Samantha: 25 Months, Week 4 {4th of July, Weekend of Weddings, and Daddy's Zipline Accident}

Thankfully, Daddy decided to stay home on Monday as well, just in case I needed his help with potty training accidents.  He just worked at the dining room table and was on standby.  However, we didn't really need him to help us at all.  Day Three of potty training went really well.  I got better at learning to read her signs better since she wasn't too good at using words to tell us when she had to go to the bathroom.  I felt pretty confident in how things were going, and we didn't have any accidents all morning!  We put her down for her nap with big girl underwear on, but she woke up wet and upset.  The afternoon and evening went well with no accidents, and we decided to try the night with big girl underwear too, since that's what the training method asks you to do.  However, at about 12:15, Samantha wakes up crying, and we can hear her over the monitor saying, "The bed's wet again," and she is very upset about it.  We go into her room and our teamwork comes into action.  Daddy takes her into the bathroom to use the potty and take her wet clothes off, and I strip her bed of the wet sheet and mattress cover, putting on clean, dry ones.  Luckily, her treasured blankie didn't get wet because she can't sleep without that.  She went back to bed, but then was crying again at 5:00 in the morning with more wet sheets.  We cleaned everything up again and put her back to bed, but needless to say, none of the Toll family got a very restful night sleep that night.

After that long night of two accidents and washing wet sheets, we decided the next day that we would just use a pull up on her for bed time.  We know several people that do this with their newly potty trained children, and it doesn't seem to ruin the purpose of the method.  Children understand that they are just for when they are sleeping, to give them a good night's sleep.  Then, once Samantha goes awhile without having an accident at nap time, we will leave her in big girl underwear, and follow the same procedure for bed time.  We just didn't think it was worth fighting this battle with her, especially when she is still in a crib and doesn't have the option of getting up and going to the bathroom if she needs to during the night.  She never wakes up dry in the morning, so we felt like that was just setting her up to fail and make her feel frustrated about potty training, rather than successful and proud of potty training.

I printed off some potty reward charts that we tape to the wall in the bathroom.  Every time she goes pee or poop in the potty, she gets to put a special sticker on the chart.  Each chart has a different favorite character of hers, from Disney princesses, to Dora, to Woody, to Curious George.  Well, at this time of the week, we had a Curious George reward chart on the wall, and on this chart it shows George looking out at you through binoculars.  Whenever Samantha sees George, she says, "He's looking at me."  When I ask her what he's thinking about her, she'll say, "Hey!  I'm cute!"

On Tuesday, I decided to be brave and take Samantha on our first real outing out of the house, testing our potty training skills.  We went to the event at the library called Tuesday Tales where they tell stories and sing songs for the kids.  We sat on the floor near the door in case we needed to make a quick exit.  We now carry Samantha's Baby Bjorn potty seat with us wherever we go.  I showed her where the potty was in the library and we tried to go before the program started, but she didn't need to go then.  In the middle of the program, she told me she had to go potty, so we hurried to the potty, but it was just a false alarm.  I would rather have a false alarm then an accident on the floor, but I think she may have said she had to go potty to get out of the listening to the stories.  She didn't seem too interested that day.  After the program, she played around in the little kids' area for quite a while.  We had no accidents during our whole outing at the library, even though I was so nervous she was going to have one.  I realized that I just need to trust her a little bit more and allow her the chance to let me know when she needs to go, allowing her to recognize and trust her instincts.  This is a learning process for both her and me.

That night, after another somewhat tiring day of continuting on with a newly potty trained girl and night with interrupted sleep the night before, I was ready for a break when Daddy got home from campus.  I got the privilege of going out with some friends for a pedicure, drinks, and desserts to celebrate Andrea getting married on Friday.  It was a good night out for me, even though Daddy had a tired little girl who ended up having an accident on the couch while he was reading books to her.  We're getting there.  My doubtful self was ready to through the towel in by the end of the second day, but I'm glad we stuck it out.

On July 3rd we decided to go the Solsberry fireworks.  Bloomington wasn't going to be having fireworks due to budget issues, plus we figured it would work out better staying out late tonight, rather than the night before Andrea's wedding in which Samantha is a flower girl.  A parent of a student I had my first two years at LCA, invited us to park at their house and sit in their backyard to watch the fireworks.  We had to wait quite a while for them to start, but Samantha had fun walking around, watching kids play, playing with rocks, and eating snacks while listening to the live bands that played. 

I don't know if you can tell in these pictures or not, but I have french braided Samantha's hair as a practice for Samantha being a flower girl in Andrea's wedding.  I know how to french braid, but it has been a long time since I have tried it on anyone.  Plus, it's hard to do anything to the hair of a wiggly little two year old.  Here's a better picture below of what it looked like right after I did it at home.

We told her that the fireworks wouldn't start until it was dark outside, so she kept saying, "Getting darker and darker!"  She sat on my lap for part of the fireworks and then Daddy's lap for the rest of them.  Samantha talks a lot.  For those of you that have met her and know her, you know this fact about her.  She always has to interact with us or talk about what she is doing or seeing.  Watching fireworks was no different.  Here are our favorite fireworks quotes from Samantha: "I like that favorite one" (which she said after I asked her what her favorite one was, and then she said that about every single one she saw after that), "I like that one.  It's pretty cute."

