Throwing Rocks

While we were at Cheaha, Tray took Penny to play at the playground at the lake while I hiked down to the lake from the cabins on top of the mountain. When I got down to the bottom, they met me at the creek, and Penny had a ball throwing rocks into the water. It has taken Penny a long time to do things that get her hands dirty, like picking up rocks. The fact that she can brush them off after each rock like this rather than immediately freaking out asking me to clean them for her is an accomplishment. I think we were maybe overzealous when she was a baby trying to keep her from getting her hands dirty when she was eating, and she was so impressionable that she has so far hated getting her hands dirty in any situation. Oh well, I'm glad she's growing out of it. (See: archaeology).

Not Again

Penny dislocated her elbow again on Sunday afternoon (it was Sunday the other two times too!). Only this time, we were up on top of Mt. Cheaha with no cell reception and spotty internet. We went down to the lodge and were told that the ranger didn't have the training to deal with it, and we were given directions to the nearest hospital in Anniston. It took the better part of an hour to get there. Penny mercifully fell asleep - a combination of all the crying and the fact that she hadn't napped that day since we'd been in the car during nap time. She was still asleep when we got to the ER so I went to check her in.

The waiting room was quite crowded, but they called me right back so I thought maybe a lot of those people were just with somebody else who was a patient, or that they triaged Penny to the front of the line. Nope. I sat there for ten minutes (at least) answering all the receptionist's questions (twice, actually, because she got about half way through and deleted it all somehow and had to start over). When we got done she told me that it would be quite awhile and maybe we "should go and get something to eat and come back." Seriously. She said that.

I knew Penny was still asleep in the truck so I decided to sit in the waiting room. As soon as I sat down, a man leaned over and said, "Ma'am I don't think you want to sit there, that's where so-and-so was sitting. She's real sick." I looked around the room and there were several people with surgical masks on (a sure sign they have the flu) and two or three either actively vomiting into bags or holding vomit bags. By this point I had moved but the man went on to describe so-and-so's symptoms as including vomiting and 103 degree fever. I felt very contaminated, and suddenly very resolved that I would not be taking Penny into that waiting room - and also very certain that it would be a long, long while before we would be seen by a doctor.

I went back out to the truck, doused myself (including my pants!) with hand sanitizer and discussed the situation with Tray. Penny heard my voice and woke up. By this time, Tray had managed to find instructions on how to reset the elbow online. The doctor had shown us the last time, and I'd since read about it too, but we were both reluctant to try it. Most of the websites say that you can really mess the elbow up if you don't know what you are doing. I recognize that that is probably a disclaimer to make sure people don't sue them, but I was still scared to try it. However, I was even more scared to take her into that ER. Before I would try it based on the internet though, I called 911 hoping that the dispatcher could walk me through it. She just wanted to know where we were and where to send the ambulance and got totally confused when I said we were outside the hospital. In my mind, I thought dispatchers like helped people do CPR and stuff. I thought maybe she could just walk me through it (Penny's normal doctor's office was closed what with it being Sunday and all). So, I know now that dispatchers have no medical knowledge, and I will not rely on that in the future. Ha!

Anyway, resetting it was hard to do it because she was crying and she really started crying once she figured out what was about to happen. It's awful to have to purposefully hurt your child. But, I took her arm, twisted it as I was supposed to and she promptly put it back into "safe" position. If you haven't seen it before, this is arm bent, palm on stomach. They literally can't straighten it out, thus all the screaming involved in straightening it out to reset it. Anyway, we weren't sure if it worked and she knew how much it hurt to move it so she wouldn't even try so we could tell. I thought for a second and then offered her a piece of chocolate. She reached for it. And we knew she was ok. We spent the rest of the trip holding her other hand.

I'll post some pictures from the rest of the trip once I get them uploaded. We had a good time, nursemaid's elbow notwithstanding.

Molars

Another long night with Penny. Her two year molars are 3/4 of the way in, and she just doesn't want to sleep. I have heard that they sleep better after their molars quit coming in. It's safe to say that I have my fingers crossed.

On a completely unrelated note, one of the cutest things she is saying right now is "baghetti" instead of "spaghetti." Oh! And she always asks if we can go to another "caprade." (parade) I love toddler-speak. And I love her. Even if she never sleeps.

First why

Penny has now used the word "why" twice. I read somewhere that why was a hard concept to grasp, and it makes sense to me because I can't define the word why. So, whenever I would ask Penny why something, I would immediately follow the question with a rephrasing of it using another word. Like, "Why are you scared, Penny? What made you scared?" I was hoping that would help her figure out what why means. Well, one day this week she was standing on the stool in the kitchen helping me make something and she turned toward the sink. She reached in toward the dirty dishes and asked if she could touch them. I said no. She said, "why not?" (In a really cute toddler way.) And so I explained why not. Then today on the way home from the playground she was eating crackers. She said in a mischievous voice, "is my carseat clean?" I knew that meant she had crumbled the crackers everywhere, so I said, "I'm gonna go with probably not." She said, "and why not?" (I said, "because you got cracker crumbs all over it." She said, "yeah.") I think it may be awhile before she asks why all the time, or about things she doesn't already know the answer to, and I'm sure I'll get tired of it one day, but I think it's cool that she made the leap to "why."

Size

Penny won't sleep under the covers at all; in fact, it will wake her up if you put any on her because she'll feel it somehow and wake herself up to get out from under them. Consequently, we still put her in sleepsacks at night to keep her warm. They make them even for much older children (and I guess technically that's what snuggies are for grownups). With the weather being as cold as it is now, I ordered her some fleece ones. In the 12-18 months size! The weight limits say 22 to 28 lbs (she's 23 lbs). The thing is, I have two friends that had 9 pound babies and at the standard rate of triple-the-birth-weight at 1 year, they weighed 27 lbs at a year old. So they probably would have outgrown that size well before 18 months. I have to say though, that it's nice to still be able to pick Penny up and carry her around without too much effort. I can't imagine having had to lug around a 27 lb one year old.

Anyway, I say this because this evening I was researching the table and chair set that we want to get Penny for Christmas. One reviewer wrote that it was on the small side and she thought it would be outgrown by about the age of 5. I was sitting here worrying about that. That she might outgrow it too soon. I think she'll be good. :)

Jokester

Penny is developing such a cute sense of humor. At dinner last night Tray asked her if her supper was tasty. She said, "We're tasty...like a banana!" And then she started laughing at her funny joke. It was so absurd, but so cute. I reminds me of Dug the dog in UP and how he tells the joke about the squirrel that isn't funny at all, but he thinks it is.

Heebies

I forgot to tell you guys this story. When we moved into our house in Tallahassee, the upstairs bedroom that would later become Penny's nursery belonged to a very angsty teenage girl. As many of you already know, it was painted blood red and all the baseboards, window and door trim were painted jet black. The walls were covered with photos and pages of magazines and the like, all stapled to the wall, which meant hundreds, if not thousands, of staple holes. In the spaces between pictures, she had written on the wall with regular pens, markers, and sharpies. In a couple spots, she'd used puff-paint for a 3D effect. Her favorite subject was the band Nine Inch Nails, so NIN was written all over the place. After we moved in, I painted over it all with KILZ. Two coats. And then two coats of orange paint that I liked. The writing still showed through. In fact, it seemed to bleed through more and more as time went on. Two more coats of oil-based KILZ and two more coats of yellow paint that Tray liked - and a couple spots where I used the dremel tool and dug down through the paint to rip off sections down to the drywall - and viola! a nicely painted room.

...

One night, Tray and I were asleep and he woke me up having a nightmare. He was acting agitated and saying, "nooooo" in a spooky faraway kind of voice. I shook him awake and told him he'd been having a nightmare. He was still half asleep when he told me that in his dream he was being chased around the garage by a Chucky doll. I said, "I'm sorry. That must have been awful." He goes, "no, it's ok. I was winning." and promptly fell back asleep.

...

