My superstar!

What a bummer of a month, January is, huh?  Without fail, I am always very sick during the month of January.  This year, it was both T and I that were knocked down by whatever infection was going around.  Hers lasted a week (thanks to antibiotics), mine lasted almost two weeks!  Add to that writing up my thesis, having a committee meeting, and trying to graduate!  Phew!  I am worn out!  But the end is in sight.  I really, really do have some cool posts, tutorials, and reviews planned.  I just need to get to them!  Plus, I'll be sending a HUGE thank you to some lovely ladies for the surprise I got in the mail the other day - so stick with me, OK?

Today, though, I wanted to share what an awesome little lady we have in our house!  Miss T is growing up so fast and I'm so impressed by what she is doing every single day!  She's singing her ABCs, counting to 14 (although she always skips 10!), and potty training has been going so well!  In fact, we met a huge potty training milestone this weekend!  She used a big potty at a store!  Woohoo!  Bad mommy that I am, I even forgot her potty insert seat and had to balance her on the edge and she still did it and had no accidents the whole time we were out!  I'm so proud of my little girl!  On top of that, she did pees and poops on the potty at church yesterday!  She's also staying dry through naptime more often too!  Woohoo!

As I've said before, a lot of the credit goes to our amazing daycare!  But if you're interested, here was our strategy.  We basically went cold turkey from diapers to underwear (except for nap and bedtime), and didn't turn back.  If we went out, she still wore underwear, we just brought extra clothes and were prepared for accidents (although, we haven't had any outside of the house yet!).  Accidents were expected and viewed as learning opportunities.  "Uh-oh T, looks like we had an accident.  That's okay, we'll get cleaned up, but it's a yucky feeling right?  Let's try to go pees on the potty next time and keep our underwear dry, ok?"  We didn't do any sort of reward system, but tons of praise and being super excited for when she was successful.  We also got undies that she really liked, Hello Kitty, Elmo and Zoe, etc.  Just about every hour we would say "T, let's go pees on the potty".  Sometimes she wanted to and sometimes she didn't, we never forced her.  While on the potty, we supplied books, crayons, stickers, to keep her entertained.  Sometimes I even sang to her.

For now, we're only focusing on the awake times and not sleeping times.  Our house is difficult in that for her to get to the bathroom, she needs to go down and then back up some stairs.  Plus, she's still in a crib, and we're in no rush to change that!  I'm so proud of my little peanut!

On a mommy and T breakfast date at my new favorite Dunkin Donuts!