last (short attention span of kids meant they were not watching her) and try to jump holding onto her hands. She is now jumping and running and loves doing it. She tells you “watch me jump one more time.” Then she jumps and then tells you “watch me run.” She does this over and over. She is so proud of herself and it is cute.

Avery jumping

Camille pushing up

veggies from our garden

Bull or Bulldozer

Some new things Camille has started to do:

• She is totally impossible to dress. Sometimes I put her on the floor and throw a leg over her chest to keep her from twisting over while I change her diaper. The second you put her on her back she rolls herself over and is either sitting up or off crawling away. It can be very very frustrating.
• When she is crawling around on the floor and decides she wants to be picked up she runs her head into your leg. She is like a bull.
• Or a bulldozer. She crawls over anything in her way including her sister.
• If she sees something she wants she just crawls over and takes it. Including pacys her friends have in their mouths. Her day care teacher told me the other day she kept doing it over and over again.
• She is relentless. We were outside the other night and she kept crawling over to the play area and grabbing a handful of rocks to shove in her mouth. I kept taking her back to her blanket and toys over and over again and again she would be right back at the rocks. It didn’t faze her or frustrate her in the least that I kept moving her from the rocks. It sure did frustrate me though.
• Baby yoga. Downward doggie is her favorite. She does it all the time. Not sure where she got it from. Pushing up, she will crawl over to a step or something low to the floor and push her legs out straight so she is bent over whatever she is trying to stand at. She does not know where to go from this position but I am sure it will not be long before she figures it out.

John

“Hi John” “John” “where are you John” were all statements made by Av this weekend. She has taken to calling him John. He will come back with “who am I?” and she will laugh and say “daddy.” The phases kids go through are pretty funny. Her friend Caroline has been calling her daddy by his first name too. I don’t think Av picked this up though, I think it is something that kids just naturally start doing as they learn their parents are not just daddy and mommy. I wonder when “I want a nack (snack) Melissa” will come out of her mouth?

No accidents

The weekend I have been dreaming of for months and months happened this weekend. She didn’t have a single accident!!!!! It was great. We did not stay home either. While out shopping for new pants for daddy at the mall she told me she had to go potty. We headed downstairs, she was able to hold it and go once we got to the bathroom. We don’t really even have to remind her anymore. She just runs and goes on her own. She even has had a little stomach bug and has had to go poop way more then usual and still no accidents! Kids are so funny they have no inhabitations. While on a walk yesterday she told me she had to go potty. I have read about that and knew it was okay in the world of parenting to let her go potty behind a tree. We headed to a little park on our street. No one else was around. She squatted right down and pooped like it was no big deal. She had not warned me that she had to poop. It took everything in me not to die laughing but I held it in and acted like it was no big deal and told her what a good job she had done. I didn't know what to wip her with so we settled for a leaf . Hehhehehehe I will remember to keep TP with me from now on.