Little Explorers

Here are Anna and Alexander exploring things. Anna is caught in the act of discovering that mommy's and daddy's Crest toothpaste does not taste quite as yummy as her bubble gum-flavored training toothpaste. She loves trying on my shoes, by the way. How darn cute is this picture! Alexander (before haircut late last week) is caught flipping the light switches, which are just his height as he descends the stairs. It wasn't too difficult to get him in the act, since he loves to do this everytime he's on the stairs. Anna doesn't bother with this too much for some reason, maybe it's an age thing.

On another note, I realized last week that Anna will be starting preschool in about a month! I don't have the exact date but it's supposed to be either in late August or first week of September. Anyway, she's supposed to be potty-trained to enroll, so I had to bite the bullet and ditch the training Pull-Up diapers. Even though she's been wearing Pull-Ups, she has been doing her business on the toilet for months now. Usually. Sometimes she'll forget or maybe not realize she has to go or has already gone until it's too late. Sometimes she would tell me she had to go beforehand. But I figured this wasn't truly potty-trained and that her school administrators wouldn't be very pleased. So one day last week I gave her warning that we were soon going to start wearing pretty "big girl" panties and no more Dora or Wella (what she called Cinderella) Pull-Ups. Within minutes of me warning her about this (I figured I'd warn her about his for a few days and then start), she asked if she could start wearing her "big girl" panties then. I said why the heck not?! May as well start now if you're ready. She had one accident that afternoon, and I saw it happen. She was playing and suddenly looked up with wide eyes and said "Uh oh. Pee pee." That was all it took for her to realize how this whole big-girl-panty-thing works. I think this was last Thursday. I'm writing this Tuesday night and she's only had maybe two more unavoidable accidents — both times were while sitting in her car seat (yuck!) when we were coming home from places. She warned me that she had to go and I asked her to hold it (once she was actually able to) but we live so far out now and, depending on where we are it might take 20-25 minutes to get home. As a result of all this learning, we've been having to use all kinds of public potties, including at Target, a little greasy diner where we ate lunch today and the city's recreation department where her swimming class is located. I liked not having to buy Pull-Ups when I did my weekly shopping last week. We are still using Pull-Ups at night, but I'm not sure she has gone in them much.