A couple days after the people who bought the house from us moved in, the phone rang and it was Felipe (the new owner). He said that they had found something wrapped in a sheet in the attic. I had seen the sheet back up in the rafters, but didn't ever climb in there to see what it was, and honestly forgot about it when we were moving out. You'll never guess what it was. A Chucky doll. Felipe was calling to ask what was up with it? Like, I guess to see if were we trying to spook them or something. It still gives me the heebies thinking about it.

Celebrate!

*note, I wrote this Tuesday, but it didn't post for some reason.

We sold our house! We closed yesterday. I was not physically present for the closing; I turned over my power of attorney to Tray for the occasion. He was amazing to go down there and take care of all of that. We are both so, so glad to be out from under that mortgage. But now we need to refinance our current house.

Last night was the City of Troy's Christmas Parade.



This is Penny waving at a Christmas tree. Actually, she waved nonstop for the whole parade and several times stated that she was waving at this or that Christmas tree as it went by on a float. I thought it was interesting that she was waving at trees. Anyway. We all had a good time. It's interesting how worldview shifts. Prior to leaving Troy, I never attended the Christmas parade, but had I done so I would have found it quaint and even boring. After having lived in Tallahassee, I loooooved it. It was quintessential small town and exactly just right. We got there from our house in five minutes and back home in five minutes. I had a chicken pot pie in the oven and left it to bake until we got home to eat it afterwards and the whole evening was just wonderful.

Thanksgiving 2010

Penelope had a great time playing with her cousins Carlisle and Emily today in Nana's backyard. They ran up and down the hill together I don't know how many times. When we first got there, Penny was very shy as usual. Carly just came and gave Penny a hug and that was all it took to break the ice. Penny ran and talked and hung out with Carly and Emmy like no big thing.

Sick

So it turns out that had I gone to the conference, I would have been sick the whole time. This makes two colds and one stomach virus in one semester. College kids are germy.

Bummed

I am feeling down because I am not at an academic conference going on in Birmingham right now. It's the Southeastern Division of the Association of American Geographers. I was on the program committee this year, which means I read other peoples' papers to see if they were okay ahead of time. But I couldn't get my act together to write anything to present. I had extended time to write something, too, but I was so busy with school and Penny that I never did. And now all my friends and colleagues are writing about SEDAAG on facebook. I am so bummed that I didn't go.

Friends

There is a little girl at Penny's gymnastics class (I'll call her "A") that Penny really likes. She always asks ahead of time if A is going to be there, and once we are there she always wants to go and do whatever it is that A is doing. The only problem? A is incredibly, horribly shy. Whenever I take Penny over to A and her mom, A hides behinds her mom's leg and/or cries. It's very ironic considering I figured it would be Penny who was the shy one in any relationship. Anyway, last night Penny got A to play ball with her. They rolled a large ball between the two of them (with lots of motherly encouragement on both sides) for several minutes. I'd love to parlay this into a playdate for Penny some other time outside of gymnastics, but A's mom works all day and she also has a 6 year old daughter, so I'm not sure she'll be interested. But, maybe if she's as relieved as I think she is that A is actually playing with somebody else besides her older sister maybe she'd be interested in keeping it up. *fingers crossed*

One of those days

I was supposed to meet two students in my office at 1 o'clock. I first thought I could get Penny to sleep in time for her to wake up and come with me. But that didn't happen, so I thought I could get her to sleep and then leave her with Tray while I went by myself. She wouldn't stay asleep though. She was asleep, but I got up to leave and she woke up and wanted to come with me. Tray was asleep in the other room so it would have been too much trouble to wake him up and leave him with a crying Penny. With 10 minutes to get to campus, I had to get her ready and move the carseat from the truck to my car. We got here at 1:15. My students were gone. So there was no point in having come at all. Penny got maybe 15 or 20 minutes of disjointed sleep because I was trying to get out the door, which would have been justifiable if I'd accomplished something by going. As it was, she missed her nap AND I missed my students. FAIL.

Empathy

I think I've mentioned before how tender-hearted Penny can be. Tray and I don't dare express pain because she'll worry about it forever, long after we've gotten over it. I made the mistake of mentioning that I'd cut my finger and I had to discuss the issue with her for two days. Anyway. We just got back from visiting Tray's parents in Georgia. Mr. Glenn has a sick baby calf and Penny keeps asking about him. As she was going to sleep she asked me if he was okay. I said he was. She asked if he was having mommy-milk. I said he was. Then she asked if he was zipped up in his sleepy-sack (which is what she sleeps in). I said no, but his mommy was keeping him nice and warm. It was very sweet.

Two Year Molars

Penny is teething hardcore right now (three of her last four baby teeth are poking through) which is keeping her up at night, and with the time change her sleep is all out of whack (not that it was ever in whack - ha!). We had fun today though. She helped me make meatloaf tonight. She calls it "squishy," as in that's its name, not a description. She'll say, "I want some squishy." and she means meatloaf. Tray and I try really hard not to make mealtimes into any big deal*. She can eat or not, we don't care. That said, I couldn't help but be pleasantly surprised by how much meatloaf she ate this evening. That's good stuff.

*Her main mode of defiance, rather than food, has been and continues to be clothing. As in, she is impossible to get dressed if she doesn't want to get dressed. That's better than it was - at least she stays dressed now. :)

One Year Ago

One of the default viewing choices in iPhoto is to show all the photos taken in the last 12 months. This was the photo at the top of today's list - playing with her (then) new mittens. I can't believe how much she's changed in the past year.

Documentation

I finally remembered to take my phone into Penny's gymnastics class so I could take a video of her jumping. The week before last was the first time she was able to jump on the trampoline like this. Now, I know that the pediatrician said it wasn't a "delay" until 30 months - but the average is around 21 months, which means lots of kids jump well before that (roughly half, mathematically speaking). It was so tough being around all those 18 and 19 month olds in class with us who can bounce with such gusto (and even bounce over into a roll in one case!) and see the looks on the instructors' faces who had clearly never yet had a child in class who couldn't jump and not worry about something being wrong with my 26 month old who could only lurch around on one foot trying to hop. But, now she jumps! And she keeps getting better and better at it! Her new big thing is to jump off of things - which is obviously not necessarily a good thing. So far, she hasn't tried anything too terribly high off the ground, but I imagine it's only a matter of time.

Scary Train

Penny loves trains - when she can see them. Troy is a train hub and lots of them pass through downtown everyday. During the day she can hear the train whistles from downtown and she will get scared and run to Tray or I and want to be picked up because she is scared. She always asks if they are going to come to our house. We keep telling her that they are far away and won't be coming here, but it seems to do little to alleviate the fear. One really negative thing though is that now when one passes by during the night, it will, almost without fail, wake her up and get her upset. I do not know what set off this fear or how to nip it in the bud, but I hope it resolves soon because, seriously, Troy has a lot of trains.

Tricycle Riding on Campus

Couldn't think of a more creative title, so I went literal. We took the push bar for when she got tired or bored, but when she was into it she rarely needed more than a little guidance. She was zooming all over the place.



And then she got a little overconfident in her abilities:

Halloween 2010

Halloween went much better than anticipated! As if to further my point, earlier today Penny let me put ponytails in her hair. They lasted all of 20 minutes, and she wouldn't let me do it for trick or treating, but baby steps.
Here she is checking them out:



And here's the best shot I managed to get of the actual hairdo with my camera phone:


Actual trick-or-treating turned out to be such a blast. The wand got in the way of picking out candy and it also made her nervous to be holding it when confronted by strangers, so I ended up carrying it. But otherwise, she did much better than I thought she would. I don't think she remembered to say trick-or-treat, or talked at all for that matter except when it was just the three of us walking between houses, but she didn't get shy and latch onto us. Instead, she dutifully stood there and picked out candy. She was very funny though - she'd take one piece and that was it. If the person offered her another, she'd say no (so, come to think of it, I guess she did talk to say that!). In between houses when it was just us, she talked and talked. She kept asking "does that house have candy too?" Like, she just couldn't believe that people were giving out candy. She wanted to open every piece that she got, but she was easily deflected by saying, "Well, let's wait and see what this house has." She'd go, "Yeah!" and that was that. She was so excited to trick-or-treat. I'm sure she'll have more fun as she gets older, but this year was so sweet because there was no greed involved. She was so genuine in her excitement, and it was infectious.

