Potty Training Breakthrough

We've officially started really potty training! I took the week of work and Hailey and I are doing it. We had a really rough start...so rough that she ran out of the bathroom to her bedroom and SLAMMED the door! I can't believe it! We're starting attitude already! Anyways...on a brighter note! We went out shopping with friends and picked out big girl panties for Hailey. She was pretty excited because they were all shopping for her! We picked up about 6 packs of Bratz panties (I'm not a fan but they were $1.20 for a 3 pack!). I also bought a Cinderella Pez dispenser which did the trick! When we got home, we looked at all her panties and Pez which thrilled her. She tried right away to go potty so she could get a candy. Success! She picked out big girl panties and wore them all evening without an accident! She even stopped coloring, got off the couch, pulled down her panty and sat on the potty! ALL BY HERSELF! I was in another room! SO proud of her! She's gone three times with no prompting! And she wants to wear her big girl panty to bed. We took proper precautions and put waterproof pad under he bed, left a light on and we'll see! She went potty while I was up there (cleaning her room so she wouldn't be tempted to get out and play). Just wanted to let EVERYONE know! Hopefully we keep it up! Wish us luck!

Kohl's Alarm!

Nich and I went to Kohls Friday on my lunch break to get a post-season house for our Christmas village and decided to get him new shoes-his old ones had holes in them. We paid for everything and were walking out the door the same time someone else was coming in with returns. The alarm went off and we just figured it was the other guy. Nope! It was us...the cashier forgot to take the tab off. He through out his old shoes and put on his new ones and realized the tab was there. Saturday he went back to have them take the tab off and it set off all of the alarms! Inside and outside the store and they were still going off even after he left!! Moral of the story...check your tabs!

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas! Here's a quick recap of our day....

Hailey got up at 9! I'm dreading the years that she's actually too excited to sleep...she didn't know any reason to get up early! I got her out of bed and heading downstairs where Nich was waiting with the video camera. Her reaction was priceless! (The video's too big to post...sorry!) Nich and I had given each other our presents Christmas Eve so all the presents she saw were hers. We let her pick out which ones she wanted to open first. She saw Mickey Mouse first and was thrilled! We let her open her other presents. The exciting ones were Mickey Mouse Clubhouse with all the characters, Tickle Me Cookie Monster, Doodle pad, and Tinkerbell movie.

She played with the clubhouse all day! She barely turned around to take the picture!

Her big Mickey Mouse. Our camera battery died right after this picture.

After playing with new presents for awhile, we had breakfast - Nich's famous potatoes and kielbasa, then went on a traditional egg nog ingredients run! Each year we have made our own egg nog Christmas morning and bought all the ingredients at whatever store/gas station was open. This year we kinda cheated and only needed milk but it was still expensive. $4 for a gallon of milk! Turned out pretty well - milk, vanilla instant pudding, cinnamon, nutmeg, vanilla and sugar. We brought 1/2 gallon over to the Washington's and hung out a bit. We have such great neighbors and a really thankful for them! They kept Hailey for a little while and brought her over when she was ready.

Grandma and Grandpa came down around 4 and we played Wii Bowling until Hailey woke up from her nap. Grandpa and Nich played 5 games! They stayed for a delicious dinner - Roast, carrots and potatoes cooked by Nich and Grandma's mac & cheese and salad followed by pumpkin pie.

We had a great day just enjoying each other. More Christmas memories coming next week! :)

Christmas Memories

This week was so much fun! I can't believe Christmas is right around the corner! We had to get cookies and gingerbread houses in one afternoon! Our day was off to a great start - Hailey got to wear her pretty Christmas dress to church. Which made her sooo happy! After church we had lunch at Taco Bell (Hailey now eats taco's by herself. Last week she ate 3 so her new nickname is Baby Taco). Then we went to Circuit City's store closing sale and got really great deals! We got home and it took 8 tries to get up the driveway! We kept getting stuck and eventually we got out and walked halfway up the driveway. After we got Hailey inside Nich and I went out to shovel and eventually get my car up! By the time we all got inside and settled it was 3pm and Hailey was wired! We changed her clothes into her other Christmas dress. That made her even more excited and needless to day, napless. We didn't want her to sleep all day so we took our chances and had a really fun day!Cheesin'!

Brittney had a cute little present box that we had Hailey open for pictures :)She was very proud of herself for turning on the outside Christmas lights! How adorable! :)

After a bit of goofying around Britt, Nich, Hailey and I built gingerbread houses. Or tried....

Our finished products! Hailey's, Nich's and mine!

