After Dinner Treats

Tonight, after we finished dinner and finished cleaning up the toys in the living room, the girls and I took a short stroll. Carl's Jr. I know! Fancy, right?? :-).

Heck, at least there is somewhere to go! I miss where we lived in LA where I could walk to 2 grocery stores, Subway, 2 Starbucks(es), 7-11, the dentist, the hair salon, the nail salon, the cleaners, 5 parks, 2 yummy original sandwich shops, a card shop, a gift shop, a bank, ... I could easily go on. Suffice it to say, it was really nice to have a specific place to GO when went for walks, not just a stroll around the block.

So. Here. Notsomuch. The bank. A good Mexican restaurant, a Pizza Hut, and Carl's Jr. It's been a bit of a shock to my system. :-) but it's nice, once in a while, to walk to Carl's Jr and get a treat.

I think the girls enjoyed both the journey and the destination. And I enjoyed the exercise. :-)

Dear Rocket Man ~ Month One

31 days sure can go by fast when you're new to the world. It's hard to believe that you're already one month old!

I am really enjoying watching you grow and develop. You work hard to move your head, and definitely turn to look whenever you hear my voice or Papa's voice.

We aren't sure, yet, what color your eyes are going to be, but right now, they're a dark gray/blue. We are doing better with nursing, and you seem to be growing well, although I don't know your exact weight. It's clear you are one of us, though, with your long, skinny build. I just don't make chubby babies. :o)

We were very blessed to have your Grandma Claudia here to help after you were born. She really enjoyed playing with your sisters while I was feeding you or getting you to sleep. And she enjoyed holding you, of course!! She held you every chance she could. :o)

We were also incredibly blessed to have two baby showers, and everyone was just SO generous! They gave you lots of clothes and toys and books...and lots of diapers, too. :o)

People ask if I think there is a difference between boys and girls since I had two girls before you, but I don't, yet. You're too teeny, and really just eat and sleep -- much like your sisters did. I'm definitely spread thinner, though. I don't feel like I get to spend quality time with any of you, or with Papa. And I certainly don't feel like I have much of a grasp on the household duties or my sewing. I know that will all change soon enough, so I'm simply trying to enjoy the time I have with you this little and count my blessings.

That's all I can think of to say right now. I love you, Rocket Man!

Gorgeous and Gorgeous ~ with words this time. :)

The weather was GORGEOUS on Thursday. Ridiculously gorgeous.

So after I picked Mookie up from preschool, we went to Subway and grabbed some sandwiches and went to the park for a picnic and some fun play time.

Sprout LOVES to swing. Holy cow, that girl loves to swing. And, sadly, she wants her big sister to swing, too, but Mookie won't. Mookie is, for some VERY strange reason, scared to swing. But every time I put Sprout on the swings, she points to the other one and says "Nini wing! Peas? Nini wing?"...which is her way of asking her sister, begging her sister to swing. And her sister continues to break her heart and mine.

Anyway, once she gets to swinging, Sprout giggles and laughs and smiles and throws her head back and her hands out and just. has. fun. She's just as happy swinging by herself as she is sitting on my lap swinging (which Mookie will do, she just WON'T swing by herself. Even in the baby swing. I wish I knew why.)

She loves to play at the park, but she always wants to swing. One thing I miss about where we lived in California was that we had a park on our street, about 7 houses up, so we could go every day if we wanted to! And, believe me, Mookie wanted to!! Sprout was too small to enjoy that park much, but Mookie sure did! It didn't have swings, but whenever we went to a park with swings, she was happy to swing...so I'm not quite sure what happened. :-/  She also loved to go down the slide. Big or small - loved it! Now? It takes a small miracle to get her to go down the smallest slide.  It's the darnedest thing. I know I need to get them out to the park more often, but it's just not the same. And it's sure-as-heck not as easy as it was! And the weather? A lot less cooperative. :)

It's cold and snowing now, but at least we had Thursday!

Christmas 2011 ~ Recap and Highlights

(I also posted this at We Shall Sew, in case you go there, too)

Well, it's Tuesday now, the 27th, and we finally ate Christmas dinner tonight. :)  There is no real reason for the delay, except that I kept sleeping through my put-the-turkey-in-the-oven-NOW window.  How was I supposed to prepare a turkey and get it in the oven smack dab in the middle of my nap time?

