more fun in the sun

We're fasting from TV these days. I had always thought I'd be a no-TV mom, but between the last few weeks of a crazy spring semester and that first trimester of pregnancy, I turned it on to buy myself some down time (or some grading/ planning time.) I guess we just got into the habit of having it on, and over the last few days, I had noticed that we were spending more and more time watching Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, Peter Pan, and Beauty and the Beast... and Lauren Clay was getting more and more drawn in. Monday morning, I decided not to turn it on, so we came up with other, creative ways to fill our day. It's much more exhausting, but much more rewarding to leave the TV off. So I think we'll keep it that way for a while. I've posted some pictures of what we did Tuesday after Lauren Clay's nap. I filled up her pool, but she preferred sitting and splashing in the white bowl (above.)

Lauren Clay helped herself to a snack straight off the tomato vine (ate the tomato like an apple)

Here's her new tu-tu. She loves to wear it. She actually wore it out to lunch at a restaurant. She also wanted to dress up in the bunny rabbit poncho from her Ga Ga, so I couldn't pass up that photo opportunity...

Finally, here she is helping me straighten the house (the TV usually helps keep her corralled so I can quickly make the bed and put things away. Cleaning with the help of a 2-year old is not very efficient, but very cute and much more fun.)

Lauren Clay wouldn't let me take a picture of what she did most of the afternoon: sit on the potty. I find it amusing that she has picked out two Clifford books in Spanish that she wants to read in the bathroom. That's the only time she asks for those books, but when she's in the bathroom, that's all she wants. We must have made 25 or 30 trips to the potty, which is exhausting for a mommy whose belly is getting bigger and whose tailbone hurts after sitting in comfortable seats (so you can imagine how much more it hurts after sitting on the edge of the bathtub.) The upside to potty training is that our bathroom stays very clean. Nothing holds me accountable to keeping a clean bathroom as a little potty trainer who doesn't understand germs very well yet.