A {Stinky} First
I can’t believe that it finally happened to me. I have heard numerous stories of it happening to friends, but really was impressed that it never happened to me. Blame two kids, blame grandma, blame anyone but me!
What happened that was so stinky? Well, today I found a moldy sippy cup. Yep, the Big One will be 4 in May and today was the first time it’s happened to me. And it wasn’t even at my house.
I suppose it happened because it wasn’t my house. At home, I keep pretty good track of things, but at Grandma and Grandpa’s house things are a bit more lax.
The girls have a Pooh bear ride-along train that has a little storage area under the seat. Today we were looking for a little phone that belongs with another toy when I opened the seat and smelled a rather sweet, yet putrid smell.
Someone left a sippy cup full of diluted apple juice in there. Since my girls are the only ones who drink from sippy cups at Grandma and Grandpa’s, I can only assume that the cup has been in the train for about three weeks, since the last time we were here.
Normally this particular type of sippy cup doesn’t leak, so I’m not really sure what happened. For whatever reason, it leaked so not only did I have a cup half full of moldy juice, I had mold growing all over the storage area of the train.
I suppose the bright side is that I didn’t find the stinky cup leaking under a seat in my car, or somewhere ruining the carpet. A little bleach and an old toothbrush for the nooks and crannies and the Pooh bear train is as good as new.
And now I can check off another one of those inevitable mom moments.
A Tale of Two Girls
I had just put the girls to bed and was putting my jammies on when it struck me that the Little One is 23 months old. That’s how old the Big One was when the Little One was born.
Incredulous at the realization, I had to sit down on my bed for a second. The Little One still seems like such a baby. She’s crazy short, has very little hair and really hasn’t shown any tell-tale terrible toddler signs.
For some reason in my brain, the Big One seemed so much older then, than the Little One seems now. Maybe because she is my baby, she will always be a baby in my brain. While physically she looks like a baby, she is a hundred times more verbal than the Big One was. She is a crazy climber and has no fear like the Big One did. And she eats like a champ. She will eat just about anything put in front of her. Unlike the Big One who even at that age was on a chicken dino and yogurt diet.
As I was contemplating all of this in a matter of about 90 seconds. I heard a crazy loud thud, followed by a horrific scream.
I knew immediately what had happened. While the Little One is still a baby in my eyes, in reality she is in fact transforming into a devious little toddler. And she had done something that the Big One NEVER did.
She climbed out of her crib. Well, I should say she attempted to “climb” out of her crib, what I can only assume happened is she shimmied up so high that her tummy was resting on the top rail of her crib causing her to become very top heavy and forced her to fall over the rail onto the floor.
The thud, again I am speculating, was her head or face hitting the wall. Because of course she didn’t try to climb over the front (long) side of the crib. Instead she flipped over the short side of her crib so that when she fell she was wedged between the rocking chair, wall and crib. That and the fat lip led me to the wall plus face conclusion.
I think she was reaching for her Mermaid Dora beanie baby. Once I picked her up and checked her for blood, I offered the Dora to her. She said “NO!” and threw Dora. I think she blames Dora for her fall.
I then asked her if she was going to try and get out of her bed by herself again. She said, “No, Mommy.”
Who wants to place a wager on how long it takes her to do it again?
Why Can’t I Lie Down?
UGH! I am feeling a little cruddy. I’ve got the sore throat, stuffed-up nose, achy muscle thing going on. The girls were playing well independently yesterday so I decided to just lie down for a minute. They have some kind of crazy radar. The second my head hit the pillow, they pounced.
Literally.
Why oh why do my kids think that I am the most fun jungle gym ever? It doesn’t matter if I am on the couch or on the floor, the second I am horizontal, they feel the need to bounce on me, climb on me, crawl over me and generally harass me.
I just don’t understand the appeal. Yes there is a lot of me to climb, but I don’t have any slides, swings or climbing walls. Yet they act like the FixItMommy is the best climbing wall and bouncer ever created.
It’s Not What You Think
Just a little FYI, if anyone hears the Big One say that she saw the FixItMommy putting medicine up her nose. It’s true. I was putting medicine in my nose.
It was Zicam, in an obviously failing attempt to keep this darn cold at bay. The Big One started it, then passed it to the Little One and now I am desperately fighting with all I can think of ~ tea with honey, Zicam, Airborne, obsessive hand-washing ~ I am not quite ready to admit defeat, however my throat I think has succumbed.
And you know why it’s all happening? The Husband is out of town, imagine that.
Too Smart For Her Own Good… Already
Oh boy are we in trouble with the Big One, I think. Most days she wakes up, goes potty and then gets herself dressed for the day. She then hangs out in her room until I come to get her.
I was a bit surprised today when I went in her room and she was still in her jammies. The conversation when like this:
Big One: I just picked my clothes out, but left my jammies on today.
FixItMommy: Okay. You don’t have to get dressed yet.
Big One: Yes, I picked out my clothes, but the clothes that I picked go all the way down my sleeves to here (points to her wrist). I just wanted you to put a tattoo on so I needed to keep my jammies on until you put the tattoo on. If I didn’t keep my jammies on you couldn’t put the tattoo right here on my arm (points to her upper arm) so that’s why I didn’t put my clothes on yet. But they are right there, cause I picked out what I want to wear, I just didn’t put them on yet.
{Yes this is really how she talks… run-on sentences and all!}
FixItMommy: Wow! You were really thinking this morning. That’s a great idea to wait until we put your tattoo on before putting a long-sleeved shirt on. How’d you get to be so smart?
Big One: Well…. I just know something about everything.
And there you have it. She knows it all already.
Too Smart… Part II
{It’s a bonus double feature day! WAHOO! For you.}
I thought we were done with smarty-pants for the day but apparently we weren’t.
After applying her tattoo, she asked if we could make some hot chocolate. I said sure and warmed up some milk. She decided she wanted the “white kind” of hot chocolate today so I pulled out the industrial size Ghirardelli White Hot Chocolate mix. {We like Smart & Final in case you’ve missed it! We are too cheap to pay for the Costco or Sam’s membership}
She picked out her spoon and was all ready to stir the chocolate. I opened the silverware drawer to grab a tablespoon to measure the powder. And the conversation went like this:
Big One: What are you doing, Mommy?
FixItMommy: I’m getting a spoon to measure the hot chocolate out.
Big One: Mommy, last time there was one in there already. Why are you being so silly?
Sure enough the little turkey was right. I had put an old formula scoop in there to measure it out last time. It’s been several weeks since we’ve made the white hot chocolate. How in the world does she remember this stuff?
Cleaning the Waffle Iron ~ Revisited
When I asked y’all how to clean the waffle iron, I had no idea how popular that post would become.
I get several hits a day from people searching on how to clean a waffle maker. I feel a little bad because I don’t really offer any useful information when people get here to my little blog.
So today I got this lovely little ad for what looks like a wonderful new product from Williams Sononma, the Nordic Ware Waffle Pancake Pan. So in the interest of being helpful, I figure I’ll share the information here. Maybe if y’all click on the link enough times, they will give me a free one. So here is a visual to entice you even more. Click away!!
Click on the picture or the link up there!
Should’ve Named Her {Chatty} Kathy
That Little One is a talker. It’s still a bit strange to see this teeny tiny person bust out with several word sentences. More than once someone has done a double-take when we’ve been out and she’s started chattering.
Y’all know she is short, I’ve talked about it several times. She also doesn’t have much hair so she really still has that baby face about her. The other day at the park, someone asked if she was one yet. That was a bit of a stretch, she certainly looks older than one, but she doesn’t really look like she’ll be two in April.
