Difficult weekends make kids hungry

Not sure what Char had for breakfast today, but she ate every bit of her school lunch, which was:

• Pumpkin seed and sunflower seed butter and strawberry vinegrette jam sandwich on whole wheat cut with a heart-shaped cookie cutter (so about half a sandwich)


• About 1/3 of a plum, 1/2 an apricot, a couple dozen raisins sprinkled with rolled oats and cinnamon and a touch of sugar in the cinnamon


• 3 yogurt covered oatmeal raisin cookies (these are tiny cookies, about the size of a nickel but spherical)

I'm sure she had a snack when she got home, but again not sure what. Usually fruit or maybe yogurt.

Usually the nanny gives her dinner since she's over-hungry when I get home, but Char apparently wasn't in the mood to eat. Or didn't want her dinner. Whatever. She'd eaten most of the little baked asparagus spears I'd set aside and that's it. She ate the rest of them for me as well as her "fake meat and peas and diced carrots mixed with taco seasoning and cheese and baked in crescent dough whatchamacallit". THEN she had went to the fridge and got out the cheese, so I let her eat 5 cubes. She also ate a good bit of champagne grapes before going back to the fridge. I helped her prepare a kiwi with several generous dollops of plain yogurt, and she ate it all.

Then it was my turn to eat. Unfortunately we're low on food for mommy, so Char suggested I eat a banana and "be happy" lol. And then she took half the banana. Stinker. And THEN I caught her STANDING on top of the counter-height stool going through the fruit bowl, and I held her while she chose a peach, and ate about 1/3 of it.

And just exactly how bad must the weekend have been to make her this hungry, you ask? Well, Friday night she complained about it hurting to go pee pee. She's made this complaint before but never showed real signs of pain, until Friday. I had planned to get her to the pedi on Tuesday or Wednesday this week, but I decided to take her on Saturday. Note to self: The urgent care clinic is about twice as fast as the pedi office on a Saturday. Sigh. 2 1/2 hours later, no UTI. Yay! But still, ugh, what a morning! It was pretty cute when Char asked the doctor for a "sticker, please" and the pedi said, "How about two stickers?" "OKAY!" lol

After the pedi, it was time to meet up with the in-laws, who came in town. Actually, DH forgot his phone (and mine is broken for calls right now), so we felt bad because we couldn't contact them and they were worried, but we had lunch. The in-laws are always an energy drain though.

We got home from the doctor's office and lunch with IL's (note: I had not even showered yet at 2pm) to discover one of the dogs had had diarrhea in her crate while we were gone. And dragged it down the stairs and out the door. DH cleaned the living room and stairs while I put Char down for a nap, and then I cleaned the crate, only to discover the dog had been nice enough to hide some really runny poop in a fold in the dog bed and got crap ALL OVER ME. Yay! So I finally got my shower, followed by a bath, while Char napped. The IL's were over but I was willing to be rude. I figured it may be rude to shower while they waited, but it was equally rude to sit and chat while covered in dog crap.

Sunday we were heading to the IL's hotel only to discover that the same poor dog had gotten her paw pad caught in her evil crate. Apparently the brand new dog bed we had to buy Saturday was a little taller and squished her paw. So we took about 10 minutes carefully extracting her foot (she's fine), and went swimming with the IL's, and played on the playground there. Went home and put Char down for a nap again, and they came over after the nap. Oh, and after they got their car a brand new battery because it died! I swear this weekend was cursed! And to top it off, poor Char had a very bad afternoon of diarrhea and pooped in her undies and was very very upset about it. Poor girly!

Like, it's totally like my body, okay?

So last night Char and I argued about the names for her body parts. We've tried to use medically-apppropriate terms for the most part, but she has made her own name ("tutu").

Last night she said something about her tutu. "You mean your vulva?" "My tutu!" "It's called your vulva." "It's my body, mommy. It's my tutu!" Well, she has a point I guess, but I didn't expect to get the "It's my body" argument for another 10 or 12 years!

Communing with the Devil

Yesterday we were driving in the car on the way to lunch or something, and we passed by the school Char was kicked out of last November (it's right around the corner). If you recall, I was on the "playground committee" and we had grand plans to create an all natural playground with stumps, boulders, slides built into hillsides, etc etc etc. I was very excited about it, but for the 3 months I was on the committee, absolutely nothing happened except some not-very-productive meetings. In fact, for a good 4 months after that, nothing happened either, and then they put out some stumps. (I admit they look like fun, but that's it; there's tons of work to be done).

And then Sunday, we saw that half the parking lot plus a little bit of playground was torn out. I admit I exclaimed, "What the devil?" Charlotte said, "What debil? Where da debil? Hi, debil!" And she started waving at the school! And as we passed, she said, "Bye, debil! See ya later!" That may be the funniest thing ever!

There've been some other wonderful Charlotte-isms lately, like the time she was told that she couldn't go outside because she didn't have shoes on, and she said, "That's okay, I'm wearing my feet!"

Horsey Pics!

Yesterday the high was <95 degrees (finally), so we decided to go visit Sunny at the farm. We brought a friend and her son, who happens to be Char's best buddy. Well, we met them there. Anyway, the kids fed Sunny so many horse treats that I worried a little about his gut.

The cutest moment was probably when Charlotte went into the tack room and came out with 2 helmets, and promptly handed one to her buddy.

(I don't have permission to post his pics so I'll just show this one )

Some undeserved praise

First let me give the disclaimer that I fully realize that CHARLOTTE is responsible for Charlotte potty training early, as well as all her other early milestone developments. At least 90% of her potty learning was just a result of her being her, and I can only take partial credit for the rest. All we really did was follow her lead.

My husband made me cry tonight. He told me a story about a guy from work who has twin 4 year old boys and just came back from vacation, gushing about the fun time they had. Husband mentioned our upcoming vacation, and guy said, "It's even more fun when they're potty trained!" Husband said, "Oh, Charlotte's been potty trained for 6 months!" (Actually 8). Guy said, "Really? How? My boys were almost 4!"

Husband's comment back to him: "I have a genius little kid for a daughter and a genius little kid mom for a wife. Charlotte does everything early because she's incredible and because my incredible wife learns about all these issues and observes Charlotte, knows what to look for, and follows her lead."

And I'm pretty sure no one has ever paid me a nicer compliment in my life, even if it's not really something I can take credit for!

DIY Sensory Table

A very simple project for under $20. I took a 24" wide shoe rack, attached 2 largish plastic bowls to the top with industrial velcro (not necessary but helps prevent them from being knocked off or completely poured out), and filled 6 short pitchers with water, rice, or lentils.

Char really seemed to enjoy it! It took about 4 seconds before the rice and beans were mixed together, but that's okay too.

Of course it made a huge mess, but she was thrilled to help clean up :).

And here's a picture just because it's cute:

Check out the wild hair!

And in other news, I got a new job! It's not a promotion; it's actually a lateral within the same department, but hopefully it will position me for advancement in the next year or two. The senior manager actually came to me (after going to my boss) to ask if I'd be interested. I hadn't planned to, but I did, and I got it! Yay!

I really should give my kid more credit.

Who hasn't shoved something horribly inappropriate in some bodily oriface as a toddler? With me, it was a Vitamin C tablet up the nose. Why? I liked how it smelled (like oranges, der)! But I also have a memory of my sister babysitting the 3 year old next door and my mom had to rush her to the hospital because she (the girl) shoved a Barbie earring up HER nose. As an aside, can you imagine just how tiny an earring for a Barbie is?

So, when I saw Charlotte take something small and put it very close to her ear, I assumed that she stuck something in there and nearly had a heart attack. Nope. She had found a tiny little bell (the kind used in cat toys and probably some jewelry of some kind that she found), but she wasn't putting it in her ear, she was shaking it very close to her ear. So I felt like a real "mom" when I discovered this since I had scolded her for putting things in her ear. Not the good kind of mom, the "all grownups are just alike" kind of mom feeling. Blech.

And back to the topic of this thread. I should really give Charlotte more credit, but so should other people. Really.

Last Friday (I've been a bad little blogger), I had to pick Char up from her preschool since her babysitter's car is broken and she had to catch a ride and obviously can't pick Char up. Charlotte was in a MOOD! She ran around in circles and wouldn't let me pick her up, or stop to put her shoes on, or anything. She finally tripped on a table leg and I was able to scoop her up and put her shoes on. I decided she needed a distraction while I collected her things, so I told her that when I put her down, I needed her to find me a turtle. There was a picture of a turtle on the rug, as well as other animals, so she ran over to the picture. Then she went to the next animal over and said, "What's this?" I said, "What IS it?" She said, "A dog. Ruff ruff." Then she went to the next animal over (there are animals all around the edge of the rug) and repeated. "What's this?" "What IS it?" "Cat. Meow."

Now, please let me say at this point that I don't think that's particularly "impressive" for a 2 year old. I'm not telling this story to leave the impression that I think her ability to recognize pictures of common animals and what they "say" makes her a genius or something. Oh, she is, but not for that ;). IMO it's fairly common stuff for a kid as verbal as she.

So I was pretty shocked when the teacher said, "She acts smart when you're here." "What?" "She doesn't do smart things when you're not here." Oh my gosh! If that isn't the dumbest thing a preschool teacher can say, surely it's pretty close, no?