It was pretty late when we left the fireworks that night.  I want to say it was sometime around 11:00.  We were in quite a bit of backed up traffic getting out of the little town, so I did my best to amuse Samantha and keep her happy even though she was extremely tired.  So, I started telling her about last year's fireworks with 'Cago Ema and Papa, about how she wasn't feeling very well that day, and how she fell asleep during the fireworks on Papa's lap.  Samantha thought that was interesting to hear about falling asleep on Papa's lap.  She said, "Aww....Papa like cuddling with me?"  She thinks it's funny to hear stories about when she was a "little baby."  We got back home and put her in bed as quickly as we could, but it was close to midnight, way later than she ever stays up.  We encouraged her to let herself sleep in the next day.

Thursday, July 4th, she woke up at about 9:15, which was perfect timing to get ourselves ready and get to the July 4th parade in downtown Bloomington.  We told her we were going to go to the parade, and she assumed we meant a baby parade, which is from one of her favorite books right now called "Baby Parade," and is about all these different babies passing by wearing different colors.  We told her there wouldn't be any babies in the parade, but that there would be fire trucks, police cars, people playing music, and many other fun things.  Even though we only got there about five minutes before the parade started, we were able to find parking and good spots right along the street of the parade route.  Samantha LOVED the parade, as I thought she would.  The fire trucks and police cars were a bit loud for her, so I helped her cover up her ears.  (That was always my least favorite part of a parade as well.)  Samantha got candy that people in the parade were handing out, and we got to see some really strange participants that you would only see in Bloomington.  Just peruse the pictures below and tell me if you've ever seen a parade like this before.

Here is Samantha eating a grape flavored, organic lollipop.  Only in Bloomington. :)

We even had a successful potty stop at the parade.  She told us she needed to go, so Daddy to took her across the street to the lobby of a hotel for her to use the potty.  We are so proud of our little girl.

After the parade, we went home and ate lunch, then putting Samantha down for a nap a little on the early side so that she could get a decent nap in before Andrea's rehearsal at 3:30.  Even so, we still had to wake her up at 3:00 to get her dressed and ready.  The rehearsal went pretty well, Samantha got to practice her part, and we had no accidents, which was great!

That night, Samantha and I got to hang out by ourselves while Daddy went to a bachelor party for his friend, Kirk, who was getting married on Saturday.  This was just the beginning of a weekend full of wedding festivities.

Friday morning, we had some errands to run to Kroger, Bed, Bath & Beyond, and Kohl's.  We have been a little wary of running errands with Samantha so far for fear of her having an accident in her car seat.  (Sorry for all the potty talk, that's pretty much a major thing in our family right now.)  However, she did a wonderful job telling us when she needed to go.  I think we visited the bathroom in every store with one successful time.  We think she just likes to scope out the potties wherever she is, even if she doesn't really have to go.  We put Samantha down for another early nap, as we would have to wake her up by 2:45 to get her ready for Andrea's wedding.  I did the french braids in her hair again while she sat and watched a show on TV.  That worked pretty well to distract her and keep her sitting still for long enough for me to get her hair done.  It turned out better than my practice run, so I was pleased.  After braiding both sides, I brought the braids together in the back of her head with another hair band and rosette clip that matched her dress perfectly.  Her natural curls on the bottom looked perfect.  We had such a beautiful little flower girl.

Here is a picture of the flower girls coming down the aisle during the ceremony.  The flower girls didn't know quite what to do, or where to walk, or when to drop the flowers.  Another little girl started crying and her mom had to walk down the aisle with her, but it was cute.  What can you expect when you include two year olds?

And here is the beautiful bride, Andrea, with her flower girls and ring bearers.  All throughout the wedding and reception, Samantha kept saying, "Andrea looks pretty!"  Samantha was so excited to be a flower girl in her wedding, was talking about it at least a week before it took place, and will probably continue talking about it several weeks after.

Samantha did really well during the reception, but I give most of the credit to Andrea for having a wonderful reception that was kid friendly.  She even had a table with coloring pages, markers, stickers, and play-doh for the kids to play with while waiting for the reception to start.  It was a wonderful idea, and Samantha loved having the freedom to go over there and play when she got a little bored.  We stayed through dinner (which Samantha really enjoyed), cake, and some dancing.  They actually had some Bulgarian dancers come to perform some traditional dances which was really neat.  Samantha really loves to watch people dance, she couldn't take her eyes off of them.  Then, there was free dancing time and Samantha got out on the dance floor right away, spinning in circles and having a good old time.  I think we left the reception around 9:00, even though Samantha could have kept dancing for quite some time.  How did we get such a social, extrovert for a daughter?  She's going to be teaching me some things, I can tell that already.

