Two

I have a feeling things are only going to get faster from here.  Not to be cliché, but it really does feel like yesterday was the day she was born.  And then I blinked and it was her first birthday.  And then I almost blinked and it was her SECOND birthday.  Before I know it, she will actually fit into those shoes of mine she stomps around in. 

In case it hasn't been made clear in my previous blog entries, Facebook posts, Instagrams, what have you, I LOVE this girl.  I love everything about her, even the bratty bits.  You might say I'm obsessed with my kid.  And you would be right!  And frankly, what's wrong with that?  I spend my days prosecuting cases where parents really, really F up.  Where kids will do just about anything to get their attention.  If you ask me, the world could use more parents who are obsessed with their kids.  Is it annoying?  Totally.  I acknowledge I am annoying with my constant social media chatter about my awesome daughter.  But I can't help it!  And if you really hated it you wouldn't be reading this blog :).

So, anyway, big girl turned two this last week!  Here are some photos of her actual birthday.  I took the afternoon off work so we could hang out at the trampoline park.  It was so much fun.  I think in the midst of it I even told Erik it was the most fun I have ever had, however, in retrospect, that may have been the jumping-induced endorphins talking.  Elliot thought it was thebomb.com (do people still say that?).

Wall to wall trampolines!

She really loved the foam pit.

 

We had her birthday party over the weekend.  The theme was Charlie Brown because apparently Peanuts is timeless and appeals to all ages across all generations.  Elliot has been obsessed with Charlie Brown since she was old enough to obsess.  We have watched both Charlie Brown Christmas movies more times than we can count over here.  And the viewings are year-round!

 

As usual, I wish I would have taken more pictures of the decorations because I tend to put WAY too much energy into decorating for these things.  It was super cute if I do say so myself.  My favorite part was Lucy's Psychiatric Help stand / photo booth.  Erik built that thing from scratch.  I just told him my vision and he made it come to life!  We had props people could wear to take silly pictures in the booth.  It was a hit.

 

We also rented a bouncy house!

Even though Elliot had never been in a bouncy house before, I suspected she would love it.  Jumping is a big deal for her right now.  And I was right.  She did not want to get out.  Even after all the guests left she was still inside bouncing the afternoon away.

 

It was a long, fantastic day.

 

By the end, we were all a little tipsy with sugar overload.

 

Happy Birthday, my sweet girl.  I will try not to blink so fast this year.

 

 



Little Girl Things

 

 

You guys.  Yesterday was the most cute I have ever experienced at one time in my life.  I am talking puppies-snuggling-with-baby-bears-and-teacup-pigs cute.  Elliot, my Mom, and I went to a Mommy and Me Princess Tea at Sharehouse in Richland. It was ADORABLE!  Picture 30+ little girls aged infant to third grade all dressed up like their favorite princesses.  Now add cute little tea sets, marshmallows on a stick dipped in pink chocolate and sprinkles (kicking myself for not taking a picture of these), pink lemonade, tea cookies, arts and crafts, and games!  And if that wasn't cute enough, you should have heard the room erupt into song when "Let it Go" came on.  "Frozen" is clearly the movie of this generation!

 



Elliot decided to go as Cinderella.  And picked the headband out on her own to go with the dress.

 

And she was really into the marshmallow sticks.

 

But the real highlight, for her, was Belle and Snow White.  Elliot very sincerely believes she met THE Belle and THE Snow White yesterday.  She spotted them from across the room, told me she wanted to go see them, and when I brought her over she cautiously approached, a look of complete awe on her face.  She was quite star struck.  But as you can see in the picture, she played it pretty cool.  (Unlike the time I saw Tina Fey and just stared at her awkwardly until she noticed and then quickly left the premises...but I digress.)  Ever since she has been telling everyone she sees that she met Belle and Snow White. 

 But, the highlight for me was the girl time, during which I got to witness my daughter experience joy.  I watched her be confident and brave, boldly approaching girls she has never met and playing with them.  Somehow she has already surpassed me in this skill.  I watched her thoughtful heart reach out to a more shy girl that did not boldly approach the group (similar to how I tend to be) and invite her in to the fold.  And I watched her leadership skills develop.  Although she was the youngest one in the group, soon all the girls were following her lead and doing what she was doing, all smiles and giggles, tulle, sequins, and glitter abounding.

Arts and crafts.

Decorating cookies...

...then eating all the decorations off the cookies.

This is her looking at the picture we took of her with Belle and Snow White.  See?  Star struck.  She had to see the picture again literally 5 minutes after it was taken.

 

All the best Girls' Days include Grandma!

 

 

It was one of the best days ever. I love, love, LOVE little girl things.  And this was definitely a little girl thing.  I am forever grateful that I was given the gift of my little girl.  She is everything I ever hoped for, princess dress and girly nature notwithstanding, and I am so proud of her, every day.

Easter

In what has, apparently, become my signature move, I am going to blog about Easter...three weeks late.  But I think it still warrants a post, mostly because I took so many good pictures!

