Lots of progress this week...

Since we came home from vacation, our weeks have been pretty full (2 weddings, 2 funerals, VBS, swim lessons, a few fun days at the lake with some friends, etc.). I foresaw that this week would be our first 'down' week, so I geared up to potty train Hannah, who had been showing signs of readiness ever since the week prior to our vacation in PA. I thought of potty training her while we were in PA, but there's something to be said for diapers when you're traveling and constantly visiting other people's homes.

Nana volunteered to keep Christopher, Sarah and Mary Grace on Tuesday, the first day of intensive potty training. There were several accidents, lots of carpet/floor cleaner and loads of laundry, but Hannah also had many successes and was even self-iniating by the evening. On day 2, she only had 2 accidents - one in the morning when she started to wet herself, stopped short, ran to the potty and successfully finished the job; and one mishap with #2...always gross. On day 3, her only real accident was not making it to the potty in time to do #2. A funny moment in the evening was hearing her yell, "Oh no!" and then seeing her dart down the hallway toward the bathroom yelling, "I peed on Cinda-rey-yah!" (the corresponding print on her undies). This morning (day 4), she had her first successful poop on the potty! There was much rejoicing in the McCracken household, as you can see in the video below:

I also noticed this week that Mary Grace was able to get herself from her tummy to a sitting position pretty consistently. By Thursday, I thought she was getting so close to crawling and then watched her take a couple 'steps' toward a toy!

Christopher and Sarah began the summer completely forgetting how to swim. I even had to put Sarah back into a life vest and then slowly eased her back into putting her head under water. Christopher picked it back up pretty quickly, and then both were swimming really well by the time we had swim lessons. Yesterday at the pool, I saw Sarah do things I'd never seen her do, like swim out to the middle of the pool by herself and then dive down to the floor to get a ring (or some other sunken object) and swim back to the wall or the steps!

It is so fun to see each of the kids making progress in different areas of his/her development, so we always have to have our cameras and video recorders handy.