So anyway it got me reminiscing last night after she said, “More ice cream please, Daddy.” That’s five words. Okay, okay, okay, that’s kind of cheating since ice cream is one item, but two words. If my brain wasn’t so tired, I would share another {legitimate} five-word sentence that she used the other day. I can’t remember what she said. I just remember the incredulous look on the Husband’s face.
Anyway, the Big One never said much before she turned two. And now she is rarely quiet. So with the Little One, trust me I a NOT bragging about her vocabulary. Rather I am afraid. I can only imagine how the noise level is just going to keep increasing as time goes on.
Some of her favorite sentences are:
- “No Mommy, I do it!”
- “No {Big One}, no hitting!”
- “Greasy no kisses.” {Greasy = Gracie Lou, the dog}
- “It’s on TV, Greasy. On TV. On TV!” {when Gracie freaks out about a doorbell on TV}
- “I towd you no!” {When channeling the FixItMommy.}
- “{Big One} bonked the head.” {when the Big One has hit her}
It’s Not All Bad
I know I lament a lot about the challenges with the Big One, but I want to set the record straight that it’s not all bad. {yes, mommy guilt has kicked in}.
In addition to being a tester, she is crazy funny, imaginative, smart, beautiful, witty and quite charming.
She puts on a fabulous ballet show despite the fact that she’s never taken a ballet class in her life.
She is quite the entertaining magician. She puts on her princess dress, commands the “stage” and waves her princess wand around screaming “ABRA-CADRA!!” over and over and over again and then takes a bow.
She is an aspiring Olympic gymnast. She can do somersaults with the best of them.
And she has an amazing knack to soothe the Little One. Ever since the Little One was itty bitty, the Big One has been able to sing her down from whatever she is fretting about. At the first instance of fussiness all the way to calming a full fledged tantrum, the sound of the Big One singing “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” calms the Little One. I wish it were that easy for me.
So yes three has been a challenge, you can all rest assured that I will miss is terribly. I know it’s only a matter of time before she’ll figure out that she’s not really the best ballet dancer, magician, gymnast or singer. And you can bet that I will be here blubbering on about where my innocent little rock star went.
Isn’t it amazing how when faced with a group of pre-schoolers you are surrounded by the most talented group of individuals you will ever met. If you ask them who can dance, sing, paint, draw or cook they will all gladly volunteer. It’s a sad shame that by the time they get into the midst of elementary school that all changes and somewhere along the way they became aware of what makes them “good” at something. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could retain that preschool confidence? What an amazingly different world we would live in.
When Will This Be Over?
I guess I am really naïve. I have always heard how difficulty two-year-olds are. Nobody ever warned me how challenging three can be. Grammy is a pre-school teacher and I remember on a recent visit her looking over the Big One’s head at me and saying, “She’s a tester.”
In other words, the Big One is going to push every boundary to see how much she can get away with. The Husband had a three-day weekend this past weekend. Last night after the girls were in bed, he gave me a hug and say, “They are exhausting.” I had to laugh because we have a long-standing debate on whether or not he could actually handle being home with them all day if I was working. I don’t think he can, but he is convinced that it would be “so fun” and that I am exaggerating about the challenges.
Anyway this was about the Big One, not the Husband’s fantasy world. The first thing I heard from her this morning was:
“MOMMY…. GET IN THIS ROOM RIGHT NOW!!…. MOMMY, GET IN HERE!!”
I kid you not she was screaming this at me this morning. I was getting some laundry started before I got them out of bed. She obviously heard that I was upstairs and started bellowing instructions at me. At first I laughed at her brashness and then I got a bit annoyed because then Little One started mimicking her. So now I have two wonderful, loving, beautiful, smart little girls yelling orders at me.
They are still in bed. . .
Okay so they aren’t really still in bed, but I should have left them there. I did wait several minutes until after the screaming had stopped before getting them up. I hope for the Big One’s sake that that was an isolated incident or she will be spending quite a bit more time in bed.
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