hangin' with Coop and hangin' out on the potty ...

We have been home most of this week as I am trying to potty train the twins. Well, more like they are training me ... training me to buy them lots of toys and candy to get them to sit on the potty. It is hard for a control freak like me (there, I said it) to not have any control ... guess what? ... you absolutely cannot MAKE a kid pee pee! Believe me, I have tried! I have cleaned up WAY more pee pee off the floor than anything else this week but I am determined to at least give it an honest effort as the twins have to be trained in order to attend their 3 year old preschool come August 23rd. I have tried bribery with food, with trinkets, with the promise of a new toy, with all kinds of cool big girl panties and the only thing that MAY be working is a sticker chart that I made tonight. If they get enough stickers by the end of the day, they get a fun little trinket (sparkly nail polish, little purse, lipgoss, etc ...) This potty training thing is costing me a fortune! Well, costing Alan a fortune ;) As for Caroline, she is coming right along. She has had a good bit of fussy time in the last week or so ... I won't be surprised if I see a little tooth soon (or she could quite possibly be tired of sitting in the bathroom watching the twins try to potty ... I know I am!) She is beginning to sit and she is getting to be a champion roller ... which is fun as the twins never really rolled around much. She is doing great with her little baby food. She is very much in a Mommy phase and it is almost comical how much she will be freaking out while someone else holds her and I take her and BOOM happy in an instant ... it is a little of an ego booster, to be honest ;)

Caroline has discovered Cooper and loves to "play" with him ... and he loves to bring her his toys as if she could play tug of war with him ... it is fun to see her laugh at him!

... she is beginning to be able to sit for a few seconds ... with the twins ... as soon as it was a few seconds it felt like within days they were sitting like champs ... she will just sort of fall on her face and not let it phase her ...
... she will also occasionally draw up her knees like she is trying to crawl and she can scoot along a teeny bit ... mobility seems just around the corner ...
One of the twins favorite things to do these days is go out after a rain and find the snails ... they will literally find 30 snails and cart them around and "name" them and let them crawl all over their arms ... gross ...

... another favorite is to play Mommy and baby ... Hannah had her "purse" (a little bag she filled with blocks) and was going to go take her "baby" (aka Meredith) for a walk ...

I will try just about anything to get the girls to try to potty ... everyone says just to wait until they are ready and they will just train themselves ... well, no one tells you what to do if you can't wait for them (as in they have to be trained for pre-school, which I really find unfair ...) We are all getting tired of talking about potty! I try and make potty time fun but feel that my kids may be 5 and still expect me to come in and party with them while they go potty ... hopefully, once they "get it," we can move past the painting of nails and watching of DVDs while sitting on the throne ... here is Meredith painting my nails ... she really didn't do all that horribly!

... and Hannah painting Grandmama's toes ...

... they look excited, eh? More like "OK I will sit on the darned potty just so you quit buggin' me!!!" Meredith actually goes pee pee in the potty a little over half of the time ... Hannah has never gone in the potty! AHHHH!!!!

One of the things derailing our progress is Caroline ... the twins don't want to be "big girls" and go on the "big girl potty" ... they want to be "babies like Caroline" ... "Mommy, I am your baby, too ... I don't want to learn how to potty" ... I caught Caroline "in the act" today and thought maybe I could use her to my advantage ... the twins got a kick out of Caroline making poopy on the potty!