Lots of firsts!

Hi all,
It's been a fun month for the Reed family. March was busy and then Mica and I got sick, but once that was all over we've been doing much better. Mica is talking up a storm. New words every day! She's really good at mimicking an will try to say nearly anything you encourage her to. I got inspired by a friend to attempt some early potty training. I got it all set up way in advance-- got the potty, the training pants, the book... ANd she's been watching ME go for months. Amazingly the first time I tried to have her poo on the potty she did! It was incredible (highly orchestrated, but incredible nonetheless). Unfortunately the excitement more or less ended there and she has since pooed in the hallway directly outside the potty at least 3 times. I might give up for now and wait until she's a bit older. It was fun while it lasted, though.
We've been instituting some new sleeping policies, that while they are hard, seem to be working. Mica has been moved out of our bed and into her crib. We're not allowing her to get out of the crib or nurse at all until morning (although as part of the weaning process we have been waking her twice at night to feed, and will be dropping it down to once tonight). This is a HUGE change for her, and me and it's been a bit traumatic for both of us. What really worries me is if this is so hard what am I going to do when she goes off to Kindergarten?!! Or, god forbid, wants to go to college!!! She is sleeping much better, however, which, for all of us, is long awaited.
The biggest news as of today is that we've just gotten back from our first camping trip with the little Bean! We went with 15 of our closest friends here and it was great fun. We camped amongst some enormous redwoods and drank great wine. I still have a belly ache from the chili! Mica and Blue both had a blast. I barely saw Mica as she wandered from one eager caretaker to the next, and she slept great considering our tent was barely 10 feet from the party (so that we could hear her when she woke). It was great and makes us very excited for some good east coast camping this summer!

Sarah