up to her waist

perspective

HALP!

long hike

footprints

deep

frosty morning

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I’m pregnant!

So. There ya go! A bit anticlimactic but maybe it’s just me becausezzzzzzzzz…

Baby #2 should be arriving sometime in late September, which puts me at around 6 weeks at the moment. Yeah, I know it’s early and most people wait to share the new with the World, but I can’t keep a secret, you guys. I’ve been keeping this in for 2 weeks and I can’t TAKE IT ANYMORE! (I suck at keeping my own secrets.) I went to the doctor this morning, everything looks good so far. We’ll get to hear the woosh-woosh of the little bun’s heartbeat in a few more weeks.

Even with all the nausea and mind-numbing tiredness, we are obviously beyond thrilled. And seeing my daughter talk to my belly (“HI SISTER!” or “HI BRUDDER!”) is pretty much the cutest thing I’ve ever seen.
More posts like this:

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coloring

birthday girl

twirling

cake

NOM

lipstick? or icing?

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fancy

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So naturally, because she’s so darn cute, I obliged.

While navigating my Flickr stream, we came across a video of her from when she was about 12 months old. And apparently, it’s the funniest thing ever committed to video.

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Maggie wanted to wear a dress to school. There were no clean dresses to wear.

She didn’t want to brush her teeth.

She dropped her pink step-stool on her foot. The band-aid I got for her (invisible) boo-boo didn’t have the right princesses on it.

She didn’t want to put her socks on. She COULDN’T put her shoes on (she totally can).

She dilly-dallied about doing EVERYTHING and we were running late.

Finally I got her to school and me off to work but it was a rough morning.

Then, after our dinner with Daddy at Applebees after work and school, we came home and she asked sweetly to watch A Bug’s Life. I turned it on, and I sat on the couch next to her.

After a few minutes, she climbed over to me and laid her head on my shoulder. Then she climbed even closer and laid her head on my lap. She stayed there for at least 20 minutes.

I guess she can stay.
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• ALL ABOARD THE CRAZY TRAIN. December 17, 2009

We first introduced Maggie to the potty, like, a YEAR ago. And she peed in it. Once. Then that was it for while. I was okay with that because she wasn’t even 2 years old yet. Occasionally throughout the summer, we would ask her if she wanted to sit on the potty and if she agreed, we were happy. If she peed, we were even more happy! We’d do a potty dance, reward her with M&Ms or Smarties or whatever, and it was all great fun.

Then for a few weeks, she was totally NOT into it, so we eased up. Then she’d be cooperative with it for a week or so, then she wanted to have nothing to do with it. Then cooperative, then not so much again.

It was a cycle. A routine. I LIKE ROUTINES!

Then we decided to get Serious about it. We tried a sticker chart for prizes. FAIL. She simply says ‘Nope, I don’t want a sticker!’ and that’s that.(Question: How do you bargain with a child who is ONTO YOUR TRICKS?? Answer: YOU DON’T.)

We tried training pants. She uses them just like a diaper. The kid just does NOT care if she’s sitting in her own pee or poop all day. Even if it turns cold like the training pants say it does. We tried candy again. We tried reverse psychology (“You’re not ALLOWED to use the potty!”)

I even tried putting her in underpants one day when I knew we’d be home to deal with accidents. I told her “Come on, let’s go sit on the potty! You have to sit on the potty if you’re wearing underpants!” She stood up, took off the underwear, handed them to me and said “I wanna diaper.”

So! We’ve tried it all. Seriously. She knows the routine, she CAN go pee on the potty if she wants to (poop is another story, but I’m not too concerned with that just yet). She just simply does NOT WANT TO. (And given the fact that recently she gave up her pacifier AND her crib all in one week, I’m willing to give her a little slack on the potty training thing. I mean, the kid needs to control SOMETHING in her life, you know?)

Today was another rare time when we were going to be home all day. No errands to run, no work to do, just us hanging out in our pajamas.

And our Elmo underpants. (Well, just Maggie.) (And that was only after she pooped this morning. I’m not STUPID.)

She did great. For nearly 2 hours, she had on her underpants and had zero accidents. She even peed on the potty THREE TIMES. Hooray!

