So many big girl stories – where to start? Why not with a self portrait?!

I left my favorite notebook and pen out on the coffee table, then walked back into the room to see Zoe helping herself to them, drawing a self portrait that she named “Big Girl Zoe”. We’ve never seen her draw anything except circles, so this is really impressive (comparatively speaking). I mean, there are two eyes, two ears (under her arms), a whole bunch of fingers on one hand (not quite enough on the other), some lovely model-length legs.

Maybe we need to work on her body image (Mrs. Potato Head?), and I hope there’s no messaging in the fact she’s missing smile (and a nose)? But hey, as a first self portrait, we think it’s awesome!

Speaking of Big Girl Zoe, we’ve officially entered (well, RE-entered) potty training, with interest from Zoe this time. Turns out her whole class is going to “big girl” together. I found this out while I was in Chicago on Thursday when I received a text with this photo from my husband:

And the caption “Panty shopping!!!” (yes, Bart Johnson used 3 exclamation points – panty shopping must be very exciting)

So far, we’ve only had a couple of accidents in 2 days, including an accidental poop… Yesterday was awesome – in fact so awesome that she peed 4 times in about 15 minutes in her little potty chair, each time she insisted on taking the white “potty” out of the chair and bringing the pee-pee outside to show to daddy. She was so excited. Our “one jelly bean for pee-pee, two for poop” didn’t account for so much pee… but even if her teeth fall out from all the sugar, at least she’ll be potty trained.

The poop accident was not as exciting. She was sitting on the floor, innocently building a castle, then stood up and said “Will you change my poop, please?” My mouth dropped open, and I looked at Daddy (I swear that man’s a saint). A lot of “be very still, wait, wait!” and a shower later, and we were back to big girl.

One day at a time, right?