Category Archives: Milestones

10 Months

April 11, 2012 – 9:14 pm

I have a whole post in my head about Hannah turning 10 months old today but for now you’ll have to settle for her newest trick.

Y’all… Madison was in a cast until 9 months & didn’t walk until 13 months. I am NOT prepared for a 10 month old walker. I mean, she already climbs onto chairs and anything else she can hoist her chunky little butt on top of so I guess it won’t be too different. This kid is a nut.

P.S. This video gives you a sneak peak into our toy room. I need to do a post on it at some point because it’s awesome & my kids are damn lucky we devoted so much square footage to their shit.

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Happy 1/2 Birthday Hannah

December 11, 2011 – 10:52 pm

My Hannah Banana,

I know it would be easy to feel like you are suffering from a severe case of “second child” syndrome. After all, I’m pretty sure this is the first letter I’ve written to you since you’ve been born. There are not nearly as many pictures of you doing nothing in a million different outfits like there were of your older sister. Whereas Madison had droves of age appropriate and stimulating toys to play with you have play fruit, megablocks that Madison shoves in your hands and your pacifier (which for some reason you find to be an awesome toy).

But what you really need to know my sweet love bug is you have completed our family in the most fulfilling way. You bring such joy to our lives. You are a quiet little thing, not really interested in babbling or squealing but smiling? It is your FAVORITE thing to do. There will be moments when I’m folding laundry, cooking dinner or some other chore and I’ll notice that you’re just quietly staring at me waiting to give me a smile.

You have those most amazingly kissable soft cheeks and lips and I can’t help but cover you in kisses for hours each day. I get lost in your big blue eyes and I just know that you’re going to be quite the little heartbreaker.

You are oh so quiet but deliberate. You know what you want and your temper is a force to be reckoned with. You hardly cry but when you do you make it count. You fight sleep with a force that I just can’t understand. Someday when you’re screaming at me as a teenager because I’m making you get up at a reasonable hour I’ll remind you of all of the sleep you COULD have had as an infant if only you would have given in.

You LOVE to breastfeed and prefer your milk “straight from the tap” although you’ll accept a bottle from others to give me a break. You’ve been on baby purees for about two months and we haven’t really met a food you haven’t liked. You were a huge fan of your Nana’s cream of cauliflower soup (a girl after my own heart).

You ADORE your big sister and carefully watch her every move. She is the only one that can get belly laughs out of you regularly and I wouldn’t have it any other way. Madison loves to give you kisses and hugs and is always sharing her toys with you. I try to soak those moments in because I know all too soon I’ll be met with the cries of two sisters who want the exact same toy at the exact same moment.

You desperately want to crawl but have perfected the art of rolling to get to your desired location. Gone are the days where I could lay you on a blanket and leave the room for a moment. The other day you had made it all the way under the Christmas tree while I was pouring myself a cup of coffee. We are convinced you will be our little troublemaker, silently getting into everything in the house. I’m terrified of the day you actually do start to crawl.

You are a mere weeks away from celebrating your first Christmas and I sometimes have to pinch myself when I realize that this is my life. I have these two completely different beautiful little girls that hold my heart in their hands.

I used to worry about how I could possibly handle having two small children. I was scared of the logistics of day to day life and being able to love you and shower you with affection the way I did with Madison when she was my only baby. Now all I can think about is how did I ever think life was complete with you?

You are truly a gift and you make every day measurably better.

Your daddy, sister and I love you very much.

Love always,

Momma

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Madison Milestones Potty Training

We’re potty training… please hold me.

October 17, 2011 – 2:28 pm

If you follow me on twitter you probably already know that we picked this weekend to start potty training Madison….

So the million dollar question on all of your minds (ok, well like 3 of your minds)… how’s it going??

It’s going okay, I guess. I’m not really sure what I’m doing or if I’m doing this right or just scaring all of us for life- it’s really up in the air at this point. Some time last week when I was almost a bottle of wine deep Clint & I decided that Maddie had presented so many of the “signs” of being ready for potty training so we should pick a weekend and just go for it… balls out. Remind me to never again make decisions after 3 glasses of cheap Merlot.

I talked to my girlfriend Heather who did her own version of the 3 day potty training and I decided that method sounded good to us. We had nothing going on all weekend so we could basically just sit around and watch her pee. And thats basically what we’ve done.

Day One:

Clint was working Saturday so I got her up, psyched her up about big girl panties, gummy bear treats and peeing on the potty and then we set up camp in the den.

That’s about as far as I had gotten with my plan so from there we started winging it. I realized really quickly that she wasn’t a big fan of the underwear. She can’t get them down by herself and she freaks out if they are hanging out around her ankles while she sits on the potty so I after about ten minutes I just let her run around nude from the waste down. (FYI if you ever come over to my house just be warned that her butt cheeks have touched everything. It’s quite alarming and makes me rethink having children altogether).

