Bumbo chair

Isabel used to really enjoy sitting in her Bumbo chair (photo taken June 2008, 6 months old)

Now that it is out again, she likes to see if she still fits! Big girl now!

And it is fast becoming one of Josiah's favorite places to sit too! From here, he can see all the action that is going on in our house (believe me, it is one active place!)

Abundant blessings,

Kristy

Happy Daddy's Day!

This morning I scooped Isabel out of bed while Luke was in the shower, and we headed down to the kitchen to make blueberry muffins for Daddy's Day! What a great little helper she is turning out to be! Isabel and I also went shopping yesterday and bought Luke a water-resistant Twins pullover, that he can wear to his frequent visits to Target field (he has had a habit of going to games during inclement weather!) Isabel was chanting "Baseball shirt! Daddy's Day!" on the way home from the mall, but by the time we got home, I had her saying "No telling him!" instead. She did a GREAT job of keeping the secret until we gave him the present after we got home from church.

Look closely at the two photos below. Can you tell a habit that Isabel apparently picked up from her mommy? We both stick our tongue out slightly when we are concentrating hard on something! Too funny!

To my wonderful husband - Nearly 6 years of marriage and two-and-a-half on this crazy journey they call parenting. Thanks for being my partner, my best friend, and the absolute best, most involved daddy that our two precious blessings could ever ask for! I love you!

Abundant blessings,

Kristy

Clad in cloth

Some of you might know about my newfound obsession with cloth diapering. I have always had a "green" streak in me, and so when my good friend Jenna introduced me to it a little over a year ago, I was intrigued. We dabbled in it with Isabel, doing cloth at night mostly and disposables during the day. But with Josiah, I am in full-blown cloth mode, loving it, and consider myself fully addicted!

The photos below are from just after we brought him home from the hospital. This type of diaper is called a prefold, and requires the "snappi" to hold it closed, so that you don't have to use diaper pins. We used prefolds for the first month he was home, but were borrowing the prefold waterproof covers (like the gray-and-white striped one shown below) from Jenna, so when she had her son Levi, we returned them and I started shopping for new diapers for him!

I have had so much fun building up my diaper stash for Josiah. I have learned a lot about what I like, what I don't like, and what I want to try next! And, you have to admit, they are just so doggone cute!!! The photo below is from today when I put him in my current favorite diaper, the Katydid pocket diaper. He is clearly enjoying having a cloth-covered bum too! No chemicals touching this baby soft skin!

As the weather gets warmer here in our beautiful MN summer, I am sure you will see many more photos of this little guy clad in just an adorable, earth-friendly cloth diaper.

Dry all day!

We are one week into potty training (I will now be calling it potty learning, because it helps me to remember that pottying, like all other developmental milestones, is a learning process and will not happen overnight. I have more patience with Isabel if I remember this small fact! Admittedly, the experience has been a bit overwhelming for me at times, since I have Josiah here to care for as well, and sometimes it is hard to meet both of their needs when Isabel is needing my near-constant attention for the potty-learning to be successful.

In the middle of the week, we had some bumps in the road, including Wednesday morning where she literally peed in her panties 5 times in a row. She will tell me she needed to go potty but it was too late every single time. Another bump was that Thursday, we were heading out on an outing, and she refused to try to go potty before we left. I gave her a choice, try to go potty or put on a diaper, and she actually chose the diaper. I had been sure we would not put diapers on her during awake time anymore, but once I had given her the choice and she chose it, I really couldn't go back on my word. So she wore the one diaper, and peed in it (of course, since she is used to peeing in diapers!) No biggie.

So last night I sought some counsel from a much trusted friend, and also did some additional research on online discussion forums, and went into today with a much more optimistic outlook. And it paid off! SHE STAYED DRY ALL DAY!

We went to the zoo this morning for 3+ hours with friends, and while yes, we did visit the zoo potties no less than 5 times (all at my prompting), I still find it extremely rewarding that I did not have to change a single pair of wet panties while we were there! And, we had a breakthrough once we got home, in the pooping arena. I knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that she needed to poop toward the end of our zoo visit (around noon), and when we got home, she told me almost immediately that she needed to go, so off to the potty we went. After 10 minutes of her switching back and forth from her little potty to the big potty, me reading books and letting her watch a YouTube video of babies breakdancing (at the suggestion of a mama who I met through an online forum), it was clear she was not going to go, but still needed to. I knew that the moment I put panties back on her, she would go in them. So, she stayed naked from the waist down for about 45 minutes, venturing off to the potty on her own several times with no results, and finally, at about 1:15, I heard her say (from the living room where she was playing) in a concerned voice, "Poop coming out now!" She clearly did not want to go on the floor so I told her to hurry to the potty. I followed along, and a small piece of poop did fall onto the floor, but she didn't notice so I didn't tell her, not wanting to upset her and wanting her to continue her progress toward the bathroom (and knowing that if I picked her up, it would be an ugly scene). We got down there, and I encouraged her as she finished her pooping on her little potty!! I, of course, celebrated with her immensely and got her special treat that she gets for going poop on the potty, a Hershey's Kiss.

Successful pooping on the potty happened once more in the evening (she was again running around bare-bottomed), with one more small incident on the floor, but this time the poop hit the floor in the bathroom, so she was clearly trying to get to the potty. I consider this amazing progress and am encouraged that we will not go back to awake-time diapers! And she did not have a single wet accident all day, no matter if she was in panties or no panties.

Great job, Isabel! Mommy is so proud of you!