We started out making gingerbread houses and that turned into just a fun, gooey mess! Rudolph the Red-Nosed Hailey!

Brittney and I made Christmas cookies and Nich helped decorate! We didn't realize how many we were actually making! Cookies for everyone!

More to come...I just wanted to get this posted before I left for work!

That darn hand!

So tonight we were driving home from a super shopping spree at Steven Barry's (20 items for $60!!-jeans, skirts and dress pants) when we heard from the back seat "Oh! Oww! My hand! No!" So any normal conversation you would think she hurt her hand on something. Nope. We asked what was wrong and she says "My hand hurt my mouth." She hit her mouth with her hand and was telling her hand to stop. Only Hailey... :)

"Pretty" pri-tē

"Pretty" according to Merriam Webster Dictionary:
1 a: artful , clever b: pat , apt2 a: pleasing by delicacy or grace b: having conventionally accepted elements of beauty

"Pretty" according to Hailey Pollak:
1 a: pink, b: layers and layers, c: nothing in Mommy's closet

Yesterday Nich, Hailey and I were dancing in the family room when all of a sudden Hailey stopped us! Mommy couldn't dance unless she was pretty! (what was I thinking?!) She wisked me upstairs saying "Mommy be pretty." She likes to pick out my clothes when we play dress up. She opened one drawer...and shut it. Opened a second...and shut it. I asked, "Didn't you find anything pretty" Hailey replies, "Nope." What Not to Wear has nothing on Hailey...fashion diva! Eventually we found a skirt and two shirts and I got to finish my dance.

Thanksgiving and Pistons

I know it's been so long since I've posted! Nich and I were in Traverse City for a work conference, then getting ready for Thanksgiving just has kept us so busy! Nich has finished all the little projects! Thanks to Dad and Grandpa for helping with the closet, bathroom and kitchen! :) Nich's family came over for Thanksgiving last Saturday and we had a great time! They helped motivate us to finish the little projects and man did our house look good! Here's some pics of Pollak Thanksgiving:

Ashley, Nich, Ashley's friend, Amber and Jake. We got a Wii a couple weeks ago and everyone had a lot of fun playing!

Uncle Jake and Wesley. The boys got trucks and trailers!

Hailey and Papa Dan
Hailey, Ashley and Abrial
Abrial and Hailey. They both got pj's and babies for Thanksgiving Presents! Thanks Aunt Sherry and Uncle Marty!!Aunt Sherry and Uncle Marty

I know this doesn't go with this posting, but I loaded it and didn't want to deleted it! Video's take SO LONG to upload on blogger. Enjoy! Hailey is becoming quite the sports fan! She knows the difference between football, basketball and baseball. In this video she's cheering for the individual players....Go Pistons! Go A.I., Go Tayshaun, Go Sheed, Go Kwame, Go RIP. Quite the fan for a 2 year old!

Two Peas in a Pod

Two pretty girls! Lately Hailey has been on a "pretty" kick. Everything she (and Mommy) wears has to be pretty. Translation...has to be pink and lots of layers. In this picture she picked out pretty clothes for her and I. Yes, we're both wearing 6 layers. We embraced her dress up game and she and I both put on all the layers then she picked out pretty shoes for us. She has pink high heals that I bought post-Halloween sale and found my high heels that have a bow. We wore them all night! She and I went upstairs and had a lot of fun! We danced, sang songs and dressed babies in multiple layers too.

Here's a video of Hailey playing with baby and walking in her high heels. She's a natural! :) Notice how she puts the purse strap in baby's hand too!

After playing, Nich brought us up dinner - fish sticks and french fries. We shared our food and had our own party. We totally bonded...two peas in a pod.

Peak a Boo

So this weekend Hailey and I went to see Shelby & Riley. Hailey absolutely LOVES Riley! She sings songs about her, thinks we're going to her house every time we leave the driveway...so needless to say they were excited to see each other! We usually play with Lincoln and talk while the girls play in Riley's room. All of a sudden we heard giggling and went to check it out. They were playing peak a boo in the closet! How adorable! We're so glad they get along so well! After they went to sleep Shelby and I got to scrapbook! Both of us got to play with our friends!

Reading on a Rocking Horse

Strange title huh? Yep, Hailey likes to read on her rocking horse!



She's even giving her babies a ride on the back!

Bargain Shopping!

