Ellie's Potty

Almost every morning, Ellie wakes up with a dry diaper.  Within a few minutes, however, she is soaked right through her pajamas.  I had tried to sit her on a potty that we had been given before she was born, but she is still so little, she just about fell in!  So I recently looked up "little potty" on Amazon to see what was available and I found the perfect potty!  

Ellie's Little Potty

My plan with the potty was to just see if I could avoid that initial morning soak of the day.  I certainly had no intentions on "potty training" my nine month old.  I started on Christmas morning and sat her on the potty in the bathroom while I sat on the "big potty."  As soon as she heard me go, she went!  I was so excited!

The next morning, I did the same thing and she went again!  This has been the case every morning since I've started!  But today I thought I'd try to put her on the potty any time her diaper seemed dry or dryish.  She peed on her potty FOUR TIMES today!

I think that she is already making associations with her potty that allow her to release that muscle.  I'm still not attempting to "train" her, but I do feel like this will possibly eliminate the need to train her at all in the long run.  I'm theorizing that if I put her on the potty often and give her the option to go there, she will eventually choose that over her diaper.  I plan to teach her the sign for potty starting tomorrow and hope that once she learns it, she can tell me if she wants to use her potty.  

Visions of Minivans Dance in Her Head...

I don't know if it has been previously blogged yet, but Harold, my 1998 Ford Escort, died in the beginning of October. It was decent timing, the Durham family I worked for was becoming a Carrboro family that weekend and Scott and I were already talking about how we could start saving for a new van by March.

So we just went with it. Ellie and I have become pros at the Chapel Hill bus system! Time seems to be flying past with the holidays and the mild North Carolina weather has been something to be truly thankful for!

But now I'm missing the time I'm losing without a van. The buses are free and they run often, but they are horribly indirect. Jack's family lives only five minutes away, but it takes an hour to get there and another to get home. Three days a week equals six hours of my life that I could be using doing other things.

Recently, I've started to paint. I would love to have more time to indulge in this past-time! I would also love to get up at 5am on a Saturday, pack up my computer, and sneak out to a coffee shop to do some blogging before Ellie wakes up! Ellie's bedtime is nonexistent because we get home at 7:30 most nights and she misses Scott and he misses her. So they are playing and spending time together when she should probably be getting ready for bed. Or she falls asleep on the way home and wakes up full of energy way too late. I have sort of given up until we have a van.

Anyway, it's just for a short time. I'm sucking it up and looking at the positives. No gas or upkeep to pay for. I've been losing weight with all of the walking. Sitting on a bus is pretty stress free when compared to driving amongst the masses every morning. So in all, I've got nothing to complain about.

But I still can't wait to get that van!

Nonna

Ellie calls Scott Dada. It is very obvious she means him when she says it. When we are at work, she rarely says it unless something reminds her of him or if I ask about him. At home, she will use it all the time. She knows home is where her Dada is.

For a little while, she was calling me Momma, but it went away. Well, she still uses Momma when she is mad at me. If she wants me and I can't come immediately, she screams, "Maaamaaamamamaaa!"

But she has recently started to say Nonna a lot. At first I just thought it was a new sound. However, we have realized that it's Ellie's affectionate name for me! She says it in the sweetest voice! It sounds like Momma, but with n's. I don't know if she's heard people call me Rhiannon and picked up on it, or if she's just made up her own thing for me, but I love it!