Tips for Puking Kids

• Garbage bag, over the pillow, under the pillowcase.
  
• Mattress protectors: 10 bucks and half an hour of wrangling the thing on over the mattress, no scent of barf embedded in the mattress forever. Barf smell sucks.
  
• Cover the couch in towels, top with kid, keep a bucket handy.
  
• Lysol.
  
• Backup DVDs or a preschool cable channel is worth it when you're trapped in the house for 2 days.
  
• Have Sierra Mist, chicken soup, saltines and chocolate in the house at all times. (The chocolate is for me.)
  
• Buy a comforter that fits in your washer.
  
• Woolite Oxy Deep carpet cleaner works.
  
• When puked upon, remove clothing and get dressed again before trying to change her sheets. Half-asleep naked moms on Benadryl are not effective linen changers when shivering so hard we can't stand up.
  
• Be thankful you bought the mega-mini-van-jogging stroller so at least you can get out of the house for 20 minutes to walk the dog.
  
• Bake a cake to cover up the smell of puke. Eat the cake.

Sigh. She's recovered, thank goodness. And so far, no one else has caught it. Phew.

What she doesn't like about Jesus

Conversation with Rowan as we walked the dog, Saturday evening.

"So, you're going to go to Bible school next week!"

"What will I do there?"

"Hear stories, do crafts, play games, sing songs..."

"What else?"

"Learn about Jesus! He's a pretty awesome guy, right?"

"Yeah," she says. "But I don't like his hair!"

5/365

5/365, originally uploaded by MrsBinParis.

I guess her growth spurt is over--she's no longer eating much, so I'm getting more creative with what I feed her. Today, I turned her blueberries and yogurt into a smoothie. She liked it. (But she still didn't eat much.)

Note: more 365 photos are on my flickr site.

Gift

We talk a lot about preferences.

She likes pink, I like red. She likes cherry tomatoes, pickles are my favorite. My favorite number is 13. She's decided hers is 12.

"Mommy, you don't like that!" she says, when a "The Fresh Beat Band!!!" commercial comes on Nick, Jr. "You're right, I don't!" I answer. She doesn't like watching the local news. "I don't like that. I want my show!"

She eats the hot dog, I order Target's personal pizza. "I'm tired of this music," she says as a Couperin harpsichord piece plays in the car. "I'm not, and the driver gets to choose," I answer.

We both like string cheese.

Today, we ran out in the morning to do some errands before a promised lunch out. I was hopeful for a long nap* after so I could cross several things off my to-do list before her grandparents arrive late tomorrow night.

It's Christmas, I thought. It won't kill me, just once.

"OK, Honey. You were such a good girl at the store, I'll let you pick where you want to eat for lunch. Wendy's or (big mental shudder) McDonald's?"

"Wendy's!"

"Are you sure? You love McDonald's. I thought it would be a special treat. You really want Wendy's?"

"Wendy's, Mommy. You don't like Donulz. I like Donulz, but you don't like Donulz. It's OK, I like Wendy's!"

We went to Wendy's. And I ordered a Frosty to split. A special treat for my very special, thoughtful, sweet little girl.


*Unfortunately, she didn't make good on the nap promise. I crossed some things off my list, but in quite a foul mood, and one got crossed off and dumped in the garbage. Total biscotti fail. Ah well, if I were Martha Stewart, I'd have a staff to hide my mistakes, a personal trainer to keep my tushie toned, and a bazillion gazillion dollars to bathe in whenever I wanted.

Smells like...

Though the temperature rose into the 60's this weekend, we're definitely into the chillier months of the year. The leaves are pretty much all down, the air is cooler, and I always shove a warm jacket in the back seat when we go somewhere, just in case the temp drops by 30 degrees (which it does, as soon as the sun is as low as the housetops.) There's been little rain, and the air is dry. Rowan and I have limited baths to every other day, the true sign of Winter Approaching.

I pulled her out of the bathtub and dried her with a towel, and then reached for the lotion. She usually doesn't need it, but has recently begun scratching herself and announcing it to the world every time--"I scratch! I scratch my leg!", so the moisture is necessary. This time, I tried a new brand.

"Mmmm!!!!" she said, "Smells good, Mommy!"

"Yeah, it does, doesn't it? It smells so clean and fresh," I said, rubbing the lotion on her kneecaps.

"Yeah!" she answered. "Smells like..." She looked at the bottle, then back at me.

"Clock. It smells like CLOCK!!!"

Apparently, that's how clocks smell. Perfectly logical, if you ask me. I wonder if oatmeal smells like Quakers?

Victory Farts

This is a post about potty training. If you're the squeamish sort, bye bye.

