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!