BIRTHDAY DOG SASHA AND IJ THE POTTY BOY

Tuesday was Sasha's first birthday. She is no longer a puppy, but a DOG. She doesn't seem to notice, though, since she's still acting like a crazy puppy. She's loopy. I can't even count the number of times in a day I say "Sasha, no!" or "Sasha, go on!" or "Sasha! Don't poop in the neighbor's yard!".

In a year, she's gone from this:

To this:

From getting into "trouble" like this (such a cute little muddy puppy she was):

To being this troublemaker (that's a dog toy stolen from the neighbor's yard in her mouth):

Yes, in a year Sasha has gone from this cute little puppy lump that was too scared to climb the stairs so I had to carry her, that would cuddle up and sleep in my lap and give cute little kisses, to a crazy dog that chews up my underwear and socks (and no one else's), who constantly tries to get to the neighbor's yard to poop, and just drives me relatively insane with how obnoxious she can be.

But I guess she's still cute. She sure can smile:

***

The past few days have been really good in potty training land. IJ has been relatively trained for a while now, ever since the day when he was a little over a year old that he asked to go potty after seeing C do it so many times. I put him up on the big potty not expecting much, but as soon as he was on there he pooped! He's used the big potty since then, cause I wasn't going to mess with one of those little potties if he understood what the big one was for. Since then I have gotten him mostly poop trained, but he was still doing most of his peeing in his training pants. I've been putting off putting IJ in underwear for a while, since that's what worked for C. But the puddles everywhere! But the past few days we've gone for it, and he's been wearing underwear for most of the day, and I've been giving him a few M&M's every time he goes in the potty. We've had a couple days where he's kept one pair of underwear dry the entire day! I can't believe how well it's been going already. The next step we have to work on is IJ recognizing that he has to pee on his own instead of me asking him around the time I know he should have to pee. Right now it goes about like this:

"IJ, do you have to go potty?"

IJ: "Nooooo."

"You're sure you don't have to go potty?"

IJ: "Nooooo."

"Okay, but remember, if you go potty like a big boy and keep your underwear dry, you get M&M's."

IJ thinks about this for a minute, and then "Mommy, I have to go potty and get M&M's!"

The only bad thing about the M&M thing is that C thinks that he should get some every time he goes potty too. So I'll probably have to wean off the M&M's soon and find some other potty reward. I saw a Dora potty chart with stickers on the Nick Jr. website that I'll probably print out. IJ likes stickers, so maybe that will work. I'm hoping IJ gets the hang of it faster than C did. C had the habit then, and still does now, of waiting until the very last moment to go potty. Pee had to be coming out of him before he would go, so a lot of the time he wouldn't make it. He's better now, but he'll still get the occasional wet spot in his underwear from waiting too long. I hope that IJ realizes that he can go potty before the pee is coming out. :)

Here's hoping he's totally trained by, like, next week. That would be awesome. :) At least I'd like him totally trained before his sister is born. It will be nice to only have one kid in diapers this time. :)