Happy Home Initiation!

This month we celebrated my 28th birthday. We had a bring your own dip and board game party.  By the time everyone left to put kiddos in bed, however, we didn't get to the boardgames.  The night owls of the family (Mom, me and Lucy) did get a few rounds of Wits and Wagers in.  During the party itself, though, we did get to initiating the bathroom.

Sam decided that she would make the party day the day that she would experiment with flushing non-flushables down the toilet.  After peeing her pants (more on that later) I sent her to the bathroom to clean herself up.  After about 10 minutes I realized that she was taking WAY too long in the bathroom.  I entered the bathroom to find the toilet overflowing and Sam standing on her stool panicking because she was all wet and things were just getting wetter.

Her pee soaked panties, however, were still on.  She'd forgotten to take care of that little bit of business.

Anyway, my dad came to our rescue and fished out lots of toilet paper and the hand towel from our pipes.  I'm glad he was there, as I would have 1)not thought to turn off the water to the toilet and 2) tried to plunge the clog down, rather than pull stuff out.  Sam has never before tried to put anything in the toilet other than lots and lots of TP, so I'm not sure what spurred the sudden curiosity.

After that fiasco was cleaned up my niece found the broom that we keep behind the door and proceeded to "sweep" the entire floor.  Unfortunately I'd forgotten about the broom during the first clean-up and it was soaking wet.  Commence clean-up #2.

And finally, my brother was in the bathroom and accidentally knocked over our soap dispenser from our tiny sink, spilling the watered down soap contents all over the floor.

tiny sink

All this in less than an hour in the smallest (and most recently remodeled) room in the house.

Happy Home Initiation!

Picky Dresser

I am proud to say that with all of Sam's "isms" that she has, being a picky eater is not one of them.

She'll try anything once- and SHE's the one who will demand to try it! She loves onions, bell peppers, mushrooms, asparagus, avocados, salads, tomatoes- you name it, she'll down it. Now, this isn't to say she won't go for the "classics" (plain noodles, pbj's, mac and cheese, hot dogs) it's just that she'll just as happily eat the healthy as she will the unhealthy. I love that I can give her a bite of any thing off my plate and she doesn't care what's on the fork (as long as I tell her what it is and it's not too spicy...she's got to be prepared you know.)
My theory, however, is that every toddler has to have an all out tantrum inducing revulsion to something that's fairly common. For most kids, it's foods. For my child, it's clothing--jeans to be more specific.

I have the most adorable gap jeans (bought used, of course!) that I've been dying to have her wear, but I may as well be trying to dress her in poison ivy. Just the sight of them sends her running and screaming "I NO WEAR JEANS!!! THEY TOO TIGHT!!"

I've tried the loose fitting kind, capris, shorts, skirts; but in my effort to get her to warm up to the rancid fabric I have simply encouraged further revulsion on her end. "Jeans" are now anything but stretchy cotton pants. That means no corduroy, no khakis, no anything that could possibly resemble the general shape (or "tightness") of jeans. No bribery in the world allows me to get them on her without tears- and even then they only stay on for a few seconds before a tantrum ensues.

So I've decided to choose my battles and am not even going to put the next size jeans in her drawer.

*Sigh*...they were just so cute...

Fly on the Wall

"Mommy! Mommy! I have a question!"

"Yes, Samantha, what is your question."

"........"

We're still working on the meaning of "question"

Fly on the Wall- Classroom Edition

I was administering a listening part of a test. The students had to indicate whether the statement I read was "logical" or "illogical". After reading the first one a native Spanish speaking student started to laugh. Seeing as this was a test, I called on him, across the room, "What's so funny?" I asked (I know I know, rookie teacher mistake).
"It's just funny. It doesn't make any sense."
Cue dramatic pause before everyone (including the student) realized that he just gave the answer to the rest of the class.

Sam's Signature

Back in October or so I showed Sam how to draw a smiley face. It pretty much became her signature and we found random smiley faces on every piece of paper we left lying around. I thought I'd give her a little variety, so I showed her how to draw tears to make a sad face too. If I'm not careful, my students get papers handed back with smiley faces and crying smiling faces on them.
Luckily, they think it's pretty cool.

