Flour = Snow

Making cookies together is so much fun!! But apparently making snow on the kitchen floor is more fun. My personal favorite is the eating cookies part...

An especially energetic hand print makes great snow! Waiting for the cooking wasn't easy. A-chan's first taste of cookie dough was today. I used real eggs instead of the egg replacement that I normally use in baking so she only got a tiny taste. She was scandalized by the fact that I ate a chocolate chip before it was cooked! The chocolate chip cookies were for santa, and she lovingly arranged three cookies on a Hello Kitty plate just for him. There were only a few crumbs left on the plate in the morning.

It was everything I ever wanted it to be. Happiness :D

Pine cone mania

It's craft time! For this midwinter holiday we're focused on making some crafts. These mostly involve pine cones, acorns and tons of glitter glue. I am in charge of gathering supplies and supervising the glue use. A-chan is in charge of using the glue on everything except for herself or the cats or the furniture. Ketu is in charge of using the hot glue gun to attach ribbons with which to hang the decorated stuff on trees.

It's been a lot of fun! I'm not a very creative person when it comes to crafts like this so it's a huge new project to find things that a toddler can create and enjoy making. There have been a few incidents of innappropriate glitter application but not many. And A-chan adores being able to make things for her friends and loved ones. She'll pick out a special one for each person. Every day she wants to go gather more pine cones, lol. Unfortunately we ran out of acorns fairly quickly since the deer and squirrels eat them very fast! We had had a pile of them on our front porch that A-chan has been collecting since summer and they've all been glitterized now.

Making crafts for christmas decorations is like my penultimate wonderful thing to do as a mom, that I've always wanted to do! Now it's time for creative toddler cookie making next week...

A Miracle

For two days A-chan has consistently used the potty! It's something that we had begun to despair about, but now we have hope that diapers will soon be a distant memory. (Except for overnight and on long car rides...)

All of our attempts to get her to use the potty had been completely rejected or ignored for a long time. We really had just about given up. What caused the change of heart? Well...I have a theory that she heard us talking the other night. She was in the living room playing with the cats while we were in the office and candidly talking about how utterly depressed we were that she wouldn't even try to go to the potty. We didn't think that she could hear us, or that she would pay attention if so. But then when we stopped talking for a little bit she asked us to keep talking. We asked her if she knew what we were talking about and she said, "yes, me!" At the time we didn't really think much about it, but it was the very next morning that she immediately started using the potty. No dithering about it either, every time she's had to go, it's been in the potty! For two days!

I don't know whether to feel elated that it's finally happening or to feel guilty that she overheard us talking about it and decided to change. Hopefully the potty gods will continue to smile down upon us.

Finally back in the groove...

Okay, so we've been back from India for about three weeks now and still haven't quite caught up with real life yet. We are improving, though - A-chan is no longer waking up at 4 am every morning and thinking that's a perfect time to have breakfast and play.

India was awesome. Absolutely awesome. A-chan really loved India, she loved the trip and there were definately times that she didn't want to come home. Her favorite parts were riding in autorickshaws, playing with other kids and petting baby animals (goats, cows, camels, she loved them all). We had Halloween in Ahmedabad where A-chan dressed up like a kitty and was vrey cute, we handed out some candy to people and even took some Halloween decorations for our hotel room.

Bhuj and the tribal villages were so much fun. I learned a lot and A-chan got to hang out and play with lots and lots of other kids, the desert was so beautiful! Here are a few pictures of A-chan enjoying India...

We're going on a trip!

We leave for India tomorrow. A-chan is really excited about it and has been telling every person she sees about our trip for several days now. Hopefully we've prepared her well enough for the journey - she's been educated on airports and airplanes, learned a little bit of Gujarati, loves Indian food and likes to see pictures of where we're going. I'm a little worried about everything because that's what I do - worry! But I'm also soooooo excited. I'm happy to be going back to Gujarat. I"m really happy to take A-chan with us.

Of course, I'm terrified of airplanes. Or rather, flying in them. And I haven't been able to express that fear this time out at all. I'm also terrified that A-chan would catch onto my anxiety and then the flight would become fearful for her as well. So the crying and gibbering and crushing fear that I have displayed in the past this close to an impending flight has been rigidly held back. I feel a little strange about that. My little girl is the inspiration for strength that I am sorely lacking on my own. I know it's strange that I love to travel when I'm incredibly afraid of flying, but the being there makes up for it. I just really don't want A-chan to have any glimmer of that fear.

So here we go, off for adventure, back in 18 days! With luggage a little bit less in weight and size than we took to Thailand, though 3.75 of our 5 bags is stuff for A-chan...

We Hate Shots.

Oh yes indeed we do. A-chan has pretty much been repeating that phrase most of the day. It was her three year check-up in which she was already supposed to be getting a dose of HepA vaccine but we added in the Flu shot and a Typhoid vaccine in preparation for our trip. Not happy making in any way. And we have a prescription for anti-malaria meds for her. Anti-malarials as a whole make me just cringe! I don't like them. Well, I don't like any type of meds really, but I hate anti-malarials. But the pediatrician seemed to think they were important for A-chan and so we shall give them to her. I don't think any of us are going to like it, though.

We did come to the doctor's office prepared with a box of one of A-chan's fav treats, Pocky. At first she was too upset to want any but after a few minutes many, many were consumed and she started to feel a little better. Yay for bribery! We still feel horrible, she was being such an extraordinarily good girl with the doctor and cooperating with everything and then after being so good she had to get shots and it's just not fair. Explaining to her that the shots were necessary to protect her from getting sick might have actually done some good, we're not sure.

Now out with the guilt and in with the rant: Ever notice that the check-up questionaire has some really dumb questions on it? Here's one from today - 'If you give your child a pair of scissors and a piece of paper, will he/she use the scissors to cut the paper?' Duh! Am I really going to give my 3 year old a pair of scissors and wait to see what happens? No! Scissors + toddler = badness. Even child-safe scissors. Sure, she might not cut her finger off but there are a whole lot of other things that I don't even want to think about her being able to cut with them...like hair or cat fur or electrical cords or my favorite books.... End rant.

