Operation Potty Watch: Phase 1, Day 2

Sunday was a much more successful potty day. We started a progress chart, which is displayed prominently (at B height) and she gets to put a sticker on it every time she gets a "hit." Even as this is being typed, she has had another "hit" and danced the dance and had her picture taken. Because of course we take a photo with the chart every time she adds a sticker; that's half the fun! B is our little diva, after all. Might as well use that to our advantage.

Also in the month of March...

T turned 28 and Nana came to visit for a long weekend. There are no pictures of T's birthday cake because J surprised her with it while she was giving B a bath and since we still find it easier to bathe the little ones if one of us is in the bath with them...well, let's just say that it wasn't an appropriate time to be taking pictures of T and leave it at that. It did make it much easier to clean the cake off of B though. So, in lieu of a birthday photo, please enjoy these other pictures taken during the month of March.

The Potty Dance or Operation Potty Watch: Phase 1

The time has come, evidently, to teach B how to use the Big Girl Potty (BGP) and to say good-bye (for the most part) to diapers. We were planning to wait until after her birthday to start potty training, but she appears to be ready before we are...as usual. T read an article about Diaper Free Toddlers and this three day method and J is so ready to cut down on diapers (probably because he is the one that always has to make rushed runs to the store five minutes to closing time because we are almost out of diapers) that we decided to go ahead and try it now. What do we have to lose but a weekend? So the basic foundation of this method is to let B run around like Lady Godiva for three days and every time we notice she's about to evacuate we rush her to the BGP and if even a little, tiny bit makes it in we cheer and clap and do the Potty Dance. Yes, the method very specifically calls for us to invent a Potty Dance to make going in the BGP a fun event. In fact, this is the only reward this system uses; that and the fact that she won't have to wear a diaper anymore. And since B recently decided that she is most definitely not in the same category as C, and C wears diapers...she is more than ready to be done with diapers now. So we covered the living room floor with sheets (easier to wash than the carpet) and we moved the BGP into the living room for easy access and we commenced Operation Potty Watch. By early evening we were really starting to wonder if we had jumped the gun a bit and starting to doubt if she was really ready for this step. But T had the idea to just leave her on the BGP, uncoerced...but encouraged, until she went in it so that we could really show her how fun it is to go in the appropriate spot. It took so long for her to go! The last half of "Bambi" and half of "Charlie and Lola" and lots and lots of fluids (and T's slumber party trick of placing B's hand in a cup of warm water...not kidding about this one) later she finally did it!!! And we danced and cheered and clapped and kissed and hugged. Then we dumped it in the toilet and said "bye bye" as it went away. And B was, literally, jumping for joy as we did all of this; she even cheered and danced her way back to "Charlie and Lola" waiting so patiently for her in the living room. She's sleeping in a diaper for now, and then tomorrow we will go sans pants again and hope for even greater leaps and bigger bounds!

158th Annual St Patricks Day Parade & Festival

Before you even say anything, we are fully aware that St. Patrick's Day is not actually for another three days. But nobody can go to a parade or festival on a Tuesday! The festival is at the San Francisco Civic Center Plaza and we happily used J's new iPhone to navigate our way right to the parking garage located under the plaza, easy peasy. The parade ended at the Civic Center so we got to see part of that too. The weather was very windy, overcast and chilly so we didn't stay as long as we might have. Hopefully next year the sun will be out and we can stick around longer to listen to the live music, which was a lot of fun. Despite the grey and the cold, we did have a good time; B went on her first carnival ride with Nana, and she got her face painted for the first time. We took CA-1 from Daly City to Half Moon Bay on our way home, which meant that J finally got to see the Mavericks.

