Lauren

Lauren keeps things interesting around our house. Although I think she would rather be at preschool with Allison in the morning, she serves as a great little helper to me. Sometimes she gets a little frustrated with the imbalance of attention as Megan's needs are often more pressing than hers but overall she has been a great big sister. And of course, she has mastered being an annoying little sister to Allison and loves to push all her buttons. Lauren hates bugs, thunder, and feathers.

Latest obsession
Lauren has a new best friend: Dora the Explorer. This discovery was made about a week ago when Allison picked out a Dora DVD to borrow for a week from the library. I turned it on for the kids to watch and went to clean the kitchen. After a while I found that Lauren had discovered which button to push on the remote to play it again. And again. And again. No wonder she had stayed quiet for so long. Normally she gets bored of watching TV pretty quick...but no, not with D-D-D-D-DORA! When she's watching, you'll hear it from the other room--random words shouted out at the TV. Anyone who's seen the show before, I think you'll know what I'm talking about. Hey, it's better than Polka-dot Shorts. Maybe.

A little bathroom humor
As much as I hate potty training, we have reached that time with Lauren. No, she hasn't just figured it out on her own as I was hoping, but she was showing enough interest that I thought I better move on it. So here we are again. We are taking it pretty low-key at this point, and she has done well so far. At the risk of embarrassing myself, here is a picture of the chart I made for her.



What can I say...she can't read, so I made pictures instead! She has done great with it. One "enimen" (m&m) for trying (empty potty), two for "pee-pee" and three for "poop". Sorry, I didn't mean for this to get gross but hey, we're talking about potty training, what can you expect? We track her progress with stickers, and at the beginning there was a heavy imbalance on the empty toilet column, but now the middle column is catching up. So here's my funny story...at least, I thought it was funny. The first time she earned a sticker in the last column, she stood up, turned around, looked in, and announced, "It's a pine cone!!"