A word from David

Learning to be a copycat

And later that afternoon

Hmm, eerily similar to Anna at around this age. I love baby "talking"!

A Child's Prayer

Anna is learning to love to say her bedtime prayer. Usually either Dan or I will help her say it by saying something a line at a time for her to repeat. Last night Anna decided she wanted to say her prayer without any help.
Said with eyes closed tightly (I peeked because I was curious what she would do), in a very quiet almost whisper voice and a slight pause between each line...

"Dear Heavenly Father
Thank you for this day
Thank you for our family
Thank you for David
Help us to be good
Help us sleep well
*longer pause*
Help us to be good
*longer pause*
Help us to be good
*I interject with a "We pray in the name..."*
'No Mommy, I'm saying it!'
Help us to be good
Thank you for David
Thank you for Jesus *tiny acceptable prompting on that one this time*
Help us to be good
*long pause*
in the name of Jesus Christ, amen."

I'm so proud of my little girl! She was pretty proud of herself, too. I grow more and more amazed each day at the little things she picks up on so quickly. And how she wants to remember to be good, apparantly. Or else I'm just a broken record playing in her little head... That's what mothers are for, right? I know I have a few of my mom's "mom-isms" as we call them running around in my head.

Anyway, I love the sweet spirit of an innocent child saying a prayer. I feel blessed to have that innocent faithful spirit brought into our home by our toddler.

Potty Training

With General Conference being this last weekend, and since we would be home for the whole weekend, I decided to hit the potty-training really hard. So Anna had a very "free" weekend running stark through the apartment while we listened to Conference. We had a few good break-throughs!

And I learned a few things.

I absolutely love this:

Completely worth the $15 or so bucks. Especially when your child was hysterical at the thought of sitting on the "big potty" still. I wasn't planning on getting one, but it has been wonderful for Anna. And hey, she can sit and watch Elmo on Sesame Street at the same time! Portable potty chairs are so cool.

And we're loving these:

I typically don't buy character anything (t-shirts, shoes, etc) for Anna. But for new big girl underpants, we love Ariel. We might even go back for the Cinderella or other Disney princess ones. Very grown-up compared to her old diapers. Nothing's more exciting than having her special big-girl underwear! Dan didn't understand why the 3-pack of princess underwear was so much better than the less expensive 10-pack of any old pink ones. I told him not to worry, he'd understand better when we're buying Batman, Spiderman, and Superman underwear for David in a couple years.

We're on Day 4 of no diapers--well, except for naptime and night-time--and only a small handful of accidents. Knock wood, but I think she's finally getting it a little better and is able to recognize and let me know when she needs to use the potty. I'm hoping a few more days this week will help solidify this, but we're looking forward and no more turning back to diapers during the day!

And I'm terrified. Wish us luck! We're fully stocked with stickers and leftover valentine heart candies. Yes, I bribe my daughter to use the potty. Hey, whatever works!

Diapers Reprise

Thanks for all the tips and suggestions on diapers. It's nice to hear the advice and tips and experience from others.

So I thought about just going up a size in the White Cloud diapers to see if that solved the problem, but when I went to get the different size at our Walmart the other day, I couldn't find any White Cloud diapers. After a quick google search, it looks like they are discontinuing the WC line, so I guess that makes that choice of diapers obsolete for me now.

New diaper of choice is:

I couldn't bring myself to spend the full price on Pampers or Huggies yet without trying the other lower priced ones, so I bought Luvs to try. They're working great so far! I love that we haven't had a blowout diaper in days now after having at least a few a day. I'll take it.
Funny that I'm back to Luvs after not being able to use them for Anna. I put her in Luvs when she first came home from the hospital, but they gave her horrible rashes from the dye in them, so I just didn't even try them on David. Hopefully they keep working for us!

Heads

Anna was giving David a kiss on the top of his head, and said, "Kiss David's 2-head, Mommy! 2-head, 3-head!" Took me a minute to realize that I've been focusing on pointing out the difference between head and forehead this week when I realized that Anna didn't know where the forehead was. Or "4-head" in Anna's mind. I love my 2-year-old's mind and the connections she makes. "2-head" and "3-head"-- Makes sense to me!