Rolling and Potty Time

I'm so proud of my two girls.  They've both achieved great milestones in the last two weeks.  Natalie is now potty trained!  She's been doing so great with it since we started two Saturdays ago.  We decided to try the 3-day potty training method with her since the laid back approach was not working with her even though she wants to sit on the potty -- I think she just needed to know the feeling of letting it out when sitting there.  So we put her in underwear as of 10 days ago and she hasn't gone back to diapers since.  She even wore them right away during nap and bedtime.  The first 48 hours were the toughest -- for her and us.  But she didn't have any accidents at nap or bedtime for the first few days and only a 3 or 4 since.  She had one day of regression last Friday but since then she's had no accidents.  We're so proud of her.  She's such a big girl!  She picked out her own underwear to start with (in combination with the ones Oma got her) and of course, they were Disney Princesses.

And our other great news -- Claire started rolling back to tummy this past Sunday!  She's been moving all over while sitting - twisting, turning, and scooting all over.  She finally decided to try this rolling skill out!  And she's so close to crawling.  She inches around on her belly from left to right and even scoots backwards.  Plus she's lunging forward.  I think she's going to start crawling soon.  Here is a video I finally got of her rolling.



We also got Claire a different type of puff to try eating (Teddy Puffs). They are not as light so she's able to grasp them and actually get them in her mouth without them sticking to her hands like the other ones.

July 4th Weekend Fun

We flew to WI for my Dad's 60th birthday party over 4th of July weekend.  We got to spend a lot of time with family.  The girls had a great time playing with Grandpa, Nana, Auntie Kendra, Hayden and Uncle Paul. They spent a lot of time playing with toys at the house.  We got ice cream at Dairy Queens.  We hung out in the pool.  Natalie had lots of fun playing in the sprinkler and slip-n-slide with Hayden. 

On July 3rd, we had a birthday party for my dad at my parents house.  We enjoyed spending a lot of time with the family and friends that were able to make it.  Natalie and Claire's Oma and Opa were even able to make it to the party.  We also got to see:  Jerry, Barbara, Lynn, Rob, Brett, Ryan, Lynn and her boyfriend Chris, Natalie and Claire's great-grandma, Becky, Amber, Christopher, Lauri, Pam, Merlin, and Cameron and his girlfriend Mindy.

Another reason we chose to have my dad's party that weekend (versus closer to his birthday on the 19th) was to take our girls to the Racine 4th of July parade.  The parades here in North Carolina are horrible -- they only have children's parades.  No marching bands or floats.  Racines' is supposedly one of best in the nation.  The day turned out really great -- not to sunny or hot.  Unfortunately I broke out in a heat rash that itched for days.  I enjoyed being able to have my girls see the parade.