Here she is before trick-or-treating at Nana and MawMaw's house:



And eating some candy corn:



We got back to our house about 715 or so and passed out candy ourselves. She kept peeking out the front window (on tiptoes) and asking if there were any more people coming to the door. Between being up later than normal and the sugar high, she was cranky going to bed, but it was worth it overall. I hope I always remember this evening and that genuine innocence and excitement. Now I'm really looking forward to Christmas morning!

Fairy?

Tomorrow is Halloween and I am a little worried about how it is going to go. Penny likes candy, so she's excited about that part, but she doesn't like people - ha! Well, she likes them fine, but not when they actually talk to her. And probably not when they are dressed up in strange costumes. I am also worried about getting her to wear hers. I tried to find the most non-costume costume that I could because I knew she would not tolerate dressing up in anything too much out of the ordinary. (This is a girl who gets embarrassed to look in the mirror with a ponytail in her hair.) Old Navy had their fairy costumes marked way down so I got her one of those. It is pretty much just a dress with tiny wings attached on the back and it has a wand. I figured I could get her to wear a dress. She likes dresses sometimes. I think she'll carry the wand up until we get to the first house. At that point, she'll probably latch onto one of us and abandon the whole enterprise. Well, I guess we can always stay home and pass out candy to other kids. Here's hoping it all goes better than I think it will. And if not, I just need to keep in mind that she is two, not seven.

Johnny Knoxville

Had to use his given name since this is a family establishment. Penny's latest daredevil antics:

Medley

I found some videos to post! This is from August, just after we'd moved to Troy. Penny is playing guitar with Tray and singing a medley of "Old MacDonald" and "Keep on the Sunnyside." Um - I would advise against turning up the volume very loud.

Making Faces

Penny has this new face that she makes that Tray and I cannot stand. It's a cross between a glare and a glower and is used by her to express her dissatisfaction with something. She knows that we don't like it, so the face itself is like her little way of being disobedient on top of whatever else it is she is doing that precipitated the face.

She also likes to tell on herself if she does something "bad." For example, she isn't supposed to get onto her bed with her shoes on, but she will and then come running to tell me, "I just put my shoes on the bed!" Or I'll get her down and tell her no and Tray will walk in from outside and she'll have to run over to him to announce, "I just put my shoes on the bed!" Not in an excited way, but seriously an admission of something she knew she wasn't supposed to do.

This evening she and I were in her bedroom going night-night, with some gentle coercion from me. It was dark so I couldn't see her clearly, but she announced to me, "Mommy, I'm making that face at you." It is so hard not to laugh at times like that.

Riding My Tricycle, Easy To Do

That's Penny's favorite Elmo skit on Sesame Street youtube. (On a separate, but related note - what is UP with Elmo's World on Sesame Street? Are they trying to damage kid's brains with insane amounts of overstimulation?)

Anyway. Penny can ride her tricycle now! I failed to report this in my earlier skillz entry. It certainly qualifies. She often starts off pedaling backwards, but soon gets going in the right direction. She's still not great about steering, but she's got the pedaling down.

Skillz

We re-upped Penny's gymnastics class for the new term, and the first class was on Thursday. There was a week off between the last week of the last term and this week. At the last class we attended two weeks ago, Penny could not jump on the trampolines. I am very happy to report that this week she was able to jump! She jumped on the trampoline and had a big time. There was zero evidence that just two weeks ago, this was a skill she did not possess.

At the end of class the instructors always give the kids something. For a couple weeks there, they gave out dum-dums and Penny has asked every time before we go if she is going to get a lolli-pop. Unfortunately for her, they often give out stamps on the hand or stickers instead. She loathes the stamps. I have to take her to the bathroom immediately to wash it off every time. This week she got a green star sticker though that Miss Hannah gave her. She really likes Miss Hannah. Penny started to put it on her shirt like she does with all stickers, but she heard Miss Hannah suggest to another girl that she put it on her hand, and so she immediately put it on her hand. The way she was holding her hand so carefully was so cute. She asked me to roll her sleeve up too so she could see it. You could tell the sticker was extra special because Miss Hannah had given it to her.

In other new skill news, Penny has started being able to eat corn on the cob. This may seem minor, but she's always been somewhat averse to biting things off. She eats well if it is cut up for her, but biting into a sandwich or hamburger, or an apple, or corn on the cob, has not been her thing. She would eat bananas without them being sliced, but that was about it. Until this week, when she figured out how to eat corn on the cob. She also put a hurtin' on a hamburger from Burger King on the way back from Tallahassee. I didn't have to tear up pieces for her or anything. She ate it like a hamburger. Pretty cool.

Actually..

I so wish I had been posting more regularly here because I want to keep track of the stuff Penny does so I won't forget. She's really been feeling the strain of moving that we all have felt. She's been kind of hard to deal with the last few days. She's definitely high maintenance, but I know she'll settle down again if we can get back into a routine.
In terms of talking, she's just a little jabberwocky going on and on and on just to hear her own voice I think sometimes. She'll string sentences together with all kinds of connector words, but, and and, and so, and then, creating one long run-on sentence, the parts of which do not necessarily bear any relationship to one another. Tray joked that she sounds like some of the papers he used to write for grad school. Ha!
One of my favorite words that she uses nowadays is "actually." If you say something that's wrong, she'll correct you with, "actually,...". Like, "Penny, do you want to wear this green shirt?" "Actually, it's blue." Or, if you give her something to eat and she wants something else, she'll say, for example, "actually, I want a banana." It just trips me out.
Yesterday, I was putting something together and she was holding the bag of screws for me (to "help"). I asked her to hand me a screw and she took a longish time, so I reached for the bag. She yanked it back and said (with deep seriousness), "Wait a minute! I will get one for you."
On the negative side of things, she will also say stuff like "leave me alone," "don't bother me," "stop it," etc. when she isn't getting her way. That stuff annoys me. A lot of times I don't think she means to sound as, well, "mean" as she sounds, but she is working out how to express herself. I hope she works it out soon! (But, I'm not holding my breath.)

Moving

I see that my last post was on October 3, so I'm falling down on the job around here. Ha! We got an offer on our Tallahassee house, so in addition to the 5 classes I am teaching and the two year old, we've been traveling back and forth to get that place cleared out. Which, you know, no big deal except for the aforementioned two year old. Who Will. Not. sleep in the car even if we are in the vehicle for 3.5 hours through her nap time and she is yawning profusely. At one point she asked if we could go back "to the Alabama house" so she could go night-night and then we could keep going to Florida.

Anyway. We met the new (potential) owners and they seem really nice. They are going to lease the house from us until December when we will close. Hopefully. It will be SO nice not to have two mortgages.

BUT and ALSO, we got new phones! Palm Pre phones to be exact. And they are awesome. They have cameras! And video features! So, I will be posting more of that type stuff hopefully. If I get a spare moment to do so. I am actually typing this in my classroom as my students are taking a test.

Mommy Tell Mr. Bear...

On the way back from Tallahassee this afternoon, Penny and I had this thirty minute conversation (at least) in which she prefaced every single thing that she said with, "Mommy, tell Mr. Bear..." As in, "Mommy, tell Mr. Bear 'where'd Penny go?'" Ok, I said, "Mr. Bear, Where'd Penny go?" and then she'd say, "Mommy, tell Mr. Bear 'there she is!'" and so on and so forth. "Mommy, tell Mr. Bear Penny wants a snack." Me: "Mr. Bear, Penny wants a snack. Penny, what would you like to eat?" Penny: "Mommy, tell Mr. Bear she wants a nutrigrain bar." Even later on after she got upset because we'd seen a train and I wouldn't turn around and go back for us to look at it some more, she said through sobs, "Mommy tell Mr. Bear that she [meaning Penny] wants to see the train!" It was the most wonderfully bizarre thing.

And then after she'd been crying about the train, we stopped at the rest area outside of Dothan for her to go potty and I needed to wash her face (combination of tears and nutrigrain bar remnants). She asked me something about why I had to wash her face and I said because it got dirty when you were crying. She said, "I was crying cuz you wouldn't give me a hug!" It broke my heart and made me laugh at the same time. Also, I think that might be the first time she correctly used the concept of 'because' in a sentence.

