Once Upon A Potty...

I'm sure many of you are rolling your eyes thinking... Brixie, you're nuts! What are you doing putting an 8 month old on the potty? She can't even walk yet and your potty training?????

So here's the scoop on poop... I HATE IT! When Brixie Lee was 6 months old I started reading about all the different potty training strategies. Everything from holding a bucket to their bare bottom at birth to letting them tell you when they are ready. Neither of those sounded good for me. Then I found the "Diaper Free By 3" book that was written by a pediatrician who saw the world as I do. The book has lots of good information in it, but the bottom line is an early "introduction" to the potty. Brixie Lee was 1 day shy of 7 months old when I first sat her on the baby potty... pictured below! She's so cute!


As you can see, she loved it. We would sit there for a few minutes everyday and read and sing and just have fun. In fact, her first word (duck) was from a book that we read everyday on the potty. That's also where she learned her ABC's, shapes, and colors. After a couple months she started to poop regularly on the baby potty and I was getting sick of cleaning out the baby potty. We put her on the regular potty when she was about 10 months old and never looked back. I can't tell you how happy I was to not be cleaning poops from a diaper! OK, there were occasional poopie diapers, but most of the time she waited to poop on the potty! Happy Mommy, Happy Daddy and Happy Brixie Lee!

I was even more pleased when Brixie Lee successfully started wearing panties 100% of the time when she was 21 months old. That's less than 2 years of diapers! I was over the moon!

Now for Helene... our lives have been dramatically more busy. I broke the potty out when she was almost 8 months old (a month late, I was not happy with myself). Unfortunately, Helene HATED the baby potty. I would sit her on it and she would scream bloody murder and try desperately to crawl away. We tried again a week later and the same thing happened. And again, and again. A few weeks ago she started pulling herself up and decided she wanted to play in big potty. Gross, but at least she was showing interest. I decided we needed to try the big potty but was having a hard time getting to the store to buy the potty seat (Brixie Lee never used one).

Grandma came to Helene's rescue and bought one for her yesterday. She sat on it for 10 minutes before bath and loved every minute. She even when pee! Basically she just wanted to do it like Big Sister does. On the big potty!

Ahhh... the beginning of my freedom from poopie diapers!

The End!

Playing Dress Up...

It's sad to say that my twin is no longer my twin. We broke out some of my old baby clothes and played dress up with the girls. When Helene was a newborn she looked A LOT like me as a newborn. Things have changed and she's starting to have her very own look! My mom and I think this picture of me was taken when I was close to 1 year old.


Now here's my baby girl and it's quite clear that she doesn't look like me anymore :( I guess it was bound to happen sometime! My extremely determined little girl is growing up too fast and I'm spending a lot of time trying to savor every moment. She just recently started giving kisses when asked and I must say that melted my heart!

I know I've posted this picture of my mom and I before, but I wanted to show it again because of the picture below with Brixie Lee in the same dress. Brixie Lee never looked much like me as a newborn, but there are times when she looks like me as a toddler.

My bright, beautiful, big girl may not have her sister's determination, but she sure has her father's memory. This girl listens and remembers EVERYTHING! She knows over a 100 songs (seriously), can "read" numerous books to you via memory (some words), and is always reminding me of promises that I've made (like ice cream after dinner).

Someday I'll try to get some baby pictures of Don Lee so we can see how these girls compare with Daddy. There are many, many times when Brixie Lee looks exactly like her father.

If you would like to see all the pictures from our little dress-up session, you can check out Don's Gallery!