Today we went to JCPenney since I had a $10 off a $10 purchase (thanks Shelby- it worked!) and walked out with 9 other items! BUT the great part is we bought 10 items for $18.30! 6 shirts for me, 2 for Nich and 1 outfit and a pair of shorts for Hailey. We saved a grand total of $237.20!! Nope...that's not a typo! :) They had their clearance clothes, buy 1 get 1 1/2 off. The shirts I found were $1.97 which made the other $1! These are really nice shirts I can wear to work! Just excited and wanted to share!

Pre-Halloween!

A sneak peak of our Halloween costumes!

Hailey's going to be a butterfly! She wouldn't really sit still for a good pic. Hopefully tomorrow!

Mommy's a clown! Yes...those are home-made red shoes! :)

The things they say...

Today Hailey had "ketchup milk" for dinner and read a story about "ketchup's house." You guessed it...she's obsessed with ketchup. We had KFC for dinner; chicken, mashed potatoes and mac & cheese but she insisted she had ketchup. Sometimes we give Hailey pink milk (milk with a couple drops of strawberry syrup) because she will gulp it down and tonight was one of those nights. BUT tonight it was ketchup milk. We read a story about Santa and reindeer (when mommy read it) and when Hailey read the same story to her baby it ended up being about visiting ketchup's house. Oh the imagination! :)

Big Girl

This weekend was busy but we had so much fun! Friday night we decided to put Hailey into her big girl bed. Well, it was her same bed but we changed it into the toddler bed part. Since then we have seen a completely different side of her! She is so independent and a "big girl!" Here's a cute pic of her showing off her new bed.


She has done so well with it! We haven't heard any pitter patter of her little feet running around...yet. We practiced with her that she could play in her bed while the lights were on, but she needed to lay down when the lights turned off. Hopefully it continues! Since sleeping in her toddler bed she has become so much more independent in everything! She's way more open to going potty on the potty and wore big girl underwear for most of the day yesterday! She picks out which ones she wants to wear (each time because she's still peeing in them) and grabs them out of her drawer by herself. I think it's going to be easier training her from panties then pull ups because she knows the minute she's wet. She looks at us and says, "I'm peeing Mommy" and we whisk her away to the potty! We're definitely getting there!

Saturday we spent the morning playing and potty training and after nap headed over to the Paulk's. Hailey was so excited to see Riley! She kept asking if we were really going to Riley house, we'd say yes, and she'd yell yea! We're so blessed to have such great friends (us and Hailey!) and we're not too far away. We let the girls play for awhile, then Shelby and I snuck out to Meijer to pick up food for dinner. Nich and Ty did pretty well handling the three kids! Way more work than just Hailey! The girls played some more....and more...and more.


I didn't get a cute picture of the girls, but Hailey sure loved Lincoln! After Riley went to bed Hailey got to play with him and hold him. She'll be such a good big sister some day!

After dinner and bed times the fun began! Nich and Ty watched the new Hulk movie and Shelby and I got to scrapbook! It's so much fun with someone else! :) She's making a book of Riley's family and I was still working on Hailey's book. I got 4 pages done! Amazing how much you can accomplish if you put your mind too it!

Sunday we surprise Nana and Papa and headed up to Flint after church. Of course, Hailey didn't nap the entire drive and passed out after only playing for 1/2 hour at their house. She slept until 5:30! Nana and Papa have my old toy box filled with toys for Hailey and she knows right where to go! She found the dress up dress and became a whole new person! Here's some cute pics and video of her. My little star!


I was helping her jump off the fireplace hearth onto Ceaser's bed. She wouldn't jump by herself, but got such a kick out of it!

Papa was checking to see if the light would come out the other side...

Sweetest video of Hailey singing her heart out! Pay close attention...she slips in "I love Riley!" I love the ta'da at the end too!

Glasses Girls!

So I have to wear my glasses for a week. NOT excited about it. I have GPC, an eyelid disease that makes my eyelid rough so a contact doesn't fit right. Proteins build up and make bumps on my eyelid. (Dr Schaff would be proud!) Glasses for a week with steroid drops, then for the next six weeks I can't sleep with my contacts in and have to clean them with hydrogen peroxide.


Hailey hadn't seen me in my glasses for awhile and wanted to wear her glasses too! She's such a sweet heart!

Polite 2 year old!?!

Hailey now takes her baths in the sink and she had such good manners tonight I had to get it on video! "Thank you Daddy! Excuse me Daddy! Thank you Daddy!"

Catch up pics!

Ok, now for some pics that I have been really wanting to post, but I figured I should probably post all the cruise ones in a row. Now I'm caught up and can post random adorable pictures of Hailey!
The day after we got back Grandma and Grandpa took us to Applewood at Mott's Farm in Flint. The three of us rode on a golf cart down the hill and got this family picture!