Then it was naptime, so I convinced her to let me put Princess Pants on her (Pull-ups. With princesses on them, in case that wasn’t obvious.) I told her after her nap, she could put her underpants back on because she kept them clean! and dry! She was excited. We read a book, I tucked her in, and headed downstairs.

After about 10 minutes or so, I heard her walking around her room (still working on the Staying In Bed Thing) so I went and poked my head in the door. I noticed a pink Pull-up laying by her bed, and she was standing in the middle of the floor, staring at me.

“Pull your dress up, please”, I said.

She stared at me. Didn’t move.

I asked again. “Pull your dress up.”

She slowly reached her hand down and pulled up her dress to reveal… Elmo underpants. That I had put on top of her dresser where, HEY! Apparently she can reach now!

Not only was she wearing underpants that she stole from their hiding spot until after her nap, THEY HAD PEE IN THEM. And also a huge puddle on the (wood) floor over by the window.

This potty training thing is AWESOME, you guys.
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undomesticdiva (blog) ME: Is now a good time to tell you I bought our son a guinea pig for xmas? HUSBAND: No. ME: Ok. How’s your day going? 1:20 PM Dec 16th, 2009

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samanthajcampen (blog) I really REALLY need to exercise. Feeling slothful. Will someone come over here and chase me with a knife? 4:17 PM Dec 18th, 2009

jonniker (blog) Adam & I both *swear* that Samantha said “doggie” in reference to Sunny. And then our 9-month-old prodigy slapped herself in the face. 5:14 PM Dec 19th, 2009

CranberryPerson Missed out on a kids’ birthday party and family Christmas shopping today. PRETENDING TO BE SICK IS AWESOME YOU GUYS. 9:37 PM Dec 19th, 2009

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notthatyouasked (blog) I just ripped a fart while rocking the baby and the monitor is on downstairs where Asher is playing with… MY MOTHER- IN-LAW. 7:24 PM Jan 5th

Sundry (blog) When your wife finishes school registration and jokes “Does this look like the ass of a college girl?” correct answer is NOT “Freshman 15″ 1:42 PM Jan 6th

woycheck (blog) TRAFFIPOCALYPSE 4:49 PM Jan 7th

ModernMatriarch (blog) If your PR email to me starts, “Dear Fellow Vegetarian” clearly you have me confused with someone who wouldn’t kill her own cow for a burger 8:32 AM Jan 8th

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CranberryPerson Somewhere in the deep recesses of my mind are memories of a time when a weekend’s success was not measured by how much ironing I got done. 5:29 PM Jan 10th

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wii belly

curly-headed kid

kisses

couch potatoes

More posts like this:

• break time June 23, 2008
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What I ever did without my BlackBerry to record these precious moments on my blog, I’ll never know.

So anyway. My kid. She’s the best.

===

I’ve mentioned before about how suddenly she’s taken a liking to music that doesn’t involve animal sounds or animated characters. THIS IS EXCITING. Her favorite is Miranda Lambert, and of course she picks the two songs on the CD in my car that are the least appropriate for a 2 year old: “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” which has like 3 cursewords in it, and “Dry Town”, a song about beer.

That’s not the awesome part, though. The awesome part is that she identifies the songs within like TWO NOTES. Without hesitation, without fail. The first two notes of “Dry Town” come on and she’s jamming in the back seat, yelling “IT’S DRY TOWN! DRY TOWN!” And she sings it while we’re grocery shopping. With the right notes and rhythm and everything.

She clearly did not get her father’s musical talent (which is like, NONE.) She gets it from me. I can sing. Kinda.

I’m just worried she’s gonna break into Crazy Ex-Girlfriend out in public and say the swears. whoops.

===

Maggie is in school Monday, Wednesday, Friday. (we call daycare “school” for whatever reason, I think it started because it was easier for her to say that when she was younger.) She loves school, but pretty much every day now when I go into her room to wake her up, she rolls over and says “We not goin enny-ware today?” and I have to tell her that no, we have to go to work and school. She looks sad.

I know, kid. I wish we could just stay home in our pajamas and ‘hang out’, as she calls it.

But on Wednesdays, I have a card to play: “But it’s PIZZA DAY at school!” and she gasps and says “IT’S WEDNESDAY!!??”

