We’re due, right? Â Quite a bit has happened with Jules in the past three months. Â Most significantly, little lady is finally potty trained! Â We hunkered down at home the weekend after her third birthday and essentially bribed her out of diapers. Â A sticker and an M&M for each pee, double-sweets for each poop. Â There was much initial resistance, but after just a couple of go’s, she had the hang of it.
She was so confident by day 2, in fact, that she decided she could teach Purple Baby how to use the potty as well!
Once she was in big-kid underwear, she wanted to play big-kid board games and spent a few weeks endlessly requesting that Shane and I play Hi Ho Cherry-O with her.
She claps excitedly for the winner every time, whether she’s it or not, and makes a big show of rolling her eyes and good-naturedly grumbling when she gets a bad spin.  This pre-cheating, non-competitive phase is pretty sweet (though probably short-lived…).
She’ll always opt to have Shane and me fully engaged in whatever she’s doing, but there are the rare occasions when I can set her up with something to do independently and step away for awhile.  If I call it a “project” and make it sound very grown-up, she’ll indulge me.  She spent a rainy Saturday morning drawing circles while I sat nearby and organized my desk.  It was a treat, getting to spend time with her but focus on my own task at hand.
Juliette’s showing increasing resistance to naps, so I told her a couple of weeks ago that she didn’t have to go to sleep if she just played quietly in her room for awhile.  She pulled out her blocks and I patted myself on the back.  My kid had graduated to solo “quiet time”!
(Four minutes later, she yelled, “Mama!!! Come plaaaaay with me!”)
It seems that parenthood is one continuous loop of finding, then losing, then finding your groove, but for the time being, it seems we’ve nailed a couple of pretty important routines. Â Getting dressed and out the door in the morning can still be a hot mess, but once we’re on our way, we’re digging our morning commute on Lightrail.
Once we get to school, I read her two books from her bookshelf (admittedly skipping a lot of words if I’m running late…), give her a hug, and then, most importantly, wave goodbye and blow a kiss at each of her classroom’s four windows. Â No tears. Â NO TEARS! Â We have arrived.
We’ve also managed to eliminate the crying portion of bedtime, as Juliette is satisfied with two books and a story by Shane that always starts with, “One day, Pooh got some newwwww honeypots!” (we’ll call that a Daddy-Jules inside joke).  Once Shane turns out the light and comes downstairs, we both belt out “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” from the living room, so she knows we’re close, then she calls down, without fail, “Goodnight, Mommy!  I love you, Mommy!  Goodnight, Daddy!  I love you, Daddy!”  Gah!  That girl can be a dream when she wants to be.
She can chat a mile a minute when she’s hopped up on sugar or just sheer toddler adrenaline and continues to say the darnedest things.  She turned to Shane one evening as they were sitting on the couch, put her hand on his face, and said, “Daddy?  You’re my favorite cute guy.” She’s picking up quite a bit of Spanish at school and is practicing her new vocabulary any chance she gets, pointing at planes and shouting “Avion, Mommy, AVION!!!”  She counts in Spanish about as often as she counts in English these days.
She sings a lot in Spanish, and although I often have no idea what she’s actually saying (I suspect she might not know, either!), I’m awfully proud of her.
Finally, some old pics of an extra-special Mama-Jules day – she and I took the ferry out to Bainbridge for a Friday adventure a couple of months ago.
We hit the Bainbridge Children’s Museum first, taking a pretend spin in the Smart Car and then doing some crafts upstairs.
Girl’s got skills on the climbing wall!
We grabbed lunch at Blackbird Bakery and then hit Mora’s for ice cream, trading our mint chocolate and raspberry cones back and forth.
We were completely tuckered out by the time we landed back in Seattle – Purple Baby snoozed in Juliette’s tummy while we walked to Lightrail.
And a few last sweet pics from sunnier days… Â Our Fridays with friends ended in September when most of Juliette’s buddies started preschool, so Purple Baby has been filling in as her new playground companion, which is sweet and kind of sad all at once.
The 35-month time capsule:
Favorite songs: Â “Flowers in Your Hair” by The Lumineers and “Bad Blood” by Taylor Swift
Favorite book: Â anything with Pete the Cat
Favorite show: Â Puffin Rock
Favorite foods: Â chili, french fries, “wollipops”
Favorite color: Â purple
Favorite pastimes: Â grocery shopping; cutting pieces of paper into a million little pieces with her new scissors, then scattering them all over the floor;Â dancing with Dad to Beyonce and Katy Perry
Favorite way to make me crazy: Â refusing to get dressed in the morning (my nerves wear thin just writing about it…)
My favorite thing about 39 months:  Her exuberance is more infectious than ever – I opened the blinds this morning to the sight of big, bold rainbow, and when Juliette saw it, she exclaimed, “A RAINBOW!  It’s all the colors!  It’s so, so, SOOOO beautiful!!!”  She was also wide-eyed and breathless today about the single string of Christmas lights our next door neighbor had strung on her outdoor tree and the Lumineers song that came on the radio when we were in the car.  Life is indeed quite grand, Jules.  Thanks for the multitude of reminders.