Thanksgiving

Look at me, getting my Thanksgiving post up in a timely manner this year!

This year it was Ohio for Turkey Day. We flew out Monday afternoon and came home on Saturday night. If those seem like weird travel days, its because they are. But they were strategically selected based on airline ticket prices. The Stegmiller trio wasn't able to join us, but all reports are that they had a lovely time back home in San Diego.

Once again we waited until the day of travel to inform the boy that he'd be flying on an airplane to visit Gammy and Papa. Even half a day was a bit too much anticipation, but he is proving himself to be an expert traveler. In fact, now that he watches videos and plays games on the iPod, he's almost easy to fly with! He even achieved his first 30,000 ft pee!

All in all it was a very uneventful and relaxing trip. Wonderful! I did hit up 6 grocery stores on Wednesday for a variety of reasons, but most of them were suspiciously calm! We decided that the fact that Whole Foods was the busiest is in indication that the economy can't be that bad, right?

Sam was spoiled rotten with attention by his grandparents, Uncle Matt and Aunt Kate. Someone was always willing to play whatever game it was he could come up with. A couple of times he even got to go out and play golf on the real putting green! Kate came up with another fun new game, which seems to be her gift. And the little man sure did turn on the charm for his people. Comments like "Thanks for playing ball with me!" might just earn him an extra Christmas gift!

Friday night we kicked off the Christmas season by visiting the Zoo Lights. I'll tell ya, two and a half is a fun age for such an event. From the second we walked in the little boy's eyes were filled with wonder at all the twinkling lights reflecting off of everything. "Its so pretty!" he announced to Papa. He enjoyed naming all of the different colors he was seeing, and feeling the fire. And then he spotted the train. "Hey let's ride that!" And a few minutes later, Gammy had purchased 7 tickets for the Polar Bear Express. There was a bit of panic when were standing in line and the train left without us, but once he understood that it would come back for us he just patiently waited to hear the whistle, and declared "All aboard the choo choo train!" He also got to decorate a cookie at Mrs. Claus's Kitchen. He sufficiently discouraged his aunt and uncle from having children anytime soon with his meltdown at dinner, but still declared that the extremely creepy singing bear Christmas tree was his favorite part of the excursion.


Saturday morning I met up with my high school girlfriends again. It was a quick visit, but good to catch up nonetheless. Sam did not care to be photographed, but Lex's little Will was cooperative.


I could probably write a book, but there are the highlights for you. It really was a great trip and we, especially Sam, were sad to come home to our disaster of a house. Thanks again for having us, Gammy and Papa!

The Growing Belly - Volume II, Part I

In attempt to document this pregnancy in the same way that I did my first, I have taken my first set of "belly shots." For comparison's sake, I will try to wear the same outfit for all my pictures this time around that I did last time around.


Here we are, me and Marshmallow, about a week ago. We were 23 Weeks 3 Days in this picture, almost exactly as far along as I was in the pictures in this post from my first pregnancy. Hmm, seems I am a bit bigger this time.

Please excuse the partially wet hair. I have a good excuse, more on that later. In related news, we have now passed the 24 week mark, meaning Marshmallow is now viable outside the womb!

All Aboard the Potty Train!

Friday, November 3 was a very big day in our house...we removed a diaper from Sam's body for the very last time.

Although we'd been practicing whenever he wanted, we hadn't pushed it or talked about it much before that day. And he didn't really know it was coming. But I did, and I was scared. So I prepared and I prayed...a lot. I am not generally a parenting book reader (I find much more value in talking to other mothers, and I feel the books are like the line from the sunscreen speech, "Do not read beauty magazines they will only make you feel ugly!"), but I read several on potty training. I ended up combing three methods into something I thought would work for us.


When he woke up on Friday morning the bathroom was ready. Potty chair in the corner, potty ring on the toilet, incentive poster (what two year old doesn't love stickers?!) on the wall, a stack of books and DVDs about going potty, a bag full of cleaning supplies and a stash of candy. He had already seen his underwear - 20 pairs of licensed character 2T briefs to be exact - and was pretty excited about those. I explained that each time he went in the potty he'd get a jelly bean and a sticker. I handed him a cup of "special juice" so we'd have plenty of practice and we sat on the potty. All morning we read books, watched the DVDs, and ran to and from the potty every time the timer went off. If nothing came out he got an "I Tried Candy." I wonder how old he'll be when he figures out they're actually called Skittles?


We actually had more success than I anticipated on day 1. By the end of the day he had 6 stickers. Several accidents, yes, but he learned quickly that he didn't like the feeling of being wet and cried every time it happened. Since I removed his diaper he has yet to have an accident during nap, and had only one the very first night. He is night trained!

Learning to go outside of the house has been exciting, too. His first day back at preschool (day 4 of training) was an epic failure. At that point we had to take the little potty chair away so that he was more comfortable on the big potty. He's doing much better now, and I think feels proud to be part of the crowd using the potty. He now goes at church, and he's gone at McDonald's (they had a little potty in the play area bathroom!). I was concerned when he announced at Pei Wei that he needed to go, as I knew they would have no little potty and we had no potty ring, but Daddy came up with a brilliant "stand on the potty rim" solution. I'm not sure my female mind ever would have come up with that one.

