Wow, where have I been eh?

Not posting here, definitely.  Not posting on my thoughts blog, either.  It’s not for lack of stuff to talk about, just lack of motivation.

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Ever since she stayed over at her grandmother’s house and MIL put piggy tails on her for school last Friday, the Kiddo has been all about the piggy tails.  Every single day.  So now to our morning routine we’ve added putting her hair up in piggy tails before we head off to take her to school.

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I think she did fairly well yesterday, considering that most of it happened during her normal nap time.

When we first got there, the birthday girl’s family wasn’t there yet so we walked around looking at all the games and rides and such (it was at chuck e cheese), and she kept trying to get on the cars to ride them. I told her they needed coins to work and that we would need to go get some tokens, and she started to FREAK out, I think she thought we were leaving.  She wanted so badly to go get on one of the “rides”, finally I was able to get it through to her that we weren’t leaving, but if she wanted to ride the cars and play the games, we needed to go get some “money”, and that we’d be right back for her to play. View the rest of this entry…

The Kiddo had a pretty good nap this afternoon.  She went down at around 1:45p and got up at about 5pm.  Yep, a fairly long nap, but she seems refreshed.

At about 3:15 I started nodding off at my desk, so told my husband I was going to go lay down on the floor of the Kiddo’s room in case she woke up while he was gone on his errand, so I would be right there.

Well, she slept until 5 like I said, when we both just kind of sat up and decided it was enough of naptime.

Although I don’t feel refreshed, I feel like something the cat dragged in.  I feel like a walking zombie, and could probably have slept for much longer had it actually been comfortable on the floor.  Ugh.  This is what I get for having a small bout of insomnia last night and didn’t actually get tired until almost 4am and then getting up again at 9am.  On the bright side, at least the Kiddo slept in today rather than waking up at 7am.  I don’t know what I would’ve done if she’d woken up that early.

Tuesday evening, my husband decided we should go to the toy store and buy the Kiddo some new playdough and some of the play sets that go along with it, since a) she really likes playing with playdough and the accessories when she is at school, and b) it would give the two of them something to do while he stayed home with her the next day.

So off to ToysRUs we go, and we bought a Dora themed fun-factory, the food making set, and a package with smaller tubs of playdough and oodles of little extras – playdough scissors, letter stamps, etc.

And of course, she could hardly wait to open them when we got home.  Heck, my husband was even excited to open them up. LOL

We probably sat and played with the playdough for about 30 minutes before it was time to get her ready for bed, at which point we would get an emphatic, “NOoOooooo! Pay pay-dough!”  We were finally able to convince her that she’d be able to play with the playdough the following day.

Which she did.  In addition to watching Lilo and Stitch several times.

I’m sure I’ll be picking bits of playdough out of the carpet for while to come.

I finally convinced her to watch something else besides Toy Story 2.  I think my poor iMac was about to keel over from playing that one constantly.

We’ve moved on to Lilo & Stitch.  I expect that one to play over and over.  And over and over.  And over.

I swear I start dreaming about these movies after hearing them so many times.

Most days, we have to convince the Kiddo when it is nap time to go lay down and get some rest.

Today was different – she was sitting watching Toy Story II, and decided to pause it and proceed to tell me “I tired, I want to nap.”

O.o

You won’t get any argument from me on that, girlie. 🙂

So I followed her out of my office, asked her to go give her daddy a kiss and then she went straight into her room to her bed.  All I had to do was change her into a diaper in case she wet while she sleeps, give her a kiss and put her blanket on her, and walked out and closed the door.  If I had to guess, I’d say she was probably out within minutes of me leaving.

Wow.  Some days she just amazes me. 🙂

The Kiddo stays overnight at her grandmother’s house now and then.  Before our vacation in August, it was every other week. Then Grandma decided it was time to revamp it to allow the youngest grandchild the opportunity to spend the night at her house, too.  Which is only fair and everyone was ok with.  So there are three grandchildren, so she has each one staying over night over the course of three weeks.  For the oldest it is on a Saturday night, and for the Kiddo and the youngest, it was a Tuesday night.

Well, then she started preschool, and my husband and I figured it would probably be a good idea to see if Grandma would be OK with moving the Kiddo’s night to the weekend, too, on the same pretense as the oldest grandchild – who is in preschool, and the idea is to avoid having them miss school.  Grandma agreed to the change.

