Potty train part 2

Well ladies and gentlemen the potty train is leaving the station and I am so not ready to get on. I must say I am not ready for my little girl to be a big girl. Don't get me wrong. I hate changing diapers. I hate the smell of the diaper pail. I hate having to bring a diaper bag everywhere and then forgetting to restock it with diapers. I hate wrestling with my daughter to get her to lay down so I can clean her butt all while she yells "butt butt" and "peeyeewww". SO I should be the one that is happily embarking on this quest. However I just find diapers easy. I don't have to find bathrooms for her. Road trip? no problem! Day at the park? Sure why not? Day at the pool? Of course! Except now what I see is the logistics of finding bathrooms, reminding her to use the potty before we leave, the amount of spare clothes I will have to bring, trying to convince her to get out of the pool to use the potty. UUGGHHH what a night mare this seems to me. Like I said diapers are easy. I just have to remember to change it and hey she reminds me if she is too wet! Now with all of that said she keeps chugging ahead. 4 days since the potty went in the bathroom and she has peed on the potty 4 times! Now I know this isn't a huge amount but since I am not reminding her to use the potty this is pretty good. She has also told me twice "poop? POTTY!" and goes running to the potty. She gets on, sits for ten minutes, then says done and gets off. We get the diaper back on and then she poops, but she gets the concept! So now just to wait for it to happen I guess. With all of that said it is all her because here is our method as of now!
I put her in diapers and pretend the potty doesn't exist.
Eventually she will suddenly look up and say "potty" I say "ok let's go potty" and she runs to the bathroom.
I strip her down and she climbs on up.
She reads her books and I try to think of new things to point out in the books.
She may or may not pee (usually she does once a day).
We celebrate the potty time with 1 marshmellow ("marshy") for sitting and 2 for peeing, after the hand washing of course!
Then she gets back in a diaper and away we go. She usually asks to go potty once maybe twice a day. Now I just have to figure out how much longer I should be lazy about it or should I just bite the bullet and jump on the potty train? I just can't figure out where to fit it in our schedule. How have my experience parents out there dealt with potty training. Any advice would be great!

PS. Cute story from Day 1: I told Little Lady I had to go potty and so I went to the bathroom and she followed me. Then she disappeared and came back carrying her potty stool for me so I could reach the potty. lol

All Aboard...the potty train

Well here is a post I thought would be a long way off. We are ready to POTTY TRAIN!!! Yep you heard me right. Little Lady is 19 months and ever since we returned from our vacation has been saying “potty”. She has yet to actually do anything other than sit on the potty with no pants or diaper on but she loves doing it. Maybe all that time on vacation going in bathrooms with mom and watching me go has encouraged this sudden fascination with the potty. I don’t know but she is excited about it so I better get there too. Now after the first few times of going potty and her not loosing interest I quickly did some Amazon research and ordered a soft cushioned potty seat, a foot stool, four books for her about the potty, a movie for her, a book for me, and of course her big girl undies. The other day the undies arrived in the mail and she was sooo excited to wear them. She grabbed a pair of pink ones and put them on over her diaper, leggings and dress. I know what your thinking…where is the picture? Well I was a little too busy trying to reinforce the “YAY your in big girl undies” moment and not laugh about her method for wearing them. So she paraded around the house in them and checked herself out in every mirror she could find, and we have a lot of them. Today the potty seat, books, and stool came. So now her bathroom is ready. I have read a book about it and we shall see where this takes us. I am not rushing this and if anything I am the one dragging my feet but this girl thinks she is a big girl now. So stay tuned for the Adventures of Potty Training!  I think we will really start…maybe next week. Today we will just watch the movie. Wish us luck!

Since many of our friends will be joining us on this road in the near future here are the products we are using. I’ll let you know how they work when we figure it out ourselves.

Potty Seat: Prince Lionheart weePOD Basix, Berry Blue (round/oval seat but does work on our square toilet)

Stool: Bumbo Step Stool, Blue (soo cute, it looks like elephant feet and seems super stable)

Books for her: Potty time with Abby, Elmo’s Potty Book, Where’s the poop?, and The New Potty

Book for me and S (if he ever reads it): That’s How I Roll- great quick read, funny and an easy quick method. We shall see how it goes. The author does give support on her facebook page which seems great.

And the all important DVD: Elmo’s Potty Time!

Her undies are just basic Hanes ( Hanes Toddler Girls Briefs 6 Pack, Assorted, 2T-3T ) for toddlers. The fun Hello Kitty and Minnie Mouse ones are coming from grandma a bit later and she is still searching for Girls Elmo ones.

(you sense and Elmo theme don’ t you?)

All ready for when we are

 ******************************UPDATE********************************

Someone woke up from her nap and we watched Elmo's Potty Time. When it was over she said "Potty" and off we went, where is was happy to find her new bathroom accessories. She sat on the potty and read her books. She practiced getting on and off a few times. At one point she climbed down and sat in my lap then quickly got up and looked at my lap. I told her if she needed to pee pee she needed to get on the potty and she climbed up and peed!!! Yes folks she did it!!! So as hesitant as I am about this adventure she is definitely ready.

you would think she has been doing this forever.

we had to read all the new books

Maybe this potty seat is a bit too comfy.

