Rough Evening

In less than one half of an hour last night I was:

1. Poked in the eye by DaBoy.
2. Bitten on the shoulder by DaBoy.
3. Peed on by DaGirl.

Here's to hoping tonight is a better day!

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Here you go.....

DaGirl has never been interested in dressing herself. Sure, she'll help wiggle into a shirt for you but she never voluntarily puts clothes on, except her rubber frog boots, and who wouldn't want to put those on?

Taking her clothes off...that's another story. If left alone, it seems she can strip down to her birthday suit in under a minute. If we are nearby she has "problems" and asks for help.

We've been potty training for a while now with mixed results. Some people keep telling us she's still young and not to pressure her or for us to get worked up over it. Two demanding kids in cloth diapers is no picnic and the faster we get her asking for the potty the better for everyone.

We keep telling her "listen to your body and let us know when you need to go potty". We know she understands the concept. It's the application that's a little off. Case in point:

DaMom is in the kitchen putting lunch together and DaGirl is allegedly "playing" in the living room. DaGirl strips down to her socks (in the living room!), acquires some toilet paper, picks up the offending lump from her diaper with the paper and brings it to DaMom in the kitchen . "Poop" DaGirl says as she holds the prize up for examination.

"sigh"

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When is it to early to teach fluid dynamics?

Apparently DaGirl is auditing a correspondence course in fluids. In our driveway.

When I got home last night I was greeted by DaMom with "Take her with you! She's spent too much time in front of the TV today."

OK, no problem. I'll round her up and we'll walk the dog.

Umm, not quite.

"Curewius HAT" DaGirl says to me. (allow me to translate: Curious George and the man with the yellow hat. One of her favorite shows and good luck getting her away from the TV when it's on.)

Here's where one needs to resort to bribery and trickery.

First I say:Do you want to go pee pee on the potty?
DaGirl: no.
DaGoof: Do you want to walk the dog with me?
DaGirl: no.
DaGoof: Do you want to splash in the puddles outside?
DaGirl: YAA!
DaGoof: OK, then you need to go pee pee on the potty first.
DaGirl: OK.

So I get her away from the electronic baby sitter, emptied out, dressed for outside and out we go. While I'm getting the stroller from the garage she's stomping in the big puddle in the driveway. No problem, she's got her big rubber boots on and her pants are up. She's having a blast. I wheel the stroller over and say "Do you want to walk Scrappy?", she voluntarily speeds over to the stroller.

We go for our walk and upon our return I pick her out of the stroller and put her on the deck. "NNNOOOOOOOO!" She screams. "Pudel" she points beyond DaMom's car.

"OK, you want to play in the puddle some more" I say as I lift her back down to the ground and she scurries over to the puddle. I think to myself "There's only an inch of water and if she gets wet I'll change her. I can put the stroller away and then play with her in the puddle."

Well, when I got back to her 30 seconds later she was standing in the middle of the puddle, bent over, analyzing the flotation characteristics of her mittens as she pushed them through the water.

My future engineer.

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The Enablers

Dinner at our house does not usually end with a dessert. Most of the time dinner is filling enough that dessert is just not required and we'd rather have the kids eat a good meal without having to bribe them with dessert. But desserts do happen occasionally.

My in-laws (Memere & Pepere - French for grandma & grandpa) always have dessert and we have most Sunday night dinners at their house.

Last night was a particularly light meal that needed to be followed by a sweet treat. We finished our meals and were still at the table when DaMom asks DaGirl what she would like for dessert, here's what happened:

DaGirl: COOOOKIEs
DaMom: We don't have any cookies.
DaGirl: CREAAM
DaMom: We don't have any ice cream.
DaGirl: (pauses - you could see the thought coming) MEMMES HOUSE!!!

We all laugh.

DaMom: My mother's got to hear this!

She grabs the phone and rings her up.

DaMom: Hey mom, guess who wants to come over for dessert? YUP. What's that say she thinks about your house?

She hands the phone to DaGirl and with little prodding DaGirl tells Memere that she'd like ice cream for dessert. They end the phone call with some laughs and we think no more of it.

DaMom gets up to make some cookies from scratch while I bathe DaKids.

10 minutes later guess who's here? With ice cream. And brownies. And whipped cream.

The Circus of the Grand Enablers

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The Power of Bubbles

Never underestimate the power contained inside a bubble.

I'm sure as kid I loved bubbles, but over the years their effect has warn off. Was it was the cold reality of the hardships in life that killed my love for the bubble? Or was it learning about air pressure and surface tension that diluted my interest in flying, soapy spheres?

I'm glad to announce that interest in the magical childhood physics lesson has been renewed in our house.

DaGirl loves bubbles, good thing too. She had been "kinda" potty trained, I like to say anywhere between 25 and 75% on any given day, but a couple of weeks ago she started refusing to be in the same room as the potty. No matter what we tried to do to lure her into the bathroom she resisted, violently.

Much like the power of the Pied Piper's magical pipe, the lofty orb of soap has renewed DaGirl's interest in putting potty where it belongs and will chant "bubbbbles, bubbbbles, bubbbbles" as soon as she walks in the door of the bathroom.

All hail the bubble.

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Darth Vader is in DaHouse!

How do you check on your little ones before you go to bed?

Let me tell you how we do it around here:
For DaBoy, you creep softly into his room, put your head as close can to him, and listen for the faint, soft breathing only a baby can make.
For DaGirl, you sit in the living room, downstairs and listen for the Darth Vader, vacuum cleaner, cutting a cord of wood a night, snore only she can make.

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Boxes...

Why do people feel the need to open other peoples boxes?

I handle 90% of the parts that go out to be machined, fabricated, plated or painted. The other 10% are handled by our "middle eastern division" (they're in an eastern cell of the converted strip mall we're in, and the name just fits) When an item is for plating or painting I box the items, make up the parts lists, call for pick up, deal with any QC issues the vendor has and perform the incoming inspection. It is generally understood that if the white truck from the other side of the river is here, it's here for me.

So then why did a particular busy body see the need to open a box that came back from plating this afternoon?

I saw the truck pull in. I put the box on the bench in front of my cube. I knew what it was and I knew it could stay boxed up for the day. We have enough stuff spread around here and keeping the contents of that box together and wrapped up would be fine until we got to Boston to do the final install. As long as the parts were in the box they could be all scratched and hot pink and I could care less, their function would still be performed.

Now the box is gone and the parts are who knows where. I'm not even sure he signed the packing slip.

So then back to the question, why?

Is it the fear of not knowing what's inside an unopened box?

Is it the joy that comes from opening a sealed box?

Is it need to be in everyone's business?

Yeah, that's it.

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