Fears of the Cosmos

I think toddler fears are pretty normal, but it seems like Penny is "scared" of something new everyday, and by the next day she's on to something else. A lot of it has to do with her perception of the world, which is really interesting to me. She and I had driven to Montgomery in search of catfood for Mullet (don't ask) and on the way back we were going up a hill. The slope of the road made the horizon beyond the hill temporarily disappear and Penny got really upset that we were either going to drive right up into the sky, or that the sky was going "to get us." The other day, on the way to the grocery store, she put on her sunglasses and said she was doing so so that the sun couldn't get her.
This one isn't associated with a fear, but illustrative of her perception of the sky: At my mom's house one day a couple weeks ago we left after supper and the moon was already up. She asked if we could walk down the road to go see it (she likes the moon). I looked down the road, and the perspective did make it seem like if you walked down the road that the moon would be closer.
It's kind of interesting to see how she views things at this age.

Ma Ma

When Penny was learning to talk she called me ma-ma for all of a nanosecond before transitioning to mommy. It was probably a few months really, but it seems like it didn't last very long. Sometime over the last week she decided that it would be funny to go back to ma-ma though. Not all the time, but sometimes - and always with a mischevious laugh like it's just soooo funny. It's her joke of the week apparently.

miss independent

A short anecdote: this evening Penny was being extremely talkative, even more so than usual. I think she was just trying to keep talking to keep from having to take a bath. At some point, the conversation took a humorous turn. I forget what she said exactly to start with, but it was something to the effect that she couldn't (physically) get into the bathtub. I told her that I would help her. She looked at me and said, "I will get in there when I want to." The way she said it, she really didn't mean anything by it. She was actually trying to explain that she could get in the tub by herself, but out of context it sounds so teenager talk-back. I cracked up.

2 year well visit

I finally got Penny in for her 2 year well visit yesterday - two months late. Actually, at her 18 month visit our pediatrician said that it was fine to wait a couple months until on into the fall so that she could have her flu shot and not have to come in twice. But, mostly we were late going because of moving and then finding a new doctor and having her records requested and then sent and then the first appointment I could get was several weeks away, and etc. So. Yesterday.

She's doing great. Still 6th percentile on weight - 25th on height. Even though she wasn't due for any shots other than the flu shot, she got a prevnar booster. Apparently a new one came out that covers more strains so she got it. And it made her sick. She was irritable last night. We could not get her to take a bath, or really agree to much of anything. And then, of course, today she woke up with a fever. She did not want me to leave this morning. It was heartwrenching because she was begging me to stay and crying and she was so pitiful because she didn't feel good. Poor baby girl. I can't wait to get home this afternoon to give her a big old hug.

I did ask about the jumping thing, and the doctor said that the majority of kids do it by 2 1/2 (30 months), so she's still got a few months. But even if she doesn't jump by then, as long as she's doing everything else ok then it's not a big deal. For example, she can kick a ball by bending her leg at the knee which is supposedly a harder concept than jumping, so it's probably not developmental. Maybe she just doesn't like how it feels?

Work

I've been wanting to post to the blog more often, but I am crazy busy with work. Also, my camera died so no photos to post either. Right now I am at work in my office for office hours. I'm supposed to be writing lectures, but I am fighting burnout so I am going to write this instead.

I really like teaching, but it is so much work. It's not a 9 to 5 job. I teach 4 classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Two of them are the same so I have 3 different classes. Each class meets 1 hour and 15 minutes. This means that I am writing six different 1 hour and 15 minute long speeches every week - coming from someone who struggled to write a 20 minute speech in college if required for a class. I'd spend a week or more working on that 20 minute speech, practicing it over and over again to get it just right and usually would end up talking too fast or forgetting parts and wind up with a much too short speech. Now, I have to fill up five hours of talking time twice a week - ten hours total. I write most every night after Penny goes to sleep. I write during her naps. I write during my office hours on Monday and Wednesday. Sometimes I write my lectures right before class over my lunch break (and sometimes it shows). I also am teaching an online class that adds to the workload.

Add to that that we moved in to our new house the day before the first day of classes. All of the myriad things that need doing day to day in an established household are challenging for me under normal circumstances. Housework, plus unpacking and painting and etc, etc. It's overwhelming sometimes.

Tray is wonderful though and I am so glad that we have each other to get through the craziness. He's really great about helping me to step back and just enjoy things too because I definitely have a tendency to stay wrapped up like a stress ball.

And teaching really is worth it. The grades on all my first tests were not that great, which was disappointing (and much lower than the grades I used to get teaching at FSU). But, students are starting to come out of their shells and ask questions and stay after class to talk about things. With excitement in their voices! In my 230 class yesterday, students actually engaged in discussion about structural adjustment programs in South America. With each other. During class. I was like, yes! This is what college should be like. There are definitely a lot of challenges, but also glimmers of good stuff.

I am so grateful for the job and the opportunity especially in today's economy. And hopefully things will get a little easier as they go on.

Now, back to writing lectures. And writing a presentation for a conference in November. It only has to be 15 minutes. Should be a piece of cake. :)

Diapers

I boxed up P's diapers this weekend. She's only been wearing one at night for awhile now, but I was reluctant to put her in underwear overnight. I don't know why - she was overnight potty trained long before she was daytime potty trained. It's been months since she pee-peed at night, long before we moved. I guess I was just worried about what would happen if there was an accident, that it might set her back during the day. I finally just decided that it at this point if she does go potty at night that it will be just that - an accident. So, no more diapers. Three days now, all underwear all the time. Yay, Penny!

Duck Center update

We went to the rec center for gymnastics this evening. Penny was ... watchful. She didn't really do much but hang out and watch other people. But that was really kind of cool because she would watch somebody for a long time, and then do whatever it was they were doing. They had some of the older girls rolling down a small incline, and Penny decided this would be fun, so now she is rolling all over the place. Also our instructor, Miss Hannah, was showing some of the older girls how to do different types of jumps down the long trampoline. Penny was enthralled. She stood in the ball pit bouncer thing and watched Hannah intently. Then she started bouncing! She still never quite got off the ground, and looked pretty awkward, but she was trying SO hard. I could tell that she really wanted to do whatever Miss Hannah was saying. I have to admit, it is a little hard for me to watch her try so hard to do something that seems to come so naturally to all the other kids, but at the same time I felt a lot of pride watching her put so much effort into it. I just know she's going to figure it out soon!

Duck Center

So, Penny's gymnastics "classes" continue on Thursday nights. We missed the week before last b/c it was the day after she dislocated her elbow again, but we went last week. She learned how to roll head first on the mat (with help). She won't do it from a standing position, but if she kneels down she will do it. She even attempted to bounce on the trampoline. I don't think she actually got any "air" but she did bend her knees and sort of moved in a bounce-ish manner. Not sure what that's about, but we never got her to bounce in her doorway bouncer when she was a baby either. Well, I think she did eventually do it, but mostly she just hung there and spun around. :)
The classes are held at the recreation center, which I call the rec center for short. Penny calls it the "duck center" because I guess that's what it sounds like to her when I say it. They have a large salt-water fish aquarium there that she loves and will ask multiple times a week to go see the fish at the duck center. I am tempted to get an aquarium for our house, except that we need another mouth to feed like a hole in the head.
They also have an indoor pool, an outdoor pool, and a sprayyard. I took her swimming last week and we had fun. She mostly wanted to hang out on the wheelchair ramp part where it was shallow enough for her to walk up and down in the water. I did take her to the shallow end where I could stand up and she "jumped" in for me to catch her (I held onto her from a seated position on the edge). I also turned her on her stomach and she sort of doggie paddled naturally. I didn't have her any arm floaty things, but I think I might get her some so she can move independently of me. I thought we could get by without them, but without them I can't let go of her at all and that turned out to be no fun for either of us. My friend Kelly visited Australia last summer and taught over the summer. Her oldest daughter took swimming lessons. If you don't know, swimming is HUGE in Australia as a sport and she said that little kids like little, little kids were swimming in the lanes freestyle. None of the mommy and me stuff - full on swimming. I wonder how old Penny will be before she can really swim like that - 3? 4? I think I started lessons at 3, but I'm not sure when I actually started really swimming. Anyway. It's a fun place, the duck center.

Let me ask mommy a question

Penny is very humorous in announcing her intent to do something before she does it. (And then sometimes recapping the event after it just occurred.) Today we had a dead pine tree cut down and the guy who did it also brought us a load of mulch for our yard. This evening Penny was "raking" the mulch with her Penny-sized rake when she suddenly dropped it saying to herself, "I am going to go ask Mommy a question." I bent down low as she ran over, curious to know what she might ask me. She pointed to the pile of mulch in the garden and asked, "Do you see that mulch right there Mommy?" "Yes," I replied expectantly. "The man brought it in the yellow tractor." It was kind of anticlimactic, but then I realized, wasn't it just like yesterday that she was learning to talk? And now she's telling me about stuff?

Also, one funny thing Penny does is to say "dude" when trying to ask "what did he do". Instead, she'll say, "what he dude?" (I'm spelling it "dude" so you'll know how she's saying it - doed just didn't look right). I do that thing where I parrot her statement back to correct her without correcting her and it usually results in the next time she says it being, "what he did?" Close enough. Anyway, I just love the conjugation of the verb did into dude.

Miss Priss

Penny can be so prim and proper sometimes. Yesterday, I sliced some mozzarella cheese for myself. She asked for some cheese so I sliced her a couple pieces. I put them on a napkin for her on the table. She looked at it and said, "I'm sorry. I want yellow cheese." (meaning cheddar) like she was sorry for creating a misunderstanding or something. I had to stifle a giggle at that one.

Cold

I have a cold and I feel blah. Wonder if I caught it in the ER with Penny or from one of my students? Or some mashup of germs from both? Well, anyway, at least it held off until after my birthday this year. Thanks to my mom for coming over to help with P while Tray is out of town so I could take a nap (or two).

On a totally unrelated note, I would like to point out that Penny has stacked a tower of legos at least ten pieces high on the top of which a lego horse is currently balanced precariously on one foot. Physics, Penny.

Elbow Redux

So I didn't take this picture for purposes of my blog. I was trying to convince Penny that her sling was something super-cool, so super-cool, in fact, that it warranted me taking her picture. This is her late last night after getting back from the hospital before we ate an extremely late supper. She dislocated her elbow again - doing much of nothing, again. The doctor popped it back in, but there was no relief and after some wait time they did an x-ray. 9 times out of 10 it pops back in during the x-ray process since the technician has to move it into different positions to get different views. Six different views as it turns out. X-rays on a two year old's dislocated arm = not fun. For anyone.

Anyway, it did not pop in - or maybe it did, but it didn't take. After another long wait period, the doctor popped it in a second time, but she was still unable to move it. Although they were not great at communicating this with us last night, I have since read online that after that standard procedure has been followed and it still isn't functioning then you go to an orthopedist because the ligament is likely torn. Which would mean she would have had to wear a splint on her arm for a week and a half or so. It being, by then, the middle of the night, the ER sent us home with P in the above sling and the information for the orthopedist we were to call this morning.

We did not attempt to give her a bath or anything before bed last night. She was super tired by the time we got home and actually we ended up just letting her sleep in the shirt she had on rather than attempting to take it off. (Well, I figured I could get it off, but I wasn't sure if I could get another one on.) It was a long night. It was so sad as she was going to sleep. We took the sling off before bed, but she still couldn't move her arm. She wanted to hold Mr. Bear, but couldn't move her arm. She asked me to put him under her arm for her, but I didn't want to hurt her, so I told her I would just lay him on her tummy. She fell asleep relatively easily (thankfully), but it was a fitful sleep. She would cry out in her sleep. She woke up at 4 a.m. and was still in pain, but I got her back to sleep. At some point thereafter though she must have moved in such a way that it popped back in fully because when she woke up at 7 it was fine. She waved it at me and Tray and said, "My arm's all better!" In a tone of voice like, "huh. look at that."

Tray and I were so, so grateful for that turn of events. She's been totally fine all day, but Tray and I are completely gun shy with her. Which is funny because she really didn't do anything out of the ordinary the two times that it has happened now. It still doesn't hurt to be careful with her though. Man, what a night. I am so glad she's better. And I really hope that it won't happen again, but I know now that the possibility is pretty strong.

I Love You

Penny has lately been telling Tray and I, "I Love You." It comes out more like, "I lovf you," but still it is very sweet. Right now she seems very sincere when she says it. This evening at dinner she kept giving me hugs and telling me she loves me. You just can't beat that kind of confidence boost!

Gymnastics

One of the things about Troy (and really Alabama in general) is the lack of public space. As a geographer, this is interesting to me. As a mom, it's annoying. In Tallahassee there were lots of parks and playgrounds and public activities like concerts and outdoor movies. I was a member of a meetup group that had regular play dates and was even getting a homeschooling preschool co-op going. In Troy, not so much. There's one playground built adjacent to a housing project which means the "kids" playing there do stuff like hang out on the equipment shooting bottle rockets. Or we took Penny there last weekend early one morning and there was a grandmother there with her 4 year old and 13 month old granddaughters. She was holding the 13 month old while helping the older one play - and chain smoking the whole time. While HOLDING the baby. I have this theory that small towns in Alabama don't have public parks for the same reason that they don't have public transportation - because white people would have to interact with black people. So the only park Troy has was obviously built with grant money next to the projects and that's the only reason there is one at all. All of this is stuff I did not miss about Alabama - although it may be more of a city/town thing. But.
In trying to find something for Penny to do activity-wise, I found out that there is a parent and tot gymnastic class at the recreation center. It meets on Thursday afternoons and is very unstructured. The little ones just run around on the equipment, and the "instructor" stops by periodically to encourage them to try something or another but doesn't stay long before moving on to the next kid. It's very laid back. In addition to getting Penny some interaction with other kids, it's always nice as a mom to be around other kids to compare/contrast (in a good way) to make sure we're on track with things. The class Penny and I are in is for kids up to 36 months. There was a 3 and 4 year old class going on at the same time and they were much more structured. None of the little ones in our group were interested in each other much at all whereas the 3 and 4 years olds had no problem being part of a "group." Anyway, I was glad to see that this seems to be normal childhood development and not something particular to Penny.
So, the one thing that I was worried about physically with P is that she hasn't jumped yet. I know there is a range of time when kids do stuff like that, but I couldn't help but notice that all the other kids, some much younger than she, could jump in the trampolines and loved to bounce around. She'd maybe bend her knees if I asked her, but her idea of bouncing was to high step one leg at a time. The instructor got her up on one of the small trampolines and held her arms, but Penny just sat down. But, she is awesome on the thing where they climb up the wall on the rope net and slide down the other side into the ball pit and she was great at the balance beam. You just have to barely hold her hand and she can walk all the way across with little effort or concentration. AND, the next day at home she "jumped" outside in our yard. She didn't really get off the ground much, but she's clearly working on it in her head and I bet when we go back on Thursday, she'll be trying to jump on the trampolines and other equipment.

Blast from the past

Today one of our old friends, Amanda, came over to visit. She has a 7 month old, Anna Claire, who also came over. We knew Amanda when we lived in Troy before. She was an Anthropology major, but was just starting as I was leaving. Penny really liked her. I told Tray though that Penny is like a cat in that she prefers when people only mildly pay attention to her. If you show up excited to see the grownups and showing concern for your own child as Amanda did, Penny will warm right up. She was sitting in Amanda's lap with Anna Claire and showing her how her legos work and actually talking. In sentences. The only person she really talks to besides Tray and me is my mom, and she has kind of the same laid-back approach to interactions. So, I've decided that Penny is a cat.
It was great seeing Amanda and meeting Miss Anna Claire. Such a blast from the past. And for her too. Turns out the house we bought used to belong to her great aunt, so she'd actually been in our house many times before. I'm sure it was really weird for her. It would have been for me. Also, what a small world. Crazy how things happen like that.

