This is Julia sleeping in her cradle. It won’t be long before she fills it up and has to move to her crib. It dawned on me that I hadn’t taken a photo of her in it yet and might miss the opportunity if I didn’t do it soon. It is always a little dangerous to take a photo of a sleeping baby, but I got away with it and didn’t wake her up. This cradle was not only used by Emily, but Mommy and Uncle Philip also. The cradle was made by Grammy and Granddaddy while they were waiting for Uncle Philip’s arrival.

We were playing in the girls room and Emily discovered that she could check on Julia for Mommy. If she could figure out how to climb in with Julia, she would. This week, Emily also discovered that she could climb into her own crib with the side down. She didn’t think she could crawl out after she got in, so we kept playing the game with Mommy taking her out and she would climb in again.

Julia has been reaching out and touching things for a little while now. She has gotten much better this past week at grabbing hold of things. This is proved each time she grasps the frog on her bouncy seat. We know it because the frog plays a song that we hear often. So far we are not tired of the song yet.

Julia isn’t sleeping in her big bed yet, but we are starting to use it for a play space. We want both Julia to get used to her crib and Emily used to having Julia share the room. I thought the photo was a sweet photo of Julia. Once she gets a little mobile I will clean out the bed, but right now it is a combo of a play place and storage of toys.

A little pre-bedtime sugar cookie making with Mommy and Emily. The process was supposed to be roll, sugar, and smush. Emily loved to say roll for all of the steps. The balls she made were pretty good until she had them made and then stuck her fingers into them. The sugar step involves touching the cup bottom into the sugar, only Emily thought that it was better to coat her fingers with sugar. Then the last step was to smush the dough ball with the cup and that was Emily’s most successful step. I am mistaken to say that any of these steps were Emily’s favorite steps because eating the cookie was really her favorite.

Just a few more words on Emily’s potty training. I couldn’t be more pleased with Emily’s progress. We tried to go full action potty training and after day three and a lot of crying everytime she sat on the potty, we took a break. I just didn’t want her to hate the potty and she definately wasn’t enjoying the process.

Our new approach was to remind her that when she needed to go she needed to tell Mommy or Daddy. And then when it looked like she was trying to communicate something we would ask if she needed to go potty. This approach only produced 1-2 successful trips to the potty each day.

Then the day before yesterday we made four successful trips and no diaper changes after her nap. Yesterday followed with three successes. I guess one trick to potty training is figuring out what is the best reward motivator. Emily asked to watch Diego as her reward yesterday. I told her that she could watch one Diego episode as a reward, but couldn’t watch another Diego as a reward until she ‘poopied in the potty’. After that successful trip to the potty she always asked to watch Diego and I would repeat the rewards system. She surprised me today, while she was on the potty I went to fetch a fresh dry diaper and she poopied in the potty. She was very calm about it like she did it every day. I was so proud of her! We postponed her nap and she watched her Diego episode to celebrate.

When I was reading about the training process, I found several references to the fact that I would be learning about how Emily learns and deals with situations. So what I have learned about Emily so far is: she likes to be in control, she likes a little privacy at times when doing things for herself (espcially the first time), she learns quick, and her wanting to do something is the best motivator for her.