Carolyn

Happy Easter!

Sarah Carolyn

What a nice day we had – if you don’t count the fact that it was cold and snowy enough to be Christmas instead of Easter!

Carrie was thrilled to find a half-eaten carrot next to her Easter basket when she came downstairs for breakfast. I didn’t leave it there, so the Easter bunny must have raided the fridge while we were sleeping. But he left behind a Little People Easter train for Carrie, along with a couple of books and a small stuffed bunny.

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We went to church, where I very nervously played piano and sang – I can’t believe I used to do this every week (sometimes twice!) and it was so normal, and now I get nervous and shaky and choke up when it’s time to sing the descants – and Carrie did a fabulous job of being quiet and attentive and good sitting out in the congregation instead of the “cry room”.

We talked Carrie into taking an early nap, and then headed to my Grandma’s for dinner. Carrie was hungry and as we were setting the table she kept saying “We eat now? Time to eat?” and I’d tell her we were almost ready. Finally she got fed up with waiting and said “OK, we eat now. We eat cake!” But she was happy enough with the ham instead – actually I think she ate more ham than I did – and wasn’t too disappointed that dessert was fruit and the cookies we baked yesterday instead of cake.

The only thing we didn’t do was any sort of egg hunt, but it was too cold outside really. There’s always next year!

Easter Preparations

Sarah Carolyn

Today Carrie colored eggs for the first time. I didn’t even bother for the last couple of years, but I thought she might enjoy it. Well, that’s an understatement! She’d drop the eggs into the dye (we had a couple of casualties with her method) and say “Bye, bye egg! See you later!”

Unfortunately I couldn’t find a “normal” egg coloring kit. You know, the Paas tablets that you dissolve with hot water and vinegar? No, there were several varieties of another brand: glitter eggs, tie-dye eggs, painted eggs… So I bought the kit with the paints. Carrie was delighted. Me? Not so much. Check out the kid’s hands:

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Plus, the dye colors just didn’t look the way they should. The purple was magenta and the green looked exactly like the blue. I wound up putting the “purple” eggs into the blue and the “green” eggs into the yellow to make them actually look right. Yes, I’m picky about my colored eggs. Next year I’m buying a Paas kit if I have to go to ten different stores to find one!
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Besides the eggs, we also made some cut out cookies of bunnies, chicks (or ducks), eggs and flowers. Carrie still only dabs a tiny bit of frosting on her cookies, but now she likes to pile up as many sprinkles as she can on that wee little dollop of frosting.

Now I just have to try to make her very colorful hands a bit less colorful before church tomorrow…

Twenty-Nine Months Old!

Sarah Monthly Updates

Dear Carolyn,

Next month we can officially call you 2-and-a-half. Your Daddy and I were just discussing how different you are now from when you turned 2, how you change so much faster than we do, we can barely keep up.

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I’d like to tell you what your favorite things to do this month are, but the word “everything” doesn’t come close to summing it up. Color with crayons and markers? Great! Ride your tricycle? Sure! Read library books over and over? Wonderful idea! Play with dolls and blocks and puzzles and cars and play-doh? All at the same time? Bring it on! About the only things you don’t like to do are getting ready for bed, getting ready to eat, getting ready to leave the house…do you see the trend here?

You are a very helpful child. You love to help me load and unload the dishwasher (it definitely goes faster when you help, since I have to put away all the breakables as fast as I can!), vacuum (the floor gets extra clean since I have to go really slowly so I don’t run over your toes), fold laundry (or unfold, as the case may be) and dust (actually, that is really helpful – though not very thorough). You’re also very, very polite when we’re out, saying pleases and thank yous unprompted. The other night we were at Grandma’s house for dinner, and you had eaten a late lunch. When she encouraged you to eat more dinner, you said “No thanks, I’ll finish it later. Can I have some apples please?”

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You’re back to sleeping in your bed, although you take forever to fall asleep at night. And sometimes you have nightmares. The other night you woke up crying, and when I went in to ask you what was wrong you tearfully replied, “my play-doh!” When I asked what happened to your play-doh you sniffled and said in a really small voice, “it fell off the little green table.” And as funny as that sounds now, I wanted to cry with you that night hearing how sad you were. I’m honored to be the person who can make it all better when you have a nightmare.

