Some of you might already know that we're doing elimination communication with Mary. We started when she was 3 months old, and it works like a charm for us. Whenever we see that Mary has to go to the bathroom (when she wakes up, when she fusses in a certain way, etc.), we take her to the toilet. We save so much money on diapers. Since we switched to using cloth diapers at home, we also save ourselves a lot of laundry. We went from using 20-25 diapers per day down to 5-10 diapers per day. Right now she pees on the toilet about 60% of the time, and poops on the toilet about 90% of the time, and she keeps getting better. It is soooo much easier to clean her bottom after using the toilet than after going in a diaper, and she really seems to like using the bathroom. However, she still is a baby and still has "accidents" - here is a picture of the guilty party after pooping and peeing all over the place while daddy was trying to change her diaper!

Just lounging around the house with dad. Joe watches Mary three days a week while I work in the Biochemistry lab finishing up my senior thesis project. I should be done by the end of August. Woohoo!


We went to the zoo last Friday with Mary and met a friend and her two year old there. Mary gets worn out easily when we're out walking around, and usually falls asleep in the wrap. I don't think she really "gets" the zoo yet either - she's happy to look around at anything new, and since the zoo is a whole new place she looks around at EVERYTHING and I'm not sure she even notices the animals in particular. Plus it was really hot that day, so most of the animals were inside or just laying around, which makes them harder to notice. Mom and dad like to go the zoo anyway though!


The lions were all hiding, but luckily we brought along our own little lion for Mary. This is a picture of us at the park after visiting the zoo.

Mary also got to take her first ride down a playground slide. Hooray!

Mary is starting to push up on her arms now. She looks like she's getting ready to crawl! She doesn't really move anywhere yet, just up and down. And she can spin around 360 degrees when she's on her tummy. It won't be long before she's cruising around the house!


We went to visit Joe's parents in Genesee and they had this great blue ball that Mary LOVED to play with. We brought the ball home with us, and it always makes her laugh when we play with it.


Another new thing has been TOES. Mary "found" her feet and loves to play with them now. She'll sit there grabbing her toes, and once in awhile even pops them in her mouth.

We went to the fireworks in Waukesha for the 4th of July. Mary really liked the show! I was a little worried she wouldn't like the loud noise, but she didn't have any problems at all. The mosquitos weren't very bad at all either. She didn't make a fuss the whole time we were there. Here's a picture of her watching the fireworks with her daddy.

The fireworks were a little past her usual bedtime though, and even though she tried really hard to stay awake, eventually she just couldn't keep her eyes open. It was so funny - she would open her eyes to see a firework, and then they would slowly fall shut, and then she would open her eyes to see the next one, and then they would fall shut. Eventually they opened less and less until she was finally asleep. Daddy covered her ears so the booms wouldn't be so loud, but I don't think anything could have woken her up, she was so sleepy.