Luggage is cool

I didn't know backpacks could do that! It has wheels and this thing I can pull on and pockets and it's pretty and it's got hello kitty on it. Can I play with it? I'm just going to go for a little walk with this. I really love my new luggage!

Can This Come Home With Us?

Another recent trend in A-chan's thought patterns: ask and ye shall receive. I'm not altogether certain that this trend began with my mother, but we believe that perhaps it did. Any time A-chan really likes something, a toy or book or decoration, at her amma's house, Amma immediately offers it to her as a gift. So when A-chan started going around her house, picking up items and asking if we could take them home it seemed a bit suspicious. But this has spread to other people's houses as well and that is where we have to start making a stand.

We understand that a grandmother's first automatic instinct is to fulfill whatever wish a grandchild might have, including giving her items from their own home. But it gets really embarrassing and problematic when we visit another child's home and A-chan goes around constantly asking, "Can this come home with us?"

Recently this trend happened at a little girl's house where we were visiting to play and the other little girl thought it a fine idea, in fact starting to offer items for A-chan to take home. At the last minute before we went through the door a tiny toy teapot was offered and the little girl asked me if A-chan could take it with her. This time I was weak and said yes, but that we would bring it back next week. While not the best solution, it was the only thing I could come up with at the time. During the days following, however, A-chan has consistently insisted that we take the toy back to her friend's house! I just hope that she isn't going to try and make it into a swap-meet or something.

Look, it's a waterfall!

Playing with elemental shape stackers after breakfast. She picked it up and showed me how it was water. Then proceeded to build and stack the pieces in a new creation, pronouncing "Look, it's a waterfall!"

All grown up

My little girl is a big girl now. :( I am so very proud of her and all of her little quirks and accomplishments but at the same time I miss the little tiny girl who was just learning to walk. It's strange to have people say all the time that they grow up so fast and hearing it so often, I've tended to start ignoring it. So it hit a little more sharply today perhaps.

It delights me that she's started to understand the vagaries of the adult mind and how to get what she wants by going sideways rather then straightforward. This past Saturday she would tell us that she was just going to go and 'look' at the big cookie on the counter and after staring at it for a few minutes she asked for one chip.

One of her newest catch-phrases is "the plan". We will tell her a scenario, something along the lines of eating dinner and then watching a video, she will respond with "I don't know if I like that plan. Hmmm, maybe we should..." And then proceed to negotiate with us until we find a plan that she agrees with. Sometimes she will come up with a plan all on her own, tell us about it and then say, "I think that sounds like a good plan." Ultimately I think this tells us how much we use this type of phrase which I hadn't realized before.

Decorating with Pumpkins

We had a lot of fun unpacking the Halloween decorations and putting them out after dinner. A-chan had chosen a plastic pumpkin when we were at a store right before DragonCon and which we had purchased and promptly hid away in the 'decoration' area. She was ready to display it tonight and enjoyed deciding where it should go. It went on the top step of her step stool first, but with advise from the safety guards it went up to the breakfast bar and then later found it's way to the dining room table where it currently remains. The big plastic Jack'o'lantern what had colored lights glowing from inside was a hit again this year. One of the first things she asked about was getting the lights turned on. The Halloween books were the biggest hit of all, though. We read through three of them before watching our 'Bottle Fairy' video. 'Black Cat Creeping' was the first to grab her attention.

Ever since we decorated she's been asking each visitor to our house, "Do you like our Halloween?" And we have continued to read all the Halloween books every day. Sometimes multiple times in a day. And in just a couple more days now we will have new halloween books to save my sanity, yes we will.

Lost Something

The past three months have mostly been a blur. We've been busy with our yearly convention schedule, which I decided needed more stress this year than ever before and volunteered for some things that I should have known were too much for me to do. And I've been kind of sick for all that time as well - just incredibly tired and unable to concentrate on anything, not feeling like doing much at all except for the things that I absolutely have to do. And I feel like I've really lost something with A-chan.

We don't play anymore. Not like we used to, not really much at all. When I have the energy to do anything it's usually spent cleaning or cooking or working on projects that need to get done before our vacation. I think it just hit me today how much things are different right now from a few months ago. I used to get down on the floor and play with cars & trucks, build towers, play trains on her train set, dance with her - all these great things that I don't do now. We're not as close as we used to be. And I've noticed some behaviour patterns that are new and mainly used for getting our attention.

But the next two days should start to change it all back in the right direction again! I'm finally getting the medical care that should help me to start feeling much better, have more energy and not be sick all the time. I'm looking forward to that end result very much and it makes the whole thing a little less scary. (It's nothing that big or bad, just something I'm pathetically terrified of that's all) I miss spending time playing with A-chan. Looking around at all the toys we used to play with together that haven't seen any use at all in the last three months makes me feel horribly guilty. I hope that I will start really feeling better soon, and will try my best to make up for it!

So here is my promise: To spend more time with A-chan doing all kinds of fun stuff like playing trains and dancing and playing soccerball and playing the harp and just everything!!

Family Friendly Flights Bill

I saw an article recently about how some people are attempting to get a law passed to make airlines show only kid-friendly films in flight. It was interesting, I'd never thought about it before. There was even some discussion on making a 'family class' seating area on airplanes.

I'm not sure yet what I think of either idea. There are certainly some films that will be shown on the flights that I don't want A-chan to see. But then again, I can't say it's fair to make all the other passengers only see Disney films either. (And of course, most Disney films I wouldn't want A-chan to see either, but they are better than some other films.) The best solution in my opinion is personal entertainment options that each passenger can choose that won't bother the rest of the people on board.

Family class seating is a neat idea. Except that having so many kids in one area might not be happy either. Say, a couple traveling with a 6 month old baby who isn't able to sleep because the other kids make noise nearby. Or the 5 year old with 'just a cough' who is able to give colds/flu to all the other children. Not that these things aren't happening anyway, of course.

Ahh, well. It will be interesting to see what happens, won't it?

Soccerball!

A-chan's newest obsession: Soccerball. Yes, that really is what she calls it - all one word. And it's kind of a bizarre reinforcement of how much one's peer effect one's life. There were originally two sources of knowledge of Soccer for A-chan, one episode of a favorite Anime series where the characters tried unsuccesfully to play a game of soccer. Second, two of her friends have started playing toddler soccer. They live in another state and the only true connection she has between the girls and soccer were some pictures of them in their outfits and having their mom tell us what they were doing in the picture.

She had been interested in Soccer because of the Anime for months, wanting to go outside and play soccerball just like they did in the show. But after seeing those pictures, well, it's a full blown obsession. To the point of wanting a soccer ball shaped mouse to replace her old panda one. That was a surprise, let me tell you! Out of all the really cute animal choices she picked the soccer ball. But it really was what she wanted cause when we finally ordered it for her she was oh so happy about it! Ketu and A-chan have been going outside in the early evenings lately and kicking around a ball in the side yard. They both seem to enjoy it, and he's been starting to teach A-chan a little bit about the game too!

Put the Gujarati away!

We leave for Gujarat, India in 3 weeks and 5 days. For the past month or so we've been attempting to cram as much of the Gujarati language into our craniums as possible, hoping that we might comport ourselves with honor while we are there. A-chan is raring to get on the plane and go, but has different feelings about us speaking a language that she can't understand.

She's been with us at every language lesson, a huge slice of cake in front of her and a bottle of applejuice to help keep her happy and occupied while we try to learn. Whenever we practice she is there listening to us. Some of it has seeped in and she can say certain things like 'Tame kem cho?' (How are you?), 'Hu majama chhu.' (I am fine.), and can count from one to ten in Gujarati. But whenever she gets frustrated with it she will tell us to "Put the Gujarati away now."

Lately as our date of departure is getting closer she has actually asked us to speak Gujarati with her a few times. As we watched a Gujarati movie last night (kind of a test to see if we could understand any of it) I wondered if she was getting any of it. The songs seemed to fascinate her but the rest was pretty much ignored. We managed to understand a few words here and there, and we were surprised by how much we enjoyed watching it!

I'm looking forward to getting to Ahmedabad and seeing how much Ketu and I have learned (or failed to learn as the case may be) and to see if A-chan absorbed more than she's letting on. I am hoping that as soon as she realizes that if she learned to speak a little Gujarati she could potentially speak to other little girls during our trip then she would pick up more words instead of being frustrated.

New songs to sing

We have two new songs to sing! The first is the Bubble song which I made up as we spent the afternoon blowing bubbles in the driveway.

Bubbles, bubbles everywhere

Rainbow bubbles in the air

Catch them high and catch them low

Catch them quick before they go!

Not very complicated, but it's nice and easy for when blowing bubbles between the lines. A-chan seemed to get a kick out of it, but she's starting to get the knack of public politeness so I can't really tell for sure if she liked it or not. It's kind of cool that she's started doing the polite 'yes, that's very nice' response and most of the time I can still tell whether she really means it or not.

The second song was "Row your boat" which was quickly hit over the head with a few word changes that would make it a more challenging song like: Row, row, row, row, row, row, row, row, row a boat. And 'trees, trees, trees gently down the stream'

We also spent a few minutes early this morning playing our doumbeks together which was awesome but not very coordinated. I need more practice, lol. A-chan had fun drumming while I did some dance practice, though. And then she did some dancing with me!

Sitting in a Tree...

It's so nice that fall is around the corner. Lovely days where it's cool enough to go outside for more than two minutes, the crisp flavor in the air...time for trips to the Botanical Gardens! we had a wonderful one today. It was A-chan's first time hiking the forest trail under her own power. She'd been down it before with the help of super-carrying powers from myself and Ketu as well as her Godparents S&L. It was very neat to overlay previous trips with her much smaller and less interactive with today's trip where she noticed so much! It amazed us both that she walked the whole trail and only asked to be picked up twice. There were a few times where she tripped and she scraped one knee a little. Overall, though, it was a perfect afternoon.

(S and L, we miss you guys so much. Yes, even though we got to see you on Saturday...when we went walking today we remembered going on the trail with you two and really wished that you could have joined us!)

Here are some pics of her in the Gardens on a less wild path. Her first time sitting up in a tree was so much fun that she keeps asking to sit in any tree she sees. Unfortunatley most of them are saplings and are way too small!

Fun Fun Anime List for Toddlers

In anticipation of Anime Weekend Atlanta in 7 days, here is A-chan's favorite anime! Listed in order of preferrence (hers not ours). Mostly suitable for 2-5 year olds though some bits are questionable, particularly Strawberry Marshamallow's most memorable character, Miu, who has inspired some bratiness in A-chan now and then.

Ghibli Films:

My Neighbor Totoro

Kiki's Delivery Service

Whisper of the Heart

The Cat Returns

Castle in the Sky

Series:

Azumanga Daioh

Kamichu!

Kodocha

A Little Snow Fairy Sugar

Fruits Basket

Mao-Chan

Magical Meow-Meow Taruto

Strawberry Marshmallow

Bottle Fairy

Lucky Star

The Responsibility of No

Have you ever gotten tired of being the adult? I never quite realized before how many things the word no can be applied to in a single dinner. And I feel guilty for saying it so many times. And I don't want to anymore!

So down with the 'No, you can't run in a restaurant' and the 'no matter how dull that butter knife may be, you still can't poke your friend with it' and the 'no, you can't play hide and seek under the table'!

