Anne update

There has been a lot going on lately. I want to do updates on all of it-our cleaning, food, spiritual lives during the Advent season, and the most notable one-our house (which has become a HUGE production not to mention thorn in my side...) but all of that is another blog. At Brenda's request, here are a few big updates about Anne.

Anne's new bedroom-part of the big remodel-got finished about 2 weeks or so ago. Maybe more recently. We decided when it was done, we would move her into the new room along with a big girl bed. This has been long overdue considering, she's past two and a half now. Anne, of course, did great on the transition. The first night she got out of her bed once, and then for the next few days she got out just a few times each night. The hardest part, for her, has been that she can get out and play and so once the lights go off, she wants to get out and play and thus sometimes cries for a few minutes, saying she doesn't want to go to sleep, she wants to play. Fortunately they are short lived moments and she's stayed in her bed-for the most part-the past week or so. We haven't had any middle of the night adventures either, and I don't suspect we'll have any.

One cute thing about the bed is for weeks I talked to her about moving to it and I told her that when she got it, mommy would lay with her in the bed. She would repeat this back to me lots of times. So on the first night, I fully expected to lay with her, and my leaving to produce loads of tears, which would result into me staying until she fell asleep, which would then spiral into me spending hours in her bed every night and having to break her of the habit. Nope-not for my little independent, introverted girl. The first night I laid with her for a few minutes, sang her a song, then settled in, ready to be there a long time, when out of the silence came her little voice: "Mommy, you get out of my bed now?" And that has been the trend every night and nap since-a few minutes with mommy in bed with her (which by the way, I practically have to drag out of her to let me stay even those few minutes) then she's by herself, off to dream land.






The other update on Anne is non-reluctant, full fledged potty training. A few months ago I bought a mega sized box of diapers and realized that using them all up would happen close to when Anne was 2.5 years old. I decided then that when they were all gone, we'd switch over to pull-ups and begin taking Anne to the potty every hour or so. This seemed to make more sense to me than going diaper-less, because eventually the kid's gotta wear...oh I don't know...pants and if she's been running around naked, how does she know to even pull her pants down and go? Anyway, this is day three of potty training. I'm not sticking to it 100% because we did have errands to run and such, but when we are home, I'm trying to stick her on the potty every hour. The first day she went 3x in the potty (which is 3x more than she ever goes), yesterday 2x and today after 4x in one hour of peeing in her diaper (thus, 4 diaper changes!), she went 2x in a potty. I have pulled out all the stops for potty training including:

-Telling her the baby is going to need her diapers so she has to learn to use the potty
-Telling her Dora cries and feels sad when she pees on her
-Telling her that if she pees she makes the lady bugs on her diaper go away, and we don't want that do we?
-Giving her candy when she does pee
-Giving her a sticker on a chart when she pees
-Promising any toy she wants from the store when she fills up said chart with stickers

So far, I'd probably rate us at 40% success rate only because she still doesn't get to go in the potty when she has to pee and the only time I get her to pee is when I put her on it randomly but positively, she is going on the potty and has gone on it for 3 days now so that is a success in and of itself.

Ahh...toddlerhood...fun, fun, fun.