Signing "Cry"

Happy Tears

So...close...

They lasted about 2 hours.

Getting in the Spirit

"Mono-color" day at the High School for Spirit Week. It was WAY too easy for me to find an all brown outfit. I had three to choose from, in fact. And Sam...well, I swore I would not have nearly as much pink as we do and she had several to choose from as well.

The Never Ending Battle

So I'm here to vent.  Sam was pretty much potty trained (minus sleeping times) and recently she's decided she no longer cares.  We tell her to go potty and her response is either

1) "NO! I no have to pee pee!!!!"

2) "I pee peed my panties"

With the weather warming up and my child sweating more than...well, something that sweats a LOT, she's constantly chugging water (or asking for a drink). The problem is that it becomes a toy and she'll just play drinking games.  The other side of the issue is that she's already borderline constipated as it is, so refusing the liquids just exasperates that issue.  .  Another piece of the puzzle is that at day care she is around 3-4 non-potty trained babies/toddlers.  She's obsessed with the babies and has started sucking her thumb and grunting like a baby would, so I know this is just part of the imitation.  I've tried explaining the different between pretending to be a baby and crossing the line of being "naughty" (ie peeing her pants on purpose), but that only sticks with her for so long.  We are ready to pull our hair out right now

Basically, what I'm getting at is, any suggestions out there???

Daddy Needs to Fix It!!

Recently Jeremy and I decided that the TV is broken when Sam is awake. After a short "detoxing," we saw huge changes from the TV being off. The biggest benefit is that Sam will now play BY HERSELF.

As long as I'm not on the computer she's perfectly content to tend to her bears and babies.

And I can't tell you how thrilled I am that she is making messes.

I'm dead serious. This child is finally EXPLORING the world around her!

She doesn't even come up to whine while I'm taking a shower. I just turn on music and she's off in her own little world!

________________________________
She does get plenty of TV at daycare and Mimi and Papa's. So far the "it's broken" charade has worked quite well. I will admit that the tv does become "fixed" every once in a while. It's only happened when one of us is sick or an occasional 20 minutes of a Disney Classic right before bed while she eats her dessert. She LOVES the books so a movie is like the books coming to life!

The Wall

When we first looked at our current home my first thought when I walked in the door was, "Wow, Sam would LOVE that wall."

Four months in and it still hasn't lost it's novelty!

Jeremy's Worst Nightmare

Jer is really worried that we will get an athletic child. He barely gets the basics of the most popular sports but, to put it frankly, they bore him. I, on the other hand LOVE watching basketball, volleyball and baseball (especially if I know the players). So only Sam and I were the excited ones when I created this:

A Little Visitor

A while back Sam found a lady bug crawling on the floor.
"Look mommy! He's a lady bug! He's my friend!"
She was entranced for quite a while.
She had to stop to eat and while I was bringing food/drinks back and forth from the kitchen to the dining room I stepped on something that got stuck on my foot. I brushed it off and glanced at the floor.
Take a wild guess at what it was.
After lunch she was looking for her friend all over (I'd gently "brushed" him under the baseboard) and I told her he went to see his family.
A while later she was spazzing in the kitchen because her friend had come back to visit her. I was a little worried...either this was a freak of nature lady bug or we were on the verge of an infestation.
Instead of pondering the answer, I grabbed the camera...

"He's my friend. He came back to visit me!

Say cheese!

Try again sweetie, and open your eyes please....

OPEN. There we go!

Where is he?

Blog back-up

Ok so I've had a million things that I've wanted to post and I've finally decided- for get creativity, I'm just gonna post! So random pictures and videos from the past few months are to come shortly...to start, some quotes:

Me: Sam, did you take a bath?
Sam: Yep! I all fresh and clean and no caffeine!

Sam to random stranger during mass: Hi! What's your name?

Sam: Mommie, I need my coffee.

Back when the black eye was healing: