The Prochaskas: Thankful

I cannot even describe how incredibily thankful and blessed I am this year. Sometimes I get so caught up in wanting more that I forget to stand back and look at all that I have. It's nice to have a reminder, but I probably need to do it more often.

I am so very thankful for my job and my co-workers, who are like a second family to me. I am so very thankful for my friends, some of whom I don't get to talk to or see very much anymore, but we know we love each other no matter what. I'm so very thankful for my family, that they don't live too far away but just far enough away :), that my in-laws get along and hang out, that we can see both sets of families in the same trip, that they are amazing in so many ways, and that they are FREE babysitters. I am so very thankful for my husband, who puts up with me when I am crazy, who makes me laugh everyday, who is a great father and would do anything for his little girl. And I am so very thankful for Charlotte, who has made my heart grow over the past 2.5 years in a way I could have never imagined. She is beautiful inside and out and I am truly blessed to be her mom.

Ok enough with the sappy stuff.

Of course Thanksgiving meant a trip to El Campo and fighting horrendous traffic. But once we were there it was great. We did Thanksgiving at Jason's parents on Thursday. There were lots of people and Charlie had fun playing with the kids. Friday we did lunch at my parents. And the rest of the weekend was spent black Friday shopping, relaxing, eating, drinking, etc.

At some point over the weekend, I decided I had had it with pull-ups. I decided from that point on (sometime on Saturday) that we were only doing pull-ups a night and on long car rides. And that was it. We had a pretty good day and 1/2 of that. The first 3 days a school were rough - she was going through like 3-4 pairs of pants a day. But I told myself I was not turning back. It's make or break time. Thursday and Friday, she did remarkedly better. She only had 1 accidenet each day - both were #2 (for some reason I cannot get her to do this on the potty). But I was happy that she had no pee accidents. This weekend she did rather well too. We had a couple of mishaps, but overall I was happy. So we will keep soldiering on and hopefully I will have a potty trained child soon. I'm so over potty training.

We also welcomed our elf, Arthur, into our house on the Sunday after Thanksgiving (sorry no pics - Arthur is not very creative). I don't think Charlie really got it at first, but now she is kind of into it. She looks for him every day and gets excited when she finds him. She also tells him when she goes "tee tee like a big girl." We did have a mishap the other day when she got a little close to where he was perched and he took a fall. But somehow he magically got back up when she wasn't paying attention. He's sneaky like that.

We had been talking up St. Nick's day, so much so that the night before she kept calling us into her room while she was in bed and asking us if she could go look in her stocking. Ha. Her reaction Friday morning was pretty cute, albiet a little tired. She now keeps asking when Santa is coming, and she really has no patience for it (I wonder where she got that gene). Everytime she sees a gift, she thinks it's for her and gets upset and I tell her Santa has not come yet.

We are full fledged into Christmas time though - watching the Polar Express and making gingerbread houses (which are way harder than they look). It's cute to see her excitement this year.

A couple of quirks about my girl lately:

Really into all things princess - she wants to wear dresses.
She doesn't say the word "don't." She'll say "I can't want that" instead of "I don't want that."
When she doesn't get her way she does this really fake "waaaa" cry like if you were imitating a baby. It's annoying, I mean cute...no I mean annoying.
She calls both her pigtails and toenails "pintails."

Oh and the other day I guess she wasn't happy with mommy and daddy (we were probably making her eat her food or take a bath or something dreadful like that). And she would say "I'm going to Grandma's" or "I'm going to Bebe's." Oh man, she must have them figured out huh?