What am I going to do with her?!

Escape-artist Hannah, after making it out the front door, jumping the front fence and heading for the street... in her underwear. So of course, I grabbed my camera instead of stopping her. See ya, Mom!

Speaking of underwear...she's no longer wearing them. She absolutely refuses to use the potty. It's not that she doen't know how, 'cause she does. After being completely potty-trained, she decided she just didn't want to do it anymore. Despite this, I thought I could force my will upon her and make her go...boy was I wrong. For weeks, I would make her sit on the potty at regular intervals only to have her mess her underwear moments after she got down. On purpose. So to save my sanity (and the carpet), we put her back into diapers. How depressing. My mom assures me that she will eventually be potty-trained and won't go to Kindergarten in diapers. Let's hope she's right.

The Rumors are True...

Girls ARE easier to potty-train!I was planning on waiting until after we moved, but Hannah was just so interested in the potty that we decided to give it a try. She LOVED putting stickers on her potty chart and got very upset whenever she had an accident. We've been at it for about a week now, and I think she's about there! Last night, we took the kids to a movie (Monday nights - 75 cents! Oh yeah!) and Hannah asked to go to the potty 5 times! She never actually "went," but she sure tried. AND she kept her diaper dry all night!
I've had a child (or two) in diapers for eight straight years now!!! I'm so excited to go to Costco and NOT buy a case of Huggies (sorry Dad!)!

Hannah also started sleeping in her big girl bed a couple weeks ago. We wanted to sell her crib and dresser before we moved, plus we needed new tires on our car, so we killed two birds with one stone.

This toddler bed was made by my Dad and has survived three of my siblings and all three of my kids! That is some good quality craftsmanship, Dad!Hannah has LOVED her new bed. Whenever I tell her it's bedtime, she says excitedly, "Girl bed?!" She has been so good to stay in bed and sleep all though the night!
I'm so proud of my BIG GIRL!!!

Logan's Potty Party

Logan filled his potty chart!!! That's over 88 stickers for using the potty! He has even been wearing underwear at night and keeping them dry. I think it's safe to say that Logan is potty trained!Logan chose to go to Chuck E. Cheese last night to celebrate this big milestone. Yay, Logan! We are so proud of you!

Just a Little POTTY Update...

I know you're all DYING to know how things are going on the potty front! Well, there has been a lot less fighting about sitting on the potty and a lot more stickers on his potty chart. On occasion, he has even been going without us asking him to! I think he only had one accident today (and we were outside playing, so I'm not really going to count that). And the most exciting news of all - yesterday...drumroll, please...WE GOT SOME POOPY IN THE POTTY! Woo-Hoo!

The things you get excited about as a parent!

You Can Lead a Horse to the Potty...

...but you can't make him pee!!!

We are on DAY 3 of intense potty-training with Logan. We have been encouraging it for months, but have been pretty easy going about it because he has shown little or no interest. But now that he's graduated nursery at church, several of his fellow preschoolers (all boys) are potty-trained, AND he's coming up on four-years-old (for heaven's sake), we decided to really start pushing him. Plus, we don't have many plans outside the house right now, so what better time to run around bottomless, right? So we've been trying to get him to drink a lot and have basically followed his little bare bum around the house with his little potty, making him sit on it every 20-30 minutes.

Potty-training Logan has been a very different experience than training Andrew. Andrew took his sweet time too, but he was very easy to bribe. All it took was a sticker on a chart to get him to try. Logan however, is much more stubborn! We've tried every bribe we can think of, but if Logan doesn't want to sit on the potty, NO bribe will change that. It usually takes a threat of time-out just to get him to SIT on the potty. Here are just a few things I'm really tired of hearing:

"NO!"

"NO, I CAN'T!"

"NO! I already did!"

"NO! The air won't let me!" - not really sure what this one means, but he sure likes to use it!

Once in a while he does cooperate and has actually peed in the potty a total of 5 times! YAY, LOGAN! (I won't tell you how many times we've had to clean up puddles of pee on the floor and/or in Big Brother's Spongebob slippers...it's much more than 5!) When he does succeed, we make a big deal about it and let him put a sticker on his sticker chart. It warms my heart to see how proud he is of himself at those times. That helps me remember that he really is trying and wants to succeed, and that he's not peeing on the kitchen floor just to spite me...I think.

"I'm wearing UNDERWEAR!!!"

Universal Truth #1: Boys are dificult to potty-train! My boys are no exception! When Andrew was FINALLY potty-trained (after several agonizing months), we decided that with our future kids, it would be much easier to just wait until they are ready rather than pushing them when we are ready! Up to this point, Logan has shown absolutely NO interest whatsoever! So imagine my surprise today when he asked to wear underwear after his bath! We had a nice heart-to-heart chat about going in the potty, NOT his underwear, then he even let me set him on the potty just to test it out.

Things were going great, so I dug out a pair of Andrew's outgrown underwear (ew, I know, but what else was I supposed to do? I wasn't going to waste this opportunity!) Logan put them on and looked SO PROUD of himself! He immediately jumped up on Andrew's bed (where he could get a good look at himself in the dresser mirror) and shouted, "I'm wearing UNDERWEAR!!!" I had to get a video of him checking himself out in the mirror!

Five minutes later, he peed on my carpet and asked for his diaper back. Oh well, I guess it was the first step!