Sesame Street Live & Big Girl Undies

Well, we survived another year of Sesame Street Live. Last night, we headed downtown Minneapolis to Target Center for a family date night. A date night involving Elmo, overpriced souvenirs (even at 28 years old I can't resist at least buying a program) and lots of singing and dancing.  

When Elmo's voice sang over the speaker system, letting us know the show was about to begin - Harper's eyes lit up. As the curtains drew back, the entire Sesame Street cast danced onto the stage singing and introducing themselves. Harper (with a death grip on her super soft pretzel) screamed "Hi Elmo! Hi Abby! Me eat pretzel." With each character taking center stage, Harper would recite their name and wave hello. It was pretty adorable.

We knew the show as 90 minutes, with a 15 minute intermission. Last year, she had just started walking, so she stayed still the entire time. This year was a different story. She danced like a maniac (which never gets old!), tried singing along to every song and constantly yelled "Hi" and "Bye" as character's entered and exited the stage. She lasted the entire show, but started to get antsy towards the end. I know she wasn't the only one. You could hear almost every child in the Target Center squirming around getting restless, and all the parents thinking, "Okay, let's wrap this up Elmo." When it was all over, she told us "That was fun." with a big smile. 

It was a terrific family night out. I'm sure we'll be seeing the Sesame Street crew again next January. Oh, and a side note - Harper used the big potty during intermission! As a proud Mama, I had to share! :)

Our potty training success has continued for the second week. She's still having accidents overnight in her Pull Ups, but even those are decreasing. We haven't had an accident during the day in a long time! I think she's starting to get it more and more, and loves running around the house in her big girl undies. 

Yesterday I couldn't resist snapping pictures of her, "outfit of choice." With her Hello Kitty rain boots, Ariel undies and no pants, she thought she was hot stuff. She danced around the kitchen and posed for every picture. I'm pretty convinced if we gave her the choice, she would never wear pants. Actually the more I think about it, she might not wear clothes at all if we didn't make her! The pictures made me smile, so as usual I found them share worthy. Mitch even said as I was playing paparazzi, "this will be the picture we submit for her senior yearbook!" 

The last few weeks we've had great success at church. Harper has had no problem playing in the childcare center... until today. We walked in for 11am service, and headed over drop her off just like we have been doing these last few weeks. She immediately started kicking, screaming and sobbing - yelling, "all done play with trains and kids." We tried showing her other toys, but she was having none of it. After walking around, grabbing a few books and a coloring board we headed into the sanctuary for service with Harper in tow. Explaining to a 2 year old, "We have to use our library voices. Whisper please." is pretty much a joke. That lasted all of 3 minutes, then it was right back to our not-so-indoor voice. We made it through 15 minutes of the service, before we needed to make an exit. We sat for a few minutes outside, but Miss Thang just got more rambunctious. We tried one last time to get her to go into the childcare area, but it was clear we were losing that battle today. I'm hoping next Sunday we'll be back to normal!

Hope everyone is staying warm and having a wonderful weekend!

Until next time...
The Helleen's