A family night out...you just gotta laugh!

The C family had big fun plans tonight to go as a family, for the first time, to Daddy's softball game. All year so far, he has only had games at 7:30 and 8:45, which are both too late for Isabel's bedtime. Tonight, the game was at 6:15, so all day I was getting Isabel all excited about it. I told her that when she woke up from her nap, we would get to go out to dinner as a family and then to Daddy's baseball game! She was very much looking forward to this. She always likes seeing Daddy in his "bay-ball shirt" (Hosanna! softball jersey) before he leaves for his games. So, when we found out the game got rained out, it fell to Luke to break the news to her. The conversation went something like this when he went up to her room after her nap:
Luke: "Isabel, remember how Mommy said we get to go to a baseball game today?"
(A lightbulb went on in Isabel's head as she remembered what our plans were for the evening. She looked at Luke, then looked at Luke's shirt which was a gray T-shirt and not his softball jersey. Looked back at Luke, then back in confusion at the shirt.)
Isabel: "This your bay-ball shirt, Daddy?"
Luke (sadly): "No, Daddy's baseball game got cancelled because of the rain."
Isabel: "You play bay-ball, Daddy?"
Luke: "Not tonight. You can come to Daddy's game next week!"

Since we had already had plans to go out, we decided to go out to dinner as a family (a risky endeavor with kids our age, but we thought we would give it a shot). But something or someone seemed to be out to get us this evening. After the 45-minute ritual of trying to get out the door, we arrived at Buca di Beppo in Burnsville at about 6:15 pm. We got there and carried both kids inside, only to discover they were on a 20 minute wait (too long in our opinion with the kids and not a very large waiting area). Much to Isabel's chagrin, we packed them back in the car and decided where close by we could go instead. We headed over to Chili's (meanwhile, Isabel is screaming "I wanna go to Buca!" repeatedly in the backseat). Noticing the full parking lot, this time we decided it would be wisest if I ran in alone to check on the wait. I waited 5 minutes in a hostess-less lobby, to be told that they were also on a 15-minute wait. I went back out to the car (Isabel still semi-upset and getting hungrier by the minute) and after debating what to do, we decided to head back to Chili's in Eagan, figuring that by the time we got there, the dinner rush would be over and we could get seated. But, we were going to do call-ahead seating just in case. I called Google 411 from my cell phone and tried to get connected, but kept getting connected to a random man's voice mail when it said it was connecting me to Chili's! Argh!

As we had hoped, there was no wait at the Eagan Chili's, and we ordered our food the second the server got over to the table. At the hostess's suggestion, Isabel was given a booster seat instead of a highchair, which made for an interesting dinner experience, but even with that and two trips to the potty during dinner, we managed to all eat hot food and avert any major disasters (other than the server refilling my Sprite with a pitcher of water, then promising me a new Sprite which she forgot to bring until we had paid our bill). Josiah, true to form, just sat in his car seat contentedly from beginning to end of our "relaxing" (LOL) night out. I think a crying baby on top of everything else would have sent me hurtling over the edge, so thank you, Josiah!

Sometimes, you just have to laugh, or you will cry.

She's a big girl now!

On Saturday, Isabel...

...threw away her diapers and donned her big girl Dora panties!
Look how proud she is to be a big girl now!

For a couple of weeks now, Isabel has been going pee-pee every time we put her on the potty, and sometimes even telling us that she has to go. We have even had a couple of successes with her going poopy on the potty! All these signs told us that she was ready for potty-training, so we decided to go for it cold turkey with both of us home this weekend. We used a variation of the 3-day potty training method that I have read other parents have had a lot of success with. Isabel currently LOVES Dora the Explorer, so a couple of weeks ago I began to build her excitement about potty training by telling her that we would go out together and buy some Dora panties for her. She was very interested in this, and all week we would hear the words "Dora panties!" at least ten times a day. Late in the week, we started telling her that Saturday was the big day. She would get to throw away her diapers and start wearing her new panties. When she woke up from her nap on Saturday, she was very excited when she got to pick out her first pair to put on (ones with the color pink in them of course, as she is currently obsessed with all things pink and purple).

On Saturday, we were very proud that she had only two accidents, and 7 successes on the potty! She even went poop on the potty once, for which her mommy was literally jumping up and down in the bathroom and carrying on more than any grown woman should for any bodily function!

On Sunday she also had many successes and a few accidents. One accident was #2 in her panties, but she had been playing outside at the time, and I know that many children simply don't want to stop playing to come inside to use the potty. So, we are continuing to watch her like a hawk and trying to recognize the signs of when she begins to go #2, so that we can rush her into the potty. One series of events on Sunday made me very proud of her, and proved that she really does have the ability to hold it for a long time. She had gone pee-pee around 1:00, then we went outside to play for a long time. Near the end of this time, she was jumping on our neighbors' trampoline with their kids, and giggling and giggling and giggling. I thought to myself, "Oh no, I hope that her laughing does not make her pee in her panties!" Then, it started to rain on us, pretty hard, and we were all scrambling to get me, Josiah, Isabel, and Ginger back to our house without getting too wet. Again, I was steeling myself for the discovery of an accident. But when we were finally inside and I took her to the potty, her panties were dry and she went a lot on the potty! Yay Isabel!

We kept her pants-less for the most part these first couple of days, to reduce the amount of laundry I needed to do! The below photos show you that she has no inhibitions and unabashedly played outside in her panties! I love this about little kids!

Cool girl with her shades and her sidewalk chalk

Checking out a daddy-long-legs