So I pumped her full of capri suns, pretzels and goldfish crackers and then waited. At first, the novelty of sitting on the potty in the den was high so she basically sat on it every chance she got and within the first hour she had peed on the potty. We did a dance, gave her a gummy bear and made a big deal of the success.

After that first hour was up the novelty wore off and I pretty much just made her sit on the potty every 15-20 minutes. She’d sit there for a few minutes and then want to get up. I didn’t want this to become a power struggle about sitting on the potty. Maddie gets really worked up and cries easily and I just knew that if I pushed her that she’d hate the potty and this would be a nightmare. Sure enough, one of the times she got up she started peeing on the rug two seconds later. I grabbed her in time to get about 1/2 of it on the potty. So then I didn’t know what to do. Tell her peeing on the floor is a no no? Treat for getting half of it in? They do not teach you this in college.

I decided to really emphasize the part that was a success and give her a treat but I was pretty stern about not going on the floor and the importance of sitting on the potty. She ate her lunch sitting on the potty at her play table (eww, yes I know… this whole process is decidedly disgusting).

The rest of the afternoon went a lot like the morning. She never told us she had to go to the bathroom. We just tried to keep watching her and making her sit on the potty. We let her have more free range of the house but made sure the potty was near by. We had two more accidents but 3 more successes. Then she got over tired and it was all downhill. She ran into the toy room to get something and came back in crying like she was in trouble. She had peed on the way over and it was like she was disappointed in herself because she kept saying “no pee pee on the floor.”

It broke my heart and we just decided it was time to put her in her jammies and a diaper for the night. I checked her diaper before bed and she was dry but she woke up really wet this morning. She has been waking up dry most days so that was a little different.

Day Two:

I’m not going to sugar coat it. Day two sucked majorly. She sat on the potty fairly often in the morning but as the day wore on so did her willingness. Every request to sit on the potty was met with whining, crying and crankiness. Our patience was thin and you could tell she was exhausted and overwhelmed. I didn’t keep count of the accidents or successes but I want to say it was 50/50.

I went to bed last night thinking that she was not ready and this may have been a mistake. I told myself I’d see how the morning went and we’d decide if we’re still going to stay diaper free during awake hours….

Day Three:

I’m happy to report that today has been awesome. She woke up with a wet diaper so I wasn’t sure when she’d have to go. I made her morning chocolate milk. Yes, she gets chocolate milk in the mornings… go ahead and judge me. We turned on some Dora and she said she wanted to sit on her potty. 10 minutes later she started yelling “mommy, I’m doing it.” and sure enough… she had peed on the potty.

(side note: We know she’s peeing when she tells us that she’s doing it. You can ask her a million times if she has to pee or if she’s already gone while she’s sitting on it and the answer is almost always “yes.” We’ve figured out if we wait long enough she tells us while she’s going).

She went once more this morning and had zero accidents. She’s down for a nap with a diaper and I’m optimistic about the rest of the afternoon.

On the downside… we’ve had no poop since Friday. I’m certain that the poop is going to be a whole level of disgusting that I’m not even prepared to handle. I can’t tell if she’s constipated or she’s just holding it because she’s nervous about pooping on the potty. She’s told us several times that she has to go but every time we sit her on the potty she doesn’t. You can tell she’s trying (I CAN’T EVEN BELIEVE I’M WRITING ABOUT THIS) but there has been no success. At one point she even ran and sat on the potty herself and said she was pooping, but again… nada.

Supplies:

Two packages of size 4 underwear (side note: buying this was so weird. I went to walmart. The walmart brand pack was the cheapest so I bought those but some of the pairs have like a heart or star on the crotch. It just seems so wrong to me…. but I guess its whatever, they were cheap and its pretty cute to see her butt in underwear. Makes her look like 5 years old).
Huge bag of gummy bears. I heard people use m&m’s but she’s nuts over fruit snacks so I thought these would be a hit- they are.
I bought two packages of plastic covers at babies r us. They were $4.99/pkg. I’m going to use these over her underwear when we leave the house so that if she does have an accident it won’t be a complete mess.
Carpet cleaner (no explanation necessary – lol)

Summary:

Overall, it hasn’t been that bad. I only thought my marriage was going to fall apart once and I managed to keep my wine consumption to a minimum level.

I don’t think it’s completely sunk in that by doing this I’ve pretty much committed to not putting her in diapers when we leave the house. So I probably won’t be leaving the house ever again. I also have NO clue how it’s going to go at preschool. I know they have a potty in the classroom and I know their company line is that they are very supportive in potty training but I have no idea what’s going to happen when I send Maddie to school tomorrow in just underwear.