Ordinarily, the Kiddo would’ve stayed at Grandma’s last night.  Now it will be this Saturday.  After she got up this morning and I got her dressed, and we were laying on my bed waiting for my husband to finish getting ready for work, she asked about seeing papa and grandma.  “See Papa? See Grandma” she asked.  I told her we’d see them again on Saturday.  “Noooooo!  See Papa! See Grandma!”  I just kind of let it go rather than pick a pointless arguement with my toddler.  She also let it drop since I didn’t continue to remind her that she was going to have to wait until Saturday.  I’ll have to remember that tactic for future reference.  Heh.

I didn’t expect that she’d notice she hasn’t stayed over at her grandmother’s since before our vacation in the middle of August.  But it’s apparent that she does remember.  I think she also wants to go over there because they just got a new puppy, that we had visited on Monday night and she wants to see it again.

On Saturday, sweetie. 🙂

So last night, we went to dinner at Red Lobster with my husband’s mom & step-dad, to partake in RL’s Shrimp Fest all-you-can eat dealie.  Yummy!  Well, that also meant we got home a little later than we anticipated.  The Kiddo really needed a bath, but 1) it was already bedtime when we got home, and 2) it was starting to storm outside with lightening, so there was no way I was putting her in the bathtub and risk getting us both fried.

So, I decided I’d try to give her a bath first thing in the morning.  My husband usually showers in the hall bath, so he said he’d just use the stall shower in our master bathroom, and I could use the hall bathtub for the Kiddo at the same time.

First of all, she’s cranky in the mornings.  Kind of like both me and my husband.  Usually she likes taking baths.  But first thing in the morning? Not so much.  When I woke her up and asked her if she wanted to take a bath, she pouted and said “no!”, and threw herself back down into her pillow, complete with thumb-in-mouth.  A clear signal – go away mommy, I’m going back to sleep!

I said “Fine,” and walked into the bathroom and shut off the water, and started getting dressed.  Being cranky myself, I also told her she can go to school stinky and with her hair gross if she wanted, no skin off my back.  Not my finest moment, for sure.

Finally with a little more coaxing and some tears on her part, I got her into the bathtub.  Then she didn’t want to get wet (any more than just her legs).  *sigh*  More coaxing, more whining and tears, and we got her quickly soaped up and rinsed off.  She likes to help wash so that helped change her mood a little, which made washing her hair (which was the entire goal, since it was quite icky from running around and sweating yesterday) much easier.

I think that will be the last morning bath for her for a while.  Next time I’ll just wet her hair down and comb it out, and save bath time for night like usual as long as there aren’t any storms.  Lesson learned.  

Cranky toddler + morning bath = even more cranky toddler + a cranky mom

Earlier I was looking through the pictures in my gallery to make the badges for my Entrecard widgets, for a specific picture of some flowers my husband gave me for my birthday right after I found out I was pregnant with the Kiddo.  This of course meant I was scrolling through hundreds of pictures taken between then and now since I was going backwards from the current date.

Pictures from the Kiddo’s second birthday, second Christmas, the first time she met my sister’s youngest daughter, and then her second Easter.  Her first birthday, then her first Christmas.  Her first bout with the flu, which she caught after her first holiday pictures with her other cousin (my husband’s brother’s daughter).  Her first Thanksgiving.

And then the pictures I took of her after I got home from one of the most upsetting days of my life – the day I had to drive my mom, brother & his girlfriend up north after receiving a phone call from my grief-stricken father that my sister’s son had died during the night.  He was only 9.5 months old, and the only explanation the coroner could give was SIDS.  My daughter was born about two and a half weeks after he was, so I was definitely paranoid after that.  I think that night I checked on her at least a handful of times as she slept just to make sure I could still hear her breathing.  At the funeral, she was an absolute angel, and even though my husband and I were a little uncertain about whether to take her or not, both my sister & my mom said it would be fine, and that she would most likely help bring some light to an otherwise dark day.  And they were right.

Then loads and loads of other pictures preceding that, most of the Kiddo, but a few here and there of her cousins (him and his older sister), taken on my mom’s camera, which I had uploaded to my computer after his death, to make a picture DVD with.

To her first Easter, and then to her birth.  The monthly belly shots preceding her birth.  And then finally the roses I had been looking for.

It seems hard to believe that she’ll be three years old in a few months.  Every now and then when she’s doing mundane things like brushing her teeth, or standing next to the t.v. tray in the living room, I’ll think back to how, not too long ago, I had to hold her over the sink so she could spit water out of her mouth after I brusehd her teeth.  Or how she used to bonk her head on the t.v. tray because her head barely came up to its height.  And now she can lean over the sink without help.  And she practically towers over the t.v. tray now.

And she’s maybe only one inch shorter than my brother-in-law’s oldest daughter who is eleven months older than the Kiddo.

She’s growing up fast.  Slow down there, girl!