Love, Mommy

Bowling

Sarah Carolyn

I signed Carrie up for bumper bowling for the spring, for a change of pace from story times and music “classes”. She loved it – from the fancy shoes:

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…to the fun metal ramp that actually lets the ball get all the way to the end of the lane:
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And she bowled a 78 for her very first game of bowling ever. That’s pretty good…I bet I could barely break 100 since it’s been so long since I went bowling last!

Sixteen Teeth, Going On Seventeen

Sarah Carolyn

Carrie came to my dentist appointment today. She got to take a ride in the “big chair”, while the dental hygienist counted her teeth. (Apparently two of her two-year molars are finally on their way in – which could explain a bit about the last couple weeks of sleep issues.) The chair was such a big hit that Carrie kept begging for another turn while I was getting my teeth cleaned.

Next fall she’ll have her first “real” appointment. In the meantime, all of her teeth look good, and she seems to have a normal bite…despite the sleep-time binky habit we haven’t kicked yet…

Oh, and the hygienist was impressed with our toothbrushing song. We sing the ABC song while Carrie brushes her teeth, but then after when Denis or I brush her teeth we sing the “Toothbrush Hokey Pokey”. I’m sure it’s not really original, but the hygienist had never heard of such a thing, so in case anyone needs a new toddler toothbrushing strategy, I give you:

The Toothbrush Hokey Pokey
You put the toothbrush in. Stick the toothbrush in.
You take the toothbrush out. Take the toothbrush out.
You put the toothbrush in, I trust you can figure this out…
And then you shake it all about! Brush as many teeth as you can!
You do the hokey toothbrush and you turn yourself around, You can turn around, or have your child turn around, or just turn the toothbrush around here.
That’s what it’s all about! Jazz hands. Seriously.

(Repeat until all the teeth are brushed.)

Carrie’s Tricycle

Sarah Milestones

The tricycle I ordered during last week’s blizzard came today, which turned out to be the first beautifully warm day this year. Carrie was so excited she could barely contain herself! Denis assembled it – with Carrie’s “help” of course – and I got her all set with her new helmet. We headed out to the driveway and let her try our her new wheels. Of course, she had to bring her baby out to tuck into the convenient basket in the back.

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I think she loves her trike, don’t you? More pictures here.

For anyone who’s curious, we ordered the Kettler Blossom trike from Oompa toys. It was the best price that I found, they had free shipping, and it’s a store I’ve ordered from before and had a good experience with. We also ordered the optional parent push bar, and it’s a good thing too since I think it will take a while for Carrie to master the whole pedaling/steering/stopping thing! The helmet is a Giro Me2 from our local bike shop. I tried Target first, but none of their helmets fit quite right – the 1+ helmets were too small and the 3+ helmets were too big. I’m really happy I spent the extra money on an easy-to-adjust helmet. And Giro has a grow-with-me program that lets you trade in a too small helmet for credit towards a bigger one. Plus, well, it’s pink. With bunnies. Carrie couldn’t be more thrilled – unless maybe it was pink with puppies!

Magic Words

Sarah Carolyn

I don’t remember where I ran across this idea, but I read somewhere that kids Carrie’s age have this belief that words are magic – as in, if they say something, then it becomes true. So what adults perceive as lying in small children is really just the child trying to alter reality to make it the way they think the adult wants it to be.

Carrie obviously believes in the power of her words. Since I’ve been sick, she says “I give you two kisses Mommy, to make you feel better”, kisses me twice, and then says (while wagging her finger at me) “You are not old, and you are not sick. You are just fine!”

Don’t ask me where she got the old part from. No idea. Especially because if you ask her how old I am she says “three!”

I wish she were right, and the words worked like magic. I’d like to not be sick anymore. Being stuck in the house for most of a week with a toddler while not feeling 100% is really not the most fun I’ve ever had in my life.

But I suppose the “magic words” concept explains why I can tell her a half a dozen times that we don’t have any bagels in the house to eat for breakfast, and yet she’ll insist that we do. I guess to her I’m making the bagels go away after she’s already willed them into existence…

Yet More Cute Sayings

Sarah Carolyn

Quite a few funny toddler moments these past few days:

We watched Sammy on Tuesday afternoon, and the kids were playing follow-the-leader around the house. When I asked Carrie what they were playing, she said “We playing fun!” And then they proceeded to “play sleepy!” where they laid down on the couch, covered themselves up with a blanket, and pretended to snore.

