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:

Skinamarinkydinkydink

We went to the hardware store this afternoon and Penny was singing Skinamarinkydinkydink, skinamarinkydoo, I love you over and over again in the backseat. It was so nice to hear - and it made Tray's Father's Day. Even if all day long she kept saying, "Happy Mother's Day!!"

Nursemaid's Elbow

Penny dislocated her elbow today. She and I were taking a nap after we got back from fishing this morning. When she woke up, she sat up and started crying. She told me her arm hurt. I assumed she must have slept on it wrong and that maybe it had "gone to sleep" like your leg does sometimes. It didn't get any better though as time went on and she kept on crying off and on. She wouldn't use her arm at all either. Tray and I took her outside and let her play some, but her arm seemed to get worse. She just cried a lot and eventually just started holding it very still. She'd barely twitch her fingers if you asked her to hold your hand or tried to get her to take something from you with that hand. About an hour after she woke we decided to take her to the doctor. It was of course about a 45 minute car ride to the doctor (urgent care clinic on a saturday) and then a fairly long wait in the waiting room (college world series baseball kept us entertained). She was so good in the waiting room. She sat in my lap and only asked to get down a couple times and was easily put off by telling her she had to stay in my lap. Just before we were called back I sat her down with the intention of walking around with her holding her other hand, but as soon as she stood up she started crying again. And, then, like I said we were called back. She was scared of the nurse (who was actually very nice and gave Penny a sticker) who called us back and cried when we weighed her and took her temperature, etc. She was crying pretty hardcore by the time the doctor came in. Although, the doctor actually seemed to appear very quickly - probably because of the crying. The doctor seemed to know right away what was wrong and explained that it's really very common for toddler's elbows to dislocate. She said she'd have to pop it back in and that Penny wasn't going to like it. I braced her and the doctor popped everything back into place. The adults in the room - the doctor, the nurse, Tray, and I - collectively held our breaths... and Penny stopped crying. Just like that. She sat there and started waving her arm around and jabbering at us about her new sticker like nothing at all had happened and that she hadn't been in extreme pain for the last 2.5 hours completely unable to use her arm. All of the adults just started laughing because her reaction was so night and day.

Apparently, nursemaid's elbow (as it is called) is the most common orthopedic injury in children under 2. It happens most often when parents swing their kids by their hands or pick them up by their arms instead of under their arms. It also happens when toddlers throw tantrums and go to fling themselves onto the floor but mom or dad still has ahold of their arm. Stuff like that. There was none of that with Penny though. We guess she just zigged when she should have zagged sitting up in the bed after her nap. We'll have to be more mindful of her arm because once it's happened once, it's fairly easy to happen again. We are so glad she's ok and that we didn't "wait and see" until tomorrow assuming she'd just sprained it somehow. I only regret that we didn't get her there sooner. But, as I say, she's fine now and seems rather disinterested in the whole thing. Like, yeah, we went to the doctor. No big deal. Can we run around the yard some more?

Rinse and (Don't) Repeat

Today I thought it would be fun to wash dishes with Penny. It is super hot here - heat indices over 100 everyday, and really hard to stay outside for long even though Penny wants to. She's used to being outdoors 80 or 90 percent of the day though, so being stuck inside, we run through her toys and activities after awhile. I really needed to wash some dishes by hand in the sink, but she didn't want me to wash them because she didn't want to go play with any of her toys anymore because she was tired of them. So, I decided I would fill the sink up with soapy water and pull a chair up to the sink and let her "wash" dishes. They were mostly plastic cups and small items that it would be fine for her to play with and I figured she could just have a ball filling up cups and dumping them out, etc. I knew it would probably make a mess, but it's just water right? The thing I was most worried about was that she would enjoy it so much that she would want to do it everyday, and I wasn't keen to start that, or that she'd enjoy it so much she would have a tantrum when it was time to stop. But then I thought I can't keep her from doing an activity just because she'd want to do it again (and again and again) or because she might get upset when it was time to be done with it. So, I went for it.

And all my worries were for naught, because she freaked out when I put the cups into the water. Fuh-reaked. She had rivers of snot running down her face, gasping for breath crying so hard. I could hardly calm her down. She was hysterical wanting me to get the cups back out of the water. I explained (or tried to explain through the tears) that we were just going to give them a bath and it's just like her toys in the bathtub and etc. etc. To no avail.

