Oh, the guilt of a mommy....

So, I've been trying hard to follow the "Love & Logic" principles when it comes to Kate's terrible two behavior, and we've had a few bedroom time episodes where she was told she could come out when she could be a nice, sweet girl again. Well, today I went out into the garage to put something in her stroller and I closed the door between the garage and the house. I wasn't quite ready for her to get in yet, but about 2 seconds after I went out I heard a sweet little voice calling "I'm ready to be a nice girl." Oh, like a dagger to my heart. I just felt so bad, like she thought she was being naughty. Sometimes you just can't win, especially when the mommy-guilt kicks in!! Luckily, she HAS been quite a sweet girl today and didn't even protest when I told her it was time to leave the swimming pool (a lot of progress from the usual flailing screamfest). We're having a great time with Uncle Jay and Aunt Cyndi, and are very appreciative of Grandma Connie who watched Kate last night while we went out to dinner and will watch her again tonight so we can go watch a stage in the Cascade Cycling Classic. It's the first time since Ryan and I went on vacation last September that I've gone two nights without putting her to bed....I must admit, it's kind of fun to be out and about!! Watch out for the mommy on the loose in Bend tonight (albeit a pregnant mommy who tires about 8 pm, but still.....)

Where will this take her?

While I was on the phone the other day, this is what Kate was doing: organizing things into groups and patterns. This is something she does with almost everything that can be grouped. She's always telling me she wants to "match" and to "organize" (not in the cleaning up toys sense, mind you). I know Ryan was methodical like this when he was younger, so Kate's definitely got his gene there. I wonder where this quality will take her?

Kate's nocturnal activities

Kate's been in her "big girl" bed for over a month now, and it's really gone much better than I expected. She's never tried to get out of her bedroom and has stuck to her 7 pm to 7 am schedule. At least we THOUGHT she was sleeping that entire time. Recently, I've noticed that she must be getting up because books are scattered about when I go in there in the morning. Not so bad, though, because she puts herself back to bed. But last night I checked on her before I went to bed and found her sleeping in the rocking chair, surrounded by pillows! It must have been quite an effort to drag pillows up there and then to wedge herself behind them. I moved her back to bed and she didn't make a peep, so all's well that end's well. Except....we've noticed that she is way more tired during the day, yet still doesn't nap. And she's been so much more difficult in the behavior arena lately. I was chalking it up to turning two soon, but could it be that she's just entertaining herself during the night? Perhaps. Oh well, she STAYS in her room and that's what counts. Right?? Right?

Umm, Sesame Street?

So, Sesame Street, I think you may have dropped the ball a bit when you made "Elmo's Safari" coloring book. Kate loves to color in this book, but Ryan and I were a little surprised when she announced "I want the naked Elmo" to us while she was coloring in it. We just sort of ignored her and told her that Elmo wears his safari clothes, but she kept firmly insisting that she wanted "NAKED Elmo." I took the book, thumbed through and, lo and behold, on a couple of the pages Elmo is not wearing his safari gear. To the eyes of an increasingly anatomically-minded toddler, this meant Elmo was indeed naked. Now, I do know that this "naked" state is just normal Elmo and that he IS covered in fur, but KATE doesn't know it and she is fascinated by this disrobed little creature. This is the same girl who gleefully announced "Daddy's naked!" to the swimming pool. (He was, of course, not naked, but he wasn't wearing a shirt). Her first made-up joke was also about anatomy, but I'll leave that one out here.....Anyway, thanks for feeding her naked obsession, Sesame Street. Guess I'll add this to the ever-increasing list of things we HOPE Kate doesn't announce in public!

Sugar and Spice

Isn't there some nursery rhyme that says "when little girls are good, they're very good and when they're not...watch out?" Or something to that effect. We've decided the author must have penned that saying about Kate. Hence our weekend, which was mostly delightful, punctuated by moments (some loooooong ones) of sheer tantrum-y terror. Kate's either sweet and nice, or completely off the rails. I suppose that's what we're in for as we enter the "terrible twos." We met a couple this weekend who have a two-and-a-half year old and when I mentioned that ours was almost two, the dad just said, "oh, welcome." I completely caught his drift: it is like joining a club, forcibly at that. But, as to not dwell on the more difficult moments of the weekend, I will say that we did have lots of good times. We went to the pool twice, the brewery once, the library and had Uncle Jay and Aunt Cyndi visit for a night before the headed up to see an Elton John concert. It was a nice preview of this weekend when they'll come back and stay a bit longer. We also met the aforementioned couple who have the home across the street from us as a vacation home. They're daughter came and played outside with Kate, and it will be SO nice to know some other kids in town. On the note, we randomly met another couple who have a daughter who is almost two and have just moved her from Montana. Oddly enough, the dad has a Master's in Forestry and is named Ryan, so, of course, I'm thinking we're destined to be great friends with them. At least we're meeting people in town and getting Kate some playmates! So, that's our weekend in a nutshell--the good, bad and, sometimes, VERY ugly!!

Asserting independence (AKA "Becoming a two-year-old")

I SWEAR Kate knows she's turning two in a few weeks and she's gearing up, practicing to live up to all that is said about two-year-olds. I mean, she's had the art of the tantrum down for awhile, but suddenly her willfulness (of which she has an incredible abundance) has accelerated dramatically. So, I did what any desperate parent would do: took cousin Cindy's great recommendation to read "Love & Logic" hoping for the magic cure to the terrible twos. Okay, so I KNOW there's no magic cure, but some insight would be nice. I've been trying the book's techniques and I do wholeheartedly agree with its philosophy. One big thing is to offer kids lots of choices and give up some of your parental control, so that when you do need to make a choice for them, they're a little more agreeable to it. This is how Kate ended up wearing one polka dot shoe and one red shoe yesterday. I generally give her the choice between two outfits, but the shoe arena is all hers. Man, does she have opinions about shoes (as I've said before, it's her only nod to girliness). So, we're doing the choices thing. Another idea in the book is to give empathetic responses and let consequences do the teaching, as opposed to lecturing and saying "That's one, that's five, that's 250..." Instead, you just say something like, "uh oh, how sad, looks like it's time for a little bedroom time" when things are really going awry. Then you take them to their bedroom, tell them they can rejoin you when they can be sweet again and then shut the door. Kate's had two bedroom times now. I kept asking her if she was ready to be nice and, for a good while, she'd say, "NOOOOOOO!" At least she got it. When she'd calmed, I went in, hugged her, told her how nice it was to have my big girl back and that was it. I like this technique (and am hoping, probably to little avail, that we won't need too many bedroom times.) Just when I was getting a bit more confident with this whole discipline thing, though, Kate again showed me that sometimes she's just too smart. We were playing outside yesterday and she was throwing toys around when I'd asked her not to. Before we could get to the "uh oh" stage, she looked at me and announced, "Olivia's mom says: you really wear me out, but I love you anyway." Olivia being a book about a precocious little girl (well, pig) who's mom DOES say that to her. After this announcement, whenever she did something she knew she shouldn't do, Kate looked straight at me and said, "You love me anyway." Yep, outwitted by a toddler again.

I doubt this has been said many times before....

Kate and I went to the park this afternoon, and there was a guy working with a Bobcat in an empty lot nearby. After playing awhile, Kate announced, "I want to give a kiss to that Bobcat." So, off we went to, well, look at it anyway. I think the guy thought she was quite a sight: a girl in a dress, pig tails and pink shoes, telling him, "I love your Bobcat." She has since been adament that she wants a BLUE Bobcat and that we "should go buy one." Sometimes it's blue and pink. So, Santa, how are you going to deal with THAT??