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...