Potty Training

The last two weeks we've spent potty training Claire and I think it's safe to say that she's got it! She is not a baby anymore, no more diapers for her and we are down to buying only one size diapers again, yay! :) 

I was dreading potty training. I had heard so many horror stories, and using diapers was safer and more dependable and easier (in a way). But it was time. She had been showing signs for awhile that she was ready. So finally we started and she has been amazing! She keeps on surprising me with how well she gets it. :)
This was our method. Monday morning she woke up and we took off her diaper and didn't put on another one. We let her play around the house and I tried to keep a close eye on her, and when she had an accident I didn't really say much, just "oops, you made a mess." Then I cleaned it up and pointed to her little potty (which we kept in whatever room she was in) and told her to try to get it in her potty next time. That first day she sat on the potty a lot, but never made any "deposits" in the potty and it was unfortunately all accidents. The second day, we took her diaper off again and left it off. She completely surprised me and went in her potty and had no accidents all day. When she actually went "potty" in her potty, we made a huge deal about it. We cheered for her, gave her high fives, gave her a "potty treat" and told her what a good girl she was. I did start a timer the second day and had her hurry and sit on the potty every twenty minutes or so, but she was sitting on it herself without the timer going off or me reminding her, so I didn't use the timer for very long. The third day we did the same thing and she only had maybe one accident. On Thursday, we put panties on her, and she had a couple accidents, but picked up on that pretty quick and has been doing great since. Her biggest problem has been just learning to pull down her panties quickly. Once she gets that down, she'll be a pro!

We've put pull ups on her for naps and bedtime, but we've left her potty in her room and she's totally surprised me by how well she's doing at the night training too. She'd wake us up in the middle of the night with a little cry to get our attention and when I'd go in her room, I'd find her just sitting there on her potty with a smile on her face, just waiting for us to help her. I was worried about going to church, but we brought her little potty along (and hid it in the kitchen right next to nursery) and she surprised me again. As a sign she had to go, she made it a habit of just pulling down her skirt wherever she was. While this proved effective in letting us know, it was a little awkward when she did it in the middle of nursery and again in the hallway. It made us laugh pretty good though. :)

This week, we've worked on keeping her "little potty" in the bathroom and then transitioning her to the "big potty". She's been doing awesome. We're jumping for joy around here! :)

Everett's Four Month Facts

1. Everett is 4 months old!

2. At his 4 month check up he weighed 16 pounds 4.5 ounces and was 26 inches long. (This puts him slightly bigger than Claire was at her 6 month checkup).

3. He is now in the 70th percentile for weight and 75th percentile for height.

4. Everett is starting to sleep better at night. I admit we co-sleep a lot of the time, but it works for us. I mostly wait until he falls asleep and then move him into his bed though. The last couple nights he's slept from 8pm to about 6am only waking up maybe once for his paci. I hope he keeps it up! :)

 5. Along the lines of sleeping though, he seems to be a cat napper during the day. He takes a lot of shorter naps instead of a couple long naps. I try to get him to sleep longer, but he wakes up twenty or thirty minutes into his nap and he's kicking and flashing me huge smiles like there is no way he's going back to sleep now. If he wasn't so cute, I'd probably get more frustrated with this habit!

6. Everett likes to be held a lot. Especially up high. He gets very upset if we're holding him and decide to sit down. Although we've found that if we hold him up above our heads while sitting down, he's happy with that too. He likes to be high above everything.

7. He blows bubbles and spits and drools a ton. A lot more than I think Claire ever did. We posted the video of him spitting in the last post. He soaks my shoulder sleeve all the time though with the amount of drool that comes out of his mouth.

8. Everett loves watching Claire. He will throw her huge smiles when she's in his view. I love seeing them together. They both seem to like each other a lot right now, I hope they are always like this!

9. He's still working on the rolling over. He's done it just a couple times on his own, but for some reason he puts his arms down and backwards and does the whole airplane position when we put him on his tummy.

