2Y3W: Pee-Pee in the Potty! (3/14/11 - 3/20/11)

Spring is almost upon us. Finally! We have a lot less snow around the yard and it got warm enough (and light enough) that Lily could actually play outside for a little bit when we got home from work. She was very pleased because she loves to be outside.

Thursday was St. Patrick's Day and my farewell luncheon at the PFT lab. Since I left for my new job so quickly, it took a while to get it organized and find a date to have it on. Plus, the holiday seemed like a good time to celebrate. It was a 'Mexican Irish Fiesta' as a nod to the fact that I am an Irish Mexican. There was a lot of yummy food. I was very grateful to Lois and Mary for organizing the party for me.

Friday was a landmark day as Lily went pee-pee in the potty for the first time! I put her on the potty when we got up in the morning and she actually sat still for once. It didn't take her very long to go so I think I timed it perfectly. She was so proud of herself! I took pictures (which I won't post, ick) and we called Daddy and Grandma right away to share the good news.

On Saturday, we went to Tractor Supply Company to see the Easter chicks. Lily loved them so much last year that we had to go back multiple times and this year she was equally excited. We spent almost an hour looking at and petting the chicks. Good thing she didn't know they were for sale or she certainly would have been begging us to take some home.

Here are some pictures from this week.

Lily and daddy walking around the yard after work on Monday:

Lily loved the crunching sound her shoes made on the snow and the footprints she left behind:

Lily really wanted to try out her tricycle but her legs are just a little too short:

So, instead, she ran around the yard gathering sticks:

And drew in the snow with them:

A magic wand?:

She desperately wanted to jump off the big rock, with or without help. It's hard to tell in the pictures but the rock is almost taller than she is:

It was so much warmer on Wednesday that Lily got to run around outside without a coat and hat. She was thrilled! She had fun chasing Canada geese around the yard:

Lily loves this giant giraffe at Border's:

I didn't get any good pictures of Lily in her St. Patrick's Day shirt on Thursday so I had her pose in the outfit again after her bath on Friday morning:

I asked Lily to take out her binkie and show me her shirt so she stuck out her tummy as far as she could which caused this funny face. So silly:

Goofy girl:

Playing with her bees:

She wanted me to take a picture of daddy, baby, and mama quack-quack:

Reading her favorite book with daddy:

Heading in to see the baby chicks on Saturday:

Peeking at the chicks:

Look, mama:

Fascinated:

A teenage girl at the store was fast enough to catch the baby chicks and very kindly got the ones that Lily wanted and held them for her to pet. She was so thrilled:

Bye-bye cute baby chicks:

2Y2W: Pumas and Other Animals (3/7/11 - 3/13/11)

This week a lot of wildlife returned to our yard. Despite the super cold weather, there is hope that spring is on its way. There is apparently an opossum that lives under our neighbor’s deck and this week it started coming over every day to eat birdseed off our patio. Lily thinks it is the most delightful thing ever except she continually calls it a “puma”. We tried to correct her multiple times but the way she says “puma” and the fact that she calls it a “puma” are way too cute so we stopped correcting her and just let her call the opossum by the wrong name. Our cranes returned on Saturday which is always nice to see.

Lily has discovered all of Rachel’s old toys in the basement and is in heaven. She especially likes the little plastic animals and would play with them for hours on end if it didn’t get so cold down there. She loves to group the animals together by type and every animal has to be in a mama-baby pair. It is so cute. She gets very worried if a baby animal doesn’t have a mama or vice versa.

Lily had a cold with a goopy cough all week which wasn’t fun for any of us. She preferred to sleep propped up on Paul or I which meant that neither of us slept well all week. She was almost over it in time for her two year well-child visit on Friday. She is still ahead of the curve for motor and speech development. She is 35.16 inches tall which is in the 82nd percentile and weighs 23.15 pounds which is in the 8th percentile. Being so tall and thin, her BMI is only 13.2 now which is the lowest it has been since they were trying to get her to pack on the pounds as a newborn. We told her pediatrician that she is not opposed to eating and eats a wide variety of foods; it is just that she is so active it is hard to get her to stop playing long enough to eat. The entire visit, Lily was leaping and running around the room so her doctor definitely got to witness her high activity level. Lily’s pediatrician still isn’t too worried about her being underweight although she did schedule Lily for a 6 month weight check just to be safe. Lily thankfully only had to get one shot for hepatitis A and didn’t cry too much. When I got home, I plugged Lily’s height into a height predictor tool I found on babycenter.com (http://www.babycenter.com/child-height-predictor?intcmp=Nav_Global_Tools_heightpredictor&scid=mbtw_post24m_1w:1047). According to it, she will be 5’7” at age 18. That sounds reasonable when you compare the tall women in Paul’s family to the short women in mine. It will be interesting to see how accurate it is. The disclaimer says that based on the formula they use, there is a 50% chance that her full-grown height will be within 0.7 inches (above or below) of this prediction, and a 90% chance that it will be within 1.7 inches.

On Saturday, my friend Mary’s daughter, Madelynn, came over to babysit Lily for free because she needed to earn some community service hours. We were certainly glad to help her out! However, putting Lily to bed is an activity only seasoned veterans can handle so we opted to have her come over at 4pm right after Lily’s nap and we planned to get back home by 9pm so that we could handle bedtime while still allowing Madelynn to get in 5 hours of volunteering. We ran some errands which went so quickly toddler-free, had a nice dinner in downtown Brighton, caught a movie, and were home and in bed by 10pm. A nice date night with an early bedtime, the perfect combination for a sleep-deprived couple. Meanwhile, Lily absolutely loved Madelynn and had a lot of fun playing with her. She even kept asking for her the next day!

On Sunday, we had dinner at my parents’ house with my grandmother which was nice since she was unable to attend Lily’s birthday party last weekend. Lily really loves her grandma nana.

Here are some pictures from this week.

My goofball wanted to wear her shoes, hat, and bib but refused to wear pants when we got home from work on Monday. Here she is opening a present from Meghan in her most attractive attire:

This is how Lily set up Rachel's old animals in the basement. As you see, every animal has to be in a mama-baby pair:

The mama cow sleeping with her babies:

And most of the mamas and babies had to be oriented face to face:

Animals were also sorted by type:

Lily received her birthday present from her Aunt Eileen in the mail on Wednesday. She was thrilled that everything was Dora themed. She even went so far as to hug her new "juice cup":

She really liked the Cooking with Dora interactive book and plays with it all the time now:

Looking out at a "puma" on the patio on Saturday morning:

Playing with her babysitter, Madelynn, on Saturday evening:

Paul was in charge of dressing Lily for bed on Saturday night. For some reason, he always tries to dress her like a boy and has no concern for matching, as you can see below. Lily liked the dinosaur on her shirt, though, and kept trying to scare us with it and her stuffed dinosaur on Sunday morning:

She still hasn't outgrown the 'baby bridge':

Lily made my grandmother play with her little animals at my parents' house on Sunday evening. I like how even though there is an 88 year age difference between them, Lily still thinks of grandma nana as a playmate: