Big Girl Bed and Bye Bye Bottles!!!

Alyssa transitioned to her big girl bed. She is doing pretty good. Unfortunately she also figured out how to open her door, so we have had a few nocternal visits. That 3:30 AM wake up call is a bit of a killer -- makes it hard to get up when the alarm clock goes off at 5:45 (really it makes you want to throw the alarm clock across the room and hear it smash into a hundred pieces, but whatever!)

For those that may not know, Alyssa was still getting a night time bottle. We had Katelyn off the bottle by 18 months, but Alyssa is a whole different child and I thought getting rid of her nighttime bottle was going to be a huge struggle. I was wrong, I guess she just had to be ready for it and to have some imput. After discussing how babies use bottles, she decided it was time to give her bottles to babies that need them. She named a few of the babies at her school, so one of them will be the recipient of Alyssa's bottles (his mom is a friend of mine, so its not too weird that I am giving her used bottles). Alyssa is enjoying having a sippy cup of milk at night (one with a straw) and getting to read her books, then climbing into her big girl bed with her new Dora sheets. She had me read "How do Dinausaurs go to School" about four times last night. And Moo, Baa, La-La-La by Sandra Boynton was a big hit the other day as well.

Katelyn is starting to enjoy school and WINGS (her after school program). She can name a few of the kids in her class. And she can remember some of the names of the teachers at WINGS. Katelyn's kindergarten teacher sends homework home and the picture below is her concentrating on one of her homework sheets. -- It doesn't work right if you don't stick your tongue out like that!

Now if we could get Katelyn to stop wetting her pants it would be great. The best we have done is two school days in a row without wet pants. She hasn't managed to go any longer then that during the week (although we have had accident free weekends). It only seems to happen at WINGS, but I can't be sure since she doesn't/can't tell us when she wet her pants. I've talked to her kindergarten teacher and she said she would have Katelyn use the restroom before putting her on the bus to WINGS -- that didn't help. I talked to WINGS about looking for signs that she needs to go potty and asking her to go as soon as she gets to WINGS -- that didn't really help either. We set up a rewards system if she stays dry for a week straight -- getting stickers for each day she stays dry and a reward when she fills up a solid week. So far, the Phineas and Ferb CD of songs I bought for her is a distant dream. We let her discuss other possible rewards and they included going to the movies, making jewelry with mom (pasta necklaces, marshmellow necklaces, etc), baking with mom, and a few others I can't remember (not that it matters since we haven't even achieved one reward yet). Its frustrating (for her and us) and it increases the amount of laundry we get to do in any given week. NOT FUN!

Well -- I'm off to bed (since I have a possible 3:00AM wake up call coming).