The Panty Diaries

Day two of this fantastic ride on the potty train. Ellie was potty trained at this age and when we got down to business it took a reward chart and all of 5 days. Up to this point Meirah has never even had an inkling of interest to use the potty. In fact whenever I would ask her if she wanted to use the potty she decidedly told me "no". Even though she wants to do everything else Ellie does, using the potty is not one of them. So yesterday after church we went to Target to let Meirah pick out some panties and to buy some M&M's as a little incentive for using the potty. She picked out some Little Mermaid panties (she loves Arial) and home we went. After nap time she was very excited to put them and we stressed to her that she now needed to pee not in her new Arial panties but in the potty. We went to the potty at intervals to make sure she had a chance to use it and to try to catch her peeing so we could praise her. No luck. Oh she peed all right, but never in the potty. Twice on her bedroom carpet, once on my church library book (that's right, on the book. We now owe the church a sum of money to replace the book) and then to top the evening off right she pooped in her new Arial panties. Actually by then we had moved on the back up package of Cinderella panties because she peed through all of the Arial panties. Day two, all of the panties had been washed the night before and we go again. We sat on the potty, sang songs, and ate M&M's ...with no success. Twice she hopped off the potty ran into her bedroom and less than 5 minutes later she had peed on her bedroom floor. We gave the carpet scrubber a run for it's money and never once regretted spending the money on it! Needless to say by the end of the day she was back in her pull-ups though she was not happy about it at first so maybe we at least pulled out of the potty train station today.



Anyone want to guess what this is a picture of? To the untrained eye it may look like an empty Mr. Potato Head Bucket lined with a wet wipe, covered with plastic wrap and tied with a piece of string. But anyone who lives with Ellie would know that this is the home of the imaginary butterfly named Arthur. She made a bed for him, asked me to cover it with something so Arthur would not fly away but so she could still poke holes in it so Arthur could breathe. She has always had a fantastic imagination and would tell me stories about the dinosaur that lived behind the couch and the pink abominable snowman that rides with us in the Rendezvous. She also loves to act out the stories in her Disney movies and rescue poor baby animals stuck in the mud......she has a strange fear of mud, but I digress. Anyway, today she had a beautiful butterfly friend named Arthur whom she wanted to make a comfortable home for and the empty bucket fit the bill.

Andrew did not have the day off but he took it off so it was nice to have a 3 day weekend together. Today we made banana bread and Mimi helped. She loves to be a part of anything that anyone is doing in the kitchen. From about 6 months on if I was cooking she was in my arms. Ellie likes to help as well but only if the mood strikes. Usually she likes to just stir and eat chocolate chips, even if the recipe does not call for chocolate chips. The banana bread was yummy and great before bed snack for the girls!

This is a little example of Ellie's artwork. She loves to color, draw, practice her letters and even scrapbook with me!! She got a kids digital camera for Christmas and a bunch of little craft items, including her very own scrapbook!This happens to be a picture of a king (notice the crown) and the black fly away hair. Can't quite remember what else in the picture, I see a lot of them all day long but we keep our favorites and hang them proudly on the fridge and on the kitchen window!!