Almost 5 months

so griffin is almost 5 months old. here's a quick progress report.

* eczema -- he still has it, but i'm no longer as sure that it's dairy related. last weekend, griffin, edward, and i all had the stomach flu (ally somehow managed to escape it). the 2 days after i had pretty much fasted for 24 hours, i noticed that griffin's eczema was actually getting worse. why would it be worse if i wasn't even eating anything? so the mystery continues.

* day care -- he started part-time last monday and had a horrible first day. he cried a lot and refused his bottle. edward said that when he picked him up, his eyes were totally puffy. :( the good news is now he is doing fine at daycare, and so we're relieved.

* sleep -- so since this past saturday (~20 wks), he has been truly sleeping through the night. he sleeps from 9:30pm to 8:30am. it's been awesome. this is the best i've slept for the last 6 months!

* physical stuff -- he isn't rolling over yet, but sure does enjoy thumping his legs on his bed. he has just started reaching for toys and grabbing things, but hasn't quite mastered it yet. still scratches his head up quite badly, so we still have to put mitts (or socks) on his hands. but when he does have bare hands, he now likes to suck his thumb. it's kinda weird to see, since ally never sucked her thumb, ever.

* stranger anxiety -- he does seem to recognize people now, and stares warily at new people. but overall, he is still pretty friendly.

and how is ally doing with griffin? ally adores her little brother (so far), and gives him hugs and kisses. she does like to take his toys and claim them as her own, but is generally pretty good about giving them back to him.

she also does give him the occasional smack. the other night she announced, "i want to hit di-di", and then she did. after a nice talking-to from both me and her daddy, she stated, "i can't hit di-di. just the couch." so then she proceeded to happily hit the couch.

Get the potty started

at the end of february, ally moved up to the preschool room at her daycare, and the teachers asked us to start putting ally in panties. that weekend, we rushed to target and bought a dozen panties and trainer pants, as well as pull-ups. up until this point, ally was going potty in the toilet occasionally, and we were really not sure if she was ready.

well, the first week of march was a mega-laundry week. she was having 2 to 3 accidents a day at school, and would sometimes ask to wear diapers instead of panties. getting her to sit on the potty was a real struggle, as she would refuse, whine, cry, and have complete meltdowns over this. not a good week.

the 2nd week, she began doing much better. so much so that we would sometimes forget to ask her to go potty. one day, she peed in the carseat. it was a major PITA to clean (according to edward, hehe), and she seemed to lose confidence in herself. but by the end of the week, she was doing better again.

now, as encouragement, we had been rewarding her with candy. one candy for pee-pee, 2 for poopy. it was probably not a good thing to do, but it seemed like a good idea at the time, and it seemed to work. but once she started going more reliably, we quickly phased out the candy and replaced it with stickers and eventually with just praise.

so we're now in mid-april, and she has been doing great. she has been in just panties (except at night) for the last month, with only 1 accident every week or so! we're very proud of her, and quite amazed that it went as well as it did. we are certainly grateful to her wonderful, patient teachers -- julianne, crystal, kristin, and annie -- who helped to train her!

of course, now we have to deal with making 4-5 trips to the restroom over the course of a meal, just because she finds it great fun to walk around touching everything in public restrooms.