She and another little girl made friends and ran up and down the hill! Brittney showed me a new downloadable program called Picassa (highly recommend it by the way!) and I did some special effects to this picture!
We stopped at Meme's house on our way home and Hailey remembered there were blocks under her couch. She just had to bend into a pretzel to reach them!


The only ear of corn from our garden this year! It was about an inch long but Hailey peeled it and carried around her "baby corn" all around the house that day!

Britt also snapped this precious picture of Hailey reading the Bible. She was reading it by herself for about 10 minutes. It's just such a perfect picture. One of Meme's friends was going to use it for her Bible study.

Britt and Shelby also posted pretty cute pictures on their blogs of her. Click on their names to see the posts I'm talking about! Brittney has a video of Hailey dancing and singing in her flower girl dress and Shelby has pictures of the two girls playing at their house last weekend.

Day 4: Key West
The last day as we were heading to Key West I got up early enough to see the sunrise and it was beautiful! There were three people (myself included) that were up that morning snapping pictures. And we got some great ones! Every other morning it was cloudy or rainy around sunrise time. I didn't set my alarm, I just have to pee every day at 6:30am. On the cruise I got up, checked the sunrise then went back to sleep for a couple more hours!
We also saw dolphins - there were probably 6 of them that kept jumping keeping up with the back of our boat! I was the only one to actually catch the dolphin jumping in mid-air! Pretty cool . It was worth getting up early the days before!

Pic of our ship! Ours is the one farthest right. There are also 2 Carnival ships that pretty much followed us to each port.

Key West was mostly full of little shops, Ernest Hemingway's House, Key Lime pie shops, and lots of touristy attractions. We caught up with a couple friends we had made and walked around the island making up our own sightseeing tour! This is Heather and Trae, Nich and I at the southernmost point of the USA. (as you can probably read from the bouy!) While we were waiting to get our pic taken, a tour guide was telling people that they used to just have a wooden sign saying "Southernmost point of the USA" but each year college kids would come down and steal the sign and hid it somewhere else on the island so the mayor decided to build this huge buoy so they couldn't move it. Useless neat facts...free courtesy of someone else's tour guide!!

While walking around the shops we kept seeing "Protected by NASA" in all the shop windows. I thought it was hilarious that NASA had anything to do with Key West's safety, but as we looked closer it ended up just being an alarm company. It would've been a lot cooler if it was THE Nasa!


Another pic of the 4 of us. We hung out quite a bit with them. They stayed at the Airport Regency hotel with us and shared our carpool shuttle to the port. Even though there are thousands of people on the ship, there are some people that you just see over and over again. We kept running into each other and ended up becoming pretty good friends! We had a great time walking around, talking and taking goofy pictures with them!

Goofy picture of Nich and Trae!

This is a full picture of our dining table and our waiter's Rakish and Garfield. We had a great company, great service and great meals! I was pretty brave and even ordered some foods that I couldn't pronounce! I also always ordered two desserts (and gained 4 pounds!) There were so good to us! We had a wonderful trip and are so grateful to Grandma and Grandpa for watching Hailey so we good have such a relaxing trip. Hope you all enjoyed the pictures and stories! :)

Cruise - Coco Cay!

Day 3: Coca Cay

Coco Cay is Royal Caribbean private island and we were there all day! The ship docked in the middle of the ocean and then we took a ferry to the island. They brought food to us and we ate a barbecue lunch on the water. I just love how clear and blue the water is!
The gorgeous view to lay out to! They had probably 1,000 lawn chair set up across the beach. It was just the perfect peaceful setting!

Nich and I splurged a bit and did the snorkeling excursion. It was $30 but we rent the equipment all day. Here's a picture of us styling in our gear! Snorkeling was AMAZING!! The water was really clear and we saw fish that I had only seen in salt water fish tanks swimming all around us! We swam out to the reefs and saw the coral and crabs and then out toward the middle of the swimming area and saw all kinds of fish! They also had a couple sunken airplanes and anchors that you could dive down to explore. We didn't (I don't think I'd be coordinated enough to not get water in my mouth!) but the water was shallow enough that we could get a pretty good view.
We ended up going out twice for a total of 2 hours! That doesn't seem like a lot but we were so sore from swimming and kicking our flippers! We didn't realize how much sun we'd get being in the water and on our backs for so long and got really burnt. We swam out to the airplane and there were probably a hundred fish just swimming all around us. It looked like we were in an aquarium. They were so close and so many that I didn't want to move with fear of touching them! I know fish are harmless... Our camera was in the locker so we asked to borrow the masks and life vests as we were heading back to the ship for a photo op!