Here we stand two weeks later. He hasn't had a pee accident in 6 days. He has no interest in going if he doesn't need to, but will always ask when he feels the need! That is success enough that I will not be turning back in spite of the fact that in these two weeks he has earned only 3 poop stickers (they are puffy and "better" than pee stickers). Every single Mama I've talked to - including his teachers - say that poop takes longer with boys. I don't love the clean up, but I am so pleased with the other half that I mind it a little less. And he knows it should go in the potty - yesterday he danced around for 6 hours trying to hold it in, then running to the potty where he couldn't let it go, repeat, until finally it was in the underwear. I do give him special privileges to encourage him sitting on the potty to try, but that hasn't work yet. I am open to suggestions on this one.


He did, however, finish his first incentive chart with a poop sticker. We were quite proud. It took him 10 days to fill it. I'm thinking the next chart will be for poop only. With the chart full he received his new toy, the Little People Nativity Set. So now we're potty training and learning about Baby Jesus.

Brown Bear, Brown Bear

One of Sam's teachers sent along this short little video. They are performing a song they learned in music class for some of the church members. Sam is in the back row, on the left in brown pants and a striped shirt. Usually there would have been a lot more of them there, but they had 9 (ane one teaching assistant) out sick that day!

Its possible that one of the stars of this video is obsessed with watching this over and over again...

Happy Halloween!

We had quite the Halloween celebration at the Hunniford household this year! Let's start at the beginning, shall we?

I took great care in selecting Sam's costume this year. Some of you will remember how we terrorized him by forcing him to wear his ridiculously cute puppy costume last year. I didn't want a repeat, but wanted that kid in a costume! So when he came home fro preschool talking all about how Mrs. Gauthier wore a fire jacket on fire safety day - and kept talking about it - I started hunting down a fireman costume. The one I found was for 3-6 year olds, so it took some minor adjustments to get my small 2 year old into it, but he actually liked it!

So here he is in full outfit on Halloween morning. It was pretty cute, because he thought he was going to ride in a fire truck. Really glad I had other exciting plans to distract him with! The costume came with an ax (he is now quite good at fighting fires with an ax), a whistle (which he blew, yelled "time to come inside!" and stuck up his sleeve "Just like Mrs. Bathe!") and a walkie talkie - plenty of pretend play to be had.

We met some friends at Zoo Boo! The zoo has all kinds of special things set up for the kiddos, including some games, and chance to decorate a free "pumpkin," trunk-or-treating, etc. Let's talk about how wonderful it is that the did this on Halloween Monday!!!! Usually they only do this Friday through Sunday. Friday is field trip day, and Saturday crowds at the zoo are bad enough without a special event, but in the past it has been a nightmare for zoo boo. Monday it was toddler town everywhere, not crowded, and lovely.

We hit up a few trunk-or-treat locations and he loved on his "wollipop" for about an hour and a half, then kept begging for lunch because I told him no more candy until we ate lunch!

Sam actually got a bonus prize for getting a ring around one of the pegs in the ring toss, too!

Leo was an elephant, and later after they'd all ditched the costumes, Sam was too.


Sam passed out on the way home. After nap we had work to do! Outside to carve our pumpkin. Not gonna lie, he wasn't much help. He kept scooping the seeds and pulp back into the pumpkin! So we got a second bowl and he enjoyed scooping for one bowl to the other. You know what he is good at though? Washing pumpkin seeds! He loved sloshing them around in the colander, and at one point I realized he was taking my directions to "clean the seeds" quite literally. I looked over to find him lining them up on the kitchen sponge. Too cute :-)

Daddy got home a few minutes early from work, so as soon as the clock struck 6:00pm we hit the pavement for Sam's first official Trick-or-Treating. In years past he's gone to two neighbor houses, but this time he had the bag, the phrase, the whole deal. He was understandably nervous to knock on the doors, but quickly got the hang of things when he realized there was candy to be had. "We better knock on another door!" he would advise us. Generally he would say "please," so I had to remind him to say "trick-or-treat!" but everyone thought he was adorable! And only a few times did he ask to go home so he could eat his candy.

We had one negative experience. People, please please please think before you let your teenage son answer the door in a gorilla mask. I know its fun, but maybe no masks until after 7pm? Or maybe restrain your dog so he doesn't run out at my son? Am I too sensitive, or is Sam?

He wanted to eat all the candy right away. We, obviously, had to cut him off - yes there were tears. He asked for his pumpkin bag right when he woke up this morning (literally, he wasn't out of his bed yet) and wasn't too pleased to learn he had to wait until after lunch.

After bath and bed, Chris and I handed out about 225 pieces of candy. Some were from the neighborhood, some were coming in car loads from surrounding areas to our nice, safe, urban oasis. Most of our crowd comes after 7:30, and it was actually getting busier when we ran out at 9pm. I roasted the pumpkin seeds with a yummy recipe I found on allrecipes.com, and fell asleep watching TV. It was such a good day.

Here's your bonus picture: last weekend the real estate office down the street from us held their annual "pumpkin patch." They load their front yard with pumpkins and invite neighborhood kids over to pick one out. Sam and I walked down with our new (to us, its been well loved by another family) Sit 'n' Stand stroller, grabbed a pumpkin, a cookie and a balloon and were back at the house 10 minutes later. It was time well spent, and Sam promised the baby wouldn't mind if the pumpkin borrowed its seat :-)