Pirates and Brothers

Penny loves to pretend to be a pirate. She'll hold up a napkin or something to her face and say that it is her "eyepatch." Or she'll take a piece of newspaper and put it on her head and say it is her "pirate hat." We have a large-ish empty box in our kitchen from unpacking that she loves to climb in and out of and from what I can pick out of her talking to herself, she mostly pretends it is a pirate ship. Today though she said something while sitting in the box that seemed to me to be completely out of the blue. She said, "Where's my brother go?" I tested her to see if I heard what I thought I heard. I had. I said, "you don't have a brother, Penny." She said, "well, we'll just have to get one." She may have to wait awhile. :)

Scale

Well, today went a lot better with Penny. She did still try to go naked several times, but I decided to just let it go on the theory that my being concerned about it is what's making it interesting to her. Even if it isn't, letting it go is still better for me anxiety-wise.

I'm really busy with school and prepping lectures and dealing with the culture shock of being back in Alabama. It's strange, but there's a lot of stuff that I forgot about living in this area that is just a lot different in Tallahassee. Not totally alien, mind you, but just that subtle bit of "off" that is just enough to be disorienting. It's hard to describe. Actually, I could describe it, but won't. I also feel disoriented because everything is the same like I just left Troy last week instead of eight years ago, but then again everything is just slightly different. Not a lot, but enough. It's like if someone you hadn't seen for eight years just ran up to you and started up a conversation like you had just seen her yesterday, only you were standing there going, "Dude. Eight years."

Anyway, I just finished reading my students' current event assignments for my online class. That's so fun, because even though it is a pain to grade 39 assignments plus replies, I learn so much without having to go and search out current events in the news myself. Did you know, for instance, that the wildfires raging in Russia coupled with the drastic heatwave being experienced there has decimated up to 20% of the wheat crop. And that Putin is considering halting all exports of wheat? That plus the floods in Pakistan (where people need food like, say, wheat) = not good. Just saying.

Defiance

I don't know if it's the move or what, but Penny is being little miss defiant. Yesterday we were all in the back yard and she kept trying to run around to the front. Since our yard is not fenced in and we live on a rather busy street, I didn't want her doing that. I asked her to stop, then told her to stop and she kept on doing it. She'd pause mid-stride, look back, laugh, and keep right on going. Like it was a big game. I told her we'd have to go inside if she did it again. She did it again. So we went inside, whereupon she cried. I let her cry for a minute (while comforting her a bit) and then told her we could go back outside if she stayed where mommy and daddy were. She made one more attempt to go back around, but did stop and come back when I told her to (and threatened to take her back inside).

The other thing she's doing, and she did a lot of it today, is to take her pants and underwear off and just run around half naked. I'll catch her taking her pants off and tell her to stop or tell her no and she'll just keep right on going and then I can't get her to put them back on, or let me put them back on. It becomes this giant battle of wills and I usually end up trying to physically force her clothes back on. But I don't want to hurt her and she's really squirmy and I end up just so frustrated and feeling like an idiot 32 (almost) year old who can't control a 2 year old. I can handle a lot about motherhood, but I swear the defiance stuff just really gets to me. Unfortunately, from what I understand, that's pretty much what life is like with a 2 and 3 year old. I hear 4 isn't so bad, but 4 seems a long way off.

Well, we're here.

We made it to Troy and have moved into our house. We still don't have much in the way of amenities - one bed for the three of us, no living room furniture, no microwave, no dishwasher, no internet, no fence for the dogs. It's almost like being on vacation at the beach or something, only no beach to make up for the other stuff. I hope to have some photos and things to upload some time. I don't have a computer yet at work (which is a whole other story), but I have my laptop here today and just wanted to update the blog briefly. Penny is doing well. When I first left my job to stay home last month before we moved, she starting having more stereotypical toddler tantrums and we figured out that it was because her routine had changed. Or rather, that she had no real routine because I was home and we could just go and do whatever, whenever. Her constantly asking us, "what's next?" clued us in. So, we started a system where I went to "work" from 8 to 10 in the mornings (upstairs to prep my classes or work on my online class) and then we had lunchtime and then nap and etc. so the days always went the same and she knew what was happening next. Her tantrums became largely non-existent once we did that. Not to say that we didn't still get out and go to the store or the park or whatever, but there were certain times of the day that we did those things while other elements of the day stayed the same. Anyway, since we've been here, the level of tantruming has increased again and I realized last night it's because she doesn't have a routine right now with the move and going back to Georgia for the party and my schedule being wonky with meetings and such. I figured this out because of her behavior, and also because she must have asked me "what's next?" eight hundred times yesterday. Once our weeks settle down into a routine though I think she'll settle down like she did before. I'm thinking of making her a what's next chart or something so she can always know what is going to happen next and not get frustrated.

Because it was there

We are moving tomorrow! Spent the day packing the u-haul trailer and running errands. As long a day as today was though tomorrow will be even longer. 2 p.m. faculty meeting and 3 p.m. closing, both preceded by actually getting ourselves to Troy and followed by, um, unloading the u-haul we spent all day loading. And the next day is my first day of classes. *gulp*

So - funny story. We had the baby gate at the bottom of our stairs taken down while we were carrying stuff downstairs so we wouldn't have to keep stepping over it. Penny was very good all day, but late this evening when Tray and I were each occupied in other rooms, Penny decided to climb the stairs. She knows she isn't supposed to go up by herself. Tray found her about half way up and she said, "I not s'posed to climb stairs, but I just had to."

So, I was just calling...

Penny loves to pretend to talk on the phone (she won't actually talk if there is a real live person on the other end, but she loves to pretend. Also right now she is experimenting a lot with the word "so." She likes to string two or three sentences together with the word so - even if the sentences bear no causal relationship. Sample sentence: "I was just running, so I was just coloring." Her phone conversations are like this (actual conversation that occurred as I was typing this): "Hi! Good morning! I'm eating teddy bear cookies. They're good. I was just eating some, so now I'm all done. [pause] Ok. Bye, bye." Then, to me, "I was just talking to Jake, so I'm going to sleep."

Moving! (-ish)

We are scheduled to close on our "Alabama house" on Wednesday at 3 p.m. (central). We are going to take a load of stuff up with us in a u-haul, but by no means all of our stuff. Since we still have a "Florida house," we can leave a lot of the non-essentials here. We aren't sure of our actual schedule yet, but it looks like we'll be packing on Tuesday and leaving bright and early Wednesday to get up there. This style of moving - a little bit at a time in the middle of the week - means we are largely going to be moving by ourselves despite lots of people offering to help. We could have waited to do a big move over the weekend, but our nephew is having a birthday party on Saturday evening and logistically it is just too crazy to think about driving back to Tallahassee on Friday and then back up to the farm Saturday for the party and then back to Tallahassee on Sunday, load a u-haul and move to Troy on Monday. Or - load the u-haul in advance of the party and bring our u-haul, two dogs, a cat, and four chickens with us to the party. As it stands it is going to be like move to Troy, then come back to the farm for the party, and then either back to Troy or back to Tallahassee to get more stuff and/or clean for a maybe showing. Ugh. Life is crazy right now!

"Fell"

Fell is like a four-letter word around here. Ok so, yes, technically it is a four letter word, but you know what I mean. Penny does not like it when somebody or something falls down. Some time ago I rented March of the Penguins thinking she'd enjoy seeing the penguins. About five minutes in, one fell down and that was the end of that. When my friend Kelly came over last week and brought her daughter Kate (age 21 months), Kate tripped on Penny's tractor and fell down in the living room. Kate jumped up completely unscathed and batted nary an eyelash. Penny was almost inconsolable. She apparently witnessed her cousin Owen fall down on the carport in Georgia because every time we are up there and walk past that spot, she'll say, "Owen fell down. [pause] "But he's okay." (because I've said that enough). And if she ever falls in the yard, for a good couple days afterwards she'll walk past that spot and point to it and say, "I fall down right there."

