Potty Trained! Esther Update

Well, I think I can officially say that Esther is potty trained!  For about the last six months, Esther has gone back and forth between diapers, training undies, and pull-ups.   She had good potty days and bad potty days.  Right after Jesse was born, she had a stomach virus which seemed to set her back in the potty department.

But about a week ago, I think it clicked!!  We switched her back to only the cloth training undies and she has done great.  Not only that, her pull-up is usually dry after naps and even nighttime (unless Mommy takes too long to hear her in the morning!).  This biggest motivator of all has been ...

New big girl panties!!   : )

I let her pick from about six different "character" panties at the store.  She finally chose the Princess panties, as she has lately developed a thing for princesses.  (What can I say?  She is my daughter, after all, although I have not intentionally encouraged it and we don't really watch the Disney movies.)  She is super excited, and she showed the package to everyone at the store when we bought them.

It really is amazing.  It's like something just switched, and the potty went from being a struggle for her to remember or to make it in time to being no big deal.  And even on the "big girl potty" - with no potty seat - instead of her little training potty.  It's great!

In other news ... Esther has been very excited about money lately.  I guess most kids are excited about this stuff that their parents use to buy them cool things, but it just kicked in for Esther in the last couple of months. So starting when Tyler paid Esther the $4 to eat asparagus and then $2 for taking a nap in the van when we went to Oklahoma, we are trying to teach her how to handle money.  It may be too early, but why not start now with her $6?  We designated $2 as money to give away (like at church), $2 to save, and $2 to spend.  (All this is per Dave Ramsey's ideas for kids.)

It seemed to work great! Esther is excited about taking her $2 to church and she was super excited to take $2 to the store today to spend.  Here is what she bought:

 Play-Doh!!!!

Esther was super excited about the Play-Doh and kept talking about how she played with Play-Doh at her friend Julia's house.  Her $2 bought her two containers, and she picked yellow and white.  We played with it before and after lunch today.  We'll have to break it out with Papa later since Tyler is a true Play-Doh master!

Something else funny is that Esther called me "Sarah" yesterday!  I know she hears Tyler and other people call me Sarah all the time, but she suddenly started saying it.  She thought it was great, but Tyler explained to her that she calls me "mama."  It was pretty cute.

And now it's time to get ready for some birthday fun... Yay!!