SUCCESS!!

I prepared my self mentally before I started this yesterday. Lydia has been going potty on the toilet off and on for over a year now, and I have decided it was time to crack down. Last week I made her 3 charts. Pee on the Potty, Poop on the Potty, and Dry Diaper. When she did one she put a sticker on and at the bottem of each column was a row of stars, once she gets to the row of stars she gets a special prize.
Mark and I have heard of this book called Potty training boot camp that we have wanted to buy, well I went searching for it online yesterday and I came across a blog that briefed the book. Basically you just go cold turkey. So after preparing my self yesterday morning, we took Lydia's diaper off and put her in her big girl underwear. That was around 9. She was very excited about wearing bit girl underwares.

She wanted a picture with the frog too.

Well things went better than expected. She had a little accident around noonish when we went to play with Aleena, but it was just a little dribble, nothing escaped the underwears. Came home, took a nap, when she woke up she was dry. HORAY! So she went potty, and THEN she went POOP On the potty. This is big folks. The last few months she has been pooping when she is suppose to be in her room sleeping. I just knew I was going to have to clean poop out of her underwears. So she got to have chocolate and wear her pretty dress, and we checked the mail and put stickers on her chart and Called Grandpa, and all sorts of fun. And of course she had to take a picture...with the frog.

Well after Daddy got home she got her last sticker on her first row of the pee on the potty chart, and since she did so good ALL day and we didn't' have anything for the special surprise Mommy took Lydia for a special trip to Dollar General. I grabbed a few things so we coudl be ready fro the next big surprise, and she got to have a fishing pole to go fishing with Daddy and Papa. She has played with that cheap thing NON STOP since she got it.She loves it.

Today she was even hooking her lip "Mom, I hooked! A hook a Lydia"

Today has been just as successful. First thing this morning we went straight to the potty. She went pee and I asked her if she was done, she said no. And sure enough after another 10 mins, poop on the potty again! I was over joyed. Who knew poop could make me so happy.
We have had 2 accidents today. Once she was watching tv and she started to go pee, and we got a little on the floor, and she stopped mid stream and said she needed to go potty. Now yesterday when she had an accident we were down stairs so she had tp put her wet underwear back on to go up stairs. She did not like it, I said it's yucky huh.
So today I sent her walking to the bathroom and she told me the floor was messy, and then sat on the potty. then she finished going potty. That made me happy that she stopped her self. Then she had an accident at lunch time as well. I was in teh kitchen cooking lunch and she said she needed to go potty and I looked down and she was wet. So I helped her walk to the bathroom, and she was walking kinda funny. She still had to go, she was trying to hold it.
She has told me a couple times today that she needed to go, yesterday she didn't tell em at all I just took her. So we are seeing big steps happen really fast.
We only have 3 pairs of underwears though, We will have to get more soon. Till then I'll just be washing underwear every day. :)
Oh one more thing. I cleaned up the pee spot then paid baking soda on top to kill the smell, and I set a towel on top of that to keep it contained will I could vacuum. Well Lydia moved teh towel and said
"A Snowman Mom! Look a snowman!"
it made me laugh, and she wouldn' share her chocolate with the imaginary person she was playing with either. She is such a funny girl.

lots of pictures

Lydia found the top to a swim suit and guess what she thought it was, a Pretty dress. She can't resist a pretty dress.

And yes she has it on backwards
This is Danton on Papa's lap yesterday

And Lydia has started to fake smile. when we tell her to smile she thinks she is smiling but she always pulls a funny face. This is one of her better fake smiles.

My two cute kids

My little stud

This is the hat I made for Danton. All we had was an adult size hat. So I made a pattern off of that hat, and then I drew a one inch grid on the pattern and redrew it on a smaller grid so I could size it down with the correct proportions. I just used some jean cut offs for this hat. Now that I have the pattern I'm going to make him a few more. It's a really simple hat. And it just looks so cute on him.

One Year

Well we have officially been in MO for a year as of yesterday. I honestly can't believe it's been that long. I find my self still wanting to say "we just got back" When really I can't say that any more. And yet I still notice the Humidity more then I ever did growing up.
I have more pictures to put up, but I don't have my camera with me so I'll post again this weekend to add the pictures.
I made a little hat for Danton, I'm pretty proud of it actually. I had an adult size hat and I wanted an Infant pattern, so I took it apart and drew a 1 in grid on it and then I scaled it down to Danton's size, so now I have a pattern that has all the right proportions. It turned out really cute. Anyway I'll post pictures of it later.

