Bagels & Achievements

After my run this morning, monster and I headed over to Main Street Bagel Cafe to share a yummy breakfast sandwich and some juice. We sat outside (in the shade of course) and listened to all the sounds going on around us: garbage trucks in the alley behind us, cars zooming down the street in a hurry to get somewhere, kids shouting with excitement at the Aquatic Center across the street, blenders humming as they prepared smoothies to satisfy customers in need of a cool down. It's so nice to have mornings when we're not in a hurry to go or be anywhere so we can take these moments to just sit and enjoy our surroundings - people watching included.

I'm in full potty training mode with Mallory and she's doing really, really well with it. We have gone all day without a diaper thus far and she even had her first BM using the big girl potty today. She's been using the toilet to go pee for quite some time now, it's just been a matter of me enforcing her to not rely on wearing a diaper. We've had our share of accidents, but not very many and she does well with understanding what went wrong without getting too sad about it.

When I began the journey of potty training a couple months ago my tactic was letting her go diaper/pants-free at the house and then asking her every 20 minutes if she needed to go potty. But if I needed to go anywhere I would still put her in a diaper just so it was easier for me to run my errands. Now we're to the point where we can go places without a diaper on and she'll let me know if she needs to go potty. I wouldn't say that she's 100 percent potty trained yet but pretty darn close. My goal was to have her diaper-free by the time Nolan comes and now I'm confident that will be the case. Of course we still do diapers during naptime and bedtime as I know that type of training has more to do with her becoming older and able to hold her bladder longer.

I'm so proud of my monster who is reminding me daily that she's growing up and maturing into a little girl more and more. Whether it's potty training, reading books out loud, transitioning easily to her toddler bed, or even just her expanding vocabulary; she makes it easy to want to brag about her milestones and accomplishments. Maybe this whole parenting thing isn't so hard after all...HAHAHA, yeah right!