Changes in Lauren Land

Lauren has had lots of changes in the last three months. Most notably she got a baby brother, who she absolutely adores. She loves to be with him, telling me she's going to "potect him" (protect him). She says she's going to teach him to talk and eat "when he gets bigger."

She's also been potty training for awhile now, but we finally got serious about it shortly before Nicholas was born. Unfortunately the addition of baby brother caused her to regress a little bit so she's still working on it. She's motivated by rewards though. Her motivation for pee peeing in the potty consistently is two My Little Ponies, a pink one and a purple one. She's good with pooping on the potty, (thank God), but she gets busy and forgets to pee pee. She's working on it.

Speaking of motivation, about a month ago she gave up her beloved "sassies" (pacifiers). When we discussed giving them up I asked her if she wanted new baby doll if she had no more sassies and she said, ummm...I think I want a pink puppy. So I said okay. We started with no sassies outside of the bed and we did that for about a month then we moved to no sassies at all, which I thought would be difficult, but it happened to coincide with the delivery of her new big girl bed!

We kept her in the crib as long as we could but in December she started climbing out so it was time to order a big girl bed. When it came the new rule was no sassies in the big girl bed, which she was totally fine with. We've been sassy free ever since.

Now that Lauren is in a big girl bed it was time to set the crib up for baby brother. Originally the plan was for the office to be converted into a bedroom for Nicholas, but that was going to take a lot of furniture shuffling so for now he and Lauren are sharing a room. Thankfully he's too little to realize his room is pink and purple. As for crib bedding, I wanted something that was kind of neutral in color so it would blend into Lauren's room. We went with a safari theme. It's cute and even though the room's not perfect, it works.

Lil' Jon likes Lauren's new bed because it allows him to recline as he looks out the window.

The last and most recent change is pre-school. Last week Lauren moved from the toddler room at daycare into the pre-school room. She was VERY excited about it, even though it meant leaving her favorite teacher behind. She's the youngest one in the class now, but she's doing great according to her new teacher Ms. Belfield. What's cool is Ms. Belfield used to be a caregiver in the infant room and she took care of Lauren when she was a baby. Now she’s a teacher in the pre-school room and she once again takes care of Lauren. So she's seen her grow up.

The pre-school room is very structured. They don't just play all day. They have lesson plans, they go on field trips and they even have homework. Lauren likes her new class and she's finally learning some of her friends’ names. The first day she came home and I asked her who she played with and she told me "I don't know. They didn't tell me their names." By the end of the week I learned she has friends named Taylor, Shayla, Logan and Christian. She also has a couple of familiar faces in the room. Her friend Chloe' from the toddler room started pre-school shortly after Lauren and of course Tomarion is in there too (but he's a biter so Lauren doesn't like him).