After a few tinkles months ago, the magic stopped. She was no longer interested, and would answer queries with a quick and final "No!" and walk away, to color in her Kai-Lan coloring book or make another little pink play-doh ball with matching play-doh crumbs.

During her visit with her maternal grandparents in DC, I heard the expected, "She's so smart! She knows her ABC's, can count to 20 in English and 10 in French* and she's only 2? She should be potty trained by now. So'n'so's kid was trained by 18 months! Why isn't she trained yet?"

Yeah, like I haven't tried. Sigh.

So they tried, the questions, the incentives, the promises. And her response?

"No!"

Then this week, she refused to let me change her diaper. I was kicked, screamed at, cried on, hit, and just generally abused. Not fun. Even so, she'd begin crying suddenly, with an "I peed my big girl bed!" or "I peed my booster chair!" (while wearing a diaper, still.) Since her dad finally had a weekend where he didn't have to really do much (this is exceedingly rare--he never takes any time off, but he needed it), it became his job to deal with diapers and the like. Rowan needed Mom to take some distance.

She didn't fight him, but still had no interest in the potty. However, she did have an interest in the Hello, Kitty! panties.

So he tried it. She wet through a couple of times, but he said it seemed to make sense to her. She insisted on the panties over her diaper at bed time.

Today? No requests, and many refusals. (All the panties were dirty.) But tonight before bed, she acquiesced. She sat on the potty, happy, with Mom in the room, for a good 5 minutes.

And?

She FARTED. At least 5 times.

I call that a win.












*That would be Un, deux, trois, quatre, six. Un, deux, trois, quatre, six. Un, deux, trois, quatre, six. Close enough.

Heard, on a Fall Walk

"I'm running, on my tap toes!"

"Your tiptoes?"

"No, Mommy! My TAP toes!"

Stopping for every surviving dandelion and remaining patch of snow, downed branch or frozen berry, we made our way up the hill. She ran to the top, turned around, grinned as she caught my eye, and raised her arms up in the air.

"Ta-DAH!!! Ladies and Gem-men!!!"

She threw herself down on the still green grass, brown, red and yellow leaves, and rolled to the bottom of the hill.

She stood, smiling as she brushed the leaves from her sleeves, and ran to me, grabbing my finger tightly. "Come on, Lucy!" she called, as we headed for home.




*Note: I hope to have new photos soon. We've returned from DC, and I am awaiting the return of our camera, which the team was borrowing for use with the competition. I'm going through withdrawl. The phone camera just doesn't cut it. Updates on the trip soon, too.

Force feeding fruit

My kid likes veggies. I know, crazy, right? I guess no one told her not to. I do, her dad does, maybe it's genetic. Whatever. Her favorite food is "tomaaaaadoes", and she prefers the fancy heirloom tiny ones from the CSA basket, turning up her nose at store-bought. Begging for a treat usually means a little cup of frozen peas, or perhaps "cold bread" (frozen french bread chunks.) Yeah, she's kind of weird.

Usually fruit is fine, too, and she likes just about everything we give her, except for some reason squash and carrots (an orange thing?), and anything too spicy, though her dad is working on that. So I shopped for our week together while her dad was in DC, buying fruit for us to eat together. Apples, oranges, grapes, and bananas.

And of course, the bananas are not getting eaten in a timely manner. Before, when I had none in the house, I'd be begged for them. But of course when I do, she doesn't want them.

So today, I whipped up a special delight, and it worked. "Bananas à la Ronica!!!"

They were a big hit.

My secret?

Rainbow Sprinkles.

I think I'm going to try them on carrots next.

Swimmer

We're home! Our week at the Outer Banks was a little too eventful for our taste (thanks to a wild horse that took a swat at Lucy), but we've survived and have made it back to PA in one piece (well, most of us, anyway). More photos will come, but I've got a lot of work to do to make that happen, so here's a teaser. I brought my camera, but one of the other women had a better one and was snap-happy, so I just let her go and read my book on the beach. She's given me free reign to download, so I will be doing that over the next few days, but since she took about 700 photos, it might take a while.

Rowan was a hoot to watch at the shore. She was terrified of the water, but determined to overcome her fear. The first day, she would go in kicking and screaming, clinging to us for dear life. As she'd come out of the pool or ocean, she'd turn around and go right back, scared but not willing to let that keep her from it. By the end, she was swimming alone in the pool (with water wings) and begging to go back into the ocean. The undertow and waves were strong, so walking was all she could do, and only with two adults holding on tight. I am so proud of her. It took me until I was in my thirties to get to the place she's at at age 2.

AND!!!

She had 3 dry nights! Woot! (I guess it all went in the pool.)