New room

Emily moved into her new room in the middle of May and she loves it. We decided that she should get the bigger room since she is the oldest and her toys are bigger. Her first night in her new bed was interesting and here's a picture to prove it. We found her like this a few minutes after we put her in bed. We had no idea she was strong enough to pull it off.

It's Potty Time

I knew potty training wouldn't be easy. Emily has always done things at her own pace. I mean she didn't walk until she was 17 months. So I expected she'd be ready to potty train by the time she was around 5. But I decided to give it a shot around the 2 and a half mark. We started in mid March. She had seen her potty chair. It had been hanging around her bathroom for a couple of months. Just chillin. So, I tried taking her to the potty every 30 minutes or so. I tried bribing her with chocolate too. I showed her clips of girls her age using the potty on the internet. She seemed interested and would sit on her potty. But did she use it? That's a big fat "no." So, after about a week of trying with no results I threw in the towel for a while. In the meantime I continued to show her clips of girls using the potty and got a copy of Elmo's Potty Time. I waited about a month to give it another shot. Nada. I then took another reprieve and decided to punish myself again by trying for a third time at the end of May. This time I used a potty chart with stickers and decided to have her go "commando." At first she would have accidents and we'd just remind her that pee goes in the potty. As far as using the potty went, she would randomly have big pees in the potty but for the most part would just sprinkle. She would pretty much wait until nap time and bedtime to do her business since that's when she got to wear a diaper. The rest of the time she would either dribble down her leg or would pee in her cloth training pants (I would only put these on when she'd go outside). I was beginning to feel like I had another puppy in the house. Anyway, I was encouraged even with all the accidents and the resistance because she was actually showing some interest and would get upset if she had an accident. In March and April, this was totally not the case. She would also actually empty her bladder at times and pooped one time. I was and am prepared for this to be a long process. This week has been the most encouraging. She has rarely had peeing accidents because she is starting to recognize when she needs to pee and will go to her potty and sit until she pees. I think the stickers and her rewards have helped. She either gets a piece of chocolate or a couple of sprays of mommmy's Sweet Pea body splash. The girl loves her some perfume and lotion. I think she'd rather have that than chocolate. Such a foreign concept to me. Now we're just struggling through getting her to poopy on the potty. She is resisting that pretty hard. But we're taking baby steps and hopefully she'll be pooping on the potty before her fifth birthday. :)