After leaving the reception so late last night, and thinking about attending another wedding right in the middle of nap time the next day, Ben and I decided to try and find someone to watch Samantha for us during that wedding so that we could enjoy ourselves a little more.  After a couple failed attempts to find someone in Bloomington at the last minute, we decided to ask Ben's parents if they would be available to watch her for us.  They agreed, and we met Grandma in Indianapolis on Saturday morning, so she could take Samantha the rest of the way to Upland.  We had plans to get Samantha back sometime on Sunday, either meeting halfway again or driving to Upland to get her.  Ben and I had a great time at Kirk and Mary Beth's wedding, and we were so glad that we didn't have Samantha with us.  She would not have done well in that setting, especially after having such a late night right before.

I love going to weddings.  It's always a nice reminder of when Ben and I got married, thinking about the vows we made to each other almost seven years ago now.  My favorite part is when the groom is standing up in front of the church waiting for his bride.  I love the look of anxious anticipation at first, then changing to a look of pure joy when he sees his bride for the first time.  Then, I am reminded of how God uses this picture to show the relationship between Christ and the church.  Christ, the bridegroom looks at us, his church, with that same joy and anticipation.  Christ gave Himself up for us, and we are to love and serve Him.  Wow, what a wonderful picture of our relationship with our risen Savior through the symbolism of a marriage.  Here are some pictures from Kirk and Mary Beth's wedding.

It's always strange when we are without Samantha though.  It feels like we are missing a part of us.  Being home Saturday night and Sunday morning by ourselves was particularly strange.  We could actually sleep in and have a relaxing morning before church.  And on more than one occasion, Ben and I looked at each other and said, "What did we do with ourselves before Samantha?  We have so much time on our hands.  How did we ever think we were so busy?"

We have been trying to find a time to get my school boxes from school and up to Ben's parents' garage, but it hasn't worked any other time.  So, since we were without Samantha this time, and had to get her back down to Bloomington somehow, we decided this would be a good time to get all my boxes up there.  We met someone at school so they could let me in, loaded up the car, got lunch on the road, and drove up to Upland.  Our plan was to just unload the boxes, stay for dinner, and then drive back home that night.  But oh, how our plans changed!

Ben had already unloaded all my boxes, and we were outside playing in their yard, Samantha riding on the swings, when Ben and I had the idea to ride on Ben's parents' zipline.  Now, we have ridden on this zipline many times before and it's always been fine and fun.  I went down first and everything went like normal.  However, when it was Ben's turn and he got to the bottom of the hill, you could see something fly out of the ground and he shouted up to us, "I'm gonna' need some help here!"  You could tell he was pretty badly injured, but being at the top of the hill, I had no idea exactly what happened.  Ben's mom ran down the hill to see what had happened, and I ran in the house to get some towels.  His left wrist was bleeding pretty badly, both Ben and his mom were holding onto his wrist with his arm up in the air to try to stop the bleeding.  Samantha, being the sweet little girl that she is, was holding up Daddy's right arm, trying to be helpful.

Because of the apparent severity of the injury, we got Ben in the car right away and got him to the closest hospital as soon as we could.  Even though we were in the ER, it seemed like we had to wait an eternity for a room, while Ben sat there holding his arm, being in quite a bit of pain.  Finally, we got back to a room and his arm was unwrapped and cleaned off by a nurse.  The doctor came in to examine his wrist and test the mobility of his hand and fingers.  This was very painful for Ben, moving his wrist as well as his ring and middle fingers on his left hand was enough to make him feel queasy and lightheaded.  We had no idea what the next step would be.  The ER doctor ordered some x-rays to be done and after looking at his range of movement, thought that there was some possible tendon damage.  No bones were broken, but Ben would have to have surgery done.  After much waiting, it was finally established that Ben would go to see an orthopedic hand surgeon at Bloomington Hospital on Monday morning at 10:00.

It was getting late, Ben was in a lot of pain, we still had to get back to Bloomington that night, and we didn't know what would be decided on Monday when he met with the hand surgeon, so we decided to leave Samantha with Grandma and Grandpa for at least one more night.  I didn't think it would be a very pleasant trip to stick Samantha in the car at 9:30 at night to drive two hours back home, hoping that she would sleep so that she wouldn't disturb Ben.  I think it was a good decision on our part.  Samantha loves staying with her grandparents, and it was much easier for me to just devote my time to helping Ben.  Our ride home was much calmer and quieter for Ben.  He tried to rest, keeping his hand elevated.  We also had really great conversation in the car on the way home, I don't know if it was Ben's pain medicine kicking in or what, but it was probably the most honest, real conversation we've had in awhile.

This was not how we expected our Sunday to turn out.  It was supposed to be just a quick trip to pick up our daughter, not a trip to the ER, and a scheduled hand surgery, but no one plans accidents like this.  We just hoped the recovery time wouldn't be too terrible and that Ben wouldn't get too behind in his work on his proposal.  It was ironic because on the way up to Upland, Ben mentioned how he only had a couple more days of solid work on his proposal before he could send it in to his committee and work on other things while he waited for feedback.  Now, those plans are put on hold.  It's kind of hard to type a proposal with one hand.  Circumstances can change in the blink of an eye sometimes.

Samantha: 25 Months, Week 3 {Holiday World and Potty Training}

Summertime has just flown by already.  I can't believe I'm writing a blog post about the last week of June.  Where did all of June go?  It just makes me all the more happy that I am not returning to teach next year.  I don't have to feel sad about having only a month left of summer.  Instead, I can feel overjoyed that I can now always stay home with my little girl.

