A couple of Saturday's ago we went to the pool with the Harkeys.  A fun time was had by all!  I have to say, our community pool totally rocks!  It's perfect for kids of all ages.  It's got a zero entry spot, a mushroom waterfall, and some jets that spray up out of the concrete, not to mention the slde.  Oh, how I can't wait to use that next summer!  Margot loves it, and I'm sad that we only have a couple more weeks before it closes for the season.  It doesn't seem fair that we get to use it four months out of the year.

On Monday Margot and I went to Dan Nicholas park with her friends from our play group.  It's a bit of a drive, but it's a great park.  Margot got to go on her first carousel ride.  She wasn't thrilled about sitting on the horses so instead we had to sit in one of the little seats they had on it.  Here's a shot of us waiting for it to start (she was still on the horse at this time, so wasn't super happy and didn't really want to cooperate, hence the "here's your freaking smile, lady" look)

The other morning Margot grabbed my camera and wanted to take pictures.  Here's a self portrait.

My brother and sister-in-law will be in town this weekend.  I am so very excited to see them!  It sucks they had to make the trip for such a sad occasion, but none-the-less, I'm glad to get to spend time with them whenever I can!  Plus, I can't wait for them to see how much Margot has grown.  She is such a funny kid now, and I think she will have them eating out of the palm of her hand in no time!

"Whoa Mom, what have you been eating?"

Holy hell, what a day!!  I never expected potty training to be so stressful and tiring.  Granted, it doesn't help that I'm 7 months pregnant and trying to jump off the floor, grab a 27 pound child and run to the bathroom before she pees everywhere. 

We started out the morning eating breakfast in her diaper and then after that, away they went and here came the first pair of underwear (we don't say panties in this house..yuck, hate that word).  I let her pick them out and she chose her Elmo ones.

After that we came out into the living room where I had pretty much planned on spending the entire day so I didn't have to clean every carpet in the house when this was over.  I kept telling her to let me know when you need to go to the potty (I think I've repeated that about 400 times today). We were playing and I noticed she started to pee.  Whoosh, scooped her up and off we went.  Put her down, and nothing.  Ok, change of underwear and out to play again.  Dribble, dribble, scoop, plop down on the potty, annnnnnnd NOTHING again.  The next time she did this, we went through the same drill, but when I tried to put her down she was really scared and crying.  This went on for probably an hour and a half where I could tell she needed to go but wouldn't do it in the potty, and when she did start going while we were playing she would get really freaked out and would start getting hysterical.  So what to do, what to do.  Well my Uncle Larry had made a comment on Facebook last night about You Tube and potty training videos.  I had tried giving her the iPad earlier, but she was not interested at all, but this time, I got her to actually sit down on the potty and turned on some Elmo Potty Training videos and she became engaged.  Enough so, that she actually allowed herself to pee....IN THE POTTY!!  After about 15 minutes of sitting on the potty watching videos, we got up and she got a book as a reward, as well as stickers to put on her potty chart.  Ahh, I was relieved emotionally and she was physically.

So the rest of the morning went on like that and then it was naptime.  I put her down, fully expecting a huge, wet mess when she got up, but lo and behold, she and the bed were dry as a bone!!  When she got up we went straight to the potty and shazaam, she went!!  YAHHHHH!!  The biggest highlight of my pee and poop filled day was when she was eating lunch, and of course I kept saying, "let me know if you need to potty", and she looked at me and said she needed to go, and we went to the potty and PLOP, it was POOP!!  Woohooo!!!  I've never been so happy to see poop before!  She did great, and wasn't even scared.

Overall, the day was a success.  Yes we went through 13 pairs of underwear, I don't know how many wipes, and shed some tears, but she's doing great!  She's wearing her big girl underwear to bed tonight, so we'll see how that goes.  Hopefully it won't be as bad as I think it will be in the morning, but if it is, hey, that's ok.  This is only Day 1, I can't expect miracles to happen.

Beach recap in pictures.

Let the countdown begin.