Will "fishing" in the backyard

By the way, this is what happens when I let my 2 year old dress himself:)

Baby Girl Dart!

I went for an ultrasound Monday and got to see baby girl in 3D! It is so neat to get a glimpse of what she is going to look like! (And that is the umbilical cord in front of her face on the left!)

Also, she flipped! I am SO glad!! I laid upside down on a propped up ironing board (I read online this is the best way to do it) with frozen peas on my upper stomach every day for the last week. Matt took this picture of me one night...

Thankfully everything seems to be going well with Baby Girl Dart! I can't wait to meet her!!

Choo Choo!

We've been wanting to take Will on the train (the Metra) for awhile now, and Saturday we decided to do it! He LOVES trains, and loves it whenever we go pick daddy up from the train after work - he can hear it coming and says "Choo Choo!" So he was pretty excited about getting to ride it!

The Metra is a double decker and Will wanted to sit upstairs. We got on the first car though, so he and Matt walked around a little bit and looked out the front windows.

Can you tell how excited he was?

We took the train into the downtown terminal. It was drizzling rain and I waddle more than I walk these days, so we took Will outside to see some buildings and a bridge over the water, but that was about it. He was more interested in checking out the terminal! We got lunch there and then took the train back to Evanston.

He's been talking about going on the train with mommy and daddy ever since we got back! He calls Matt "Mr. Conductor Daddy" and me "Mr. Conductor Mommy" and when he wakes up I hear him in his room yelling "All aboard!" I think he had a pretty good time:)

Potty training

Guess who's potty training?!

Moving to a big boy bed and now potty training - I guess I am just trying to get ready for a new baby around here:) It is going really well so far! I research things like this to death, so after reading 3 books on potty training from the library and numerous articles and posts online, I was making myself crazy. What is the BEST method? When is the BEST time to do it? In the end, I just woke up last Monday morning and after getting Will up, decided it would be the day! I didn't even tell Matt ahead of time - I just needed to stop worrying about it and go ahead and do it.

Day 1 went really well - he liked his new frog potty (and got into a bag of dress-up clothes while sitting there!)

In the end I didn't follow any one particular method. I know there are some that say you can do it in 3 days or even 1 day, and other books say it should be a slow process and not hurried. Here is what we did:

• I got the Fisher-Price frog potty. If I had to do it again, I may skip the "little" potty - I think it is built for kids much younger than 2 1/2 - he seems way too big on it (he does like it though)!
• On the very first morning when I got him up, I told him he was DONE with diapers. We packaged them up, got rid of the changing table, etc. I think it is confusing to "sometimes" still wear diapers or pull-ups during the day. I did read that it takes kids a while longer to wake up when they are asleep and have to go to the bathroom, so we use pull-ups (we call them "sleeping pants") ONLY when he is getting into bed. As soon as he wakes up, they come back off.
• For the first 3 days, we didn't leave the house. He had school on the third day, and I decided to keep him home. I'm glad I did - he was still having many accidents on day 3. By the end of day 3 we went out to a restaurant, and he practiced going to the potty about 4 times and stayed accident free! By day 4, he had the hang of it. We went to Bible Study, and he came and got me 3 times over a 2 hour period to tell me he needed to potty! By day 5, he was ready to go back to school and did great.
• For the first few days, he got a treat for going to the potty (an m&m). During those first couple of days, he wouldn't realize he needed to go until he'd started to go in his pants. This is how kids learn - for so long they just "go" whenever they need to, with no thought to it. On about day 4 though, we started rewarding him for keeping dry pants instead of going to the potty. I wanted him to learn how to tell he was about to go BEFORE he actually started going. So I'd ask every few minutes if he was dry and make a really big deal about it if he was.
• I got lots of kid's books and dvds about going to the potty from the library. He LOVED these and I think they helped him get excited about it - his favorite book is Calliou Potty Time and his favorite dvd is Potty Pirate!
• While we are at home he usually just wears a t'shirt and big boy pants. This way he can easily take them off and run to his potty without having to come get me first! We started out using Gerber training pants. I loved these - they are really thick so even when he started to have an accident it didn't mess up his shorts or furniture or anything, and yet they make him "feel" wet so he knows when he's gone.

