What A Little Lady!

Here's our little jokester, fooling around with Mr. PotatoHead mouths. I think Michaela has her Dad's love for making people laugh.

Barbie!Barbie!Barbie!

What a House!

Barbie!

Mom and Dad got Michaela a Barbie house for Christmas. I don't know who enjoyed it more, me or Michaela!

Awwww!

I thought this was such a great picture of Caitlin and Sharon. That blanket was a gift from Josh and Heather.

Turtle Trot

Caitlin and Sharon gave Michaela a really cute purple turtle that she now sleeps with every night. Here she is dancing with it.

Cool!!!!

Micah got this cool Spiderman Scooter from Mom and Dad. I think Jon was a little jealous.

Battle!

Josh and Heather sent the kids costumes and toy swords. They were a big hit, and the kids tired themselves out battling each other.

Mr. and Baby Claus

Dad always wears that Santa hat and McGill sweater on Christmas. This year Michaela matched him.

Christmas!

Michaela looked so beautiful in the special dress Auntie Donna bought her for Christmas.

Stocking Time

Here's Michaela opening her stocking very early on Christmas morning. Jon and I were actually awake quite early and since I couldn't fall back asleep (at 4:30 am), Jon was good enough to stay up with me and play games till Michaela woke up at 7.

Gingerbread Men

We went to Meghan's on Christmas Eve. The kids kept busy making gingerbread men.

Snowball Fight!

We arrived at Mom and Dad's on Friday. Around supper time it started to snow. The snowflakes were so huge and heavy, we couldn't resist going out for some fun. Here are Michaela and Jon having a little snowball fight.

Dinner With Grandmaman

Marthe took us to Barbie's for a very nice Christmas dinner with Jon's brother Shawn. Michaela was very good, and enjoyed a pizza, and ice cream for dessert. Thanks Marthe for a great evening.

Look....Santa!!!!

For some reason, Michaela absolutely loves Santa, Even though we have never talked about him before. My friend Angie, who is an aerobics instructor at Good Life, volunteered to be our Santa, and she did an amazing job!

Merry Christmas!

Party!

On Wed. we had a Christmas party at our daycare. Here are some of the kids enjoying some special Christmas treats.

Story Time!

Wow, Presents!!

Michaela was in heaven when she realized that she was getting presents. Here she is opening a Fisher Price car garage. We set it up right away, and she LOVED it!

Lion!

Auntie Donna and Uncle Rick gave Michaela (among other things), a child's first sign-language book. Michaela really loved it, and we were all amazed at how well she imitated the signs Donna showed her. Here she is doing the sign for lion.

Done!

And it's up!

I think we got the perfect tree!

Picture Perfect

I just love this picture!

Way to Go!

Jon looks pretty proud eh? Seconds after the tree fell, Michaela pointed at that tree behind them and said, "That one". Sorry, Michaela, only one!

THE ONE!!!

We finally picked the perfect tree. Michaela loved watching Daddy cut it down.

Which One, Which One?

We took Michaela to cut down a Christmas tree yesterday.

Fort Fun!

After too many quiet minutes from Michaela's room (never a good sign), I went to check on her. She had built this little fort all by herself and was playing so nicely. It was adorable.

Fast Friends

Well Newt and Michaela are beginning to get along. When Michaela's not trying to wrap Newt up in a blanket or trying to force him to play with his cat toys, they actually get along. It's very cute to see them curled up together.

Missie's First French-Braids

Well, I'm no where near as good at it as my Mom was (yet), but it think it turned out pretty nice. Missie wasn't too thrilled having it done, but she sat pretty still. I think it looks adorable. Does anyone have any other ideas on what I could do with her hair. It's very thin and grows longer in the top of her head, very short on the sides.

Funny Girl

Just Clowning Around

Getting Ready to Trick-or-Treat

We went trick-or-treating with Jake and Stephanie. As you can see Michaela adores Jake, who's like a big brother to her. They all have so much fun together. We went out for almost 2 and a half hours, it was pretty exhausting especially considering that only 1 out of 10 houses was giving out candy, so we walked FOREVER! Michaela was wonderful though, saying "trick-or treat", or sometimes "chocolate treat", and even a few times she said "Michaela treat!", but then she'd always say thank you. I felt really bad for her though because she kept asking to go potty on the way home, and eventually paused to pee in her pull up, she just couldn't hold it in anymore. Poor thing. All in all, it was really fun.

Daycare Fun

Here's Michaela doing some special Halloween crafts I prepared for the kids. She especially like the glue! And above that is Michaela playing with her friend Emerson, who was also dressed as a fairy. I bought Missie this costume for her to wear inside, because the unicorn one would have been too hot.

Halloween!

Here's Michaela in her unicorn costume. We're on our way to the daycare.

Michaela's Toilet Training History

Michaela started casual toilet training in March 2005, 4 months before she turned 2. With the help of VeggieTales (the potty was placed in front of the tv) and M&M rewards, Michaela was trained within 2 weeks. Well, she would always pee and poo in the potty if she was naked. If she was wearing panties, pants or a diaper, she would pee in them. Here's a picture of Michaela who fell asleep while sitting on the potty.
By May Michaela was using her potty as a stepping stool to climb up onto the toilet. This worked very well, because I no longer had to empty the potty bowl. She continued getting M&M rewards, but I still couldn't teach her not to pee in her panties, so Michaela spent most of the summer completely naked, because that was the only way she would use the toilet. A month or so later, she stopped using the potty as a stool, and the special toilet adaptor and started climbing up onto the potty on her own.
We were having no luck getting Michaela to remove her panties to pee. I took her to the daycare one day in pants and panties, determined to help her figure it out and she wet through 4 pair of pants before I ran out of changes of clothes, and put her back into a diaper. Finally, a couple of weeks ago, I bought her this gumball machine and filled it with peanut M&Ms. Every time she used the toilet, I gave her a coin, which she put into the machine and got an M&M. This worked really well. On Monday Oct. 24, I took her to the daycare with me, and she only wore pants (no pull-up), and except for one small leak, she did really well. Yesterday I took her out running errands. I put a pullup on her to be safe, at one point we were on the bus going to walmart, and she asked to go potty. I told her she would have to wait, and 15min later when we finally got there, her pullup was still dry, and she peed in the toilet. We left our house at 9:30 am and when we got home at 1:00pm her pullup was still dry!!! Then I put her down for a nap, and for the first time she woke up with a dry diaper. And then this morning she got up and asked to go pee and her diaper was still dry! We couldn't believe it! We are so proud of her. Thank you M&M, and thank you Gumball machine makers. By the way we are accepting donations for Michaela's future dental bills, which we are guessing will be quite expensive. (thank God for fluorinated water!)

What a Mess!

Michaela was a little hesitant to finger paint at first. She's more used to being told not to get paint all over herself. But once she saw how fun it was, she had a blast. While trying to pose for a picture with her, Missie decided to paint Mommy too.

A Day of Finger Painting