T and her love for The Land of Nod

We have ordered a few times from The Land of Nod (www.landofnod.com) and T is completely enamoured of this company. The items are usually exactly what she's looking for and they ship quickly, which is essential when you would really rather be shopping in real life but can't find the time. They have a sweet, "started in our basement" sort of story, which will always make T want to drop her dimes there rather than at a big chain store. But what finally made her fall in love is the customer service. When you call the 800 number a real person answers! A real, nice, caring person who will take the time to triple check your order status and always will go one step further than you ask to ensure your satisfaction. Wonderful! Delightful! T may never shop anywhere else ever again!

The four month mark.

C just had his four month well-baby check last week and Dr. Nikki confirmed our suspicions...he is absolutely perfect! We found it very interesting that he's almost the exact same size that B was at her four month check, which seems unbelievable to us because he's already wearing six month sizes (and B only recently outgrew the last of her six-twelve month clothes!). Weighing in at 14 lbs 7 oz and 25 in. long, he's very decidedly in the 50th percentile. He's a very observant little man and he can be pretty intense when he's trying to achieve something, and as a result he has progressed very quickly in his new skills. He can grab pretty much anything he reaches for and has gotten bored with some of his toys already. He still loves watching B and she's starting to include him in her games. He laughs a lot, its a really great, deep belly laugh that lights up his face and shakes his whole body. He's been experimenting with his voice and can go very, very low gurgles as well as high-pitched squeals. It seems like he's getting close to sitting up all by himself and is very strong at standing with help. He's always alert when he's awake and has taken to waking up completely a few times each night to practice his new tricks. For now he's still in Mama & Dada's room, but will probably move in with B soon, although he's not very keen on the crib so far. He's still got extremely sensitive skin and gets contact rashes regularly, and he's starting to teethe but he seems to take both in stride as long as there is plenty to distract him.

For the love of legos.

Our new favorite song.

Paying it forward.

Last Thursday we had a crazy experience with our fire alarms; specifically that they were going off and it was rather...well, alarming. We had been warned that the fire marshal would be coming that day to test all the alarms and that he would need access to our apartment. What we didn't realize was that every, single alarm in the building would be set off at the same time, and that they would continue to blare for over an hour! So J took some time off work to rescue T, B and C and whisk us away to Stacks for brunch (this exciting event started at about 9 am PST). As we were finishing our meal, our waitress (who, by the way, we had been most irritated by throughout the entire meal) informed us that our bill had been taken care of by "an angel." We were shocked and a bit confused. We thought maybe our waitress was more than a bit confused. But it was true, a perfect stranger had paid for our meal completely anonymously. We were touched by this gesture, and T wanted to spread the joy and pay for the table next to us whose tab would have been similar (a grandmother, mother and child). But there was such a commotion over this, and the "angel" appeared and told T that she wanted to pay for our meal because she thought we had such a lovely family and to just enjoy it and to pay it forward in the future. So on Saturday, we finally made use of the wonderful gift card that T's parents sent to J for his birthday and went out to dinner (not a usual occurrence now that we have two small children, one of them being a very boisterous toddler...but we're not naming names here). At the end of the meal we decided to take the opportunity to pay it forward, but we could not afford to pay for any of the tabs (lots of groups on a Saturday). In the end we told our waiter that we wanted to buy the desert "trio" for the table across from us (a woman and three children) and would he please tell them that someone bought their dessert for them once they were closer to finishing their meals. We had such a wonderful time doing this and it really ended up costing us so little, we wonder why its never occurred to us to do this before! For less than $10 we probably made their evening (or at the very least, gave them a sugar rush) and it brightened our whole day. In fact, we had planned to stop for ice cream on our way home, but we were so smitten with ourselves, and with the whole human race, that we decided just to go home and cuddle up with some cartoons. So we actually probably saved money that night! And what was so amazing to us was the obvious impact it had on our server, and the servers at the breakfast place previously. The feeling of good will was infectious and you just get the idea that everyone involved (as well as some innocent bystanders) walked away from the experience with a renewed sense of faith in our fellow citizens and a smile in their hearts. It was a really big event for us, one that won't be forgotten soon and will probably be repeated many, many times.