Pearly Whites

Raegan has bestowed upon us the gift of sleeping in lately! A couple of days after we returned from Nashville, she slept until 7:40 and has been waking up between 7:00 and 7:40 since then. I've never considered 7:30 to be "sleeping in" until having a baby, but it sure is nice. It's much more pleasant to wake up to a sun-filled house than to stumble around in the dark, turning on all the lamps.

A couple of days last week we went to the playground and she plays non-stop for an hour. She loves the slides and wants to do the tallest ones by herself. In my opinion, she's too little for the tall, twisty ones, so we stick to the smaller ones against her wishes. I let her go down the tall ones on my lap, but she would much rather do it by herself. She joined a boy who was running laps around the playground. I don't exactly know what he was doing, but he had a lot of energy and she thought it looked fun. She loves to be chased around the house. She says "ches" and takes off running. I wasn't aware of the rules she made up with Ryan, so she slowed down for me to catch her and tickle her. When Ryan got home I told him about it, and he said, "Oh yeah, you're supposed to catch her once per lap." We started the new class at Little Gym. Some of her friends from the previous class moved up with us. She can't do all of the skills yet, like jumping. She tries so hard, but her feet don't leave the ground yet. She spent a lot of time on the rings trying to swing out. A little boy tackled her twice in a row, and the second time I blurted out, "Hey!!" Another little boy helped her up and she was fine, but I'm going to need that craziness to stop.

We bought her a potty chair and step stool to wash her hands and brush her teeth at the sink. She sits on the potty with all of her clothes on. We tried once without pants when she was about to go, but she seemed scared, so we have not pursued it anymore. Mainly, I think she likes that the chair is her size. She puts her doll on it sometimes, too. Right now, we're just letting her get used to the idea of sitting and going on a potty. We caught her practicing wiping and some toilet paper stuck to her pants :)

She loves to stand at the sink and wash her hands and brush her teeth. Today was her first dentist appointment, and she did better than I expected, given our recent experience at her well-check. She let the hygienist brush her teeth with a new tooth brush. She noticed the mask right away and said "Uts dat?" When the dentist came in she tensed up and began to cry as he came closer. He looked at her teeth and swabbed on some flouride paste. He said everything looks good. We can go back in 6 months or a year.