Play time and potty update

*** WARNING: This is a heavily picture-laden post ***

We had some beautiful weather on Sunday so the Hubs and I took K to a local park (the same one where we had her second birthday party) and took some pictures of her romping about.

At the top of the BIG slide.

I think we have a future Olympic Luge contender

As the smile indicates, she loves this thing.

Running to the top again.

She even suckered Daddy...

...and Mommy into riding it with her.

But how could we say "no" to that face?!?

And now it's off to find other adventures.

Tunnels...

...slides...

...and swings were in store for this adventure seeker.

And if that wasn't enough, diving head-first into the tube seemed exciting.

Ahhh, my little gymnast!

And my favorite picture of the bunch. This is a true KBear mischievous smile!

A few of you have asked how things are going with her Potty Chart. I'm pleased to tell you that it's going very well. In fact this morning, she declared she had to go potty right when she woke up and her diaper was less wet than usual so I took that as a good sign. She's even made poopers in the potty a few times as well so I think she's getting there. She seems more likely to signal us for pee than poop but I'm just happy that she's telling us and is still excited to put stickers on her chart. At her age I wasn't sure if it would keep her interest for as long as it would take to fill out the whole chart but she talks about her Thomas Train that she will get when it's all full and claps her hands about it so I guess it's working. Speaking of the train table, I found the one I'm going to get. It's from Tuesday Morning and it's a REALLY good deal. It's $79.99 for the table (with built-in storage and a reversible top) and a 55 (or 70, I can't remember) piece train track with cars, cranes, people, etc. At Target they have their Circo brand table that I was going to get (which is on sale right now for $69.99, down from $79.99) but that is just the table with no trains included so I feel like this is a pretty good deal. Plus, I have a figure-8 set and an oval set of tracks already so with the ones we have plus the ones that come with the table, I think we'll have plenty of configurations to set up for Thomas.

Overview of the table (it's by Kidkraft)

Showing the reversible top and built-in storage bins.

Since this picture she has added 2, maybe 3 more stickers. As you can see, she's more than half-way done.

Last, but not least, I came across some pictures of her from this summer on my phone that are too cute not to share. Here she is learning about the joys of puddle jumping.

These last four are dedicated to Auntie Mamy

 I'm sorry for all of the pictures but hey, I did warn you!

Paper Owl Mobile from Made by Joel

I came across this blog called "Made by Joel" and he has a free template available for a neat paper owl mobile that I wanted to try.

The original template is for an (approximately) 8"x10" mobile and since I wanted mine to be bigger than that, I brought the template over to Photoshop and quadrupled it. I broke the original template into 4 8"x10" parts and then taped them back together again to make one big bird. I printed mine on card stock so it would be more durable. While the white looks very cool and kind of modern (I could see something like this hanging in my parents house) I wanted mine to look more "childish" and decided to cover it in sheets of scrapbook paper that I had purchased a few months back from the dollar section at Target.

If you decide to make one of these yourself I suggest using double sided tape and not glue to adhere the paper to the card stock. The first Owl body I made I used glue and since the scrapbook paper I was using was thin, that much glue just caused it to bubble and wrinkle and look downright terrible. The tape worked MUCH better. One note about this though is that I used thread to hang it (as directed in the original post) and because of the amount of tape used and the extra pieces of paper it's already fallen down (I hung it this afternoon) so I'm going to have to rethink how to adhere the thread to the owl since the small piece of double sided tape I used didn't cut it.

While I think it turned out cute, in the end, I would rather hang the super cute mobile my sis-in-law showed me in a magazine she has (to go along with the blue birds one that is hanging in the playroom - pictures to come, I promise). It's been a while but I want to say it was a either a cloud or an umbrella with raindrops and a maybe a rainbow and/or sun. I know it's vague but I bet she'll remember what I'm talking about and hopefully pick up this not so subtle hint I'm dropping ;)  The funniest part of the whole project is that Kface calls the owl Wall-E and you know what, she's right. It does kind of look like Wall-E. Lol!

Here are the pictures of the Wall-E Owl and of K herself because she's just too cute not to share.

The white card stock version

Here it is covered in the scrapbook paper and hung in K's room.

Here is another view of it. It was hard to keep it from spinning.

I *think* this is sorta, kinda, similar to the one S-I-L showed me, but crocheted of course.

She was wearing the foam protectors from the sides of the portable DVD player like shoes.

Took this picture today as we were heading out to the book store to play with the Thomas trains. She'll be getting her table soon... She's pooped on the potty twice now and is telling us much more frequently when she needs to go. Her potty chart is really starting to fill up and she's still excited to use it so that's a plus.