Joy

Very few things in this world are as quite as wonderful as hearing one of your favorite classical songs played by one of your favorite little kids, while another of your favorite little kids is using you as a jungle gym.

Little Big Girl

Our little girl is growing up .  A couple of changes have made their way into Penelope's life.  For three weeks, she's been wearing underpants during the day instead of diapers.  Aside from the occasional misplaced puddle, she's doing really well getting to the bathroom and going potty all on her own.  She's also (usually) alerting us in time when she needs to go and we're in a public place.  Its a little more difficult when we're away from home sometimes... like at Ben's last t-ball game, where there were no bathrooms to be found and she had to go in the woods - "Mommy, I'm a sprinkler!"  She's sprinkled a couple other interesting venues as well.

Of course, the bathroom kind of looks like a war zone when she's done - bits of shredded toilet paper everywhere... water all over the place near the sink, because she washes and dries her hands several times at each potty break.  There's a clean-up process now that's a bit more involved than just changing a diaper.  It is a good trade-off though.  We're so tired of diapers.  She's still wearing them at night, but the end is definitely in sight.  Actually, now that I am thinking about it, the worst thing about diapers was the diaper pail, and we jettisoned that thing a long time ago.  I tried to deodorize it one day last summer. Nearly five years worth of stink could not be erased.  Not with bleach.  Not with vinegar.  Not with elbow grease.  Not even with Lysol.  It gives me nightmares sometimes.  After all, it is still out there somewhere, smelling like a swimming pool full of pickled poop.  We should have doused the thing in kerosene and taken a match to it.

But I'm off track here. The other big change is that we converted her crib to a toddler bed (um.. excuse me.. "big girl" bed).  That one just took effect yesterday, and so far so good.  I'm a little surprised that she's not fighting the whole bedtime thing now, but she seems to be content to just go to sleep.  And at least this morning, she woke up content to just sing in her bed for a few minutes instead of immediately getting up and leaving the room.

The next step of course, is the overnight potty training.  But we'll give her a little more time to reduce the puddle count (and us a little more time to sleep through the night) before we move onto that.  

History Repoos Itself

The post this evening is about... Poop!  Big surprise there.  Speaking of surprises...

Benjamin : Oh no!  Daddy! Something isn't right!

Daddy (worried, and quickly heading to the bathroom) : What's wrong? Are you ok?

Benjamin : Look! Some of my poop is green!

It wasn't just your standard run-of-the-mill green poo.  It was bright, "hospital cafeteria tray teal" poo.

Daddy : Whoa Ben!  What did you eat?

Benjamin (thinks for a couple seconds, then wide-eyed) : Oh! Guaca-mooo-lee!

We talked for a little while longer about how guacamole couldn't possibly be the culprit, and how it was probably something blue.  Water from a blue cup?  No. Blueberries? Probably not.  But with Mommy's help, we deduced that it was the blue frosting on the cupcake he had two days before.

It brought to mind a tale about my own childhood that I've heard many, many times, but I don't really remember as I was a bit young.  It took me a while to dig up this photo, but I will just let it tell the rest of the story.