Okay, so the only way to teach our children the rules of society is to keep reminding them over and over with negative statements. But I feel like an ogre after spending an entire two hour dinner saying no every few minutes. Luckily I don't have to say it so much when it's just A-chan, this dinner also included a friend of hers who is the same age and they desperately wanted to get down and play. Who can blame them, really? Except the other patrons in the restaurant, the wait staff, etc.

The obvious solution would be to take the little ones to a place like Chucky Cheese where they can do as they like. One problem with this is that such restaurants cater to mainstream american life - ie, no vegetarian food. Not going to happen with our family. Another problem is that they are so incredibly merchandising oriented that it is sickening. I don't want to expose my child to places like that. On the other hand, most vegetarian restaurants are not kid friendly. We have two pure veg places in town and neither offer a kid's menu, kid's size drink cups or seem even to want to treat kids as humans. I don't like either option. What I really want is a vegetarian & meatatarian restaurant that likes kids and has a play area with a good kids menu and vegetarian kids' choices. Why is that such a difficult thing to find? And when did this post turn into a rant? lol. oh well. I guess I didn't realize how much this upset me til I started writing about it.

One more bit of ranting...have you ever noticed that at most restaurants here in the US, the kids' menu have absolutely no vegetarian choices? So if I want a vegetarian meal for my child I have to order it off the adult menu at adult prices even though she won't eat but a fourth of it since she's just (almost) 3 years old. It's ridiculous! And I hate it. End rant. :)

Soy Sauce Dogs

Being vegetarians we try to make the distinction between meat and the meat substitutes that we eat for A-chan so that hopefully she will understand a little bit when at a friend's grill out and I won't let her have a hot dog.

We try to remember to say 'soy dog' or 'soy burger', something that gets the idea across and indicates that it's not the same thing as a 'hot dog' or 'hamburger'. When A-chan plays with her wooden food toys we also make the same distinctions. She has in her little basket a 'soy sausage' and a 'soy dog'. Yesterday she dropped the 'soy dog' and it rolled under the couch. "What happened to the soy sauce dog?" she asked. It was so cute.

To further explain, though...we love soy sauce. It is hard to describe the amounts of soy sauce that we typically go through every week. A-chan won't eat any meal that comes with rice without her beloved soy sauce. We adults, having everything nicely compartmentalized in our heads already, never made the connection between 'soy sauce' and 'soy meat substitute' since obviously the twain have nothing to do with each other in normal daily life. I think it's so very neat how children make those leaps that adults minds automatically reject in most cases!

After DragonCon 2007

We are finally done with the mad dash and chaos-filled readiness for DragonCon marathon. The con is over and we had a really fun time, but wow are we tired. As always we packed way too much and didn't use all of it.

Purple jawa princess was a huge hit and we lost count of how many people took a-chan's picture. She had a blast dressing up and was quite a ham for the cameras. Saturday night she pleaded not to go to bed but to have more people take her picture instead. In fact, she started recognizing when people wanted to take her picture and began to pose - pulling up her hood and everything!

The 5 cookies went well. Here's the final decision on what they were: a thin sugar cookie base, vanilla icing, sugar sprinkles, a moravian spice cookie in the shape of a 5. They were very tasty but somewhat difficult for A-chan to eat. she enjoyed licking the icing off though. I really like them a whole lot. They do sound...interesting...but they are a nice exotic change. But they are reserved for Dragoncon and we'll have to wait for next year to have more.

But the absolute biggest hit were the Squeaky Shoes! It was amazing how many people commented on them, said they were awesome, and claimed to want some for themselves. So we thought, "wow, we could make adult squeakies and sell them next year and make a fortune!" and then we realized, "200 people at Dragoncon all squeaking as they walk from one hotel to the next....we'll be lynched. Bad idea." Wow, so many people asked about them and commented on them, though!

First trip to the beach

A-chan at the beach! Actually a small man-made beach at a local park with a lake, but it's a good first run. A school of fish swam around with us for a while, perhaps curious about us. A-chan really liked that part! I had lots of fun jumping her up and down in the shallow water. I love the beach, any beach :D

She was ready to just run straight into the water which I was amazed at, having expected to coax her in. The star float ring was a big hit and I really loved that. Keeping her afloat in the water would have been quite a chore without it!

And amazingly, not one of us got sunburned - we all had major coatings of spf 50 sunscreen that worked a whole lot better during this hour swim than it had during the Ren . Faire.

The Melancholy of Wha?

Ketu has found the ultimate toddler computer accessory: YouTube Anime Music Videos. Okay, one in particular which has been continually resounding in our heads ever since A-chan saw it, fell head over heels in dance-love with it and had it installed on her computer. The thing is...it's a great song. And a really good video. I love it almost as much as she does.

So Ketu asked, "does it make me a bad father or a good father that I taught my 2 year old how to nav YouTube?" (not the whole thing luckily, just the part where she can replay this video endlessly)

The really cool thing is that we've been introduced not only to an awesome band but also one of the greatest anime of the year. We hadn't heard of either of them - we are soooo old. Since we loved the vid but didn't know what anime it came from I did some searching. The best place for anime info: animenation.com! As soon as I knew which anime it was I found it on Netflix and the first DVD was on it's way within 24 hours. The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya - a rather bizarre name for an anime, but we love it. Ketu did the search for the music and found out that it was done by a swedish band and the song's name is "Caramel Dansen" which after listening to it non stop for 3 days you can begin to actually hear in the song even though none of it is in english :D

Here's your chance to see it for yourself...

First Lollipop and the YouTube Monster

Starting out this post with a pet peeve: People who don't bring anything for their children to play with at Doctor's offices. It's a crime, I tell you! How can people honestly expect a young child to sit still and be bored for a whole hour while they wait to be called back? It's so unrealistic and it never works out that way. People need to bring toys for their kids. Don't leave the house without some form of distraction, ever!!

