A walk in the park...

Today was a great day outside so I decided to walk down to Sugarhouse Park with the girls for a picnic and fun on the jungle gym. Not to digress, but I've been trying and trying to get Ava officially potty trained for some time. I'm not forcing it and she's been doing a pretty good job of remembering to use the potty when she's wearing her "unders" (as she calls them). But, like walking, she is kind of taking her time deciding she wants to commit to it full time. I asked and asked and asked before we left if either of them needed to go potty, knowing the park's bathrooms were closed, but of course, they both said no. Caroline can hold hers like a camel, so I'm not too worried about her... but Ava's a different story.

And sure enough, after lunch on the playground Ava came waddling over to me saying she had to go potty. Then followed up with, "I tinkled a little bit already...and I pooped a little bit." Uh oh! I didn't know what I was going to find. She couldn't really walk with her little "present" in her unders so I picked her up under her arms and told Caroline to follow me to the bathrooms while I pushed the stroller with one hand and carried Ava like a football in the other. As expected, the bathrooms were locked so I told Ava that we were going to have to be adventurous. Thankfully it was a sunny and relatively warm day because I had to strip her from the waist down (including shoes and socks) so she could go potty on the grass. And no, I couldn't find a tree or grove of shrubs to hide her...it is winter after all. But she was a good sport and when I showed her how to squat she said giggling, "like a dog?!" She took her time, but she finally tinkled and thankfully, she had pooped all she was going to poop.

After I got her all dressed and cleaned up, but before I had a chance to clean up the poop, two little dogs came wandering by all excited. They got all interested in the area Ava had tinkled and I feared they were going to find the poop. Sure enough they did and even proceeded to pick it up. I yelled "leave it" and their owner (a cute young girl) did her best to get her dog to spit it out but it just dropped it and the two of them gobbled it up. She was quite embarrassed and mortified and I was just praying she didn't know it was my daughter's. I tried to make her feel better by saying that my dog eats poop too. Ava and Caroline just wordlessly watched the whole thing unfold then Ava turned to me and asked if that dog just ate her poop. When I said yes, she said, "He shouldn't do that!"

Yeah, I know honey.

All About Caroline

So it wouldn't be fair to do a post for Ava's day at school without mentioning Caroline's big day. Her day at preschool was back on October 27th. She got to bring snacks for all her friends and bring a poster with pictures all about her. I didn't get a picture of the poster before she took it to class, but here's a slide show of all the pictures from it. I could only choose thirty and I tried to find the ones that gave a little history, but let her latest personality and interests shine through.

How cool is that?!

If there's one thing this excercise taught me, it's that I have literally THOUSANDS of pictures of these two little angels and hardly any organization to them. Technology is indeed a wonderful thing, but it does have its drawbacks. I did, however, get to reminisce on the last three plus years and see exactly how much they've grown and how far they've come from their precarious beginning. It seems like yesterday that they were in the NICU and hardly big enough to fit in clothes that weren't made for dolls.

Just about to start the presentation
(by the way, that's the 'flowey' top she was wearing when she almost burned the house down)

Dad enjoying circle time with the kids.