We're back home!

And boy, are we tired! In fact, so tired that a certain someone is napping on her mama two hours before her normal naptime. And mama, of course, is nowhere near done unpacking (although I did start, so there are piles of clothes all over our living room, yikes)
Here are some of the rest of our pictures from last week:

Extreme cuteness

...brought to you by bad-resolution-blackberry-camera

We went mushroom picking yesterday with the kids, Jonathan helped Sasha navigate the forest, they held hands and kissed. My heart just melted looking at these two!

Getting in trouble...

...and into mama's mascara!

And in case you were wondering, no, it did not come out of the sheets in the washer. But hey, at least she applied it to (almost) the right spot!

In upstate NY for the week

So in the beginning of the summer we had decided to go to upstate NY for a week (a little cabin opened up right next to Z's cousin's, so we thought that would be fun for Sasha). Well, we've been here since Saturday and it's been raining since Sunday morning. Of course, there's no heating, so it gets pretty cold at night and guess who managed to get sick on the first night? Our little girl is coughing and has a runny nose and it's just so sad to see her like that. That being said, she seems to be in really good spirits and constantly wants to go outside (in the pouring rain, mind you) She loves playing with her cousins (not that you would necessarily know that from looking at the last two pictures)

Truth be told...

I enjoy rocking Sasha to sleep for her naps. When this whole insanity with her sleep started we were dead-set on no rocking. Sleeping in a stroller, laying down by her crib, holding her hand were all acceptable options (along with some "harsher" methods which have worked for us before), but no rocking. We were worried she'd gt used to it too quickly and it'd be so hard to break that habit. Well, after weeks of screaming and crying (both Sasha and me), I've had enough. I now rock her and put her down in our bed for naps. No more screaming. No more tears. No more knots in my stomach over whether she's going to nap. No more struggles. Just beautiful peaceful little girl (and often, her mama). It's wonderful.
II do still worry about it turning into a bad habit, but it's a risk I'm willing to take. I mean, she's got another two, maybe three, years of napping? I think I can handle that (let's just hope she sticks to her current *slow* growth pattern, mmkay?)

Cruise around Manhattan

On Friday night, my parents, my sister and her boyfriend, Z, and I went on a 2 hour Harbor Lights cruise around Manhattan. We all absolutely loved it! The views were fantastic, the guide was informative (albeit annoyingly opinionated), and the company was, well, great. My sister even brought yummy deserts, as we were celebrating our mom's birthday.

Love this one of me and my dad

 

Gotta give credit to my husband who took this fabulous picture of the NYC skyline

You wanna know how we're doing?

I figure I'd update since I'm getting asked how we're doing at least three times a day. How's the potty training going? It's going. You know, somewhere. I did not expect this method to work miraculously for us and have our kid sitting on the toilet smiling from ear to ear, yelling "mama, I need to pee". She's not. But I think she may be kinda, sorta getting it. A little. She seems to get that if she tells us she needs to pee, it'll get her on the toilet to do her business. She also seems to think that if she'll tell us she needs to pee, it'll get her on the toilet and out of her crib at naptime. Yeah, naptime is ruined (nap gods, please do not leave me all alone with this for too long!) And it's either because I jinxed myself in the previous post about how much better she was sleeping or because of all the new and exciting potty training things she's dealing with. I'm willing to put money that it's the latter. But in the case it isn't, I will refrain from making too optimistic statements about any milestone for a while, mmkay?
Sasha is spending Friday evening - Sunday morning with her grandparents, so we shall see how that goes. As of right now, I'm completely convinced that it'll freak her out somehow and all her progress will go down the drain, but I'm just really looking forward to Kristin's bachelorette party in Atlantic City (plus, Z thinks I'm crazy and need to let go, that she'll be fin by this weekend). Again, we shall see...

A new road for us

We have officially started potty training. And by that I mean, crazy intense cold-turkey potty training. We explained to Sasha that she's now a big girl, put on pretty underwear and helped her throw out her diapers (ok, ok, we didn't throw all of them out, we have some unopened packs, so we are donating those, but we told her that papa is going to being them to a little baby who doesn't know how to pee or poop on the toilet)
We're doing something called the 3 Day Potty Training. It is supposed to take just 3 days if followed to a T ("supposed" is the key word in that sentence).You basically load your kid up on extra water/drinks during the day and remind them constantly to tell mama or papa when they need to pee or poop. By the end of day 3, the author claims it should "click". I'm crossing my fingers (and toes for good measure) that it does.
I made a fabulous little chart for Sasha so that she can put stickers on it when she pees or poops in the toilet, it already has 1 for today!

And it's not the neatest looking thing I've made in my life, but I've never been good at making neat-looking circles and Sasha kept stealing my markers, so I had to finish it fast!
Oh, and on the sleeping front things are going a lot smoother, even if not always easier. Z puts her to bed at night and she usually doesn't protest (and if she does, it's a little whimper or she may cry for a few minutes). I sit in her room when she goes down for her naps (which isn't ideal, but at least she's sleeping long stretches). As far as I'm concerned that is progress!

23 months!

Our not-so-little girl is 23 months old today. You know what that means? That means she's almost 2. That also means that mama has been slacking on birthday party planning and needs to really get down to it and figure everything out.
Our little Sasha is such a bright little girl, she loves her alphabet and numbers puzzles, she can easily name about 2/3 of the alphabet. She can count to 5, then skips 6, says 7 and then 10. It's really rather amusing. She says 2-words sentences (and once said a simple 3-word sentence: "auu kva, chai!" - "here, froggy, [have some] tea"). And she now says about 85 words. She wants to do everything by herself, she wants to help with just about everything. She's becoming such a big girl!
And all day today, she's been using the toilet! Granted I caught her peeing twice and plopped her on the toilet to finish, but a few times she actually went up to the bathroom and did her thing all by herself!! I was so ridiculously proud of her! She did wear diapers for her nap and when we had friends over, but the rest of the time it was big-girl undies, yay Sasha! We're prepping for hardcore potty training this weekend, which does not promise to be any fun for anybody involved. I'll update on how it goes later.
But yeah, an almost two years old.... Didn't we just celebrate her first birthday?? Sheesh, anyone know of a way to stop time (or at least slow it down)?

Coney Island is so much fun...

...unless you're a tired 2-year-old, I guess. This past Saturday, we went to the beach and then stopped by the amusement park to go on a few rides. Our little miss pretty much hated them. Clung to me and cried on the ride with her papa.