Day 2, playing in his "spaceship"

After he went an entire day without any accidents, we gave him some Thomas the Train big boy pants! He loves them! Since then, he's had 4 days in a row with no accidents! I'm so proud of my big boy!

"Roar!" (He's a dinosaur, coming to get me!)

34 weeks

How far along: 34 weeks

Size of baby: I won't show a picture of fruit this week because I am so far off the charts...according to an ultrasound Monday this baby is 6 lbs 9 oz already! For comparison, Will was 7 lbs 9 oz during this same week. So even though she isn't as big as Will was at this stage, she is still measuring very large.

How I'm feeling: Like a whale. Tired. Achy. Keeping up with our very active 2 year old takes every bit of energy I have! I really shouldn't complain though - at this point in my pregnancy with Will I was already on bed rest, so I am VERY thankful that things are going better this time.

Highlights this week: This week started my weekly NST's (non-stress tests - laying in a recliner at the hospital with fetal monitors strapped to me to measure baby's movements for 30 minutes) and ultrasounds. I found out on Monday that the baby is breech! Normally not a huge deal at 34 weeks, except for the fact that this baby is already so large, she has less time (and space) to flip around. I have looked up every method out there to flip a baby, and as crazy as they may be, I am trying them! Why not, if it can avoid a c-section, right? So I've laid upside down with my hips and feet up in the air, and put a bag of frozen peas on my upper stomach (with the theory that babies don't like cold). And two other things I haven't tried yet but have heard they could work is to play music through headphones really low on your stomach (babies can hear music and move towards it) and to shine a flashlight low on your stomach (they can also sense light and move towards it). I know, sounds crazy right? I am also doing a lot of praying:) I get an ultrasound each Monday so hopefully she will flip by the next time I go in!

Video monitor

Will has been in his big boy bed for 3 weeks now and he is doing great! He sleeps so well in it - better than the crib I think.

Last week we decided it would be nice to have a video monitor. I never saw the point when he was in a crib - even in a two story home I could hear him when he woke up, and it's not like he could go anywhere! But now that he could get down if he tried, I wanted to be able to keep an eye on him. I saw this blog post about a video monitor that you can use with your computer or iphone and thought it sounded like a great idea.

Who sleeps like this?! He is on top of his quilt, backwards, with his feet up against the wall.

We LOVE it! Instead of spending $200 on a baby video monitor, we spent $80 on this one. It was easy and quick to set up and works great. I have a website bookmarked on my computer and can instantly pull it up to see him. I can pan around the room and can even talk to him through it! (I haven't tried this yet - I think it would scare him).

And by using a free app for the iphone, Matt and I can both see him on our phones too! Pretty neat!

We keep books by the bed so when he wakes up he usually grabs some of them right away!

I'm so proud of my big boy - he is growing up!

Will's first movie - The Lorax!

We took Will to the movies for the first time this weekend to see The Lorax! It was a great first movie to take him to - he loves all of the Dr. Seuss books (Matt's mom has given him most of them!).

I thought the movie was great! It was definitely entertaining and had a good message.

I was a little concerned beforehand about why it was rated PG (Will doesn't like scary stuff at all) but from everything I read online, it was a mystery as to why it wasn't rated G. After seeing it, I agree - there wasn't any scary parts (at least for him) or any bad language. One caution though - since it is rated PG, it affects the previews shown beforehand. They were all cartoons, but there was more than one that was really scary for Will. We told him to put his hands over his eyes though, and he did fine.

Will did so good during the movie - he sat still the whole time and even kept on his 3D glasses! He talked about it the whole way home - how he went to see the Lorax and had popcorn and wore glasses and how it was so much fun!

Will also shared his first movie with our infamous ex-governer - Blagojevich. One of the last times to see him in public - he reports to prison next week.

I'm so glad Will had fun and enjoyed the movie - I can't wait to take him to another one!