After just returning from our camping trip, Monday this week was spent just relaxing at home.  The only thing Samantha and I did was go grocery shopping.  It felt good to relax and get caught up at home.

Samantha is a lot like me and likes to go out and do things.  I try to take her somewhere for at least a little while every morning so that she can experience and learn new things and get out of the house.  Our local library is a wonderful place to find free, fun activities for all ages.  Starting this week and then every Tuesday for the rest of the summer they have something called Tuesday Tales.  I decided to take her this week, and Samantha seemed to enjoy it.  They have a librarian from the children's department read books, tell stories, do finger plays, and sing songs with the preschool children that come.  Then, after the story time, they gather the kids back together for a craft.  This week's craft was making a sun out of construction paper and decorating it with markers and stickers.  I had to help Samantha quite a bit on this, but she really enjoyed using the glue stick on the paper (and on her fingers).  It'll be fun to go to this story time on other occasions throughout the summer.

Then, on Wednesday, the library had a special event called Story Hour Extravaganza.  They have this once a month based on various themes.  This program was in their special auditorium and is a combination of singing, stories told on video, and stories told by librarians.  It was interesting watching Samantha take it all in.  She was pretty quiet and reserved at first and then got bored occasionally.  She was always very interested when the people would sing or tell stories, but quickly lost interest when the videos started.  It's almost like she likes it more "live."  She likes stories told by live people.  I even got some books that came along with CD's for our trip to Wisconsin and back, just to see what Samantha would think of them, but she wasn't impressed.  Even though I was showing her the pictures and interacting with her, she kept asking me to read it to her.  She likes is much better when Mommy and Daddy read her the books.  I don't mind that Samantha prefers interacting with people.

Wednesday night, Daddy was putting Samantha to bed and got the privilege of cuddling with her.  He laid her down, and she sweetly asked, "Cuddle little while?"  Daddy couldn't resist, picked her up, and cuddled with her, holding her close until she said, "Okay, ready to lay down."  Yes, she might be playing us to get out of her crib, but we will take the cuddles while we can get them.  She won't always ask for us to cuddle her at night.

It rained quite a bit over the last couple of days, so our Mom's group play date at a park wasn't going to work this week.  Instead, we all met at the Banneker Center to let our kids play inside.  They have plenty of toys there to entertain the kids and plenty of comfortable chairs for moms to sit in and talk.  While we were playing, I couldn't help but watch Samantha and feel proud to be her Mommy.  There were many kids that weren't doing so great at sharing and one little boy in particular kept shoving in front of Samantha, even sitting on her lap one time instead of waiting his turn.  Samantha just sat there calmly while the boy's mom tried to reason with him.  That clearly wasn't working, so I decided to go over and have Samantha get off the car and let the little boy have a turn.  I don't know if it's just not in her nature, but I never see her hit or yell in anger at any other children when she is upset or frustrated.  We love watching her personality develop and hope to foster as much kindness and patience in her as possible.

After playing at the morning away at the Banneker Center, it was time for lunch and nap for Samantha.  However, something cute happened that I had to include in this blog.  After I laid her down, she started crying pretty hard, so I went back upstairs to see that was wrong.  When I went into her room, she said "I'm trying to lay down."  I said to her, "Yes, you are laying down, you're very tired and need to let yourself take a nap."  Then she yelled, "NO!  I need to lay down."  I said, "Samantha, honey, you are laying down."  She said, "I need to lay down right here," and points to a spot on the bed next to her.  I said, "You want me to lay down on the bed next to you?"  She said, "Yeah, I do."  I said, "Honey, I'm too big to lay on your bed with you, I'd break it.  Do you want to snuggle with me for a minute?"  Then, she said, in her most pathetic voice, "Yeah, I do."  So I picked her up and brought her over to snuggle for a minute in the chair.  After a couple minutes of snuggling on my shoulder, she turned and looked up at me, saying, "I'm ready to lay down now."  So I picked her up and laid her in her crib.  She asked me to sing her another song, so I did, we blew each other kisses, and I left the room.  I didn't hear a single peep from her after that.  It's these moments that make it so worth it to stay home with my little girl.  I wouldn't trade this for the world.

On Thursday, after Samantha's nap, we piled into the car and drove down to a hotel near Holiday World, about two hours south of Bloomington.  At the end of the school year, a parent of one of my students gave me two tickets to Holiday World that had to be used before the end of June.  We decided that Friday would be a good day to go.  Ben's parents were going to go with us, and we decided it would make more sense to stay in a hotel the night before, that way we could get to the park sooner and not have to get up early to do the drive in the morning.  When we got to the hotel, we changed into our bathing suits and went for a swim with Samantha.  After a little while, Grandma and Grandpa got to the hotel, and we went back to hotel rooms.  We had adjoining rooms so Samantha could go back and forth between both rooms, which she thought was pretty cool.  Eventually, after she calmed down a bit more, we got her into bed for the night.