And I sure needed my nap on Christmas day.

Dave and I were up until after 3am Christmas morning, and we were tuckered out! It was totally worth it, though.

TOTALLY!!

As referenced in my last post, we made a puppet theater for the girls. Other than the curtains and the re-build upstairs, it was done in plenty of time. But the curtains took me a while since I took my sweet time. And the re-build took a while since Dave had to hand screw everything in so as not to wake the girls up with the drill.

See, we went from having only a little tree, and no presents, in the loft area when the girls went to bed Saturday night, to having a large puppet theater and a mass of Christmas gifts in the loft area when they woke up.

That kind of transformation takes time, people. It takes time.

Every morning, Mookie has this tradition, if you will, of stumbling into our bedroom around 7:30 for a bit of a snuggle and to play games or read while we all wake up. So we weren't really worried that she would see anything out of the ordinary before we were ready for her to see it.  And Sprout has this tradition, if you will, of sleeping till about 8:30, so we were all set in that regard.  Once Sprout woke up, we all went downstairs for some breakfast...and to build the hype a bit. Since Mookie hadn't seen any presents under the tree, she didn't really expect anything out of the ordinary, but we kept talking about this BIG surprise, and how excited we were, and how excited she would be, and how much fun we were going to have, etc.

So about 9:30, I went upstairs first to set up the video camera and to hide in the puppet theater to take pictures, and then Dave brought the girls up.

Here's the before (you can see the puppet theater on the left):

Mookie was so startled by the transformation! You can see the surprise, and fear?, in her face.

She was actually so scared that she got down on the floor and started to crawl! Poor girl!

But when she figured out that it was a puppet theater and that it was all good, she jumped up and RAN for the "puppet feetar" as she calls it. :)

I love that photo! I love that face!! :)

"Look, Mama! I can do my very own puppet shows!"

Then she came around back, grabbed the few puppets we had (many more showed up soon!), and commensed to wowwing us with her mad puppetry skillz.

There were quite a few puppet shows that day...and every day since. :)

Not one to be left out, Sprout was trying to get in on the puppet show action. (LOVE the hair!)

Here's the whole family before we opened any of the presents. The loft was a WRECK by the time we were all done. Still is...

Dave gave me a pair of Christmas socks (among other things...like an Accuquilt Go! Cutter) (Score!!) and Sprout desperately wanted to wear them. How can you say no to that cute face?

Here she is with them on. These are certainly easier for her to wear than my regular slippers!

This is such a goofy shot of my goofy girl. I love it.

We got Sprout a little kitchen tools set, and both girls really loved it. Occupied them for quite a while, actually.

I found these little fairy wings at Target on clearance, and thought Sprout might like them. Well. Little did I know! She immediately said "Ningabow! Ningabow!!" (For Tinkerbell), and held out her arms. I said "Do you want to put these on? And she said "Yup" And I said "Okay." And she said "K."  I just adore this age!!

Her Tinkerbell wings stay on pretty much every moment she knows they're there. We sneak them off every now and then, but when she sees them, she wants them on again.



I love that she's wearing fairy wings and trying to build something with her Mega Blocks. Every fairy is an engineer, my love. :)

Here's Dave with his fairy baby.

Poor girl. She was just poopin' out, there! We'd only been going for about an hour and a half at this point...

She found her second wind, though, and got to playing again.

So, that's it! We took our sweet time, and very leisurely opened all of our presents. It took us about 3 hours, really, but there weren't THAT many presents. We just took. our. time. We read stories. We had puppet shows. We snacked on candy. We played with new toys. We stayed in our jammies all day.

And then we used our new sandwich press to make fancy triangle sandwiches, and then had a nice, well-deserved nap.

Which explains why I slept right through my put-the-turkey-in-the-oven-NOW window, and we didn't eat our Christmas Turkey until 2 days later. It was good, though. :)

Thoughts to Remember

Tonight I was trying to explain to Mookie why we don't put salt on our honey seared chicken. I said there are little cells on her tongue that like it when things taste good. I said "We all have taste buds on our tongue that tell our brains when something tastes good or bad."

She paused a minute, then said "Mommy, we don't put bugs in our mouths, right?"

Confused, I said, "Well, no. Not usually. Why?"

