A Good Day and a Milestone

Today was a good day. It's such a relief to be able to say that, especially since this space has been somewhat depressing lately. I can always tell when things get too gloomy around here because I start getting concerned phone calls from the grandmas and encouraging "hang in there" emails from dear readers. Sorry ya'll, just trying to tell it like it is. Thanks for sticking around.

But like I said, today was a good day. Weekends are always a bit of an unknown around here. We get frustrated, Violet gets frustrated, you get the picture. But today, I don't know... I had an extra measure of patience, perhaps. Or I planned an extra 30 minutes into our routine so no one felt rushed and frustrated. Or we were all on the same page finally. Whatever it was (okay, call it grace), it all added up to a relaxing, productive day.

We started with a birthday party. (Okay, we started with a 5:45 a.m. wake-up call, but let's skip to the positive parts of the story.) Violet's BFF Emma celebrated her second birthday at a cool place called Catch Air - an indoor playground full of inflatables and slides and giant balloons. It was so much fun to watch Violet playing with kids her own age. Around the neighborhood, Violet is the baby. But at the party with her school friends, she seemed so different, so grown up, calling for Emma to follow her and running around from toy to activity. It looked like everyone had a blast!

Of course, when I asked Violet what her favorite part of the party was, she said "cake".

I got some school work done (grades are almost almost finished!) and Violet played outside on this beautiful day. We had a pleasant trip running errands (can't always say that these days so I'm appreciating the small things) and then Matt went to the grocery store and cooked dinner (I'm so lucky!)

But perhaps the biggest news of all (insert drum roll here).... Violet went pee-pee in the potty! (Gaaa - can't believe I'm actually publishing these words out loud - sorry for the over-sharing, everyone - but it's big news around here.) She's been sitting on the potty at school now that she's switched to the early preschool room, and she'll sit on ours here while she waits for the tub to get filled for bath time. But until now, no results. Well, yesterday I explained that if she managed to produce, there would be an m&m reward (pediatrician endorsed). Well, you know Violet and the motivating force that a snack can be. And wouldn't you know it, today when I went to put her in the tub, there was something in the potty! So we gave her the m&m and did a big happy dance and promptly had to explain why there couldn't be any more m&ms right now, but she does seem motivated. We'll see if this is the start of the next big something.