She slept pretty good in the hotel room that night, waking up at about 8:30 in the morning, just in time to go down and catch some breakfast.  We finished getting all ready, packed up the cars, and headed to Holiday World.  Samantha was so excited to get there, the twenty minute car ride was almost more than she could handle.  None of us had ever been to Holiday World before, so we didn't know what to expect.  All we knew is that they had a lot of little kid rides, plus a water park, all things that Samantha would love.

We started our day in the Christmas section with many "Samantha rides," as we called them.  She got to ride on a carousel and this little plane ride, which she rode on all by herself.  I think she was pretty excited to be riding by herself like a big girl.  She just looked around with a huge grin on her face.

This park had tons of rides for kids Samantha's age.  She even was patient enough to stand in line with the adults so we could go on a couple of the wooden roller coasters.  I would definitely recommend Holiday World to other families looking for an amusement park with plenty of rides for all ages.  I was so impressed with how Samantha did at the park.  She was generally compliant and well-behaved, even though she totally missed her nap that day.  It was funny as we walked around the park and saw other babies/toddlers sleeping in strollers.  Samantha would never allow herself to fall asleep out in public like that.  She is much too social and excited about everything around her.

Holiday World had a water park side called Splashin' Safari, and we spent the afternoon there.  We lathered on the sunscreen and had a great time floating down the lazy river, playing in the wave pool, and going down all the many slides in the kiddie areas.  We had one little patch of rain in the afternoon and that's when Grandma and Grandpa decided to leave since they had a four hour drive ahead of them.  

Daddy, Mommy, and Samantha then went to another special kiddie area in the water park that probably had ten or so little slides of different heights and styles for the kids to try.  I went to the top of the slides with Samantha to help her get on and to push her off.  Daddy stayed at the bottom of the slides to catch her and point her in the direction of the ramp so she could go down again.  She did really well on the shorter, flatter slides, and she LOVED them!  She couldn't get enough.  Samantha has my adventurous spirit and kept wanting to go on the bigger and taller slides.  The slides that were enclosed I went on with her because I didn't want her to be inside a tube and have something happen where we couldn't see her or reach her.  She liked those okay, but much preferred riding on the slides by herself like a big girl.  She particularly liked this one slide that was taller and curved around a bit before it got to the bottom.  Samantha went on this slide over and over again and did just fine, but then one time she went down and somehow slid and bonked her head on the side, immediately starting to cry.  Ben scooped her up at the end and she was okay, just surprised by bonking her head.  It was hard to get her to calm down so we took her over by our stroller and suggested that we go get ice cream for a snack to help her head feel better.  She was okay with that idea.  :)

After ice cream, we went around the lazy river one last time, got changed, and left the park.  We stopped for some Wendy's before driving home. We probably left Wendy's around 7:30.  Daddy read Samantha books and sang her songs, and she was asleep by 7:45.  She was one tired little girl, but was such a trooper going all day without a nap in the midst of all the people and excitement of the rides.  We were hoping she would fall right asleep once we got some food and got comfortable in the car as that would make for a more pleasant ride home.  Here she is sleeping soundly in her car seat with Baby Sadie on her lap and sun-kissed cheeks.

It was kind of funny because right before we were almost back home, Samantha awoke, got startled, and started crying.  We think it was because she woke up and Baby Sadie was right in front of her face.  She's not used to sleeping with baby dolls. :)

Well, since our week wasn't busy enough, we also started something very daunting, yet exciting on Saturday this weekend.  I have a few friends that have recommended the Three Day Potty Training Method to us.  We have thought about it for awhile and decided that we would mark of these three days, June 29-30 and July 1 as our potty training days.  This method entails staying home for the entirety of the three days so that you can keep your child close to you at all times.  We got up Saturday morning and put her in a diaper.  We all ate breakfast together, and after that it was time to throw away the diapers.  Now, this method requires you to literally throw all the diapers away, to keep none hidden back and not have pull ups around because then it would be too easy to fall back on and would end up being a crutch.  Now, we didn't go to that extreme because we are too cheap to throw away perfectly good diapers and also because we weren't sure if this method would even work on Samantha.  We just took some and hid them away in a closet in our bedroom, still leaving several for Samantha to throw away herself.

After throwing away the diapers, it was time to put big girl underwear on.  We have several packages with different styles: Dora the Explorer, Disney Princesses, My Little Pony, and Tangled.  She was SUPER excited to open up the packages and pick out her first pair of big girl underwear.  She chose Rainbow Dash underwear, which is perfect for her personality, and I think also suits her hair-do in the pictures below.

As you can see in these pictures, she was pretty excited about her cool big girl underwear.

After putting on the big girl underwear, we set up the potty seat downstairs in the bathroom near the living room, where she spends most of her time playing.  We had her sit on the potty and explained how she needs to keep her underwear clean and dry and reminded her, "Let us know if you need to go pee pee or poo poo."  You are supposed to give these reminders hundreds of times each day during these first few days of potty training.  This method is big on teaching the child and the parents the signs of needing to use the potty, and whenever they have that feeling, or if we notice any non-verbal cues that she needs to go, or if she actually starts going, we pick her up and run her to the potty.  The act of running them to the potty helps them to know it is something urgent that they need to take care of right away.  Also, it teaches them where they are expected to go potty, and trains them to hold it long enough to reach the bathroom, rather than having the potty seat in the middle of the living room or something like that.