A Little Change

Doctor: How is the boy who swollowed that quarter doing?
Nurse: No change yet.
Yesterday Lydia dropped a cracker while sitting on the couch and the couch sucked it right in. So I helped Lydia take the cushion off and find her cracker. Before I put the cushion back on I spotted a quarter and 2 pennys in the crack of the couch. This amazed me cause we never have cash, or change for that matter in the house, so the fact that I found a quarter in the couch was pretty cool to me.
As I was reaching to pick up the change Lydia said to me
"It's yucky Mom. Don't eat it" Yeah guess what I say to her when she tries to eat cereal from under the couch.
I thought that was pretty funny, but the story dosen't stop there. Not even 10 miins later I was working out and Lydia was just playing in the living room when I hear her choking and coughing. I look over to see her with her finger in her mouth and I thought she was chocking her self. Then she got this look of PAIN and put her finger in her mouth again. I realized she was chocking ON something. And she started to gag on it. I could tell she was going to throw up, so I held her over the kitchen floor (it was closer than a bucket, or my trusty barf bowl) and up comes the chuck. Only along with the usual splater sound there was a loud plunk.
"hum" I thought " That sounded strange" I looked in he puddle and guess what I found. A PENNY!
I was not as excited about the penny as I was the quarter a few mins eariler though. We had a serious talk about what things go in our mouth and what things dont, and if she tried to eat pennys again it could make her sick and we might have to take her to the hospital to get them out. And if she ever saw a penny again she was to bring is straight to Mommy or Daddy.
I think she got the point cause later as she was sitting on the couch I could hear her relaying the conversation back to her self.
"Penny's yucky. Don't eat Penny's. A go a hospital."

A few pictures

Making Daddy Proud

She picked up the gun and said "A Deer...POW!" and moved the gun like she just shot it. It was VERY funny, not prompted at all.

Lydia and Mikey flying kites


Watchin Hockey with Daddy

Lydia

Lydia is so funny. Such a Ham, I don't know where she gets it ;) She hasn't been taking naps lately, just playing for hours in her room for hours. well I thought if I took her out side before her nap she would expend some energy and maybe if I kept her up later she would be tired enough to take a nap. So we walked across the complex to pay rent, and on the way back she wanted to pick some flowers (dandelions). She picked a few then we checked the mail, then she wanted to visit Aleena (her 2nd cousin who lives right below us). She said she wanted to give her a flower. So we knocked on her door, but they were all sick and getting ready to go to the Doctor. So she gave her a flower, but as we were saying bye Lydia wanted her flower back, but Aleena liked it and didn't want to give it back, so I told Lydia we could go pick some more. we got a few more then we decided to go inside and put them in some water. I put a TINY bit of water in the cup and told Lydia to put the flowers in.

If you can't see very well she put the flowers in the cup flower side down.

Lydia LOVES flowers. After we put them in the cup she looked in and put her hands together prayer style and put them up to her cheek and said "oh so pretty!" (she usually says "Oh so cute" with her hand up like that)
Then she really cracked me up. She picked up the flower by the stem and licked the flower, cause it had water on it. Then dipped it back in, only this time when she pulled it out she didn't just lick it, she stuck it IN HER MOUTH and sucked the water off of it. After 2 or 3 sucks she then hugged her self and said
"I LOVE wader"..."I LOVE wader"
Then back to sucking the water off the flower, till eventually she had sucked all the water out of the bottom of the cup. Then she just started sucking on the flower. ha ha ha ha ok, I know I can be weird, but I NEVER sucked on dandelions.
Later she was in the living room playing with the porta crib. It was all folded up and in the bag, and when she accidentally knocked it over she proceeded to wrestle the alligator. That's right, the crib transformed in to an alligator which she wrestled and rode for about the next 15 mins.
She was just playing with her self it was very cute. Running around playing with "Aleena" and sneaking up and scaring...someone, and running from the spider. Oh and then she found a little red ribbon, which became a scary snake.
She never did take a nap. I think saddle she is starting to do away with them. She takes them every once in a while, but the nice thing is she goes to bed an hour eariler when she doesn't take a nap.

The Barf Bowl

May I present to you the Barf Bowl

My mom has had this bowl FOREVER. And YES, we actually called it the Barf Bowl. Every time we got sick this was the bowl that stood by our side to catch our out pourings. ...It was also the pop corn bowl. But don't worry it was cleaned.
Well when I moved out of the house it came with the batch of miss matched dishes that I got from my mom. I still use it, all the time actually. The handle and spout prove to come in very handy. Espicially when your daughter comes in to the kitchen and says "owie" a couple time sand then pukes all over the kitchen floor. I knew more was coming and guess what the first thing I grabbed was. That's right the Barf Bowl. Not because that is what I remember using it for, but cause it was the closest thing that was big enough.
That was Thursday morning. And she was fine the rest of the day, which was good cause we had invited our friends over Friday night for dinner. Well after dinner Lydia was saying her tummy hurt, so Daddy was offering her some food and when she turned down a cookie that's when we knew something was wrong. And sure enough a few mins later as she was sitting on the couch, Lydia was not eating cookies, but she was BLOWING cookies. Daddy ran to the kitchen and snatched our trusty barf bowl (which had been freshly cleaned) but it was a little too late. It ended up being the caddy for the soiled clothing as I stripped her down to take a bath. This time however I was not so lucky to have a kitchen floor to catch what the bowl misses, the couch caught it. But I guess it is easier to wash couch cushions then the carpet.