Shopping

Again with the swimming in the panties.

This evening, Peeper was pushing her shopping cart around the patio, looked inside it and said, "Peeper buying water!"

In and Out

This was our day: In and out of the house, in and out of the pool, in and out of the panties, and on and off the potty.

She wore panties all day, from the time she changed out of last night's diaper, until she put on tonight's.

I washed a load of diapers last night after she was dressed for bed, and there is now one dirty diaper in the can.

But, whatever laundry time I might save on diapers, I will make up for with panties. I think we went through about five pairs today, mostly because of swimming in them (three?) but also a couple of poop incidents (two - but one pair had also been swum in).

There were no pee incidents! (Not so lucky yesterday. The one time she's peed in her panties, she was sitting in Shrike's computer chair. Right in front of Shrike. There's now a thickly-folded towel on it, and on her kitchen chair. Yes, she has a grownup chair now, she won't use a booster anymore.)

She's never actually told us when she's needed to go, but we're sending her every thirty minutes or so, so she's not had a chance.

I think tomorrow I'll space it out some more and see if she can give me a heads-up when she feels the urge.

So, I know we deserve most of the credit for her being dry all day (well, except for pool water!) but I have to give her credit for being about 90% agreeable about stopping and going when I've told her it's time, and for suddenly being very pro-panty.

We did some clothes shopping for all of us yesterday, and bought her a 7-pack of Elmo and Abby Cadabby panties, which were a big hit. I think she wore two pairs of them today - the Elmos in the photo, and an Abby pair.

Then, this evening, I was on the hunt for a toy and looked under the "sofa" table by the front window, and what did I see behind it, but a pair of the panties that the Easter Bunny brought - still rolled up and taped closed.

That's where her Easter basket things were sitting, and I guess they'd fallen off the back of the table.

I didn't try to snow her that he'd just hopped by or anything. I told her "Look, here's a pair of the panties that the Easter Bunny brought. They must have fallen off the table," but I'm not sure how she interpreted it, because she took them, and looked at them in awe, and whispered "Eeaasster Bunnny pannntees!"

They're just plain pink, with rainbow stitching around the waist like the white ones she had on yesterday, but they were from the Easter Bunny when she wasn't expecting them , so she was pretty damn impressed.


Later she told me "Want some Easter Bunny candy."

Sorry kid, we got a pair of bonus panties, but we didn't miss any candy. (I checked.)

This panty thing's only been going on for a couple of days, so I wouldn't be surprised if she decided tomorrow, or the next day, or next week that she hates them and only wants diapers, and I know that best-case-scenario, we've got a long way to go, but at the moment, I'm feeling pretty proud of us all.

Letter of the Week(s): K

~ Peeper is 30.75 months old ~

A Note To My Regular Readers: I may be repeating some photos or stories that I've already published, but I want to put all our learning activities in the one post that's part of the Tot School link-up.

Tot Schoolers: Welcome! If you enjoy this post, please feel free to stay for a while, and have a look around. I'll give you a fair warning that much of my blog is PG-13, but my Tot School link-up posts will always be G-Rated.

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We spent two weeks on Kk, because I was pretty distracted for the first week, working on a big fundraiser for our MOMS Club.

I started out strong, putting together a "letter K discovery bin" for her at the beginning of the week.

I didn't get a photo of all the contents, but I seem to remember a K magnet, k bath letter, Kangaroo Eric Carle animal card, kangaroo hand/finger puppets, king, keys, Kk block, and hmm, maybe something else.

One of her favorite "toys" is her basket of hairbands. She dumps them out, then sorts them by colors. She's a big color-sorter-er.

We baked cookies not once, but twice, in preparation for the fundraiser.

She loves this Sesamse Street sketch, in which Cookie Monster and Ernie attempt to bake apple walnut raisin cookies, and she often pretends to bake them herself in her play kitchen.

For quite a while, I've been wanting to find a recipe (well, that part's easy, thanks to Chef Google) and make some with her, but she's the only one in the family who will eat raisins, and I'm not especially fond of walnuts, either.

So, when I needed to make something for the bake sale portion of our big spaghetti dinner, I decided we'd make those, keep a handful for her, and then take the rest to the bakesale.

Of course, Ernie and Cookie Monster wanted to watch. This might have been my suggestion, but she was totally into it.

I didn't get any photos of Peeper helping because, as usual, it required both hands to keep her from "helping" herself to all the ingredients, a fistful at a time, before they were mixed up, but here's the cookies, before . . .