Equally confused, she said, "Well, how do the taste bugs get in our mouths then?"

It took me a sec to clue in that she thought taste buds were "taste bugs" that live on our tongues and tell us if food tastes good or not!

While God Was Blessing America, He Certainly Blessed Me...

Mookie started pre-school about a month ago. I know! When did she get so BIG?!  But, I love the program, and the teachers and the students and the families...it's the perfect place for Mookie. We're so blessed that she is there.

A couple of weeks ago, she came home and she was kinda/sorta saying "God Bless America" but not really more than that, so I asked if they sang that at school, and she said "Yes, after we say the Pledge Of Legions." (haha!)  So I looked up the words, and we started to sing it at home some, too.

Well, tonight I finally got her to sing it while I recorded her. I admit that I told her the wrong lyric at one point, but that's okay. This is still

THE BEST THING

EVER!!

I know I'm her mom, and I'm supposed to feel that way, but I had tears in my eyes when she was finished.  Don't worry, I'm not going to call American Idol or anything, but I just love this kid.

Enjoy!

Potty Training {Days Beyond}

So, I gave up potty training Mookie. I just couldn't take the feelings of failure and abuse and torture and bribery anymore.

I still asked if she wanted to go, and would sit her on the potty, but I didn't set a timer, and I didn't stress about it. We even pulled out a few hidden diapers for nap and bed times.

I can't remember now, but somewhere in that week, she started to really pee on the potty. A couple of times she told me she needed a diaper, so we high-tailed it to the potty and she peed in it. (Hallelujah!) She didn't have any accidents during the awake times, and grew really proud of herself.  Part of it could be that I figured out her "currency". Her bribe. The thing that makes her little heart skip a beat.

Play-doh.

Sadly, I hate the stuff. Friends should not buy friends' kids play-doh! Ugh.  Mookie? Loves the stuff. Wants to take it to bed with her at night. Wakes up asking to "play" Play-doh. Wants to take it to the restaurant when we go out to eat.

Somewhere along the potty-training line, she learned that she would get a new pot of Play-doh every time she peed in the potty, or woke up dry, or some such milestone. Knowing that, she was considerably more motivated to pee or hold it, or do the "potty dance." :)

In the big picture, the 47 pots of Play-doh aren't very expensive, and she spends SO MUCH TIME playing. And she really loves it.  She's forever dreaming up something new to make with it, or showing off her latest creation, or "making dinner" with it...the possibilities are endless with that kid.

We don't have many tools for the Play-doh, though. That would be too much, I think. I have a one-color limit (can not STAND when the colors get mixed. Bah!!), and most of the tools allow you (or encourage you) to mix colors. Not happenin', folks.  We do have a few things, though, and I've augmented her tools with a few cookie cutters, some plastic knives, and a small rolling pin. She's happy as a clam, and doesn't ask for more than one color, thankfully.

Anyway, back to the potty training. So, we had about a week of normal, around-the-house pottying, and then we went away on vacation. She was a STAR!! She peed on a big potty at the Dallas airport, at the Newark airport, in Central Park in New York City, Penn Station in NYC, at the Crayola Factory in New Jersey...

...riddle me this, though, folks...the Crayola Factory didn't have toddler-sized potties. Why? They must have a million toddlers and small children coming through in a year, why not have toddler-sized potties?? Good thing for me, she was comfortable using the big ones if I held her.

Now, a few weeks after I started this journey, she's peeing on the potty all the time during the day (I try to take her about every 60-90 minutes just to be safe, and she lets me know if she needs to go in between). She wears a pull-up at nap and bed time or if we're out of the house, and "big girl pants" during the time we're at home.  She still isn't pooping in the potty, but thankfully she has only pooped in the pull-ups. I'm kinda ooked out by the idea of poop in her big girl pants. :o)  I know it will happen, but I'm glad it hasn't happened yet!

She's still got a pile of "prizes" that she could have gotten (and still can), but she seems perfectly content with the Play-doh she already has, and isn't interested in those books/puzzles/games/candy/bubbles/movies on the counter.  However...there is a big Play-doh kit that will sit there until we are fully potty trained. And she knows it.  She's motivated, and I think that was the key to success.

So, that's our story right now. Peeing on the potty isn't a big deal. Pooping is our next hurdle. :)