Obviously we went to the Doctor's office today. A-chan was very well behaved and enjoyed playing and drawing her letters. But when it came to letting the doctor examine her dada she got a little uncooperative. She insisted on standing between his feet! Luckily the doctor was unfazed by this and offered her a bribe. It didn't work very quickly because she had absolutely no idea what a lollipop was and kept refusing it. I finally talked her into having the candy and happiness resumed it's normal course. At least normal for a doc's office. A-chan very much liked the lollipop, her very first one.

The YouTube Monster started out so innocuously. A little anime music video that Ketu was watching on his computer and that A-chan immediately latched onto as the bestest thing ever. After a while he got tired of using his computer to show the video over and over and over...so he put a link to it on her computer and showed her how to work it. I'd swear we listened to it 20 times today alone. She loves to dance to it but has yet to do the moves as they are in the video.

The Thunder, It Rumbles

It seems like storming and thunder always happen when it's either naptime or bedtime. We never have thunder at say...dinnertime when she's awake anyway. Nope, it's always right when we were going to put her to bed. Tonight was a pretty spectacular storm.

As a kid I remember always being terrified of storms. In fact, that fear didn't totally go away until after my own child was born. Jane Yolen is right - one can't be afraid when one has someone to protect. And that is what I wanted for A-chan. Not protection exactly, but security. I didn't want her to be afraid of thunder, of bad weather. Children just are sometimes, I do understand that. But I also think that a lot of what children perceive about their world comes from the adults around them. If I were to suddenly react as if she ought to feel afraid, she will respond as she thinks I expect. (Don't worry, honey, it's just thunder, it can't hurt you.) On the other hand, if I treat the thunder as something interesting and enjoyable to listen to (wow, that one was really cool, what did you think of it?) - how would she react? Tonight we found out.

When I told her that thunder is the sound of clouds talking to each other she suddenly perked up and began asking questions rather than clinging to me. "When the thunder is really loud it's because the clouds are really excited about something and get loud just like you do when you're excited." I said. Within 30 seconds we had a discussion going about what the clouds might be excited about and wowing over each rumble. There was no need to soothe her at all. Here are a couple of the things that we came up with:

"The Clouds excited about DragonCon, they be purple jawas with A-chan and have pink jawa socks and feet."

"The clouds are excited about their birthday party and want a pink cake!"

At this point the discussion took a completely different path and birthday cakes became the subject. I talked about my plans for my birthday cake this year, said last year had flowers, and I thought this year it should be a star wars cake. I was then told that her cake should be SW and mine should have blue flowers on it, lol.

Overall I was excited about how well my strategy worked! And I was continually kicking myself over the fact that I should have gotten with it sooner and used the same type of tactic with the public restroom. But in that situation I did everything wrong that I could have and perhaps created the fear that she exhibited in the public toilet. (Luckily we're all past that and the public toilet isn't a trial anymore, she's okay with it!)

Phase Shift!

Suddenly things are different. Instead of coloring everything one color, coloring by numbers is happening! It seems like such a little thing, but we've been trying to introduce the concept of different colors in one picture for such a long time. And we turned around to find that she's doing color by numbers in her LEGO computer game perfectly...and wonder when did that happen?! My opinion is that the Brainy Baby Art video has sooo much to do with it. I didn't think it would make such a huge difference at first. A-chan loved watching it, though. She asked to see it every day, calling it the Baby Painting video.

The first thing we noticed was that she was suddenly obsessed with drawing broken lines, straight lines and was beginning to make the connection to drawing shapes and things like balloons and spiders. She really wanted to draw all the time! Not just the formless scribbles that she had been doing, she was going for true drawings. And then came the color by numbers change. It wasn't even a learning process, it was an instant change. One day she was doing the entire picture in one color then redoing it in the next color. Then the next day she was doing it by the numbers without any hesitation, almost as though she'd known that was how it should be done before but just didn't feel like it at the time.

What is so amazing about it all is how quickly the changes happened. We kind of felt left behind and adrift as the things we'd been working on with her have all been conquered - so what do we do now? It's also just awesome to watch it happen, we're so lucky to be able to be with her all the time so that we can really see exactly when things change!

Here are some of her creative spiders (drawn with chalk on her dad's card table) with eyes and mouths and buttons!

Imaginary Friends

We've had two friends visiting the last couple of days. Satsuki & Mei from 'My Neighbor Totoro'. For one brief moment I have a glimpse at what it would be like to have 3 children. It was a scary moment :) But it was lots of fun to cater to A-chan's whim when Satsuki and Mei needed to be lifted up to sit on the counter and help make breakfast. I peeled bananas for them and fed everybody oatmeal. Exclaiming over imaginary fridge artwork was interesting: I had no idea what 'Satsuki and Mei' had drawn and had to be very vague in my replies. "Wow, that's a nice drawing" and "She's very creative!" got used most often, I believe.

I'm not sure at what age or developmental stage children usually have imaginary friends. Is this a normal occurence or a sign that A-chan needs more interaction with other children? At the moment I'm not worried about it. But I'm realizing just how little I know about toddler development and what to expect. I've been focusing so much on potty training that I haven't found out what else might be changing soon.

One thing that has remained constant, though, is how much she loves musical instruments. Mine, hers, woodwind, string...it doesn't matter they are all good. She's always been enchanted with playing my harps but has also more recently found my old, old, old, ancient, high-school flute. The concept of blowing across the hole instead of covering the whole thing with one's mouth is lost on her so far, but we're working on it!

Cutest thing ever!

My baby can Riverdance! OMG we were blown away by the cuteness. After finishing up our last child-friendly anime series (Kamichu! It was great and perfect for a toddler - no violence, no hideously annoying characters or loudness, just very sweet and interesting.) we've started watching a random assortment of things. Last night was the BBC Celts series and to follow up tonight we had Riverdance.