I ended up (after taking her out of the room to calm her down and clean her up) sitting her up on the counter on the other side of the sink and letting her "dry" the dishes with a dishtowel. She still eyed the dishwater suspiciously from time to time and if I forgot and dropped the brush into the water rather than putting it up on the counter when I went to rinse something she'd freak all over again. It was one of the most stressful dishwashing experiences I have ever had - and I swear all I wanted to do was a fun little activity with her.

What's Next?

Penny has been asking what's next a lot lately. She often will ask it when she is bored with her current activity as an indication that she wants to do something else. But, she also genuinely wants to know sometimes what is going to happen next. Tonight after her bath she asked me and I will admit I was avoiding saying anything about her going "night-night" because I thought she would put up a fuss. But she kept asking, "what's next?" and encouraging me with her eyes so I finally said, "and then we are going to go to sleep." I swear to you, there was relief in her eyes. Relief! So, I told her the whole routine. I said, "we are going to put your diaper on and then your pajamas and then your sleepy-sack and then we are going to read some books and then we are going to go night-night." She was soooo happy to hear this listed out. It was crazy weird, like, did she think we were going to go out dancing or something? Have we ever done anything other than the above after her bath? Why would it be any different? But to see the look on her face of just relief to know - to really know - what was coming next you'd have thought her life was utter chaos. Ok, so she's almost two. Maybe life seems chaotic to her. Anyway, I'm taking the "what's next?" question more seriously from now on.

What's That?

At the grocery store yesterday afternoon Penny pointed at almost every single thing in the store (or it felt like it anyway) and asked, "What's that?" or "What's those?" Periodically, she would interrupt the litany of questions to point out something she already recognized. "That's cheese. Cheese is good." (We say that to her a lot to get her to eat cheese.) I swear she did not stop talking the entire time we were in the store.

P: What's that?
Me: Noodles
P: [nodding] Noodles.
P: What's those?
Me: Beans.
P: [nodding] Beans. Chickens eat beans.
P. What's that?
M: Tortillas
P: [quizzically] Tortillas
P: [pointing] This is rice.
Me: Yes, Penny that's rice.
P: What's those?
Me: Paper towels
P: [nodding] Paper towels.

And so on and so forth for the whole trip.

Until at the very end, when I said, "Ok, I think we are ready to go," and she said, "What's next?"

Accident Prone

Napless wonder today got into two scrapes. First, she stuck her head through the banisters on the staircase and couldn't get it back out. I had to pick her up bodily and slide her to the top of the banister where it slightly narrows out to get her head out. I am so glad that worked. She was panicking so bad, I can't imagine having had to leave her to go get something to get her out. I was thinking giant tub of butter - but not sure if that really works or was that just an episode of Full House I saw one time?

And, then, she and I were upstairs playing with her music train when she fell out of her rocking chair. The train is a bit old for her and she can't put the music pieces in so it is a very interactive toy. By which I mean mommy or daddy play with it while she hangs out doing something else. In this case, I was putting the pieces in while she rocked. She turned the chair over and busted her lip. The bottom one bled and the top one swole up. She cried mightily. Periodically throughout the evening it would evidently start to hurt and she'd go, "you fell in the rocking chair," while almost half-crying. I gave her some tylenol before bed. Oh, and lots of cuddles.

In other news, we are showing the house twice tomorrow (Friday). It is a pain keeping the house in showing condition - by which I mean getting it back into showing condition over and over again. I have trouble keeping my house "everyday" clean. Military academy clean is beyond my capacity/desire to sustain.

Ring Around the Roses

A short video of Penny doing ring around the roses. I have another shorter video of her doing it and trying, but not completely succeeding, to fall down. It was cute, plus she was hugging her water bottle the whole time. I couldn't decide which to post, but I went with this one since it was a more complete performance. I think she looks more and more like a little kid. She's all gangly arms and legs in this video.

