Time flies...

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Monday, June 30, 2008

Pfft! What are you, nuts?

...would have been my (polite inner monologue) response a few months ago if someone would have asked me to try potty training a 1 1/2 year-old. Um, aren't you supposed to wait until they're at least two? Or, at the very least, till you have a 2nd kid and get sick of mistakenly putting size 4 diapers on your newborn in your sleep-deprived state of confusion? Why start that whole mess if you don't have to - diapers are easy! They're predictable (except for the occasional gasp-then-remember-you-fed-her-red-peppers-last-night diaper change). In potty training, aren't you living in fear of accidents, tied to the potty, not going out as much, peeing on sofas and store carpets...and again, diapers are so easy! Why go there until you absolutely have to?

A month or two ago Maddie insisted on trying to sit on our toilet. Cuteness. Then she discovered that Momma and Daddy were captives when they were on the toilet, so many books must be read from there. Um, no. We got her her own little potty out of need for a place to put her in the bathroom, and because she knew and used the words, "potty", "pee-pee", and "poop" often enough, even associated them with her own need to go. She'd actually successfully peed in it twice for Bob's mom, but after dozens of attempts on my part, I'd gotten nothing out of her. We ended the school year, we traveled, we completely flip-flopped her whole routine and haven't gotten quite back on track for summer yet. The "potty talk" had tapered off almost completely, too. I figured we'd give it a rest. I mean, come on. She's 19 months old. Who the heck would try this at 19 months old? She has no clue how to take her own diaper off, and I'm in no hurry for her to learn, judging from stories of my sister's poo-smeared walls as a child. I like the system we have going, and Luv's are pretty cheap. Again, why go there?

Um, because Maddie has decided that she'd like to try it, thankyouverymuch.

She pooped in the potty today!

After lunch she said, "potty" insistently. I wondered briefly if she had just figured out a new means of getting out to the high chair fast...but no, she padded off to the potty. She can't take her clothes or diapers off yet, hasn't even tried...(see why I thought this would come later, when she could actually attempt undressing herself?) but I helped her, and after a few minutes of singing snippits from Philadelphia Chickens, we had POOP!
A small party was thrown, there was much jumping on the bed, and now, I guess, we're potty-training? Or at least sitting on it a lot more. But WOW would it be cool to have her at least most of the way there before school started. Wouldn't it be nice to kiss the diaper boxes goodbye (although I find them great for storage and paper recycling organization)! And how great to leave the house with no excess paraphenalia, save perhaps a sippy cup in my purse?

And of course, this could all be a giant fluke. Tomorrow could be business as usual. She sat on the potty twice more today, nothing but more Sandra Boynton songs. Hey, as long as she's not in diapers past Kindergarten. (Don't laugh, I've seen it!)

Well, at any rate, I hope she gives me a few days to do a little (bathroom) reading up on this, I'm not prepared. Any and all potty training advice/anecdotes would be appreciated here. I've heard there's supposed to be charts and M&M's involved. Little scared of how.

Anyway, YAY MADDIE for her potty-awareness. :-)

Summer Movies

Maddie reads with Pappy, gets cranky:



After the Princess Party, (running off the cake?)




"Elmo's Splashtime Sprinkler Mat" in action, plus outdoor play: (loooooong video)

Friday, June 20, 2008

Pajama Tirade!

Searching online for the general price of toddler jammies. Going to the outlets in G'burg next week, and I'm not buying it just cause it's Osh Kosh or Baby Gap. They need to beat Wal-Mart & Target's prices for me, please! So I check out a major retail store's site and search for girl toddler sleepwear.

Gah! All Disney, all princess, except for one token Dora (throwing our Hispanic chicas a bone because Disney refuses to touch their ethnicity with a feature-length film?) But that's just my minor beef:

Why are we mommies expected to shell out extra money to the Disney corporation for the honor of advertising their characters on our children's chests, when our kids barely know who these animated figments are? Every jammie on the page was giving free rent to a corporate character. The 2nd page had cartoon-free jammies, two of them. $9.99. One had cats on it. We're into cats right now, I thought, "me-ow, right up our alley." (Get it, alley? I'm not my wittiest after midnight, sorry.) The cartoon character ones were selling for $12.99 and up. Honestly. I don't get it.

I've been informed by a few older (but wiser?) friends who have children older than my own that I might as well start dressing her in Princess this and Dora that now, because in a year or two I won't have a choice at all in what she likes and wears anyway. Yes, a colleague, a teacher with a masters' degree, told me this. To her face, I rolled my eyes. In my head, "the heck you say!" Well really, by this logic, when she's 10 and tells me she's going to watch reruns of Southpark (you know it will still be on Comedy Central), I'm supposed to shrug and buy her a nice Cartman T-shirt?

Now, to be fair, there's nothing objectionable about these little girl icons, besides their narrow vision of ethnicities and occasionally being a little too "tee-hee" for me. I have no major issue with the afore-mentioned characters. Dora is at least educational, and anything you buy from a PBS show gets its profits sent back to more educational programming, so I'm cool with the inevitable Elmo birthday party or two, etc. And except for the extreme overuse of the most obnoxious shade of magenta around, the Disney Princesses haven't done anything to annoy me personally. Yet. But why do these major retailers seem to think that I need no other option for my kid's PJ's? They're selling them in 12 months sizes! At 12 months, how many Disney movies could they have seen, let alone bonded with the characters? (Hmm, maybe all the little 12 month olds DO know their Cinderellas from their Ariels, and my 19-monther is just not up with the trends! Ack!)

But why not shapes? Why not numbers and letters and basic neighborhood vocab like trees and dogs and cars? I love "Beauty and the Beast" and "The Little Mermaid", but do I need to advertise that fact on my kid's shirt (she's seen neither, by the way, we may work on that this summer, but I doubt she'd be all that interested after "Under the Sea: is over. It's all downhill from there anyway.)

*sigh* Ok, tirade about relatively unimportant things over.

But I gotta tell ya, if I'm going to be expected to shell out extra cash for advertising space on my daughter, it's going to look something like this:

Saturday, June 14, 2008

MASH Game: Predicting a 1-Year Old's Future is Fun! (Sorry for the big space, scroll down!)




































Behold... My Future
I will marry One of Brangelina\'s kids.
After a wild honeymoon, We will settle down in Sesame Street in our fabulous Apartment.
We will have 2 kid(s) together.
Our family will zoom around in a Fairy Princess Pink model of Elmo\'s tricycle.
I will spend my days as a official goldfish cracker taste-tester, and live happily ever after.
whats your future