 

 

So, I know religiously-speaking, Easter is one of the big ones.  Like, possibly the biggest.  He is Risen!, after all.  And for that reason it has always been meaningful to me.  The season of Lent, associated with deprivation and sorrow, bursting forth in a glorious celebration of triumph over death.  It's powerful stuff...but not what this post is about.

 

No, I bring it up because I never really got into the secular side of Easter.  Yeah, the egg hunts were kind of fun as a child and a Easter baskets packed with tasty treats were awesome.  My family never participated in the farce of magical creatures like the "Easter Bunny." (Side bar, regarding mythical, magical creatures:  To give you an idea, my Mom told us there was no tooth fairy, but for a while had us participate in the whole production of putting our teeth under the pillow and then she would "sneak" in and leave a couple bucks, unless it slipped her mind, at which point we would present our tooth to her in the morning and have her fork over the cash on the spot.  And don't even get me started on Santa.  We were the kids other parents feared would break the news to their gullible offspring.  Don't worry, we were instructed not to, and I never did.  We simply looked at the other kids in pity when we heard their parents say something outrageous like "Santa knows if you are misbehaving!")  Anyway, the point is that Easter was never that cool or fun to me outside of church.  And I could never put together how one fit in with the other.

 

Until now.

 

I am convinced that secular Easter was created so that parents can watch their toddlers have the time of their lives.  Last Easter Elliot was 10 months old and barely walking.  We kind of forced the egg hunt on her, and she definitely did not get it, preferring to play with the grass around the eggs, rather than the eggs themselves.  This year was another story entirely.  It was like egg hunt Olympics and Elliot was going for the gold.

 

We started Easter weekend off with an egg hunt at our church on Saturday.  This was where she got her feet wet on the whole concept of egg hunting, which was good preparation for the rest of the weekend.  There was a special section roped off for babies and toddlers, and she owned it.  (Not in a bully kind of way.  After it was all said and done, meaning all the toddlers had lost interest, there were still probably 20 or so eggs left hidden spread out in plain sight in the grass.)  Once she realized they had candy inside she started getting selective.  She would only accept the ones with chocolate, so immediately after finding the egg she would open it up and say "no chocolate" and throw it back on the ground.

 

After the egg hunt at church was over she sat down with the other kids and colored a picture, like a big girl.

 

 

Later that day, we colored eggs at home.  Instead of the traditional egg dye we used Kool-Aid.  I highly recommend this.  You just take a packet of Kool-Aid and add 2/3 cup water, and voila!  Bright eggs that smell fruity rather than like vinegar.  I thought Elliot would not really get into it, doing one or two before she got bored.  Nope!  She did every single egg and was disappointed there were not more.  She was very gentle and was so proud of her.

Blowing them dry.

Proud of a job well done.

 

 

Easter morning, after a breakfast of hot cross buns, we went merrily off to church to celebrate.  Then the partying continued!  The first stop was my aunt's house with my Dad's side of the family.  There was another egg hunt, and this time Elliot knew exactly what to do. 

Showing Poppy how to hunt eggs.

Taking inventory.

Comparing notes with cousin Lorelai.

 

 

Finally, we ended the day with Easter dinner at Mom's.  And, yes, this meant yet another egg hunt.  But girlfriend was more than up for the task.

Elliot and her pretty Grandma Gail.

This face pretty much sums up her feelings on the whole event.

 



 Now every time she goes to Grandma's house she thinks there should be an egg hunt.  And I finally understand what makes it special: that it doesn't happen every day and it is something to which we look forward.  That's the common thread between the religious side and the secular side.  The Easter season is all about anticipating joy.

All in a Day's Work

 

Hooray for weekend projects!  For a while now I have been thinking of making Elliot a sandbox.  We had the perfect spot for one in an area right under her swing set that was really doing nothing except serving as a gathering spot for fallen leaves and stray grass.  Well, yesterday I decided to make this thing a reality.  So before church Elliot and I ventured to Home Depot in search of landscaping fabric, play sand, and some plywood.  To give you a visual, picture me pushing a regular sized shopping cart with Elliot in the child seat in the front, both of us in our Sunday church dresses, trying to lift and load six bags of sand into a cart that was clearly too small for the job.  Yeah.  I had no idea how big and heavy bags of sand are and I certainly didn't know how many bags I would need.  To my credit, the guy there tried to convince me I needed ten bags, and I knew that was too many, so I got six...turns out I only needed five.  Meanwhile, when I told Elliot that morning I was going to make her a sandbox, I think she was confused and thought I was taking her somewhere to play in a sandbox.  So when we arrived at Home Depot she was pretty sure there was a giant sandbox in there just waiting for her.  She kept looking around saying, "Mommy, sandbox?"  Eventually, we got it sorted out, and thanks to the good people at Home Depot, who brought me a cart appropriate for the job, loaded it up for me, and then loaded it into my car, we were on our way!

 

During girlfriend's afternoon nap I got to work on my project.  