Needless to say, we knew she would have accidents on this first day, but we had no idea the extent of what we were in for.  She did fairly well in the morning, as she tends to not have to go as much at that time of day.  We were having trouble with her not ever telling us that she needed to use the potty.  Most of the time, we would remind her to tell us if she needed to go pee or poop and then not ten seconds later, she would just start having an accident and we'd have to grab her and bring her to the bathroom.  She never finished in the potty all day that day.  We had many, many accidents to clean up, and our apartment is all carpet so the clean up job wasn't always easy.

We decided to follow all the advice of this method to the full extent these first three days which included putting her down for her nap and for bed in just her big girl underwear, no diapers, no pull ups.  We figured we'd try and see what happened.  We had extra sheets, clothes, and blankets waiting on standby.  According to the author of this method, you are supposed to keep an ear out for them when they are sleeping and as soon as they stir or begin to wake up from their sleep, you are to go in, get them, and have them sit on the potty because it is most common for kids to empty their bladders when they first wake up.  We went all nap on Saturday and all night on Saturday with dry clothes.  No accidents while she slept!  We couldn't believe it.

Besides for that little glint of hope, Mommy and Daddy were so tired and frustrated at the end of that first day.  I was so tired of cleaning up accidents and of watching Samantha like a hawk, reminding her over and over again to let us know if she needed to use the potty, seeming to us to no avail.  Daddy ended up going out to get painter's tarps to cover the floor so that cleaning up the accidents would be a little easier the next couple days, easing our frustration level a bit.  However, we went to bed that night ready to try again the next day.  We were committed to this for the full three days (much to my dismay at times).  

On Sunday, we had to go to church because we had nursery duty that we couldn't get out of.  Even though you aren't supposed to leave the house for the three days, it was a nice break for Mommy and Daddy.  We thought about bringing her in the three year old room with us so we could watch her easier and take her to the bathroom more often, but we decided she would be fine in the two year old room.  I warned the people working in the room that we just started potty training, so they would need to remind her to tell them if she needed to go.  Every once in a while, we would go peek our head in the room to check on her and she was doing a great job, no accidents the whole time.  However, when we went to pick her up after the service was over, she was in the bathroom getting changed because she had just had an accident.  Apparently, she stood up from the table after having snack and said, "I need to go potty" right as she peed.  Oh well, we said, we couldn't believe she made it that long without an accident, and at least she told them she had to go, right?

The rest of the day went pretty well with potty training.  Samantha took another nap and stayed dry.  (Mommy and Daddy took a nap that afternoon, too.  We needed it just as much as Samantha did!)  We even went most of the evening with no accidents.  She just had one later in the evening when she was getting sleepy and wasn't as aware of her feelings.

Our biggest accomplishment on Sunday was realizing that our little socialite needs her privacy in order to use the bathroom.  On Saturday when we started, we would stay in the bathroom with her to see if she needed any help and to see if she even went pee in the potty at all.  But when we did that, she didn't release in the potty all day.  On Sunday, we decided to help her get on the potty, but then we would close the bathroom door to just a crack and almost immediately after the door was closed, we could hear her releasing in the potty.  We were so excited to finally be getting the pee in the potty and not on our floor!  We rewarded her with stickers on her chart every time she went and M&Ms brought to her by the fairy.  It still wasn't perfect, as she wasn't initiating really telling us when she had to go, but it was progress, (even though I wasn't too optimistic about it and felt pretty exhausted, emotional, and ready to quit after day two), pretty good progress for a little girl who was just in diapers full time two days prior.  Potty training isn't fun anytime you decide to do it, but I am so proud of my little girl using the potty and learning and growing so much over the last two days.  We'll see what day three has in store for us!

Samantha: 25 Months, Week 2 {Samantha's First Camping Trip}

Monday, June 17th, we drove back down to Bloomington from Upland in the morning because we had a couple of appointments to attend that afternoon.  Last week when Samantha was having trouble going potty and getting a bad diaper rash because of it, I called the doctor for some advice and they suggested we come in to see the doctor.  Our appointment was at 3:15, so we tried to lay Samantha down for her nap on the earlier side, hoping she would get as much sleep as possible.  Well, it ended up that we had to wake her up, but we couldn't resist taking pictures and a video of our sweet girl sleeping and being woken up.

On Wednesday, before leaving for our trip to Wisconsin, I took Samantha to a program at the library called Tuneful Twos.  She was very excited about going to the library and really enjoyed this program.  Everyone gathered around on the rug and the lady in charge got out a ball, rolling it to each child, singing a little song to introduce each child to the class and to each other.  Samantha was a little hesitant at first, like she always is in new situations, but she warmed up after awhile and really got into the songs.  They did a variety of activities like singing songs, doing finger plays, dancing with ribbons on sticks, playing musical instruments while marching around the room, and playing with balls on a parachute.  Seeing Samantha in this class gave me a tiny glimpse of what she might be like in school some day.  She was very patient in waiting for her turn, sat quietly in the circle, listened to and watched the teacher attentively, and when the teacher was passing out or collecting things, most of the two-year-olds just rushed up to her instead of waiting for her to come around.  However, Samantha didn't do that.  She waited patiently in her spot for the teacher to come around to her.  I was so proud of her behavior and so glad that she enjoyed herself so much.  I was hoping she would enjoy it because she loves singing and dancing to music so much, this was right up her alley.

