celebrate Easter every day!

i went to church with daddy & mommy on Easter sunday morning. i really enjoy my sunday school class. but we knew there would be a big crowd & i didn't want to get upset like i had at the egg hunt. so we only stayed for about an hour (while mommy & daddy were in the church service.) then we came home & looked through my Easter basket. i received several new books & some candy! i also received some little stamps that have quickly become favorites. i put them in my purse & call them "my special things." one of them is the same shape as my blue hamster wheel. i LoVE it!

you may also notice that i am wearing sandals in these dressy pictures. last summer i was afraid of sandals, but mommy has been talking to me about these shoes for a couple of weeks now in preparation to wear them. now i like the sandals because the flowers on them have little "reflections." they are actually just little metal brads as the center of the flowers, but i can see my reflection in them! mommy is so proud of me for discovering that these shoes really not scary.

sometimes i am afraid to go outside -- i am scared of barking dogs & buzzing bees. but i did really well on Easter morning. we "borrowed" the backdrop of our neighbors' azaleas. they compliment my new dress nicely, don't they? (thank you, aunt lorna, for my PrETTy dress!)

then we went to grammy & pappy's house for lunch. after lunch, we had another egg hunt. notice -- i am wearing a different outfit in these pictures... i had my first outside-the-house potty-training mishap! i fell asleep in the car & peed on myself! so i had to change clothes. (but mommy just didn't realize that i would fall asleep that quickly!!) but i am still doing SOOO well with the potty-training! i am truly growing UP!

my own Easter egg hunt...

this morning was the big egg hunt at church. the festivities began in the sanctuary where we sang songs & listened to a story. i behaved *sooo* well -- and this included wearing panties instead of a diaper!! (we have continued to be totally diaper for since last tuesday!) then the children & parents broke up into different age groups. we were on our way to the playground, but i just could not handle being so tight in a large crowd. i was so upset that we didn't even make it to the hunting grounds. but that's ok because we had our own private egg hunt when we returned home!!

after i had gathered up all my eggs, we sat on the patio to inspect the treasures in the eggs. one of the first eggs i opened contained a tiny bottle of bubbles. well, i was no longer interested in the contents of the remaining eggs. i just wanted to BLOW BUBBLES!

my blue wheel & my pollys...

today was a special day for many reasons. i had my first totally diaper-free day!! i even had to go to school, grammy's house, and other errands -- so we were in the car quite a bit too. i got so many stamps, i look like i am covered in tattoos! then when we got home, a package was waiting for me. allow me to preface this story a bit... lately, i have started watching my baby einstein videos again. in one particular video, there is a little hamster running on a blue wheel. i have fallen in LOVE with the blue wheel in this video. well, daddy found one just for me!!

in this first picture you can see me waiting patiently for daddy to open the box. at this time, i still didn't know what i was about to receive.

now i have my blue wheel & the little running hamster!! i LOvE this! i enjoy just watching him run & i also let my zhu-zhu pet watch too. (the hamster & zhu-zhu pet look a lot alike.) i was SOO excited!!!

then i played with my polly pocket dolls too. grammy found some more pollys at a consignment sale, so i enjoyed lining up all my new dolls.

potty training, phase two....

today we don't really have any errands (or excuses!) to leave the house. unfortunately, i have really regressed on the potty training scene. so mommy says we are done with diapers, at least when we're at home. my original prize for "pee in the potty" was getting to play with the phone. but at school they give me stamps for pee & stickers for poop (haven't gotten any stickers yet!!) so we are trying the stamps here at home today. it's working pretty well -- in fact, mommy & i have a competition going on. every time i pee in the toilet, i get a stamp. every time i have an accident, mommy gets the stamp. so far, we are pretty even in the competition, but i hope to win by the end of the day. in one of these pictures, you can see my "MK" stamp on my arm. and yes, i AM wearing a halloween shirt. but when you are getting all your clothes wet, you just kind of have to wear whatever is left over! wish us luck!

painting!

i painted for the first time yesterday using real paint! aunt judy gave me some wooden cars a while ago, and i've recently lost them. mommy and daddy think they must be in a grocery cart somewhere. i loved those cars and was very sad when they were gone, so mommy and daddy stayed up after i went to bed friday and made me some more! only they weren't finished painting them, so me and daddy finished them. that's when i got to paint! i was very careful and gentle with the brush. you can see my finished art on the plate!

playing at the park...

hasn't this warm weather been wonderful?!! here are some pics of playing at the neighborhood park & also in the stroller on our walk to the park. i do like to play outside, but sometimes i get scared of the bees & other bugs.

play-doh creations...

for those of you who may not know it, I LOVE PLAY-DOH!!! mommy keeps play-doh in her purse at all times just in case we are out somewhere & i get bored. here are a couple of examples of my work -- i did these all by myself & even told mommy what they were. the orange one is "little taffy sitting at the pool, getting wet." the pink one is "little taffy with pigtails."

zoo-day tuesday...

last week we went to the birmingham zoo TWICE!! these pictures are from our tuesday visit. i LoVe to ride the train and of course we looked at all the animals too. you may also notice my sticker that says "i voted." this is because i did go to vote with mommy that morning. i really enjoyed this also. when we arrived at the polling place, i went up to several random people & asked "do you want to do voting?" then i heard mommy ask for the republican ballot, so i went up to more people saying, "republican... do you want to do voting?" even at the zoo, i continued to encourage people to vote!



my favorite animals at the zoo are the lorikeet birds. we go inside a huge cage with the birds & some visitors even feed the birds! i am afraid to let them land on me, so we just watch other people do the feeding. maybe one day i will work up the courage to feed them. but for now, i will just enjoy their beautiful colors!

just ducky...

here is the latest outfit that mommy has made for me... just in time for Easter & spring time!! when i saw this fabric in the store, i told mommy that we just HAD to have it!! and i LOVE this outfit! when i saw the shirt for the first time, i couldn't quit saying, "why, hello little duck!"

and on the subject of potty-training... i am doing pretty well. i still wear pull-ups most of the time (although mommy may put me in panties ALL the time because sometimes i get a little lazy!) up till now i have been fairly afraid of any public toilet, including the one at school. so on monday (we didn't have school that day), mommy & i spent the day at school practicing the use of the school toilet. so today i returned to school for a normal day. i peed in the school toilet TWICE! hooray for me!!

i'm potty-training *finally*...

so i am not going to post pictures of me actually ON the potty, but i can promise you, i am making progress. a couple of weeks ago we tried the "panties-only" approach & it just upset me to have wet pants. i was always surprised when the wetness came. yesterday, we tried this method again & it began to click! yesterday afternoon, i realized i had to pee & i ran across the kitchen and sat on the potty with my pants still on! but at least i DID get some pee in the potty. i really liked my first set of panties though... they had love-bug cars on them. unfortunately, we only had one set like that & i was really sad about it. so mommy drew cars on my other panties so that i could always wear a car. this made me really want to wear the panties & not wear diapers.

on saturday, i only had 2 accidents & i peed in the potty about 8 times!! i am still a bit skittish of the potty -- i usually just ask mommy to put a diaper on me. but then she would say to me, "no, we aren't wearing diapers today. you need to sit on the potty." and so i would sit on the potty & wait for the pee to come out. the first time i saw pee coming out of me, i squealed with JoY!! my reward is that i get to play with mommy's phone for 15 minutes after i get pee in the potty.