I wasn't sure how she was going to react to it. Predictably she wasn't that interested in the Celts documentary but I hoped that she would enjoy the dancing, cause she loves to dance. About five minutes into the show she suddenly proclaimed, "I can do that!" and up she jumped and did! She was so cute, with her hands on her hips and jumping in little hops. Ketu rushed over and grabbed the videocamera and got some good footage for which I will be eternally grateful.

A-chan's other newest passion: drawing numbers, particularly number eights.

Purple Jawa Update

The PJP is moving pretty smoothly at the moment. The cloak and hood are finished with one minor bit of velcro/ hook and eye needing to be added! The Small Highness has tried on both and found them to be satisfactory.

Since I am expecting her to be excited about the costume and actually wearing it for maybe 10 minutes before getting too hot or bored, I'm working on an under-dress which isn't constructed with too much Jawa fashion in mind but hopefully will be comfy to wear. I want it to be very loose to give her room to breathe and maybe even have it still fit next year. When she tried it on for me this evening she said, "can it be a little smaller?"

The main problem that I am having at the moment is how to make the belt of pouches that Jawa typically wear. It would be easy if we used leather but we don't! So I'm thinking faux leather and hand making it myself which seems tedious but I'm willing to try. The other option is to use fabric to make it. Whatever I do it won't look much like the authentic stuff, not that I'm trying that hard to be authentic, so I'm not going to worry about it too much.

After that the next problem to solve is a mask and eyes. But we'll think about that....sometime later, yep.

It's been a lot of fun working on the costume, I'm surprised a little at how much I've been enjoying it. And truly amazed at the fact that A-chan still is all excited about it. She still says excitedly that she's going to be a purple jawa for dragoncon. Almost every day she asks me if I'm working on her costume. Somehow I'd always thought that a two year old would forget about something that was a) so far in the future & b) so esoteric as a costume that she 'made up'. (though the costume is wholly inspired by star wars and even SWG, you don't see purple jawas anywhere in the movies - it's a totally random idea)

I am a little stressed about the fact that it isn't as well-sewn as it could be and it's not as authentic as I personally would like it. But I keep reminding myself that it's okay - she's only 2 years old.

Traveling

The question at the end of my last post got summarily answered this past weekend as we traveled to Alabama for a one-night stay over. We took our potty with us. In my defense I claim this to have been a special circumstance where we were visiting friends of A-chan who were a little older and potty training and whose good influence in that area we were hoping that A-chan would be inspired by. And it did seem to have helped. Not to mention she had a ton of fun.

We also got to try out her new travel bed which is an awesome invention that worked like a charm. I was a little worried about her playing in it instead of going to sleep the first time but she was so exhausted after playing with the three girls that she collapsed in seconds. Showing it to the girls was scheduled to take place the following morning so that there wouldn't be any conflict at bedtime so it stayed well hidden during the day. But the next morning A-chan wanted them all to go play in it with her and amazingly enough they all fit! (barely, lol) Then we had the excuse available that it needed to be packed up so we could put it in the car - a nice way to cut off the playtime in the bed if necessary, though they pretty much got tired of it after a little. Sleeping for us was a bit more difficult since about 3 minutes after we turned off the lights she woke up long enough to order them turned back on. We're not used to sleeping with the lights on all night but we left them on anyway. I think next time we'll be prepared with a nightlight!

Potty Progress!

W00t! 3 successful potty attempts in one day!! We're definately beginning to make some progress, yahoo :D There are two keys to our recent success, I think. First, I'm making a point to ask her to go potty a lot more than I used to. Basically I ask after every meal and whenever I think about it other times. Second, I leave the bathroom. It's like magic. I leave the room and about 5 minutes later she uses the potty. Tonight I asked if she wanted me to stay or to leave. "You can go if you want to. And I'll call you." was the response.

My mother brought up an interesting question the other day. She wanted to buy a potty for A-chan to have at her house, just like the one that we have here. I wondered if that wouldn't give A-chan unreasonable expectations, that she would start asking specifically for 'her' potty everywhere we went instead of getting used to different potties at different places. And if that were the case, but in her best interest to have a potty everywhere we go that is just for her, should we get a portable one that we could take anywhere?

I personally would prefer that she get used to all kinds of potties in all kinds of situations. For example, carrying a portable potty around with us at a convention isn't really an option. And I'm pretty sure that airlines wouldn't let us take it on a plane. I guess I see it just like restaurants. We try very hard to make sure that A-chan is exposed to a large variety of foods and flavors so that we can go to just about any restaurant and she will eat happily. Shouldn't it be the same way with the potty?

Kumon Workbook Luv

Educational materials that I really love are few and far between at this point. Mainly due to the fact that I haven't been searching all that much for them yet. But a lot of what I've seen isn't any fun. We picked up the first Kumon book, Tracing, last year and started working with A-chan using her finger to follow the lines. Recently she progressed to using a pen from a pencil and is doing great! The best part is that she asks to do the exercises. We couldn't get her to stop today and that was wonderful. I love these books! The 1-30 book and the Uppercase letters book are the other two that we have right now. They do a great job of teaching and it's really fun to watch her start drawing the numbers. (We haven't really tried drawing letters yet.) The five and the eight are a bit problematic and frustrating for everyone involved, lol.



The grocery store that we like to go to gives out free balloons to youngsters and of course, as soon as she understood that concept A-chan started asking for one as we pulled into the parking lot. The latest one had to be yellow with a yellow teddy bear weight and string. Within a day it lost most of it's lift and is a bit depleted. A-chan's friend KayKay showed her the neatest trick with her pinwheel this past weekend - holding it over an a/c vent while the air is blowing makes it turn really fast. And yesterday A-chan applied the same theory to the ailing balloon to make it fly up in the air. It's just so cool because it has this point where it just sits and hovers in the air above the vent. A-chan is overcome with joy about the whole thing and spent a long time today enjoying the interaction. She keeps wanting us to come see it, though and verify that the balloon is flying all by itself. We finally convinced her to see if the balloon could fly over the vent that happened to be in the same room as us so we could just turn around and see it instead of walking all the way into the other room every 5 minutes :D

A new shirt is happiness

We got a box today. Inside were new clothes that we'd bought online. One shirt was the one that A-chan had picked out all by herself on the computer. She was very proud of that fact and wanted to try it on immediately.

It has a fuzzy monkey on it and a fuzzy panda on it just like at the zoo and it has a fuzzy tiger, too!

Being the anti-pink woman that I am, I must now say "Yay!" for daughters who like zoo animals and not pink fluffy things. Don't get me wrong, I don't absolutely hate pink...but there is a finite amount of pink that I can stand. The pink princess thing really irritates me. Why can't there be other colors for princesses? So, I'm in favor of cute things that aren't pink.

A-chan is just starting to notice and give bits of thought to her clothes. But for the most part she still lets me pick things out for her. And while I have the power there will be not much pink in our little girl's closet. I know that the power, while wonderful, will not last long and some day I will have to step aside and let the evil that is pink creep in when she wants it to... but until that day I shall exercise my power with abandon while I can!

5 Cookies

I'm already obsessing/preparing for DragonCon and starting to put together a grocery list. So this evening as we ate dinner I asked A-chan what she would like to eat at DC. Her first choice was, "I want to eat breakfast at DragonCon. With oatmeal and banana and punch, okay?" This is her standard eat it every day breakfast. So I decided to elaborate a bit and asked if she wanted any cookies at DC. "Yes! I want five cookies!" was her reply. I tried to get a more specific answer by asking if she wanted cookies with chocolate in them. "chocolate can be good, but I want five cookies." Ketu asked if she wanted "m's" on her cookies (that's what we say when we mean m&ms which are one of her fav candies that she gets on special occassions). A-chan said yes, but repeated the five cookies statement.



So I'm going to come up with a brand new cookie just for DragonCon: the Five Cookie! The choices seem endless. Should it be a cookie with 5 m's on it? Should it be a cookie with m's in the shape of a 5? Should the cookie itself be in the shape of a 5? Or the ultimate - 5 miniature cookies with icing in between each and m's on top. What about a cookie with 5 different types of chocolate in it? Are there 5 different types of chocolate? (let's see...milk chocolate, dark chocolate, white chocolate...m&ms...I think I'm stuck.)



Anybody have any suggestions? Please? :D



I can't wait until she's just a little bit older and she can make cookies with me! She already helps with our meals a lot of the time, stirring things and putting in ingredients and that sort of thing. We've already started running into the world of arbitrary adult nonsensical rules. (yes, you can lick the spoon when we're in the kitchen. no, you can't lick the spoon when we're at the dinner table.) Here is a good picture of her helping me cook. Ketu gives this picture the title "Is this butter I see before me?"

Making cookies together is kind of the stereotypical best of home and hearth thing for mothers and daughters, I think. It has such wonderful warm and loving feelings attached. It's going to be so much fun!!

India Food is Yummy!

Exposing our girl to exotic foods is both a pleasure and a challenge. She loves Italian, Japanese & Thai food. Scottish & Irish she loves. Greek is so-so, the same with Middle Eastern. Mexican is definately a favorite (Burritos, tortilla chips & salsa all rule!).

But until now Indian food has gotten a turned up nose and a refusal to even try it. Except for mango lassis which she consumed rapidly and in great number. My love affair with mango lassis is well known in certain circles so it's no suprise that A-chan devours them like candy. The rest, though, was a definite surprise since not only does she like spicy and hot foods, Indian food is awesome. So I've been working on introducing more Indian cooking into our menus at home in an attempt to convince her that it's good. And we have success! Last night's chana masala was a hit, so was the cucumber raita and the cachumber. The aloo saag was refused but I can't blame her for that cause my aloo saag never comes out very good. I know better than to make lassis at home - for there goes the demise of my pre-dragoncon diet :D

I'm really happy that she liked dinner last night. Indian is one of our favorite 'special occassion' dinner choices which had been frought with toddler dissatisfaction the last few times we tried it. I have hope now that the next time we try an Indian restaurant for a birthday or anniversary that she will be much happier and enjoy the meal!

Potty Woes

We're having trouble with the potty training thing. It's mostly going okay, pee in the potty has happened about 3 times now which gives us hope that one day, eventually, we will be a diaper-free household. The fact that A-chan doesn't seem to really care about switching her diapers for panties is holding things back a little, perhaps. The other day I tried to talk her into not wearing a diaper for a bit around the house and that lasted about 5 minutes at the end of which she insisted on getting a diaper and then immediately peed in it as soon as it was properly secured. That's not so bad, though, really. I have great faith in the ability to accomplish the task of potty training at some point in the future, we just have to make more of an effort to be consistent with it. Some days I don't even remember to ask her if she wants to go to the potty...

(I've gotten better recently, though, and kind of keep to a schedule for it).

The thing that is truly troublesome is that she is terrified of public restrooms. The abominably loud flushes of the toilets quite literally scares her into hysterics. It throws not only a wrench into the potty training idea of being able to get rid of diapers both at home and away from home, it's a major problem whenever Ketu or I are out with her by ourselves. There are times when I have to go to the restroom and there is no way I am going to leave her outside while I go in! So I've had to carry her into the bathroom twice with her crying and screaming and me feeling horrible for making her go into a place that scares her, but having to pee! I'm desperate to find a way to get her over her fear. The stupid places that have the IR toilets that go off every ten seconds really don't help, I hate those things.

I keep thinking that if she keeps having to go in the restroom with me that eventually she will see that the toilets aren't going to hurt us, that she will get used to the whole thing and stop being terrified. Quite honestly, I can't think of any other approach. Neither of us likes this approach. She is scared and frustrated. I am upset and frustrated. There has to be a better solution...how can I help her get over the fear of toilets?!