Friends on the field

Our house was shown twice today! The first one we knew about well in advance, and the second realtor called while we were out of the house for the first one. Anyway, for the first one we took a load of stuff to Goodwill and then went to Optimist Park. There was a mommy group meeting there, a birthday party, and a (small) family reunion, so there were tons of kids/people. After awhile we went out on the baseball field again because Penny asked to "run the bases." I have a hard time guessing ages, but there were some other small-ish girls out there, fairly talkative and in gaggle-formation so I'm thinking they were maybe 5. Penny ran the bases and as she crossed home-plate Tray did the motion and said "Safe!" The other little girls came running over so that they could jump on base and have him do "Safe!" for them too. He dutifully acted as umpire for each and every one (so sweet). Well, the queen-bee girl (there's always one) motioned her followers to run toward second base and they all took off - and Penny ran with them! She ran out onto the field with the gaggle of girls and just ran her sort of toddler circular pattern in the midst of them. Tray and I stood back completely amazed. And then it started to rain. And we had to leave. But, So, so cool.

Life Right Now

Things have been very busy for me at work. I am primarily responsible for reviewing federal projects for their impacts to cultural resources. That means projects funded or permitted by federal agencies. The bulk of the work that we do in my office is state level -permits from the Department of Environmental Protection or one of Florida's multiple Water Management Districts. The federal projects are less in number but tend to be more involved. With the impending arrival of the oil spill, the Corps of Engineers has issued emergency permits to most of Florida's panhandle counties. I know archaeological resources might not be on the top of everyone's priority list in this situation, but it is my job to care about such things and part of the Corps's review process for issuing a permit is to obtain our comments. But, they have been giving us a matter of hours to issue said comments (a normal permit will usually have a 15 or 30 day turn around time). So it's been crazy to try to locate every single place in which they are going to be installing booms and/or building sand berms and the like to make sure they won't be disturbing known significant archaeological remains or shipwrecks. And I don't even want to think about the level of correspondence that's going to have to take place when it comes time to clean up all the oil and all the archaeological sites along the coast. Anyway. Work is busy. Oh. And we are moving. The legendary cages (yes, my office is a cage) are coming down to be replaced by actual cubicles. (The cages were where the artifact collections used to be kept many years ago and were later converted into offices.)

Home life is busy with moving, or planning to move, or hoping to plan to move anyway. But, it's still good. I've been working with Penny on putting herself to sleep at night. We realized pretty much immediately that Penny is one of the kids for whom cry it out doesn't work, so we abandoned that as a project, but now that she's older I can talk to her and explain things and she's been falling asleep on her own. She's still in the bed next to me, but I'm not rocking her or singing to her or nursing her to sleep or anything like that. She's just falling asleep by herself and then I put her in her crib. It is a pretty cool milestone for her to have reached I think. We both still value our cuddle time though, so falling asleep by herself in the crib with me in another room is not something I intend to attempt. It's one of the best times of my day when she takes my arm and pulls it around her for me to hug her close as she lays there. Nothing better in the world.

A couple evenings ago as we were eating supper (a bit late, at 7 pm) she announced that she was ready for her bath. I got her out of her chair and she laid down on the floor behind her chair and said, "night-night." I asked her if she wanted to sleep on the floor and she said no (of course- that is the only answer to any question after all). I then started trying to be funny and running through a list of places that she could sleep (do you want to sleep on the table? do you want to sleep in a tree? etc). I asked her if she'd like to sleep on the couch and she jumped up and ran to the couch and laid down.



This is her exact falling asleep pose when she falls asleep in the bed. Doesn't seem comfortable to me, but she evidently finds it so. Anyway, she was super tired. I've been trying to have dinner at 6 now instead of 630 and getting her on into bed with lights out at 7 or shortly after. So far (two days in), it seems to be working for falling asleep a bit earlier.

More luck

I won something else! I won this "On Top of Spaghetti" book from Huggies. It is basically a picture book version of the song. That is funny because On Top of Spaghetti was one of the only children's songs that I knew when Penny was born and I used to sing it to her all the time.

Swing and Spin

Penny loves to do things that would make lesser mortals lose their lunch. Tray and I joke that one of us is going to have to learn to like roller coasters so she can have somebody to ride with.

Listing

So, you can view our listing here. This has the virtual tour associated with it. If you go straight through realtor.com, there is no virtual tour - only photos. Not sure what's up with that, but hopefully our realtor will get it straightened out.

It's pretty scary trying to sell our house right now. I've heard from others in the area that have had an easy time selling their places, but then others who haven't. The oil spill situation makes us wonder how many people will be turned off who might have been interested in living close to the coast.

On that note, I'm really hoping to get down to the Saint Marks NWR again this week to see the marshes one more time before they are coated in oil, and maybe to the beach this weekend for the same reason. It just doesn't seem real; the magnitude of this thing just defies comprehension for me.