10. I don't think he'll have any problems trying solids. He already gets so excited when he sees us eating and he starts licking his lips. I've had more than one occurrence where I've been eating, holding him in my lap, he's made a swipe for my bowl or plate and the whole thing has come crashing down splattering us both with food. :)

a year in review

it has been such a wonderful year, full of moments we will cherish for the rest of our lives. many of those moments we have captured here, on our blog, in stories and photographs. however, many moments lacked the stories that would warrant their own entries, but we wished to share the pictures of those moments anyways. at this time of remembrance and thankfulness, we share some of our most treasured memories of the year that has come to an end. we hope you enjoy them a fraction as much as we enjoyed living them. :)

claire at a car wash for the first time - you can tell she's terrified, but she tries to play it cool and laugh it off. :)

claire hopping on a trampoline with her cousin and aunt. trampolines scare me, but obviously not her so much.

everett has learned to spit. oh no.

 

and claire doing what she loves to do - dance.

Christmas

Christmas this year was so fun. We love visiting with family and this time of year allows us lots of opportunities to be with ours. The Saturday evening before the holiday was spent with the Bryson side. We got together with Scott's brothers and sister and their families for a treat exchange. Grandma Bryson sent all the little girl cousins these cute Christmas tutus. Claire loved hers and wanted to wear it all weekend.

Christmas Eve was pretty quiet but special. We read the story of Jesus' birth with Grandma and Grandpa McClellan, watched the animated Nativity video for Claire and then finished with some hot chocolate.  :)

Everett got us up pretty early the next morning, but we were probably too excited to sleep in anyway. :)

When Claire finally woke up we opened our stockings. I think Claire loved her candy cane of skittles the most and Everett liked the little rattle he got in his.

We went upstairs to have breakfast with my sister Kristy and her family, who had also come to visit, and then after eating we opened the rest of our presents. One of my projects this year was a quilt for Claire's bed. I finished it just in time for a Christmas present. It's a rag quilt and I made sure to put a lot of yellow in it because her favorite color is yellow. I just wish I had made it a little longer, because it's a tad too short for her bed, but besides that I'm pretty happy with it, and she likes it. :)

After opening presents and playing with them just a little, we headed down to Spanish Fork to see the Bryson family. We celebrated cousin Tasha's birthday and we were lucky enough to schedule appointments and get our nails done by her that day too. :) Claire still looks at her now chipped nail polish on her nails and says "Tasha...nails...pretty!"

We had dinner with them and enjoyed relaxing and playing with our new toys and then it was home to bed. It was such a fun Christmas!

Merry Christmas!

Christmas is Coming

The Monday after Thanksgiving we set up our Christmas tree along with all our other Christmas decorations (and when I say WE I really mean Scott did most of it while I took care of kids).  Since our tree has been up I've been having fun taking as many different tree pictures as I could. :)

One of our traditions has been to put up a new picture ornament for each year since we've been married. I've made ornaments in the past, but this year I was busy working on other projects so we just bought a little frame ornament and I put a little photo shoot together in hopes of getting a good picture to go inside (we used the one on the right with both kids).

Christmas tree lights are a perfect background for pictures and so I've been playing with my camera more and Claire's been a perfect little model for me. Doesn't she just have the cutest infectious smile? :)

It snowed about a week ago and we thought we'd take Claire outside to play just a little. She was kind of hesitant at first, but Scott showed her how to make a cute mini snowman and I think she enjoyed it. Scott and I hate being cold at all and we're dreading the day that our kids will beg us to take them sledding and stuff. But then again, if they give us such cute smiles during and after, I don't think it'll be that bad... :)

memory made

"mommy, heavy. daddy, strong."

now i hope no one thought our little claire bear spoke these words as she watched her poor daddy attempt to pick up mommy. she was actually just telling mommy that something was too heavy for her, and that daddy needed to help. the former idea definitely makes us laugh pretty good though. :)