Halloween

For Halloween this year, both my girls dressed as Ballerinas (which they did last year as well!).  Then we went trick or treating at the zoo.  The tricky part about ballerina costumes is that they are hard to make warm.  This is why most little kids dress has lions, or puppies, or something warm.  But we muddled through. 

With our friend the Ladybug.



Tiny ballerinas.


November Highlights

A few November highlights for you.

Playing in the leaves! Fun for Papillon; still weird for Hibou, but she worked it out.



Sister Love!


Sharing ice cream at CFA


Watching TV in the most relaxed way possible.


Playing hide and seek. Hibou thinks that you must lick the tree in order to properly hide your eyes.



Goofy girls just sitting outside.



Goof!


Fun with our Preschool Co-Op. Learning about colors.


Hanging out with a new Baby Friend.  Apparently Papillon remembers when I used to let Hibou suck on my finger to calm her down.






Playing with our other favorite Baby Friends!


More sister cuteness.


More preschool!



Meeting Aunt Mimi's new puppy, Zelda.


Hibou - Potty Trained

Before it goes undocumented, and in years down the road, I doubt (or possibly exaggerate) Hibou's potty training story, I better immortalize this info in a blog post!

Hibou started insisting that she pee on the potty when she was about 20 months old. She has a little friend who was potty trained about the same time, and apparently she was inspired!    I didn't feel ready to attempt such an undertaking with such a little girl, but it became unavoidable.

One day the first week in November, she kept telling me she had to go potty. Totally unprompted by me and while wearing diapers, she asked 5 times throughout the day to go potty. She peed each time. And her diaper was dry all day.  We were even out and about at a friends house that day.

Still I wasn't convinced. The next day or two, she kept asking to go, and kept going every time she asked to.   Finally, one day, she comes into the kitchen where I was doing dishes, and says "Me undies too".  I explained she was a little too young for undies and she started crying. Literally on and off all afternoon she cried about wanting to wear undies.

So the next day, we went with undies. We used the same method that we did with Papillon. Meaning we spent a lot of time in the bathroom that day! But it was a success!   We had 3 or 4 days of occasional accidents (mostly cause I wasn't paying attention to her, so I wasn't prompting her enough).  But it wasn't more than a week before we were accident free.

And by January, she was diaper free overnight as well.  She still (even now in May 2014) has to pee in the middle of the night most nights. But she'll wake up to let me know.

I really didn't think that we'd be diaper free in this house for many years. But at this point I am actually getting pretty used to this diaperless mode...


Family "Camping"

We decided to go on a little family adventure in November. The original thought was to try our hand at camping. Then it got cold and we chickened out. So we opted for a hike and picnic and then a night at a hotel (yay for using Mon Amour's travel points to score some sweet free vacations).

Trying S'mores.  Hibou likes them. Papillon prefers her marshmallows untoasted and separate from the rest of her treats.











Exploring.


We took the girls on a brief "hike", but had made the mistake of telling them about the hotel in advance. So Papillon spent the entire time asking if it was time to "go to the hotel and watch TV yet".  Clearly we need to get outdoors more often....

Eventually we did head to the hotel. And after a lovely cozy night, we did a bit of non-wilderness exploring. 

This particular adventure came with endless ice cream samples. Huzzah! 




What is it about kids in overalls that are so darn adorable?