July has become the month Sesame decided to start acting like a toddler. In the grand scheme of toddlerhood she’s still pretty mellow but she’s always been very compliant so any veering off that path is noticeable. 


Within the last 48 hours she’s cried for the following reasons:


+ She wanted to sit on the potty but for whatever reason she couldn’t.
+ She had to sit on the potty when she didn’t want to.
+ She had to get off the potty before her show on the ipad was done.


(A lot of our tears are related to potty training at the moment. Pray for us.)


+ I didn’t let her watch shows during breakfast, after breakfast, during lunch and all afternoon.  


+ She found a tutu dress at the store that she wanted but we didn’t get because it was too small. She was HEART BROKEN. You would have thought someone stole her Mr. Lion. She clutched the dress to her chest while crying, “Tutu skirt! I want to take it home, Mama! I WANT DA TUTU SKIRT!” throughout our entire visit. We were a joy for the other shoppers to be around.


Have I mentioned we’re potty training? She’s gone a few times when I put her on the regular toilet so I thought she might be ready for the next step. We bought a little Minnie Mouse potty. We got a pack of Minnie Mouse underwear. We have a bag of chocolate chips to give as a reward. We’ve had zero success. I’ve started eating the chocolate chips every time we have an unsuccessful potty trip or I have to clean up a mess. 


She’s been very fussy so I had Christopher talk to her about it. “You can’t always get what you want in life. Mama is very kind to you so you need to be thankful for what she does, even if you don’t get something you want. I know it’s sad, but you can’t get all upset when something doesn’t go your way. Ok?” She responded with, “Pepperoni, cheese and pasta.” Good talk, Annabelle, good talk. Glad it really got through.


We went to her first swimming lesson on Wednesday. She did so well. Of the five kids in the class she was one of only two who didn’t scream the entire time. I was so proud. Then we went to Children’s Place and had the tutu dress incident so my pride was knocked down a notch.

She LOVES the playground. We go at least four times a week. The days she loves best are when we bring a picnic lunch. So far we’ve been able to leave the playground without tears but usually I have some sort of bribe to avoid a meltdown. There is no shame in my game.  (I have NO doubt we’ll have the Playground Meltdown of 2016 any day now.)