Bribery will get you EVERYWHERE.

No really, it will. I made Natalee a potty chart and the kid is already two sparkly butterfly stickers away from an ice cream cone! She is doing fantabulously now. She pottied on the little potty, and then I decided to leave the bathroom door open and light on in case she would go on her own...and here's where it gets gruesome, so those of you with weak stomachs, skip a couple lines... anyway, she did- she POOPED! What the crap!? I went in there to check on her, and she had climbed up on  the big toilet and pooped and got off of the toilet. I was so damn excited that I might've worried her a little. I gave her knucks (the highest form of flattery in Craftopia) and we told Jonathan, and then put TWO glittery butterfly stickers on the chart for that one! Those of you who have potty trained know that the number 2 effort is supposed to be the harder of the two. Here I was, about to give up on this whole potty-training thing, but I suppose Natalee just wanted to do it on her terms. Kind of like everything else she does. **Sigh** This kid is going to give us one hell of a time.

I don't mean to make this the Natalee show, but she also rocks at the alphabet flashcards. She knows a lot of the letters. If she doesn't know the letters, she knows how to associate them. For instance, she recognizes a capital D but for the lowercase d, she kind of blanked out Yesterday, so instead of saying "d" or "I don't know," she said "dog!" So, the kid is smart. She is shocking me around every corner. I try to do the flashcards with her twice daily. Once she gets the hang of it, we'll do a "smart-chart" kind of like the "potty-chart."

In other news, Juliette's first tooth is trying to break through. Tons of fun, let me tell you. Her baltic amber necklace seems to help tons, but she is still a little bit fussy. It's an eye tooth. Weird. She does super-great in her walker/activity toy thingy... It's like this pedestal with all these toys on it, and it has this seat with wheels that hooks to the base so she can walk in a circle around it in either direction. Last night, she ran from me, and then would turn around and try to chase me. It was adorable.

Well, I would love to fill you in on more exciting shiz, but there isn't much more to tell and my brain is threatening to leak out of my ears if I continue to look at a bright screen. I would just hate to clean brain matter off of a microfiber couch, so until next time, y'all.