A Night at Home With My Bronwynnie

This kid cracks us up. She has an obsession with coloring. She wants to color everything, at any time, with any person, under any circumstances. I love how she entertains herself. Tonight it was she and I as Reed took Aftyn to go with him to the auto parts store to pick up stuff for an oil change on our car. She is quick to clean any messes around our house with a towel. Many times that's how I knew she had had a potty accident because I would come downstairs and find her on the floor with the towel from our stove in her hand and she was mopping up her potty with it. And not because she thought she would get in trouble, oh no, it was because there was a mess and she likes to clean them up. LOL.  Her personality is a hoot!

Here she is tonight having just dripped water from her cup down her leg. She just took care of the problem herself, hopped off her toilet, grabbed the towel, sat back down on her toilet, wiped her leg off and then tried to return the towel to the stove which I would believe in miracles if any 19 month old could actually manage to hang a towel back over that narrow bar.

  How's potty training going, you may ask?  Yesterday marked our 9th week in and I'm just going to describe for you my day today.

The girls and I woke up, went downstairs, Bronwyn went potty and then I poured them some cereal and they ate. Bronwyn probably went potty a few more times before we went to IHOP for lunch thanks to my inlaws who gave us a gift card for Christmas. Bronwyn went potty before we left, went potty once we got to IHOP, went potty before we left, went potty 20 minutes later at Target, went potty again after we shopped, and managed to make it home nice and dry! And she was wearing panties the whole time and has been for about 3 weeks whenever  I take her out of the house with me.
 Just so you know, at this point, this was an exceptional day with no accidents. Just yesterday, we had accidents. I would say on the whole, we have accidents about every week, generally, which seems pretty normal for Bronwyn. She still feels so proud of herself when she goes to the bathroom in the toilet. We still celebrate every time, but are past the point of treats every time.

 I would say on the whole I am so glad I am potty training her. It seems to give her a new sense of independence and "big"ness and I can see progress in so many areas of her life. She is playing differently, she is constantly trying out new and bigger and harder words. I have no idea if it's how she would be without potty training but I'd like to think it is probably helping her feel more responsible for herself.

Bronwyn on the toilet  :)  I knew you'd want to see.  Ha ha!

Playing playing playing! Aftyn never drove cars around like Bronwyn likes to.

I just love how Bronwyn gets down on her tummy to play on the floor sometimes. It's exceptionally cute when she gets on her tummy and plays and crosses her little legs behind her. She still is a pretty 'little' little girl.

                           I can't imagine life without this sweetheart. She is so cute and funny, and yet so sweet and loving. If she hurts you and you tell her, she immediately tells you "sorry" and hugs you. She is a sucker for kissy lips and can't generally pass up kissing you if she likes you and you are making them at her. :) She finds friends wherever we go and waves at everyone at the store. And I do mean everyone. She is so sweet and little that almost all the kids at church come up and pick her up, but she doesn't really like it. She doesn't like to be manhandled but most of the kids can't help themselves. She is slowly learning to accept that she has to go to nursery and I've been told by the leaders in there that she just entertains them while she's there. She is very independent and will even lift her own nursery chair off the tall stack should she need one. :) She loves the kid slide in the nursery and I think spends a good deal of time going down that over and over.

She still loves her binky but is very accepting of us telling her "binkies are for bedtime!".  After potty training, the binky is the next big thing for us but I'm going to wait a while for that and make sure she's ready before I take it away. She doesn't worry me by sucking on her fingers the way Aftyn used to occasionally so I'm not as worried about her possibly switching to thumb sucking but I'd still like to stay far away from that being a possibility.
      She is proving to be a more adventurous eater than Aftyn when she's hungry. She will pick up and try anything and it can be pretty amusing to see her initial reaction to some foods. She loves turkey and chicken if it's cooked well and has good flavor. She likes meat and cheese sandwiches. She loves chocolate and can even say it. She can sign 'more' and 'eat' and 'please' and 'thank you'. One of her funny little things right now is when she says 'please'. I'll have to get it on  video because I cannot describe just how cute it is as she tries to say please in a 'pretty pretty please' kind of way. It makes me laugh.
                  All in all, our little girl has grown up so much over the past year. Can you believe a year ago she looked like this:

It's amazing how much our kids can grow in the first few years of life. 

We can't imagine life without her.