On the plane on the way home from GA, Zoe took a solid nap (yay!). Upon waking from that nap she exclaimed (loudly for the entire plane audience):

“Mommy, Daddy. Now I’m a big big BIG girl and I can pee in the potty and poop in the potty and I’m not going to miss you at school anymore!”

We have no idea where that came from (must have been a really good dream). In fact, I’m hoping she has a fairy godmother in her dreams who’s feeding good behavior tips – and that it continues. As the fabulous parents we clearly are, we’ve leveraged the heck out of it.

Leading up to our Christmas trip, she insisted on sleeping in her new Spider-Man sleeping bag, basically on the floor. But guess what? Big big big girls sleep in the bed! Even better, they don’t need the “just in case” mattress pulled out from under the bed in case they fall out. Amazing! (yes, this worked)

Guess what else: Big big big girls put away the toys they’re playing with before moving on to the NEXT toy! Turns out that if they leave their toys lying around, big big big girls have to give those toys to Daddy and can’t play with them for a week. Yikes! So our big big big girl is picking up her toys, and fast. (working on this one)

This weekend we made some New Year’s Resolutions as a family, and our big big big girl is ready for chores! (she has no idea what this means yet… except that she’d get an allowance and could buy stuff.) If you have any tips on how to actually DO this, we’re all ears.

In the meantime, we’ll keep our big big BIG girl focused on as many BIG girl things as possible – she can already:

1. Dress herself (though she may end up with Daddy’s sense of “matching”)
2. Bathe herself (she can even wash Daddy’s hair)
3. Put away her clothes and shoes (with prompting)
4. Help us cook (she can basically crack eggs & mix pancakes by herself)
5. Help clean up (a little, when asked)

We’re still working on sharing consistently, not whining, sitting at the table “like a big girl” (she refuses a booster seat), always saying please/thank you (though she’s pretty good at this), and LISTENING (one can hope). I’m pretty sure these are all life-long trainings… but at least we’re on the way!

Oh, and one of MY New Year’s resolutions? Blog more. We’ll see how that goes ;)

HAPPY NEW YEAR!