Words of the Week #14

"Blue and Pink are primary colors"


"and yellow is primary color too"


" I'm going to dress up a purple jawa for dragoncon, you are going to dress up as a purple belly dancer for dragoncon, and dada is going to dress up as a purple kitty for dragoncon - that's going to be so cute!"


"Okay, okay, okay!"


"As soon as it gets cool outside we going to play soccer ball!"



"Come on, star. The moon and the star are coming home with us."

A-chan: "My new bento!"
Me: "How do you know it's your bento?" (It was a surprise, she saw it on the kitchen counter.)
A-chan: "It has Mei on it."

Bare Feet

This past week we have had an unprecedented amount of bare feet! Never before has A-chan wanted to go barefoot, the only events that she would agree to take her socks off for were bathtime and swimming. But last Thursday she decided to go barefoot with her friend KayKay and then again on Saturday with M,F & E while we visited their house. She made the comment, "Look, I have feet!" several times on Saturday, apparently surprised by this fact. It is a huge amount of progress in an area that we had given up on some time before. When A-chan was first born she had trouble breathing and had to have blood taken from her heels every two hours for a couple of days. Since then, basically all of her life, she has hated to have her socks off for any reason and generally gotten very irrate if someone even looked at her feet when her socks were off. Maybe she just needed to get used to the idea of having barefeet slowly and finally decided this week that it was okay.

Other unprecedented adventures this week included the first experience with water balloons, which I hear was well receieved, coloring on the TV with chalk as she watched the Brainy Baby Art video, and getting a book stuck in the front window (It was "Ten Tiny Tickles by Karen Katz). All in all, a very eventful beginning to summer.

On a side note, the Purple Jawa Project is underway with the cloak cut out and ready for sewing later this week.

Look!

"I smiling at you!"

Sleepy, sleepy time

After a long day of waking up early and not having a nap, my sweet little girl went to sleep on my lap while we sat at the computer where moments before she was coloring in photoshop. It was so sweet! She kept jerking awake, coloring for a moment, then falling back asleep. We tried to get her directly into bed but she woke up at the last second and remembered that we were going to watch some Star Wars before bed. So...we watched some star wars. lol.

Earlier in the day she got her very first ant bite/bee sting/something or other that made her hand all red and finger all swollen and painful. Neither of us were right there to see what happened and asking her what had stung her wasn't helpful.

me: "What did the bug look like? Was it an ant?"

A-chan: "uh-huh. it looked like a bug and flew away."

me: "Was it a bee?"

A-chan: "No, it was a bug!"

Our remedy was to soak her hand in a bowl of cold water for about 20 minutes which did an amazing job. It didn't take long before she was saying that her hand felt better and by the end of the soak it was hard to tell that anything was wrong with her hand.

In a Daze

Going to the Renaissance Festival with a group that includes 4 toddlers and getting back out again alive is more difficult than I had anticipated. I learned a lot of lessons putting a large group of friends together for the trip, not least of which is that I'm not good at that sort of thing.

Even more important: don't buy one child an umbrella when the other 3 cannot have one. I had no idea that getting A-chan a little sunshade umbrella would cause so much friction! If I had, we definately would have skipped the purchase. It was on my list of things to accomplish with this trip, though, because she had been asking for one a whole bunch lately. (Her purple dragon umbrella from Thailand was getting beaten up a bit and so is taking an extended rest break at the top of a bookshelf.) It was okay for a while as the girls shared it around, but once they started getting more tired and hot it went way far downhill. I felt really horrible about it, especially because I was just clueless about how it would affect the group as a whole before I bought it. Ah well. I will know next time!

But the big swinging boats were the apple of A-chan's eye. She got to ride in one twice in one day! She is still talking about it a week hence, saying who went on the boat swing with her and how high it went and how fast it went and how happy she likes to swing on the boat. I must say that the rides were also a highlight of my day, providing the best air conditioning in the whole festival. My true fav part of ren fest, however, is the silk skirt merchant! I'm sure that A-chan will agree in a few years :D

Here are some lovely pictures of her in a complete daze after the second boat swing ride...

Star Wars Anniversary

We didn't really do much to celebrate. A-chan wore her star wars lego t-shirt with r2 and 3po. Here is a picture of her going, "this one is R2. why are you asking stupid questions, guys?"

After dinner we started watching Empire Strikes Back, A-chan's choice, the original one not the newfangled one. It has taken us 3 days to finish watching it since we're going at A-chan's speed which is 45 mins and then bedtime. I was kind of hoping for an excuse to get one of those nifty cake pans of R2 or Boba Fett...maybe I'll do one for my birthday and then the other for A-chan's. :D

Looking back on Star Wars in my childhood...

I don't remember the first time that I saw it. I was 2 years old when it was in the theater, so I'm pretty sure it was later.

I do remember desperately wanting some of the star wars toys that the boys down the street were playing with. At one friend's b-day party I spent the entire afternoon playing with his Hoth playset rather than going outside for games and fun, lol. At the time I was 5, I think, or maybe 6 and was already well acquainted with Star Wars.

My mother could not have been called a huge Star Wars fan, but she did foster a love of sci-fi and fantasy movies for me when she had the chance. The tv version of star wars was taped by her for me to watch endlessly over and over. I still know exactly where the commercial breaks were when we watch the dvds. That is one of the greatest things that I am grateful to my mother for - she let me fall in love with Star Wars. Since no one else in my life was remotely interested in it I feel sure that she introduced me to it, even though I was too young to remember the exact moment. How much different would I be now if she hadn't done so?

Will A-chan continue to love Star Wars when she gets older? I hope so. But even if she doesn't, at least we're enjoying it together right now as much as we possibly can. For the ability to share this with my daughter, I am immensely grateful.