The rest of the week marked our trip up to Chicago/Lake Geneva/Portage to see my family and go on a camping trip with my cousins, aunt, and uncle.  We left on Wednesday afternoon right after lunchtime, hoping that Samantha would take a good nap in the car.  She only slept a half hour due to some slow roads and road construction along the way.  I borrowed a portable DVD player from a friend since we were going to be in the car so much over the next few days, and that certainly came in handy on this leg of the trip.  We watched some shows together and read lots of books to try to pass the time.  We stopped by 'Cago Ema and Papa's house to drop off Roscoe and then went to a park for some play time for Samantha.  After that, we went to Giordano's to get deep dish pizza with my whole family, plus my Grandma and her husband, Don.  We ordered it ahead of time to help out Samantha's schedule as much as possible.  Especially with not much of a nap that day and being in the central time zone, we figured we'd have a grumpy toddler on our hands that night.  She did pretty well considering all that was going on and being out late.  

After the restaurant, we headed out for our trip up to Lake Geneva to spend a couple nights with my cousin and her family before our weekend camping trip.  Saying Samantha was excited to be around other kids would be an understatement.  Oh, how she is going to like having siblings around.  (Don't worry Samantha, we're working on it.)  Even though it was already past Samantha's bedtime when we got to their house, we had to let her play with the other kids for awhile as we got our things set up.

Samantha was so tired and ready for bed, that the other noises in the house didn't seem to bother her.  When she's out, she's out.  Usually, no matter what time Samantha goes to bed, she wakes up at the same time, and especially since we were an hour earlier here, we knew we were going to have an early wake up call.  Probably around 6:30 we heard rustling in the pack and play next to our bed, and a few minutes later she was up, hitting me on the leg, letting me know she was awake.  We pulled her into bed with us and tried to read quietly to her and tell her stories to buy us some time before we woke the whole house up.  Daddy was very kind and whispered stories to Samantha about how Mommy and Daddy met in Ireland, what our life was like before her, and how we wouldn't trade it for the world.  Samantha sat there and listened to Daddy as long as he was willing to tell her stories.

Once we heard stirring in the rest of the house, we let Samantha out of our room and the kids had a great morning playing together, jumping in the crib, playing with dolls and Barbies, and eating breakfast together.  Samantha could have cared less about us when there were three other kids around to play with.

Samantha really enjoyed playing with Kathryn who is only a month and a half younger than her, but she really got attached to the older kids, Kennedy and Caleb.  Samantha just loves older kids, she really looks up to them.  We have always said that Samantha has a "thing" for older boys, and we think she was a pretty big fan of Caleb as well.  Even though she knew his name, every time he would walk into the room she would say, "What's that name?" or "What's the boy's name?"  It became a running joke with her, and Caleb thought it was hilarious too.

My cousin took the two older kids to swim lessons and Kathryn stayed with us which allowed the two younger girls a chance to play together.

'Cago Ema and Papa came up on Thursday to spend the day with us in Lake Geneva.  We borrowed my cousin's beach passes and headed for an early afternoon at the beach.  Samantha loved the feeling of the sand between her toes, loved wading in the water with Mommy and Daddy, and loved digging up the sand with her shovel and dropping it in the pail.  I think she could have spent many more hours on the beach that day, but unfortunately it was getting close to lunchtime and nap time.  We will definitely have to bring her back to a beach again sometime soon.  She enjoyed herself so much, and we had such beautiful weather.

And here's more pictures of the kids playing together that evening, after Samantha had a nice, long nap.  The girls liked to jump around together in the crib and in these pictures they are pretending to be sleeping next to each other.

And here is Samantha giving Kathryn a hug.  Samantha makes friends very quickly.  She is such a people person.

Later that evening after dinner, at a time when we would normally be putting Samantha to bed, we decided to head out to a local park that my cousin's kids like to go to.  Samantha had such a great time playing with the big kids, particularly playing restaurant like you can see in these pictures and video.  Samantha's going to miss these kids.  If only we lived closer and could see them more often!

Our time in Lake Geneva with my cousin and her kids was so good for our family.  We had a great time catching up with my cousin, and Samantha had a great time playing with her new friends.  She was staying up much later than her normal bedtime, but she was having such a good time and it is so rare that we get opportunities like this to hang out with my extended family, that we were not concerned what time she got to bed for these few days.  It was also good preparation for our camping trip over the weekend when there would be no such thing as a schedule for Samantha.