When Denis walked in from work yesterday, we were playing with play-doh. Carrie announced, “Daddy, look! I playing play-doh with my friend Mommy!”

When I was getting ready for band last night, Carrie said “I go to band with you Mommy, PLEEEEASE?” I said she could when she’s bigger, and asked her what she wanted to play. Her reply? “Drums! And a cucumber.”

And then this morning I was trying to get Carrie downstairs so I could have a cup of the brown elixir of life (aka coffee) and she ran back into her room. She was shouting, “Mommy, there’s a monster under my bed!” I started to panic, thinking she was already starting the nighttime fears thing – despite the fact that it was already morning – and then I realized she’d dug out “baby monster”, the one-eyed plush critter I bought for her at Starbuck’s around Halloween. Maybe when she’s older, “baby monster” can live under her bed full-time to chase away the other monsters?

Maggie & Garlic

Sarah Carolyn

We took Carrie to Build-A-Bear on Saturday. Her great-grandparents had all given her some cash for Valentine’s Day, so we decided to splurge on something we wouldn’t normally spend money on for her. She loved it! She had a really hard time deciding which animal to make, but wound up choosing…wait, you should really try to guess, because it’s so unlike her…

A dog! (Of course. The bunnies, bears, kitties and lambs didn’t stand a chance.)

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She wound up naming her dog “Maggie”. I’m not entirely sure where she got the name from in the first place – maybe the Little People little girl named Maggie? – but she’s been trying to call my parents’ dog Maggie since pretty much day one (despite the fact that he’s a boy, and his name is Cody.)

The little magnetic puppy that Maggie can carry around in her (equally magnetic) mouth? She named that one Garlic.

Don’t ask me.

Twenty-Eight Months Old!

Sarah Monthly Updates

Dear Carolyn,

Another month, another bunch of new things you’ve been doing. You’re considering whether or not you really need to nap – which means I’m considering whether or not to go back to work. Just kidding! It’s just that days when you declare “I awake and ready to start my day!” and don’t nap? Those are really long days, full of meltdowns (yours and mine) and long whiny afternoons (again, you can’t be blamed for all of the whining…) It didn’t help that this past week was winter break and all of our activities were on hiatus.

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You’re starting to learn how to bargain. Unfortunately, you say the word “after” even when you mean “before”, so when you plead to watch Blue’s Clues after breakfast, I have to catch myself before I agree, since you’re sure you mean you’re asking to watch TV before we eat breakfast. You’re also starting to use the phrase “that’s a good plan, OK?” when you come up with a sequence of events you want to have happen. I think you’ve even been trying to make jokes. The other day you said “blueberries are green, and peas are blue, and bananas are black!” and then laughed hysterically. I’m trying to teach you how to do knock-knock jokes, but you really don’t get it yet. We do have a little shtick though – you say “I’m so happy you are here”, and I say “no, I’m so happy you are here”, and you say “no, Mommy, I’m so happy you are here”…and so on. (Yes, that’s a line from a song off the Blue’s Clues CD. And yes, you’re currently obsessed – and that’s putting it mildly – with Blue’s Clues.)
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Lately, it’s been a bit of a problem getting you to sleep in your bed. More nights than not, when we go upstairs to bed, we find that you’ve fallen asleep in the middle of your floor and we have to tuck you back into bed. We’ve been leaving the baby gate on your door open on weekend nights, so when you wake up before us on Saturday or Sunday you can pitter-patter your way down the hall to our room and climb into bed with us. I wish we could start every morning that way! You climb on in with your baby, your binky (or three), and sometimes even your pillow, and squirm in between us until you’re taking up at least three quarters of the bed. It’s nice to know that some things never change.
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Everyone warns new parents about the terrible twos. I really don’t think two is terrible so far – and we are four months into it, so I think if it were going to be so terrible we’d know by now – but it is challenging. The biggest challenge is that your moods are as changeable as the weather here. We can be laughing hysterically about something, and then all of a sudden you’re in the middle of a meltdown. The good news is, the tantrums blow over just as quickly – most of the time! I really think they should be called the talkative twos – with all the silly conversations, the mixed-up song lyrics, and the “I love you too, Mommy”s, the house is never quiet!

Love, Mommy