. . . and, well, just before. I guess I didn't get a photo of the final product.

But a couple of days later, we were back in the kitchen, making the World's Easiest Peanut Butter Cookies*.

*Slightly less easy when assisted by a two-and-a-half year old.

Peeper is very into The Wizard of Oz these days. She sings the songs constantly (and gets an amazing percentage of the words right, in my opinion) and can tell you the story (with some prompting, of course) and one evening she commissioned busts of all the main characters, rendered in Playdoh. (She doesn't actually make anything with Playdoh yet, she just tells us what to make.)

Finally, the day of the big fundraiser! It was a spaghetti dinner to benefit a local firefighter who was seriously burned a couple of months ago. His wife is on the board of our MOMS Club, so we're trying to help them out as much as we can.

Peeper has been "helping" with the preparations for a few weeks, going with me to drop of donation requests and pick up donations and so on, and she's heard quite about about "Mr. J's Spaghetti Dinner."

On day, she was playing in her kitchen, cooking for me, and saying "Mama want cookie. Mama want hotdog. Mama want (whatever else she could find)." Then she picked up the plastic pasta and said "Mr. J want asketti!"

Here she is at the dinner, playing drums on her tray. In the middle of her concert, I overheard Mr. J's wife say to their three year old, "Yes, she does have knives."

Hey, they were plastic!

When it hasn't been raining (or hailing and tornado-threatening), the weather's been very nice, and we've spent lots and lots of time outside lately.

Sometimes in the rain, actually. The day of the dinner, when I got home, Peeper and Shrike were in the backyard. I sat down and Peeper climbed up in my lap to nurse. Just then, it started raining, but she refused to go inside. It wasn't heavy, so I just waited it out and, sure enough, it stopped after just a few minutes.

She was so disappointed. "Raaaaiiiin! Moooore raaaaiiiin!"

Sorry, kiddo. That one is not within my powers.

On this particular day, amongst the things she dragged outside were the old, nonfunctional keyboard and even older caller id unit that we've given her to play with, along with a V-Tech fridge magnet letter O. Then she announced "Dat's a keyboard. Dat's a 'aputer. Dat's a mouse."

I think it's time to look into getting her an 'aputer of her own. If not now, then for her birthday in October or maybe Christmas.

At the end of the two weeks, we finally got around to doing her letter crafts. She looooves doing these. As soon as I say "letter craft" she takes off running to her desk. Then, when she decides that it's complete (whether I think it is or not) she tells me to "Put it on the wall!"

This week, we did K is for King and k is for kangaroo.

Did you spot the little baby k inside the bigger k's "pouch?" I had thought about doing a Mama K kangaroo with a baby k in her pouch, but when she put on this Target Dollar Aisle crown, I knew we had to make a king.

She placed the crown, eyes and jewels herself (Can you tell?) and, those are "worms" that she's drawn all over the kangaroo page. She worked very hard on both of them.

With only a few mishaps.

Peeper's Pool Project

Again, Peeper spent some time in her pool today. This time, she gathered everything that wasn't nailed down and threw it in. Then she took it all out. Then she put it all back in. Because she's two.

Make an on-line slideshow at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Panty Time

Up til now, I've only been able to talk Peeper into putting on big-girl panties a few times (including yesterday, to swim in her pool), but when she got done swimming (in a diaper and her jammies), she didn't want to put a diaper on.

She played nakey for a few minutes, but when she fell and sraped her booty on her desk (Well, it wasn't a scrape, exactly, but you know that thing where something grabs against your skin and doesn't slide, and it hurts like hell? That, on her still-damp booty.) I was able to convince her that "You know, if you'd been wearing a diaper or panties, you would have just slid right off and it wouldn't have hurt."
I put her little potty in the sunroom where she was playing, and set up the big potty for her (stepstool in front, insert in the seat - she does great with that setup and can get up all by herself if she's in the mood) and told her that "If you feel pee-pee coming, tell me and go to the potty!" and set the oven timer and told her that when it went off, it would be time to either go potty or change into a diaper.

And it worked.

She never reported needing to pee-pee, but I was sending her so often, she probably never had the chance to feel the need. I started with about fiften minutes, and spaced it out to thirty or more, and every time I said it was potty time, she was willing to go (after a bit of "encouragement" sometimes) and she took her panties off almost all by herself and climbed "aboard the potty train" and pee-peed. Probably five or six times!