On Friday morning the kids had more opportunities to play as we all made our final preparations for camping.  My cousin and her family left after lunch, but we stayed behind to let Samantha take a good nap.  We figured once we got to the campground, who knows what kind of sleep she would get.  We had never taken Samantha camping before, so we didn't know what to expect.  When we got to the campground, Samantha was really excited to see the tent and to go play on the playground.  We had a good evening of playing outside, swinging on the swings, and going down the slide.  Once it got dark we had s'mores, and Samantha was a HUGE fan of that.  She called it her sandwich.  She did really well with keeping back from the fire and enjoyed sitting in her new "Daniel Tiger" chair with Logan around the campfire.  It was definitely past ten o'clock when she got to bed that night, and we were worried about how she would sleep.  She is used to sleeping in a quiet, dark room by herself with only the background noise of her fan.  However, now she had to sleep with only the thin tent protecting her from the outside world with many different noises than she's used to.  Before she went to sleep that night, we talked to her about the noises she might hear when sleeping, like crickets, dogs barking, and people talking.  Even now, several weeks later, she talks about "hearing lots of noises in bed."  Apparently, our conversation stuck with her.  Daddy read her stories for bed that first night of camping, and when he was about to lay her down, Samantha said, "Cuddle a little while," so she got some extra cuddling time with her Daddy to calm her down and reassure her before she went to sleep.  She didn't make a peep all night, even though a really strong thunderstorm came through from about 3 to 6 a.m.  Ben and I were up the whole time, but Samantha slept through it all.

Much to our chagrin, we awoke the next morning to a tent that was very wet.  Our bedding was all wet and there puddles all over the floor of our tent.  Luckily, it didn't seem like Samantha got wet at all.  She was up at 6:30 a.m. again, so since everyone else was still sleeping and it was still raining outside, we went over to a covered picnic area to give Samantha a chance to run around and play, and giving us a chance to make bacon and eggs for breakfast with our camping stove.  It continued to pour and pour outside, with no sign of lightening up for the next few hours.  Samantha was getting antsy in the covered picnic area, so we decided to go for a drive up to the Wisconsin Dells area to scope it out for a possible future Toll family vacation spot. This appeased Samantha pretty well and got us inside out of the rain.  We even stopped to treat Samantha to a doughnut and Mommy and Daddy to some much needed coffee at Dunkin' Donuts.

When we got back to the campground, the rain had cleared up, so Daddy took Samantha to the park while I cleaned up all the water in our tent and took all our bedding to the dryers.  We cooked out sausages for dinner that night, and it looked like the radar was clear for the rest of the night, so we decided we would stick it out at the campground.  Boy, were we wrong.  Right as we were finishing up dinner, those with iPhones noticed that there were more strong storms heading our way, possibly with 60 mile an hour wind and hail.  We cleaned everything up and got all the kids into the camper that my cousin Brian had rented for the weekend.  

We eventually decided it would be safer if everyone went to the main lodge/office until the brunt of the storm passed us.  They had an arcade room there which amused the older kids for quite awhile.  We did let Samantha try to play some games, and Daddy tried to earn some tickets for her.  After we ran out of our little bunch of quarters, we took the tickets up to the counter for Samantha to choose her prizes.  She was very excited to be able to pick her own prizes out of the boxes.  She chose a bracelet and a little plastic frog, carrying them around with her carefully the rest of the night.

By this point, the rain just kept coming and our area was under a severe thunderstorm watch.  After our experience last night with the storms and how wet us and our tent got, we decided we weren't going to stay in our tent again tonight.  It was already past nine o'clock and we had a very tired little girl, so we decided to get a hotel room on Priceline so that at least we had a nice, warm, dry place to sleep for the night.  I don't think we were ever so grateful to see a hotel room bed as we were that night.  We quickly got everyone ready for bed and collapsed into our little double bed for the night, but we didn't mind as we continued to hear it rain and thunder outside.

The next morning, Daddy stayed at the hotel with Samantha and took her swimming in the hotel pool while I went back to the campsite and took down our tent and collected the rest of our belongings.  Uncle Matt and Aunt Christy were nice enough to deflate our air mattress and dry out our tent for us, making it much easier and quicker for me to get everything packed up in the car.

Here are some pictures that Daddy took after swimming with Samantha at the hotel.  She also discovered a new fun trick while watching an older kid play in the pool.  Now, she likes to stand on the edge of the pool and jump into Daddy's arms.  She is getting more and more comfortable around water.

After a long few days of going to bed late, getting up early, and being busy all day, I think we were all ready to get home on Sunday, but we had a long drive ahead of us.  I did my best to keep her awake on our way back to 'Cago Ema and Papa's house to pick up Roscoe because we really wanted her to take a nice, long afternoon nap.  Samantha loves to be read to.  It is probably her favorite activity in the world.  But as we were getting closer to my parents' house and I was reading to her, her eyes kept getting heavier and heavier so I had to stop reading.  However, once we picked up Roscoe and got back in the car, she was out like a light in no time.  We've found that is helps her fall asleep faster if we follow our normal bedtime routine of reading her a couple stories and then singing her a couple songs.  She slept in the car for two hours that afternoon, making us two very happy parents.

Overall, our weekend was not quite how we expected it to be.  Samantha could have had a better first camping experience, but she could have cared less.  She got to play outside, play with other kids, sit around a campfire and eat s'mores, and sleep in a tent.  Many, many first experiences for Samantha, and even though it was a wet and soggy weekend, I have a feeling we'll remember this trip for many years to come.