Happy Halloween

The last several weeks have been very busy for us, so it has been hard to keep up with the blog. In addition, she has been having some sleep issues the last week. She has started crying at bedtime and we spent about 2 hours trying to get her to sleep 5 nights in a row. She also started crawling out of her crib and falling on the floor, so we have set up her big girl bed (a matress on the floor for the time-being). This has complicated matters a little because she can now get out of bed whenever she wants; however, the last couple days the bedtime routine has gotten a little easier and less time consuming.

Despite a little sleep deprivation, we have been able to have a little fall fun. This past weekend we went to Arbor Day Farm and enjoyed a short walk through the woods and a trip to the orchard and pumpkin patch to pick our own pumpkin, which we carved last night.

Today Zoa woke up excited about Halloween, mostly because it meant she would be getting some candy. Her daycare had a Halloween party, so she wore her frog costume to Norma's. This evening we took her trick-or-treating. Zoa was a little hesitant about going, but she was very excited to see the candy offered to her. We only went to three houses and then came back home to hand out candy. I actually think that Zoa enjoyed handing out candy a lot more than going trick-or-treating herself. She got very excited every time the doorbell rang and put candy in their bags. It was hard for her to get settled down after all of the excitement, but she actually did a pretty good job of going to time. Hopefully, she keeps it up.

Potty Train

So since my last post, long ago, Zoa has learned to use the potty. It all started a little over three weeks ago. She was displaying all the telltale "signs" of toilet training readiness you read about: talking about going potty, going 3 to 4 hours in-between wet diapers and waking up with a dry diaper, but despite of all this, I could not get her interested in sitting on the toilet. So, I started bribing her with one M&M for sitting on the toilet. It worked in the sense that it got her interested in sitting on it. However, Zoa's tremendous craving for sweets caused major meltdowns when she received only one measly M&M, so I quickly switched tactics.

We moved to offering a sticker for going potty. At this point, she actually started peeing on the potty. After that, the process went very quickly. Within a week, we had stopped offering any sort of reward for going potty, and she was peeing on the potty pretty reliably. The next week she started wearing big-girl underwear and pooping on the potty, and she has not looked back. So, in about 2 weeks she was almost completely potty trained. She still wears a diaper at night in case of accidents, but I figure we can probably get rid of that in the next month or so.

It is great not to have to change or buy diapers anymore. Plus, Brian and I were musing last week about how funny it is to fold her tiny Elmo and Curious George underwear. However, it also makes us realize how fast she is growing up.

She talks non-stop nowadays and actually makes sense almost all of the time. It makes me long for the days when she would wake up saying, "Oh, no, no, no, I lost my sun," or when she would tell us, "Zoa's a girl, Dada's a boy, Mama's a job." I am sure that she will come up with equally endearing catch phrases in the future, but it is hard to see my old favorites fade from use.

Here are some recent pics. One is her sitting on her little potty hiding behind the shower curtain. Zoa always tells us she needs privacy on the toilet, and this is her favorite way to get it.