Following that theme, I finally tapped in to 5 years worth of frequent flyer miles and bought myself a ticket up to Chicago. A quick girls trip to the lovely little Naperville and downtown Chicago was just what the doctor ordered- and luckily coincided with 75 degree weather. Danielle described Naperville to me as "Disneyworld"- think Main Street USA - and she ain't wrong. And while they do have a beautiful man made beach, and Portillos (I brought chocolate cake home as a carry-on souvenir for Jared because of course I did.) they do not have dynamite rolls at their sushi houses, sooooooo.....it ain't perfect. Almost but not quite.
Danielle hadn't done much city exploration, so doing the relaxed and abbreviated tourist thing was so much fun. Chicago has so much beautiful architecture, design, and FOOD so we hopped a boat tour, visited the Robbie House, checked out the Tiffany dome in the old library, went to a vintage market, and stuffed ourselves at Frontera Grill. We also entered and failed to win the Hamilton lottery ;___;
Refreshed from my time alone, I came back to my little home on French Street and the very next weekend instituted a Potty Boot Camp. When I first told Echo that there would be no more diapers, she flipped out and tried to haul 2 foot long pack of "biapuhs" out of the giant box in was stashed in, followed by a lot of wailing. Don't worry, I caught some of it on tape. Shortly thereafter, she peed on the floor, tried to run away, slipped in her own urine puddle and fell on the air intake grate in our hallway. Non-stop fun fest at the Alexander household.
All of those things aside, she did SO great. Once she got over the shock of having her beloved diapers ripped from her, she got really in to the potty and the individual skittle reward. She filled her little sticker chart 4 days later and hasn't looked back! The potty pride is strong, I am very proud of her, even if she did become so engrossed in a story yesterday that she peed on my lap. Two has been such a precious time, so far. I love toddler Echo. She's so funny, sweet and kind.
If there is one thing I have learned as a parent of an Echo - because so much of parenting relies on the child under your care - is that any anxiety, stress, guilt or fear I am feeling as a parent is usually self induced. Echo is incredibly resilient. Every milestone we face - ditching the paci, switching from breast milk to formula, ditching the bottle, daycare, sleep training, you name it, she seems to just take it in stride. She is two, so obviously crazy moments are there (see: pee-pee puddle comedic gold), but I am almost always the one making it worse by being a stress monster or a guilt monster. I actually learned my lesson a tiny bit, and didn't rush the potty thing. I just set my expectations that yes, I would be a prisoner in my own home for 3 days, and No, we would never do day-time diapers again (naps excluded) and moved forward at my own pace, regardless of the fact that other kids were/were not potty trained completley by 18 months or whatever. Just knew I was doing my absolute best for my absolute best girl, and that perspective change really helped.
In pregnancy news, I hit the 6 month mark. Echo, and everyone else, is convinced the baby is a girl. Echo specifically say's its a baby sister named Ronnie. In fact, she asked for a baby sister with a bottle for her potty training grad gift, ans seems quite determined. Time will tell - we will find out Cubby's gender on it's birthday :).
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