Florence and Pisa, Italy Vacation day 6

 Today we booked an excursion to both Florence and Pisa. Our bus left at 8:15 because it was an hour and a half to get to Florence from our port city of Livorno. We were on the fastest paced tour ever. We started  at the church of Santa Croce and from there walked many narrow streets to the Piazza Signoria that houses, Palazzo Vecchio (a former palace and the town hall of Florence), and the statues of David and Neptune. The statue of David is a reproduction because the original is in the museum but the important part is the location. The statues in the square are lined up in an order depicting each persons enemies and who they themselves were focused on defeating and etc. The down side was that in the large square was a rally from the local republic paper. They had many speakers coming so half the square was blocked with chairs and a huge stage was set up blocking most of our views of the statues. One of the speakers was going to be Dan Brown According to our guide he is not as well liked in Italy as in the US as people seem to take his books as non fiction works and then they come to Italy to recreate them. Then argue with the local people about the history of the area. After we saw Piazza Signoria we walked though the outside courtyard of the Uffizi Gallery and to Ponte Vecchio which is a famous bridge  (if you live in the apartments over the bridge you don't pay taxes) then to the largest Church in Florence and one of the largest in Italy, The Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore. This church is the main church of Florence, is a UNESCO world heritage site, has the largest brick dome in the world, and is considered to  be at the historical center of Florence. We toured the inside of the church on our own and after that our guide was gone and we walked with our group to a restaurant for lunch. We had a lovely lunch with 3 courses and then it was off to Pisa.

The Church of Santa Croce

Everywhere you look there are unique designs

The first statue we came to in Piazza Signoria

and there's David and all his glory...(yep giggling as I type that)

Neptune

This is as close as we could get because of the rally

Palazzo Vecchio

just at the entrance to Palazzo Vecchio is the statue of David or well it's replica.

walking through the Uffizi Gallery

The statue of Galileo Galilei outside of the Uffizi Gallery

Vespucci's Statue

Ponte Vecchio (this is where people starting to get angry with our tour guide. They wanted to walk on the bridge. He told them no after telling them no they would not be going into the Uffizi Gallery and they were not happy about it.

Actually awake!

A neat look back down the street to the Palazzo Vecchio

The Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore. The round part in front is the Baptistry. The Church is behind

The Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore with a view of the brick dome behind

It was very crowded in the plaza

Some feel that all the architecture and the colors are a bit much.

The church

The art and sculptures on the outside of the church are dedicated to Mary

Someone was happy to be in Florence

The doors to the baptistry. They depict different bible scenes

This panel on the door represents the spot in Jordan where John the Baptist lived and baptized Jesus (we've been there! lol)

Inside the church

Fresco depicting heaven and hell

hell doesn't look to appealing

That's better

  LL had her worse bus ride ever. She screamed the entire hour to Pisa. We were miserable by the time we arrived and fairly sure everyone on the bus wanted to kill us. Though once we were off the bus most people came by and told us they have been there themselves or other reassuring kind words. The best advice that we heard the most was " so what, you will never see these people again after the cruise ends" too true my friends too true! Thankfully a kind lady gave us a bandaid for her toe (remember the crushed toenail from the sprite can? well the nail is now falling off) Once the bandaid was holding the toenail down she stopped screaming and fell asleep in her stroller. She slept through the whole experience in Pisa but we had fun and have a few pictures to prove she was there. It was surreal being there. The skys were so clear. It was just gorgeous with the white marble buildings against the blue background. We of course took the silly pictures of holding the tower up and things. We found our ornament and our hour was up. There was not really enough time to enter any of the building on site and if we would have ventured into the city I hear there are lovely botanical gardens we could have visited but we will  have to save that for the next time we are in Pisa! We returned to the bus and headed for the dock. We had a bit of a drive but we bought a banana in Pisa so when LL woke up she had that to eat and was a happy camper for the ride back to the ship.

and she sleeps through another part of the vacation

Family Picture!

This is the cathedral and well the tower!

Yep it leans!

The cathedral- from the sky it would look like a cross

The baptistery

One of my fave pictures from here

carvings over the door

The door to go in to climb to the top

Much of the marble is recycled from other uses so these are some random left over carvings from previous uses

Still napping and laying like her daddy

cool fountain

Time to be silly

Elmo has to get in on it

We enjoyed our day and are still processing everything we saw. It is just hard to believe we are actually here.
I think today was the day that we took LL on the water slide for the first time. It is part of the kids pool and adults are not allowed to go on it. So I took her to the top and pushed her down. S caught her at the bottom. She loved it. She went 3 more times before she was so cold we had to take her back to the room for a warm up break. This kid has an adventurous side and we joke she is an adrenaline junkie already. I can only imagine how our future is going to play out with this Little Lady and we cannot wait for her first to Cedar Point!