After our snorkeling work out and lunch we relaxed and shared a hammock. Almost fell asleep it was so nice! Nich thought it was funny that they were tied to pine trees in the Bahamas! :) We came back to the ship for another delightful dinner, enjoyed a show and hung out with some friends to end the night!

One more post to go! Key West!!

Cruise Continued...

Nassau!

Tuesday morning we woke up bright and early in Nassau, Bahamas! I was thrilled to be in the Bahamas which to me is the ideal vacation. Relaxing on a warm beautiful beach with palm trees all around! Nich - not so thrilled about the warm beach part, but he did well! We had paid for an excursion to Atlantis / Paradise Island to spend the day at the resort. Here are some pictures of Atlantis.

The bridge between the two hotels is a suite that costs $25,000 per NIGHT with a minimum of 4 nights ($1oo,000!!). It's called the Michael Jackson suite because he was the first to stay there. My camera has such a great zoom that I could be like paparazzi!

Too bad no one was on the balcony! I could have sold this picture!

I absolutely love fish and marine life. At the resort there were a ton of little ponds with different types marine life...sting rays, sharks, baby sharks, etc. This pond was all sting rays.

I think this picture is hilarious! The fish at the bottom are grouper (or so I'm told...) and they really are alive! The resort did a great job of remaking Mayan Ruins. They had aquariums all over tunnels under the resorts and under the outside grill. I was in heaven!!

Here's a video of our view of the resort. Everything was sooo cool! It was so big - I figured pictures wouldn't do it justice!

A neat story while we were in Nassau: We were walking through the shops (which were everywhere by the way!) and walked into a Sunglasses store and while I was looking Nich started up a conversation with the clerk. Come to find out he was born and raised in Nassau but went to college in Financial Management at Wayne State here in Michigan!! He met his wife and got married outside of Detroit then moved back to the Bahamas where he was a Senator and a UN representative for the Bahamas until his government lost the election. Then he decided to semi-retire and owns 3 shops in Nassau. He son works the shop and was off that day so he filled in. How crazy that tourist shop owner in the Bahamas has ever been to Michigan and used to be pretty high up politically! You NEVER know who you'll meet!

Cruise!

I know you all have been waiting patiently for a new post so here we go!! Last week Nich and were so blessed to go on a cruise to the Bahamas! AND Great Grandma and Great Grandpa Johnson watched Hailey for us! At first we were so excited to get away, but we really started missing her! The next couple posts will be packed with pictures and stories of each day!!

Miami:

Grandpa took us to the airport in Flint around noon on Sunday and we had a quick layover in Atlanta before getting into Miami at 5pm. We waited as the hotel shuttles went past us over and over and then finally we saw it -- Airport Regency! We were a little nervous about what the hotel would look like since it was only $66 night, but they had free shuttles to/from the airport! That was the selling point! We got there and I loved it!

A picture of the lobby as soon as you walk in...marble everywhere!

Here's a picture of the room. It really wasn't very special except it had a balcony overlooking the airport! We got in around dinner time and decided to walk around town to find dinner. Bad idea...we weren't in the touristy part of Miami. We walked for about 4 blocks and only found a Checkers. So we went there and it took so long for the service but food was good. The next morning we got up early and walked to IHOP (we saw it as we were leaving Checkers) and it took about 45 minutes to get our food. We ended up having to get it to go so we could walk back to check out and catch the shuttle to the port. We got there in the nick of time (Haha - Nich hates using his name in a catch phrase!) and ended up eating our breakfast at 11:30 at the port just before we got on the ship! It was such a smooth, quick process and we were on the ship before we knew it! We got settled in and then Nich and I headed up to the top deck to get front row seats as we set sail...we got coveted seats right in the middle . Below is a shot of sailing away!

The water is so blue and so clear! Out to open water!

Posing with a cool Miami City background! We were getting soooo excited!

Gotta love Muster drills!! Each cruise they sound the alarm and everyone on the ship goes to their assigned station. We got their pretty quickly and unfortunately were in the back row and I was getting pretty claustrophobic. Every so often there was a breeze which made it bearable. After the muster stations we were off to Nassau! We had a wonderful dinner and met pretty neat couples, a couple from NY that were on their honeymoon, a couple from Atlanta that had a couple kids, and a Columbian mom and daughter that spoke very little English. It was really nice to get to know others to hang out with on the trip. More to come (I'm getting tired!)