McKenna is back in underwear at night and the last two nights have been pee-free. She's very proud of herself! And we're proud of her too! To ease the constipation issue, I'm giving her a pull-up before quiet time. When I see that she's going I make her go stand in the bathroom while she does it. Yesterday she took herself to the bathroom and stood near the sink and today she just went in there while I was typing this. The next step will be getting her to sit on the potty (with pull-up still on) and go that way. Hopefully, the end result will be that I can simply remove the pull-up before she sits on the potty and there we go! It sounds easy... but we'll see how it goes.

I've been trying to get back into flylady. If I can do it, I'll have a routine to follow and get used to before the baby is born. Lately, my house just seems like a disaster area and when I was doing flylady it looked great. And it really wasn't that much work, either! So wish me luck. I'm catching up on laundry today so I can get back to one load a day. I've shined my sink and cleaned my kitchen so that I can KEEP it that way. I'm having McKenna pick up her toys if they're laying around more than half an hour without her playing with them. Stuff like that.

I'm thinking about setting up my 30 gallon tank and getting rid of my 10 gallon, which is on my kitchen counter. I've been trying to grow aquatic plants and so far I have cabomba, java moss, anubias and bacopa. The cabomba is the only one not looking well. I picked up a couple of liquid fertilizers for the water column, so I'm hoping that's having an effect. I would love a nice low-tech planted tank with some rummynose tetras. I love those guys! But my water here is 8.2 and pretty hard. Cichlids are more up my alley, so once my kids are past the toddler age, I may break out the 50 and 55 gallon and set those up with some Tanganyikan shell dwellers. I like Stappersi and Ocellatus Gold... my favorites so far, but I'm doing more research. Both of those species are aggressive, and mulifasciatus are less so, but I'm not as impressed with their coloring. I may do Julidochromis marlieri as they bred very well for me, although they had to have a tank to themselves. They are also Tanganyikan. Whatever I do, I'll have to save up some money for it. Many of those fish aren't exactly cheap, but they are prolific breeders and a couple local fish stores around here take trades or give credit for fish, so at least I can supplement my hobby somewhat. For the time being, I'm just playing with keeping my plants alive in my ten gallon and watching my guppies. And enjoying my one tank and McKenna's interest in it. I let her feed the guppies and she always wants to hold my malaysian trumpet snails, which bury themselves in the substrate during the day. Fish tanks will be a good learning experience for her - chemistry, life and death, etc...

That's it for now!

More later!