Oh who am I kidding… I’m sure she’s going to drop a deuce the second we get in the car. That’s the way we roll.

In the end, I really do think we’re on the right track. I know it will be a long road with challenges, successes and set backs but we’re committed to the whole process.

So tell me, what worked… and I guess even more importantly what didn’t work when you started potty training your toddler?

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Madison Madison's Big Girl Room Milestones

Bedroom Transition – Check!

May 31, 2011 – 10:13 pm

As you well know, we decided that having baby sister wasn’t enough to rock Madison’s world… we needed to up the anty and give her a brand new bedroom with a regular size twin bed. Apparently we like to teach them young here that life is full of change.

Last week my mom came over and helped me decorate most of Madison’s new “big girl” room. It’s bright & cheery and full of beautiful blues, greens, oranges & pinks. (It’s REALLY cute, I swear). In preparation for the big move we’ve been exposing Madison to her new room as much as possible. We let her play in it whenever she wanted, read books in her big bed and made sure to tell her how special her new room is.

On a whim we decided Friday night was as good of a night as any to put her in the room. We had no game plan other than to pray. When we were reading books I asked her if she wanted to go night night in her big girl bed tonight and she excitedly said “ok!” She grabbed her pinky (security blanket) and her paci and off to her room we went. Clint and I shared a smile thinking that maybe it wouldn’t be too bad.

We were wrong.

We arrived at the door to her new bedroom and she kept walking towards the nursery. Clint told her to come back into her new room and the tears started. We tried to forge on like we do every night… change her diaper, give her lots of kisses and I love yous, make sure she has all the friends she wants to sleep with in her bed and went on our way.

She never once stopped crying. In fact, the crying continued for a good twenty minutes and if you follow me on twitter you know that I was not handling it very well. I began to question our timing, lack of a plan and what kind of message we’d be sending to her if we just went in there and let her back in her crib after only twenty minutes of crying.

We decided we’d go back to trusted old Ferber and go in there after set amounts of time to comfort her, make sure she had what she needed and then leave. We knew she’d probably cry harder when we left but our hopes were she’d eventually realize the bed was awesome and fall asleep…. or just wear herself out & fall asleep (either option was better than the cries).

(Side Note here: Her twin bed is a day bed up against the wall with a rail. She can’t get out of it and that’s the way we want it right now. Eventually we’ll put a shorter rail on it to give her a little more freedom but for now she’s pretty restricted. She’s not (*yet) a climber so she stays put).

So we took turns going in there and finally after those 20 minutes there was silence. An occasional (& gut wrenching) sob but mostly silence. I was beginning to feel secure that she was falling asleep and then the really hard crying started all over again. It was Clint’s turn to go in and when he did she put her arms up to him & begged him to pick her up. He later told me it took him everything he had not to pick her up and drive her straight to the store to buy her whatever she wanted because he felt so bad. He came back out and told me he was done and wanted to move her back to her crib. I told him to let me go in once more and then we’d give it ten more minutes… bringing our first try to 45 minutes. I knew it wasn’t a crazy long amount of time but I didn’t want to force her if she wasn’t ready.

Five minutes after I went in there we had silence. 10, 15 and 20 minutes later…. still silence. Finally, convinced that she was asleep we walked in to check on her. She was on her belly, pinky clenched tight, sleeping. There was still a soft little sob after every few breaths and I felt like the most horrible parent on earth but she was asleep so we went with it.

That first night was awful….. for me. I didn’t sleep at all. I kept worrying about her, wondering if she thought I abandoned her in this new room in an unfamiliar bed. I tossed & turned all night and at 3 a.m. I shot out of bed with an overwhelming feeling of needing to check on her.

I quietly crept into her room and found her sound asleep in a different position. It was cold in there so I tried to softly put the blanket on her and then it happened….

I WOKE HER UP.

The second I put the blanket on her she opened her eyes and they locked with mine. She closed them right away and I thought maybe she was back asleep so I snuck out only to hear her start crying as I shut the door. I ran back in, gave her the paci, kissed her and left the room. On the way back to our bedroom I ran into Clint in the hallway and scared him half to death. He didn’t know I was up and was rushing in there to make sure she was okay.

In the end she went right back to sleep and has been taking her naps & sleeping at night perfectly in her new bed. I’m really pleasantly surprised with how the whole process went and I’d do it all over again, even with the heart-wrenching first night because she seems to be sleeping even better in her bed than she did in her crib.

If you are heading down this path yourself I have no tips for you other than to follow your gut. Turns out ours was right even though we had no idea what we were doing and read nothing about transitioning toddlers to new beds or rooms.

So for now I feel successful and am so glad to check one major “To Do” off of our list. Of course you can check back with me when we decided to wean from the paci & start potty training because I’m sure both of those milestones are going to kick our ass.