And (almost) everytime, she washed her hands afterward, including singing the ABC song (to wash for the right amount of time). I've changed the last part for handwashing purposes "Now my hands are washed all clean, and there's no poop germs on me!"

When I thought she was going to fall asleep nursing, I told her that she needed to change into a diaper and she said, "Nooooo! Paaaantteeees!" which I saw as a good sign.

As it turned out, when I had her get up to pee-pee, planning to put a diaper on her, she caught a second wind and didn't nap for another hour or so, so that bought her some more panty time.

Later, she went "swimming" again, wearing the panties, and when we came in and took them off, she asked for a diaper and we then took a nap.

When we woke up, I suggested she go potty and change back into panties, but she was done with that game for the day.

In all, I think she spent about three hours in them, went in the potty five or six times, and stayed dry. (Well, other than hopping into a kiddie pool full of yucky water while wearing them! By the way, it's now been dumped, sprayed out and refilled with less yucky - so far - water.)

We're still a long, long way from being potty trained, and I wouldn't necessarily say that we even consider ourselves to be actively in the process of it, but it was a very good day, as potty-things go!

Beach Blanket Bears

Mr. Panda is all dressed up (in Mommy's doggy pajamas) and ready to go to the beach!

He's wearing a hat so he doesn't get sunburned, and he took a few friends along with him.

Thirty-One Months

Dear Peeper:
You are thirty-one months old today.

Once again, I feel like I've been falling down on the job of recording and reporting all the funny, cute and amazing things that you say and do, but they just happen all the time these days.

Here are a  couple that I did managed to get on Faceook as they've happened:

From a couple of weeks ago:
Ernie doll + Bert thermometer + 2.5 year old = "Bert in Ernie's booty!"
You know, I've always had my suspicions about those two.

A few nights ago, during your bath, you picked up three foam letters and stuck them on the side of the tub in this order: g, a, y.

Hmm, I think I'm sensing a theme here.

I probably shouldn't mention how you were nursing this afternoon, and the dogs were barking outside and I said something about it, and you unlatched and looked at me and said "What the hell?"
 
We had a little talk about "grown-up words" and "little girl words."
 
We also have that talk during multiple diaper changes each day, because you think that "butt crack!" is the funniest thing ever, and I keep suggesting that perhaps "booty crack" would be more appropriate.
 
No, those two aren't really comparable, but - potty mouth that I am - I really don't like hearing little kids say "butt" for some reason.
 
So, yeah, you're definitely talking like crazy now! And, of course, sometimes talking like a crazy person, often in your sleep. I can't tell you how many times you've rolled over in the night or, more often, as you're waking up in the morning, and blurted out some line from Sesame Street, or called out for a character.
 
This morning, you were asking for Slimey (Oscar's pet worm) as you were looking for a goody.
 
As might be obvious from that, you are still very into Sesame Street, and now also The Wizard of Oz. We've had the DVD for about a month, and one of the features is a sing along that allows you to watch just the songs, which only takes about fifteen or twenty minutes. 
 
(For singing along purposes, they have subtitles, but you don't care much about those - although in a couple of years I can see how they'd be very helpful with learning to read.)
 
Usually when you ask to watch it, I suggest "just the songs" and you go for it, but you have seen the whole thing enough times to be able to not only sing all the songs, but also tell us all about the story, and quote each main character's famous lines. I need to try to get a video of that.
 
Last week, you even commissioned busts of each of them, rendered in Playdoh.

Of course, a lot can change in five months (Just look how much you've changed since Christmas!) but I strongly suspect that we will be buying or somehow creating a Wicked Witch costume for Halloween and possibly doing an Oz themed birthday party.
 
I can't believe we're even starting to consider plans for your third birthday party!
 
You've seen a lot way too much of both Sesame Street and Wizard of Oz lately, because Mama's been pretty busy doing things in front of her own screen - some (paid!) web development work, organizing Mr. J's Spaghetti Dinner with the MOMS Club (our firefighter friend - we raised over $5000!) and this week, more web development work, so it's been way to convenient to just let you watch instead of being up playing with you.

If you take that, plus the fact that over the course of a couple of weeks, I was out and about and were home alone with Mommy probably more than in any previous month since you were born (MOMS night out, MOMS Club meeting / tour of fire hall for spaghetti dinner, grocery store, Drinking Liberally, the dinner itself - although you were there for a couple of hours during the event) plus the fact that you weren't feeling so great during those couple of weeks, it all adds up to you really missing Mama for a while there, and really needing to have me close - like in Mommy's chair with you, while watching Sesame Street on her computer - right when I most needed to be on my computer working.

