Summer Goals

I gave myself and Alice a few goals to accomplish this summer. So far we've marked one off the list without much effort. I don't think the others are going to go as smoothly. 

Here they are:

1: Get Rid of the Pacifier - DONE! 
I drug my feet on this one. This is the one milestone I was heartbroken to get to. It's the one thing that made her so much my baby and since she will be the only, it was HARD letting it go. But in true Alice form, she did it herself. We set a rule that paci had to stay in the bed so that limited her use. It was hard at first because her Kiki (blanket) and paci go together. When she has Kiki, she asks for Paci. We did good about making it stay in the bed. We stopped taking it in the car with us and she only used it at night. I hid her bowl full of pacifiers. When I would check on her at night, she would have it in her hand and not her mouth. So one night when I was rocking her (it's not really rocking, we sit in the chair and go over the day and everyone who loves her) I put the paci out of sight. And she didn't ask for it. And that was it. She will occasionally ask for it when she's super tired but it hasn't been bad. It does make bedtime different. I now have to go in a few times and add another stuffed animal to her bed until she's so surrounded, it's comical. I sneak in when I know she's out and remove a handful. She is very much an out-of-sight-out-of-mind child and I think she was ready so the transition was MUCH smoother than I thought. 

2: Potty Train
Yeah, this will be a challenge. We put her on the potty before every bath. Sometimes she uses it no problem! Other times she sits for a few minutes and then pees as soon as she gets in the bath. It drives her Dada batty. When she asks me during the day to go potty, I throw her on the potty. Nothing usually happens but we do it anyway. She usually poops and THEN asks to go potty. This is inconvenient. And not at all the correct order. She doesn't care. We talk about potty and I will let her come into the potty with me. The other day she was watching me get ready and asked what I was doing. I said, "I'm putting on my panties! Big girls get to wear panties, not diapers. Do you want to be a big girl and wear panties?" Her response - "Nope." So I'm guessing she's not ready. I don't want to rush her, that will only lead to frustration and stress. When she's ready, she's ready. But how do I know. I thought about moving her from diapers to pull-ups to see if that speeds the process along. I'm just not sure though. I don't know nothing 'bout potty training no baby. 

3: Learn Some Letters
She's pretty good at saying her ABC's along with you which is totally cute! And I would kind of like her to be able to recognize some letters before she goes back to school. But I also don't want to rush that either. I think too much pressure is put on little ones to know too much too soon. And I don't want that. I want her to be little as long as she can, however, if she could recognize her name - that's good, right!?

So those are the goals. So far we haven't focused too much on accomplishing them. So far we've been playing and imagining. And that's really what the summer is for anyway. ;)

Until next time......