Yesterday she and I walked outside to discover that an oak limb had fallen on some elephant ears we have planted near the house. I said something stupid like, "Oh look, an oak limb fell out of the tree." I think Penny expressed her concern for that tree limb probably twenty or thirty times over the course of the morning. "That tree limb fall down?" [pause] "It's okay?"

*sigh* Yes, Penny, the tree limb is okay.

Nautical Party

Today we went to Penny's friend Arran's 2nd birthday party. It was nautical themed and all the kids got little sailor hats to decorate. Penny did not want to decorate hers, but she was just as cute in plain white. It was super hot even though it was this morning (we are under heat advisory here), but their yard was very shady. I keep meaning to write a post about how quirky Penny can be, but I think it might be a really long post. Ha! Arran's mom had chocolate cupcakes instead of a cake. Penny liked the icing but wouldn't eat the cupcake even though I kept offering her small pieces that I broke off her. She finally said something that made me realize that she thought the cake was dirt (because it was brown and crumbly). We explained that it was cake just like her birthday cake (which had been a white cake). Once she took a bite she immediately went, "Mmm. That's good!" She's a nut.

Oh - in potty training news, she wore a diaper to the party, but we had just sat down in the grass to eat our brunch when Penny told me she had to go potty. So we went inside and I helped her use the potty. I thought that was pretty cool that she still wanted to go even though she was in an unfamiliar place.

Diapers

Know how many diapers Penny has used in the last two days (including nighttime)? One.

And it was totally my fault for leaving her in the bedroom today by herself because she wouldn't take a nap and I needed to get some work done. She was screaming the toddler equivalent of obscenities at me, but I was ignoring her. So. Anyway, pretty much potty trained, that one is. I am so proud of her. I think it will be along while yet before I take her out to the store or something sans diaper, but seriously I usually wash diapers every two days and tonight would be the night to wash them. And there is all of one diaper to wash. Awesome!

Also awesome: the lack of her nap today means she fell asleep at 8 pm instead of 10! Hurray! I am off to eat a bowl of ice cream.

Penny-beeps and Pie-Pies

I keep meaning to post about this, but haven't gotten around to it. I wish now that I had written down when this started, because now I can't remember. At least since May or June Penny has been making up her own silly words and concepts. One day I was changing her diaper and she looked at me and said, "I'm a Penny-beep." I said, "You're a Penny-beep?" She nodded and said, "and you're a Mommy-beep." Daddy is also sometimes a Daddy-beep and there was a box in the dining room that she was playing with for a while there that was sometimes a box-beep. Don't ask me. I have no idea.

She also has invented something called a pie-pie. It seems to be an imaginary food-stuff. She'll occassionally hold her hands cupped together and say, "I have a pie-pie," or, "I have two pie-pies."

The alligator in the corner of the living room is still there and gets almost daily offerings of food. It is funny to walk into the living room and find almost like a little shrine of offerings to the imaginary alligator - a bowl of cheerios, the lid to one of her toys (probably used as a "plate"), etc. He is apparently a very hungry alligator.

On the flip side of the imagination is that she is suddenly more fearful of random things. For two mornings last week she didn't want me to put her down when we woke up in the morning. She said something like, "There's no snakes out there." I think she had bad dreams to that effect. She has learned the word "scared" and will tell us almost daily about something or another that she has decided that she is "scared" of. Today it was the blinds. On Friday I took her to the grocery store and as I carried her into the store a car passed us in the parking lot. She latched on chimpanzee style until it went past and then she leaned up and said, "I'm a little scared of cars and trucks." Not a bad thing to be scared of I guess, but I actually had to stifle a chuckle at the way she said it. She is so cute sometimes.

Housing Updates

We had another showing this afternoon. The family from last weekend evidently didn't work out. The school zones we are in are not good (really bad actually) and according to their realtor that was a concern for them. We saw the guy who came to look at our house today and he did not seem the type to care about school zones, so maybe he'll be interested in buying it. You never know.

We are having the home inspection on the house in Troy on Tuesday, and providing that goes well, we'll move forward with the bank. Hopefully we can close on that place in a couple weeks.

Birthday Milestones

We had a really low-key, but fun, birthday celebration with Penny. We went for a boat ride on the Wakulla River and had a good time. We ate cake and opened presents. I believe there may have been balloons and streamers and possibly even party hats (which Penny called pig hats after her If You Give a Pig a Party book). Penny liked all her presents - a toy airplane, tractor, book, and assorted cooking implements (for her play stove). I also got her a tea set. She doesn't recognize it as a tea pot though. She thinks it is a watering can for watering flowers! Ha!

In taking stock of the day, it's just amazing how much she has changed since two years ago when she first came into the world. I don't know what it is exactly, but both Tray and I noticed starting about a week ago that she seems to have made another "great leap forward" verbally (Sorry - just finished the China section of my World class). I think it's partly that she can talk about past tense and future tense things now. She will talk about things that she did and will do. She's also really into figuring out her "opposites" - she likes big and little, in and out, under and over, etc. and likes playing games with herself and us that involve getting to demonstrate/practice this, like climbing over and under our legs when we are sitting down.

Also, she has become more engaged in pretend play. She will talk to her animals and Gigi-baby and ask them questions and have them do things. She laid on the bed the other day and said she was going to sleep, but then she sat up and let me know, "I not go sleep. I 'tend go sleep." Then I was joking around with her to see if I could get her to pretend to be various animals and she flapped her arms when I asked her to pretend to be a bird. It was pretty cool.

Two!

Penelope is two years old! Hurray! Happy Birthday!

One Year Old

I would just like to point out (to myself) that according to the ticker at the top of this page, Penny is today 1 year, 11 months, 3 weeks, and 6 days old. I have precious few days left to refer to her as a one year old. In a couple days she really will be two. Amazing!

Moving Update

We put in an offer on a house in Troy! I am very excited and hope it works out. We also had a family come and look at our house here in Tallahassee yesterday, so we are also very hopeful that they will want to buy this place from us. We actually stayed here while they looked around and they seemed to like it very much, so fingers crossed. Even though we were approved to carry a second (small) mortgage, it will be nice not to have two at one time.

In Penny news, she definitely regressed on the potty training while Tray was out of town last week looking for houses in Troy, but she's getting back on track now that he's been home a couple days. We've also transitioned her to an afternoon, just after lunch, nap, but that means she doesn't go to sleep now until between 930 and 10 p.m., which means a lot less time for me at night. I can't seem to get to bed before midnight these days. I am looking forward to getting back into the central time zone (I like central time better anyway), because if we act as though she's still in the eastern time zone in terms of timing her lunch and nap, etc, that means she'll fall asleep at 9 in central time. I know this is just a transition time to get through and that it will change in a few months - I really can't see that she'll be taking afternoon naps much past the age of 2 1/2, or soon she'll be up until midnight!

Funny anecdote: last night, I was laying in bed next to her and my hand had fallen down between the two pillows. I felt her sit up and look at me, lay down, sit up again as if doing a double-take, and then she took my hand in both of hers and gently pulled whispering, "Mommy, your arm is stuck." It was so sweet. :)

Porch running

When it's raining out, Penny likes to go on the front porch so she can be outside without being in the rain. She'll run back and forth from one end to the other. We have a swing on one end of the porch and I was swinging in it while she ran. She'd run down to the other end of the porch and then run back and give me a hug - over and over again. At some point she took my hand in hers and said, "I'm holding your hand." And then she started running back and forth again, and every time she got to the other end she'd turn around and say, "I'm coming back and I"m going to hold your hand." And she'd do just that. So, I know this isn't much of a story, but it was very sweet.

Wherein I totally jinx myself

We have only had to change one poopy diaper all week! Penny has been going to the potty like a champ. She was so funny about wanting to hide behind a towel or something when she goes, but now she seems ok as long as I (or Tray) hide around the corner while she does her thing. She's been using the baby bjorn chair, but just yesterday she started asking to use the seat cover for the "big potty." I hung up a load of diapers to dry this morning and I had the thought that in a couple months I won't be washing diapers anymore. It's bittersweet.

She's also increasingly using a "regular" cup to drink out of instead of her straw sippy cup. She will at times refuse to use anything other than an open cup -- and she's getting really good at it too.

