Potty Wars

It might be hard to believe, but the princess pictured here marked not one, but two stores in a single day with golden puddles during the long, hard process of potty training.

That's right. I've reached one of the monumental times in parenting - potty training. I followed all the (questionably helpful) advice I've learned from residency. Such gems such as "Try a sticker chart, it works like a charm," "Let her run around without a diaper on so she can use the potty when the urge comes, " and "You'll know when she's ready,"come to mind. I really hope these things helped someone, but for me they resulted in: flat out disinterest in stickers, urine on my floor, couch, and coffee table in rapid succession, and continued assertions of, "I want my diaper back!"

I really don't know how I expected all of these gimmicky things to work after every other moment of parenting has taught me that nothing is that easy. There was almost zero chance that I could say, "Hey, you get one whole sticker if you go from being totally happy in a soggy diaper for three hours to having to stop doing fun stuff every hour or so to sit on a cold toilet seat," to my stubborn little bug and expect it to happen.

So here's the real truth: potty training is a huge inconvenience and a lot of work. Bug was dry all day for the first time today because I (not her) was finally willing to pay the price for that accomplishment. I carried her potty chair up and down the stairs to keep it at hand while we were in the playroom. I allowed errands to take twice as long so we could take potty breaks the minute we walked into each store, before we left the store, and sometimes during the shopping if the urge struck her. I turned off the stove in the middle of preparing dinner to help her onto the big potty.

These might not sound like huge inconveniences, but the time burden is heavy when you commit to it. It makes me realize how much easier it would be to just let her keep peeing in a diaper. Thinking of it that way, I realize why she was never going to be the one to take the initiative and it had to be me.

Anyone else about to take this journey, best of luck...

Letters - the rest

Bug at the museum on "M" day

I wish I could say that my ABC plan worked wonderfully and my super savvy 31 month old now knows every letter from A-Z. But I'll be honest - it was too much information, we were going too fast, and she got sick of it. It went great at first, but she slowly became less and less interested in my overenthusiastic declarations about how great such and such letter was and how many super, amazing, awesome things we were gonna do to celebrate that letter!! We made it to "M" doing the full out plan. She still likes making the picture collages, but I'm pretty sure she likes it because it's one-on-one interactive time we spend together (or because she gets to play with stickers...) not because she cares about what the letter is. I hope that the collages will at least help her to learn the ABCs in the future.

Here are some things I think I could have done or changed to make this work better:

1. More time! I think this would have worked much better as "Letter of the Week." She would have had more time to process each letter and really commit it to memory before we moved on.

2. I think I could have kept her attention more if I planned ahead better. We would sit with a huge box of craft supplies each day and see what we might happen to have that started with that letter that we could go with. I could have pre-sorted and put aside everything we were going to use the night before.

3. It would have been more fun if we were all involved (Daddy too!). He would always ask about the letter of the day, but otherwise it was just bug and I plodding through the alphabet.

I and J

Sorry for the delay in continuing this feature. Bug and I took this week off from letters to review and we'll resume with "N" on Monday.

We learned about the letter I by playing with ice in the sink and making ice cream.

We filled the sink with ice cubes and bins of colored water. Bug practiced catching the ice cubes with a big spoon and moving them to the other containers.

Bug watching our pumpkin ice cream churn.

For J day we spent some time outside jumping on the trampoline and then made our own fresh apple juice!

Jumping on a nice fall day.

Using our leftover apples from the orchard to make some delicious homemade juice.

Pumpkin Faves

I know I've posted about it before, but I love everything fall and everything pumpkin. Halloween may be over, but I consider it pumpkin season through Thanksgiving so I thought I'd share a few of my new pumpkin favorite foods and drinks.

1. Pumpkin spice coffee. No, not one of the dozen varieties available at markets and coffee shops (although Fresh Market's is quite nice). We make our own by filling the coffee filter with regular fair trade coffee and then adding about a teaspoon of pumpkin pie spice. Stir the spices in and brew as usual. Delicious!

2. Pumpkin Cannoli. I discovered these about a month ago at Roma's in Latham. They are of the chocolate shell variety with a delicious pumpkin flavored filling. Yum!

3. Pumpkin pie yogurt. Wonderful treat from Target for only 80 calories and zero fat.

4. Pumpkin cookies. These are more like mini cakes. The recipe I used is here, but I added a cinnamon cream cheese frosting instead of glaze.

5. Pumpkin Shrimp Curry. OK so I am cheating by listing this as a favorite because I haven't actually made it yet (dinner tonight!). The recipe is this month's issue of Bon Appetit and looks incredible similar to the usual shrimp curry I make except the can of tomatoes is replaced with a can of pumpkin so I am projecting that I will love it.

Post-Halloween Weirdness

This morning my bug is in rare form. First, she demanded that her daddy kiss her "big toe" instead of her cheek before leaving for work. Then she did this while I was in the bathroom brushing my teeth and washing my face...

When I asked what she was doing, she told me that, "The lion and me are taking a nap in the kitchen." After I showed her the photos she said, "Aww, we're so cute!" How do I even respond to that?!