And so we start

the potty training process. Potty chair, check. Big girl pants, check. Flushable wipes, check. Rewards, check.

These were taken yesterday. I was trying to encourage her to sit and try. So I handed her some of the Sunday ads to look at while she tried. She liked looking at he pictures.

Charli and I had a whole weekend at home with the emphasis being on her going potty on the potty chair. Saturday was not great. I was nearly ready to call it quits. If you haven't done this yet, it's not really that bad, but then again it's not real fun either. I stayed really positive for her and kept encouraging her to try. But she had more accidents than successes. I went through nearly every pair of big girl pants (the double layer kind) and a ton of rags. As Sunday approached I was optimistic that maybe this would be a better day. She had 2 small accidents before nap time. (I am still doing diapers for naps and nighttime right now) And then after her nap it was like a switch was flipped. She went in the potty chair the rest of the day. She even went all by herself a couple of times and would come running to tell me, "mommy, peepee". The first time I thought it was an accident but was thrilled to find out it wasn't. My folks dropped by to drop off a casserole they'd made for us and she even went while they were there. She was soooo excited. She jumps up and claps her hands and cheers. I think it's adorable. Now if we can just keep this up.

Today she is at school and they will continue to work with her. I am hopeful that she will continue to get better with each day. And if all does go well, we may just be done with daytime diapers by Christmas. Now that would be a real present. I'll let you know.....

Happy Halloween

I bought this pink flamingo costume 7 years ago. I thought my neice Emma would look adorable in it, which she did. And then I wanted to save it for someday when I had my own daughter. Karen gave it to me last year but it was too big. But it was perfect for this year.

Charli loves her "pingo" costume. They had a Halloween party at school last Wednesday so she was really kind of into the whole thing. We started the day out as we do most Saturdays, at Espressly Yours in Woodbury. I put candy in her bucket and she handed it out to the owner and the ladies we meet with. She had fun doing that. Here she is checking out what's left in her bucket.
And then we went home to carve our pumpkin. I opted to only do one of the smaller ones as I didn't feel like gutting more than that. She thought the seeds were really fun to play with. Needless to say, I had pumpkin seeds all over the kitchen and she was covered.

She had to hold it and check it out every step of the way...

Here it is all done

Charli let me snap a few pictures before we headed out into the neighborhood to trick or treat.

Going between the houses she would make frequent stops to check on her candy. I thought it was pretty cute.

Here we are done and getting cold.

But the best was once inside, she didn't want to take her costume off. She didn't even want to take the hood off. So of course I made her stand for a few more pictures. She makes such a cute flamingo that I just couldn't resist.

What a fun night. I can't wait for next year.