She's just moving so fast. I can't believe her 2nd birthday is next Wednesday. I have a hard time remembering that she is only 1; I've thought of her as two for so long now that it seems weird that she won't be until next week.

I'm sure her world is about to be turned upside down with moving in the next couple weeks and me starting my new job, but for now we are enjoying this nice lull -- the calm before the storm. Everything with her seems so peaceful, so I am sure that when we move it will all be chaos with lots of regressions. That's alright though, we'll be there to help her through it.

Sodor of South-Southwood

Last month I bought Penny a Thomas the Train set. It's the very basic beginner set that just makes an oval. It came with Thomas, Percy, and a caboose. Any of you who know anything about Thomas know how expensive this stuff is. I couldn't afford any accessories! So, I set her up with some household accessories:



This is all my doing, but she sure had fun playing with it. Ironically (and stereotypically), her favorite thing was the cardboard tunnel I made for the train to go under. :)

Old McDonald

Here's a recent anecdote to counteract the old stuff I posted earlier. Penny loves the song Old McDonald and loves it when Tray plays it for her on his guitar. She will sing the song to herself when she is falling asleep at night, but doesn't try to sing along when Tray plays or when we sing it for her. On a related note, we also have a dulcimer that Tray plays sometimes, but mostly we let Penny strum on it as though it were a Penny-size guitar. It actually lays on the floor for her and being an almost-two year old she just sort of plucks at it and maybe strums sometimes. This morning I was in the kitchen and I heard her in the living room strumming on the dulcimer and singing Old McDonald. She's not going to be winning any Grammy awards any time soon (ha!), but it was so cool that she was "playing" and singing at the same time. I so wished I could have captured it on camera.

Cages

In case you can't tell, I've been posting a bunch of old photos and things recently. I drowned my camera and let it sit in a bag of rice for a few days to dry it out. It worked great except that a small section of rice got down in the memory card slot and up in the mechanism. I finally worked it out with a toothpick and now my camera works again (hurrah!). But there are so many things on there that I would have liked to share that now seem hopelessly outdated. Case in point: my old job. I officially quit, what, two, three weeks ago now? It was mid-June, just before they tore out the decades-old cages and put in regular boring cubicles. So here, for your enjoyment, are some photos of my old cages. Rest in peace.

Unfortunately, I didn't get these pictures taken until most of the stuff that used to be there was either already moved or packed and ready to go. Here's a shot looking down the hallway.



This was my cage:



This is looking across the hall from my cage - I actually occupied that cage most of the time that I was pregnant with Penny. I moved into the one above with the window after I got back from maternity leave.



This is a view out of my window. You can see the top of the Leon-Jefferson Civic Center there. That's where I graduated with my PhD. I also used to go for walks everyday out and around that building when I was pregnant right up until a couple weeks before she was born (when I left for maternity leave). And just over the top of it you can see some of the buildings of FSU.



Ahh, memories.

Trucks

Penny's latest obsession is construction equipment. She loves dump trucks, front-end loaders, etc. They are working on a pipeline that crosses Woodville Highway and also doing construction at the intersection of Woodville Highway and Capital Circle, so she sees two construction zones on the way into town. She points to every one and asks me what it is. Basically, I know front-end loader, bulldozer, dump truck, gravel truck, and that's about it. I also can point out for her eighteen-wheelers, flatbed trucks, pickup trucks, and tow trucks. However, in naming things for her, I have discovered that there are tons of types of trucks and construction equipment that I don't know the name for. So, I just say, "that's a truck," or, "that's a tractor." I took her to Toys R Us a couple weeks ago and bought her a John Deere dump truck (small) and she was so excited about it. She couldn't wait to get home to show her Daddy and after she did she proclaimed, "I like my dump truck." :)

Wakulla Beach

A couple weeks ago we took Penny down to Wakulla Beach to go swimming. We were worried that the oil would be here, but so far it hasn't gotten this far east yet. She had fun getting in the water and watching the crabs run on the beach.

Psychedelia

No time for a longer post, but found this photo in my files. It's from two weeks ago or so. Penny and Mullet.

Spring Creek

iPhoto tells me these were taken May 30 - so Memorial Day weekend I guess. This is Penny "swimming" in Spring Creek.



She was really great and let Tray and I fish our way back down the creek after swimming, and this is from the next night when we cooked the fish. This is Penny eating grits and Spring Creek bream.

Kermit

Ok, so we are one of those crunchy-hippy type families without a t.v. Actually, we have a t.v., but it's the one I got when I went off to college in 1996 and there was that whole digital revolution thing and we never got a converter box and cancelled our cable and now our rabbit ears won't work so, yeah, no t.v.
Anyway, Penny sometimes watches sesame street segments on you tube. She doesn't like anything featuring: 1. words, 2. a character falling down, and/or 3. a character getting dirty. She mostly likes songs. She really likes Fiest singing 1,2,3,4 and Elmo's Song as well as Elmo riding his tricycle. The sole exception to the spoken word prohibition is Jack Black defining octagon, which she could watch a hundred thousand times in a row. She always smirks when she sees him (first crush?).
Today she let us watch Kermit singing "Being Green" and it was so cute! She kept trying to get his attention: "Hi! Hi Kermit! Hi!" [to me] "What's Kermit doing?" [me:] "He's singing." [Penny to Kermit] "Hi Kermit!" Then she took her stuffed duck she was holding at the time and made it give Kermit kisses and then she leaned in and gave Kermit several kisses. It was so cute the way she kept trying to talk to him. And after we watched it the third time or so she started mouthing some of the words along. I saw her say, "being green," along with him. So cute.

Successes

Penny has really started using her potty chair. She went pee-pee in it like eight times on Monday (more than she needed to, but she just kept asking to go) and then just before bed even did the other thing too! She stayed dry overnight Monday night and went in the potty first thing in the morning, but then not again yesterday. Today, though, she's been several times and she wore underwear all afternoon. We bought her some Elmo underwear (the word panties makes me cringe - yuck!) at Target and I washed them yesterday. She loves to help me fold clothes and when she saw them today she begged to wear them. But then she wouldn't let me put a diaper back on her. The only problem is that she is still very accident prone, and she went through four of the seven pairs we had today. She's going to have to wear diapers again tomorrow. Maybe I can convince her that underwear is a special afternoon thing - or something. Anyway.

Another issue I'm dealing with is her asking to go pee-pee in the potty when she is supposed to be going to sleep at naptime or nighttime. I don't want to undermine the successes we've had with the potty, but I don't want to let her manipulate her way out of going to sleep. So far I've told her that, no, it's time to go to sleep and she'll just have to pee-pee in her diaper, but I do worry that I should encourage her to go in the potty even if it means letting her get out of bed. But then, I don't really want to go down that road because she'll use it as an excuse to get out of bed. I'm not sure what to do there. Oh, well. I guess we'll figure it out. We're pretty excited here though. She's just all of a sudden decided that she wants to potty train and we are along for the ride.

Oh - and one more thing, every single time she goes, she stands up and says, "You did it!" in exact mimicry of my voice.

Blueberry Muffums

Yesterday Penny helped me to make blueberry muffins, which she kept pronouncing as muffums. She sat on the counter and helped me stir the batter (she only spilled about half of it). Then I turned the oven light on so she could periodically check in on them as they cooked. When the timer went off we got them out and ate one. She doesn't actually like blueberries though so she only ate a little before deciding she didn't like them. That's ok though; it was still a fun activity for all involved.
Here's a photo of her with her muffums after we ate one (also, this is her smile after we asked her to "show us her teeth"):

Cow Watching

On Tuesday and Wednesday we went to Tray's mom and dad's to take a load of Tray's work stuff to store up there. We have been avoiding traveling on the weekends because we want to stick close in case we need to show the house. Wednesday morning Penny went outside with Pa (Tray's dad) and sat on the steps to eat breakfast and watch the cows graze outside the fence. They sat there like this for probably almost twenty minutes. She said not one word the entire time, though he did ask her questions to try to get her to talk.



Mostly though, they just sat together and watched the cows: