Getting Ready for Preschool

Last week we visited two Mother's Day Out programs to see where we'd like to have Reagan in the fall. If all goes well, it looks like we'll have her in for two days a week at the church that is right across the street from us--how convenient! I used to attend that church, so I'm very comfortable with what they teach, and they also have a very new facility with a fabulous indoor playground. Reagan (and Mama) can't wait!

Preschool (well, actually Mother's Day Out) was a great motivator when it came to potty training. I told Reagan that if she wanted to go to preschool after Baby Sister was born, she'd have to learn to shoo-shoo in the potty because they don't let you wear pull-ups in preschool. (Actually most MDO programs do require their 3-year-old classes to be potty trained.) I'm happy to report that Reagan is now fully trained and rarely has an accident. And though we put pull-ups on her at night, she is almost always dry in the morning. On the drive to visit both MDO programs, Reagan reminded herself: "I learn to shoo-shoo! I go preschool!" She's very proud.

Reagan has also learned to recognize her numbers. I was changing my wooden calendar (you know, the kind with all the little number pieces) to April and asked her to bring me the correct numbers I needed. She did it perfectly through 11. I even skipped around, since I was putting numbers in from both sides, and it didn't mess her up. I have been seriously negligent in actually teaching her anything, so watching TV and playing My First LeapPad must be doing something good for her!

Countdown to Baby

Today I'm officially at 31 weeks, but since I'm counting on this baby being early, I expect to have about 8 weeks left. We're just now starting to do all those important baby preparations that first-time parents would have done months ago. For instance, Scott spent the weekend priming the nursery. He still has to paint it, but hopefully that will happen this week. At the moment, the crib, changing table, glider, bassinet, and various other items are blocking our hallway.

We have a plethora of boxes and baby accouterments to get down from the attic. This will hopefully happen over the Easter weekend, as my family will be in town (read: Dad and my brother can help Scott do the heavy lifting instead of me!).

We still have several things to get rid of, since we're converting what was our guest room into a nursery. (We had taken the liberty of using the closet space in that room, so now we have to shuffle and eliminate.)

Reagan asks almost every day when Baby Sister is coming out. She even yells, "Come out, Baby Sister!" to my belly. So far, it's not working. We're all anxious to meet our little one--and I'm especially anxious to finally hold her outside my body (and get a little freedom from my ever-growing belly).

She doesn't officially have a name yet, but we're getting closer.