Big girl stuff

This weekend, the girls and I have all been working on some pretty significant milestones. Some are fantastic, some not so much so, and some a bit bittersweet, but given this mighty convergence, I think it's all pretty notable stuff.

Maggie Jean is now officially one year old. She now officially has three teeth (#3 appeared at her birthday party!) and is working on her fourth. She's been doing a fantastic job of sitting up on her own (finally!) and this weekend is letting daddy put her down for naps (in other words, has been going down without my boobies) while at the same time has been graduating from the bottle to a sippy cup filled with hybrid breast/cow milk, because...

I have officially RETIRED the pump! No more lugging it around and no more hassle with the boobies in the middle of work! Oh joyous day!

But, sadly, I've also retired my Fridays off with the girls. This could bring me to tears, thinking about the girls both being in daycare yet another day, but I'm deciding for the sake of my mental health that I need to try look at this as a positive thing. I will have more time in the office to keep up on my work and connect with my co-workers and constituents which means less anxiety for me on Monday mornings when, for the past 9 months, I've faced very full inboxes of mail, voicemail and email amidst many, many meetings. It's also going to be an informative change for us as a family: we'll now have a truer sense of what life as two full-time-working parents will mean to our routines and down-time with the girls. I'm not saying this is a great thing, but rather an inevitable thing.

And on the list of inevitabilities is Zoe's potty training. It would be great to put an exclamation point on that, but we're not quite in celebration mode just yet. However, we're making HUGE strides this weekend: Zoe has been wearing her big girl pants during her awake hours (still in dipes for naps and overnight) since Friday and has had only two accidents. And a very fortunate turn of events presented us yesterday with a play-date with her good friend, Lucy. Lucy has been using the potty for quite some time and Zoe certainly benefited from seeing a pro in action (oh, sometimes peer pressure is a FABULOUS THING). She did show a bit of reluctance yesterday (especially during her post-nap grumpiness. boy howdy.) but today has been very successful in trying, going and not having accidents. I'm not going to jinx us by making any strong predictions here, but I think by the end of this extra-long weekend, we will have some serious progress on this front.

I read somewhere at some point that you shouldn't do too many transitions with kids at once, that it can become overwhelming for everyone. However, I must say that our girls are taking to all of these changes, so far, quite well. The week after this next shall be the real test, when life is in full swing, but for now, I'm enjoying being holed up in the house, working on all our big girl stuff together.