It was kind of stressful for a while there. I felt bad for you, but I had things I had to get done, and Mommy wanted to help, but you were being mean to her and tell her to "go way!" (Although I hear you two had a great time when I wasn't home.)

So, yeah, I'm glad that's more or less over. I will continue to have website work to do, but it won't be as intense as it was for a while there.

(This is an on-going gig, doing the web stuff for a friend who's a lawyer who helps other lawyers to run their practices, advertise, etc. Work at home, in whatever hours I can fit it in, highest hourly rate I've ever earned. Yay!)

Also, Mommy was off work that week, and she's back now, so you and I have, out of necessity, are having lots of one-on-one time again, and it's nice to be back to normal.

At the beginning of the month, we sort of got back on track with our Letter of the Week, and did J and then K, which I carried over for a second week, after being so distracted with the spaghetti dinner the first week. Next week, we'll move on to L.

You're also loving the warm weather and have been hanging out in the backyard as often as possible. Lately, you've been "swimming" in your plastic pool pretty much every day, whether that was our plan when you went outside or not.

This month, you also helped us to plant our veggie garden, and you love to water the plants while our outside. You haul load after load of water from your pool in the watering can, or a bucket, or a cup, or a froggy boot, and pour it on the plants that I ask you to water. (Usually.)

I'm really looking forward to your helping to harvest the veggies (if they survive me and you and, oh, hailstorms like we had last night) and maybe een wat some. I know you'll enjoy thehearrots, if I cook them in soup - every time I eat soup, you steal all my carrots!

Which is fine by me, actually, because I'm really not a fan, and I'm definitely glad you like them.At least they aren't Goldfish crackers, which seem to be your favorite food these days, other than goody.

And speaking of goody, still no signs of slowing down there, although I'd say that most nights (escept when you were sick, and waking often) you go from bedtime (whenever that might be) until morningish without nursing. On mornings that we're going some where, you might not wake to nurse before I get up, but if we sleep in, we usually spend the last hour or two nursing off and on, mostly on, before you start talking and telling us to get up.

Your sleep schedule is a total crapshoot these days. We're at a very awkward stage, in that you usually don't need a nap until it's too late to have one without being up super-late (even for us). I have this theory that if I could just get you to power through to eight-thirty or nine a few nights in a row, you'd get used to getting a solid twelve hours at night (as opposed to the seven to ten you get now) and wouldn't need the two-hour nap.

As much as I love nap time, I could live without it if you were going down for the night that early. Maybe I could even get my Mama time and still go to bed when Mommy gets home, instead of hours later. But, alas, that hasn't happened yet.

And now, speaking of sleep, I think I should probably go get some, since it's actually taken me two days to type this up (I'm predating it for the timestamp.) and I've just moved you to bed, after sleeping in my lap for about an hour, and it's four in the morning.

I love you my little nightowl.


Love,
Mama

Panda Pics - 31 Months

No posing today.

Just action shots.

A Day

We started the day with some of our MOMS Club friends, at Recipe Club (which is uually more of a themed potluck, because we rarely end up actually exchanging the recipes). Today's theme was veggies - (healthy or not), so I made spinach dip and carrot cake.

Shrike's official judgement of the carrot cake was "I don't even like carrot cake, and that stuff was awesome!"

Peeper enjoyed the toys and especially this groovy little couch, that's just her size!

After we got home, Shrike went to work and Peeper and I hung out in the yard for a big chunk of the afternoon. She "swam" (wearing big-girl panties) and watered the garden and had a high old time.

When we came in, I took off her wet panties, and she came up with this outfit all on her own: One snowboot, an AuntieKay hat, and a smile!

"Yook yike a queen!"

And then we spent about an hour and a half in the basement, while about three inches of rain came down, hail pelted the house, and luckily, none of the funnel clouds spotted arond the county came to anything.

I will have to take a good look at my car in the daylight, but I don't think we had any real damage, just a smidge of water in the basement, which is already drying.

We were mostly hanging out on the finished side of the basement, but Peeper went over to the unfinished side for a while, "Hey, what ar ou doing over there?" "Playing in da water." "WHAT?!?!"

Stylin' In The Aisles

Babe in a Basket

I Think It Might Be Time for Her Own Computer

"Dat's a keyboard (old, nonfunctional keyboard). Dat's a monitor (really old caller id unit). Dat's a mouse (V-Tech fridge magnet letter O)."

Can You Identify These Folks?