 

 

Step 1: Clean out the area of all debris, including random grass clumps, leaves, roots, and, as the case was, wayward golf balls.

 

 Step 2: Cut the appropriate length of landscaping fabric and pin it down with some fabric staples.  Your dog can help.

 

 Step 3: Fill the sucker with sand.  (Actually, Step 3 should be carrying the bags of sand from your car to the sandbox, which was, by far, the hardest part of the whole project.  But as it was just me and those bags of sand were 50 lbs. each, there was no way a selfie was happening.)  Once all the sand is dumped in, rake it out so it can remain pristine for 30 seconds before the dog runs through it.

 

 Step 4: Insert ecstatic, post-nap toddler.  (Me: Do you love it? Elliot: I LOVE it!)

 

I am proud to report that this is a success story!  It turned out well, didn't it?  And I earned some pretty big Mom Points.  She has played in it pretty much non-stop, insisting she go out first thing this morning in her jammies.

 

Oh, and did I mention that in addition to making a sandbox yesterday I also made a pie, entertained my in-laws, cared for my toddler, and took care of my sick hubby?

 

Supermom out.



Adventures in Potty Training

Warning - Despite the beautiful pink potty chair with a dancing Disney character depicted on it, shown above, there is nothing pretty about potty training.  If you find any of the following words/phrases offensive, I recommend you read no further: potty, pee, poo, poopy, giant log, deuce, farted, explosion, yuck, yuck is right, turd ferguson, naked, butt cheeks...ok, ok I am not actually going to use all of these, ahem, expressions, in this blog post, but if you were to come around to our house these days I can't make the same promise.

Ok, so a couple months ago we embarked on what I now refer to as "it was the worst of times and it was the worst of times": potty training.  Elliot was starting to show signs she was ready to use the big girl potty, and let's be honest, diapers are freaking expensive, and it seemed like a win/win.  I decided it was time.  And it was exciting!  We made a big show of going out to pick out her potty.  We went to the potty aisle, laid out her options at one end and then set her at the other end and let her walk up to the one she wanted.  She picked Minnie, unequivocally.  Then we got to move on to the big girl underwear section!  Dora, Princess, Elmo, flowers...too cute and fun.  We paid for our items and headed home, excited for what was to come.

When we got home, we unloaded our purchases, set up the Minnie pot, and then I did what any well-researched, highly competent, potty-training mama would do; I called my Mom.  I believe my exact words were "Ok, we got a potty.  Now what is step 1?"  To my relief, step 1 was getting the potty, so we were already headed in the right direction.  (Side bar: For some reason, early on before we had even decided to start potty training, I decided I was going to do one of these "potty training boot camps" that guarantee your child is potty trained in one weekend.  Great idea, in theory.  However, when I actually looked into it, it sounded like a lot of nonsense.  First of all, one of the instructions was to get a potty chair for every room in the house.  What?  Those things are like $20 each.  If I was made of money I would have paid someone to potty train her for me!  Then, it said to go to a furniture store and buy some kind of special fur covering to put in the car seat.  No thank you.)

Big girl underwear!

 

So we started employing what I call the "Gail Method" (my Mom's name is Gail) to potty training.  And it was going well!  There were obviously many accidents, lots of loads of laundry, and plenty of frustrating moments, but for the most part she was getting it.  And let me tell you, even though it is the absolute worst thing about parenting I have experienced so far, potty training has lead to so much laughter in our house, albeit sometimes through fat, frustrated, tears.  (Mine, not Elliot's.)  There is the unavoidable increase of poo and pee related words to the toddler's vocabulary, so we heard a lot of "No poo poo!  No potty!"  My favorite though, is the phrase she really held on to: "Yuck is right!"  The background is, she had a number 2 accident and Erik (or was it my Dad?) was changing her and she said "Yuck!" and he answered "Yuck is right!" and from then on she has thought the name for the actual poo log is "yuck is right."  So whenever she would drop a deuce she would shout out "Mommy! Daddy! Yuck is right!"  In fact, recently we were walking up my Mom's walkway and there was an unfortunately shaped pinecone Elliot spotted.  She stopped in her tracks, shocked, and pointed at it saying "Yuck is right! Yuck is right!"  But I digress...

Anyway, I say it was going well because a few weeks ago she decided she was done.  D.O.N.E.  She had been having a few days in a row where she didn't make it to the potty at all.  Not only that, she made no effort to get to the potty at all, preferring instead to go in her pants and then tell us to change her afterward.  She was with my Dad when it happened.  I guess she was sitting there for a while and then suddenly stood up, slammed the potty shut, and promptly pooed on the floor in protest!  After that, she showed so little interest in the whole process we decided to put the potty away for a while and try again in a couple months.  Was this the right thing to do?  I don't know.  Was it was the easier option for these first-time parents?  Absolutely.  We figured, she's not even two yet, it's still acceptable for her to be in diapers.  Now, if she's heading off to kindergarten and we haven't resolved this yet...different story.  But for now, cost of diapers be damned!