We do this pretty much every Wednesday. It’s like our bit now.

===

Okay the next thing in my Crazy Person Notes reads “not nice kitty bubbles”. I’m not 100% sure what that means, other than one day we were headed to my parents’ house and she was talking about my parents cat is not nice. And she wanted to blow bubbles with PapPap.

Sorry, that’s all I got on that one. I need to take better notes.

===

She is very good at speaking. She can pronounce complicated words perfectly, such as ‘quesadilla’ and ‘ridiculous’. But she says ‘openin’ instead of ‘open’ and I think it’s the freaking cutest thing I’ve ever heard. I have never, ever corrected her. And you can’t make me.

===

She likes to take her socks off and exclaim, “My feet are sweaty!”

===

We were at my parents’ house a few weeks ago and she kept putting her feet on the coffee table. I said “Maggie, please stop putting your feet on the coffee table.”

She said, “Dis not a coffee table. It just a TABLE.”

Well then.

===

She’s bossy. Dan was playing with her one day, and she apparently wanted him to leave her stuff alone, because she yelled at him, “DADDY! Don’t touch ANYTHING… in da wooooorld!”

===

We are in the midst of a massive Toddler-Food-Parent battle. She is very picky about what she’ll eat. Thankfully, she still loves fruit, yogurt, cheese, and peanut butter & jelly. Dinner is usually mac ‘n cheese or some type of noodle. She haaates all vegetables. She gets very little protein that doesn’t come from dairy, and while I don’t want to force meat down her throat, I would like her to at least try it. But we struggle with getting her to eat even the delicious chicken nuggets from Chick-fil-A (I KNOW. How can she NOT LOVE THEM?? They are like little, breaded bits of heaven.)

One night we had Dan’s parents over for dinner, and I made chicken pasta. She had some noodles and I put a small piece of chicken in her bowl (so we could bribe her later to eat at least ONE BITE, OMG) I hadn’t even mentioned the chicken to her, just kind of stuck it in there to see what would happen.

A few minutes into the meal, she held up her fork with a hunk of chicken on the end and proclaimed “I LOVE CHICKEN!”

*headdesk*

Dan’s mom said, ‘WOW! Since when does she eat chicken!?” to which Dan replied, “um… like 10 seconds ago.”

===

More on the Showing Off For The Grandparents Front: we’ve all but given up on the whole potty training thing for now (figured we’d give her a break since she just gave up her pacifier and her crib all in one week- successfully and without much fuss, I might add.) But potty training is still a frustration because lordy, we’ve tried it ALL. Candy bribes, a sticker chart, big girl underwear, pull-ups… please don’t try suggesting anything else because we have TRIED IT. Right now we just have to wait for her to decide she wants to. And she doesn’t want to.

So it’s been a week or so since we’ve really pushed her to sit on the toilet at all. Then on Saturday, my mom stopped by to play with Maggie for a bit, and she wasn’t there TWO MINUTES and Maggie stops eating her lunch, climbs down from her chair, and says “I go sit on da potty, okay?”

*headdesk*

===

When we give her goodnight kisses, she sometimes pushes our heads together and says “KISS TOGETHER!” and makes us kiss. It would be cute if kissing Dan didn’t make me throw up in my mouth a little bit.

(I’M KIDDING.)
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• how is it Friday already? SRSLY. February 6, 2009

(Almost. I still have to do the little butler’s pantry area off of the kitchen. But dude. Just humor me.)

Living Room: BEFORE

Living Room: AFTER

Kitchen: BEFORE

Kitchen: AFTER

(Believe it or not, the rooms are the same color. But it looks a lot greener in the kitchen for some reason. But I like it!)

I counted, and since last Saturday (as in, TWO Saturdays ago), I logged about 20 hours of painting. Plus my mom helped for about 6 hours. HOW ON EARTH DOES IT TAKE THAT LONG? I have no idea. But it’s done! And I’m loving it. I didn’t realize how much I dislike the peachy/beige-y color that is all through the house until I started covering it up.

Only like a bajillion more rooms to go! Grab a brush!

(And speaking of new coats of paint, I made some changes to the blog last night. Click through your feed reader to check it out!)
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