Conversations

It is indescribably precious to have a conversation with Jacey Dae right now. She’s got a mind of her own, and she’s learning how to express it. She’s so sweet… and so smart… and so funny. These conversations all happened in the last week or two. Again, imagine all of these in Jacey’s funny little way of speaking.

~~~~~

Jacey: Fpttttttt (and that didn’t come out of her mouth.)

Kellen, incredulously: Was that you?

Jacey: Yes.

Kellen: That was a big toot!

Jacey, happily and proudly: Thanks!

Ahh, my sweet, delicate little girl.

~~~~~

I was leaving my Nanny and Grandaddy’s house to run to the store, leaving the kids there to keep playing. Jacey walked me to the door to open it for me.

Jacey, yelling as I step through the door: Bye bye, Mama!

me, turning to walk away: Bye bye!

Jacey: I love you, Mama!

me: I love you too, bye bye!

Jacey: Be careful! (“Be dewefow!”)

me, laughing: Okay, I’ll be careful.

Jacey, not yelling this time as she’s thinking: Be careful, cuz… cuz there are lots of bugs out there and they are mosquitoes and they might bite you!

me, laughing again: Okay, I’ll be careful.

Jacey, yelling again: Be careful of getting mosquito bites!

me, now around the corner: Okay, baby, I love you, bye bye!

Jacey, no longer able to see me, now yelling at the top of her lungs: Bye bye! I love you!

me: Bye bye, love you too! Close the door, honey!

Jacey, even louder: BYE BYE! I LOVE YOU!!

The door finally slams.

I guess she got the last word.

~~~~~

Then Nanny gave me some tennis shoes she didn’t want anymore. As we were in the car on the way home…

Jacey: Where are your new shoes?

me: Right here.

Jacey: Um, may I hold one?

me: Uh… okay? (I pass one back.)

Jacey: This is a REALLY GIANT shoe! (“WEA-wy DYE-an”)

I stay quiet. But I think, boy, that’s flattering!

Jacey: What’s giant?

me: It means really big.

Jacey: So why is this shoe giant?

me: I guess I have really big feet.

Then ensues a conversation about the size of each of our feet. Followed by this.

Jacey: I want to wear these shoes! But they are too giant. I want giant feet so I can wear these really giant shoes.

Because every woman wants to have giant feet.

~~~~~

Jacey’s sitting in my lap, eating a snack. She reaches up and touches her face, then reaches down and rubs my pants.

me: Did you just rub food on my pants?

Jacey: No.

Me: Good, because that’s not very nice.

pause

Jacey: It was a booger.

Kellen: hilarious laughter

You win some, you lose some…

Our day yesterday, in poop:

Jacey potties in the morning and scares herself pooping. Yay!!

She immediately seems to need to poop more but vehemently refuses to try. Sigh.

At dinner at Red Lobster, she is forced to try multiple times, loudly protesting, to no avail. Sigh.

She poops in her panties. Still at Red Lobster. Boo.

When she goes to get cleaned up, she poops in the potty. Yay!!

When we get home, she potties again, and accidentally poops. Yay!!

Then we put on the new Pull-Ups we bought as a reward for the morning poop. She goes to put up her stickers from her poo-poo chart and toots loudly. “Mama, we need change my new Pull-Up,” she says. Boo.

Go to change Pull-Up- no poop! Just gas, apparently. Yay!!

~~~

You just wish your day could have been as fun as mine.

Memories, or headaches?

You know how, when you become a mom, everybody tells you what it’s going to be like? Stuff like, “You won’t sleep through the night until she’s three!” or “You’re having a boy? You’re going to get peed on so many times!” or “Potty training girls is so much easier than boys.” (If that last one’s true, I’m in trouble!)

One of the things no one ever said to me was this: “Just so you know, if you want to make good memories for your kids–sometimes, that means making headaches for yourself!”

Cue last Wednesday. I want my kids to grow up remembering all the fun things we did in the summers, the splash pads and play dates and trips to the zoo. In the spirit of making these memories, off we went to a $1 movie, and everything went wrong. Here we go, as short as I can write it, because when I tried to write it out the way I really wanted to, it was coming out to be over a thousand words and I wasn’t even up to lunch yet:

~Movie at 10, so kids sleep til 9:15. Run around like crazy getting ready. Tell Jacey to go get her shoes, she decides she’d rather not see the movie. I actually consider skipping it, then make her run and get them. We leave late.

~Get to movie, buy tickets, go to get snacks. As I’m fixing to pay, Jacey says, “I need to go pee pee!” I say, “Really?! NOW?!!” Woman behind me in line laughs. Leave food at counter, run to potty, come back to get food, head to movie.

~Picture it: Jacey is holding a very full box of popcorn. Rylan is holding two of his toys, Jacey’s baby doll, and the fruit snacks that came with her snack pack. I’m holding Rylan and everything else. When we get to the theater and find it full of preschools, we have to go up towards the top, and Jacey can’t carry a box of popcorn AND climb stairs, so here it is; are you ready for this? She walks up the stairs before me. I have Rylan’s baby carrier over one arm, containing him and all those things he was holding before, plus Jacey’s cup of water from home. In the hand attached to that arm, I’m holding a very full box of popcorn–directly over my baby’s head. In the other hand I’ve got a big cup of Coke, a small cup of fruit punch, and a tiny cup of popcorn salt sandwiched between my hand, arm, and chest. I’ve got a pocketful of napkins, and a big ol’ diaper bag hanging off of one shoulder. You’ve heard it said that, if evolution were true, mothers would have three arms? Case in point.

~Finally sit down. Well, I do. Jacey won’t. “Do you need a booster seat?” I ask her. She NEVER wants a booster seat. Except today. “Yeah!” she says. “Okay, you’ll sit in it if I get it for you?” “Yes.” She was very decisive. So I left her with Rylan and ran back down to right outside the theater door to get a booster seat for her, feeling like mother-of-the-year as I left my kids in the theater. (I wasn’t out of their sight for a whole minute. The seats were literally right outside the door, and I literally ran.)

~Watch movie. Jacey spends 70% of it with her hands over her ears because she’s scared. We’re watching Curious George.

~Movie over, we wait until most of the theater clears out before we leave. I ask Jacey, “You don’t need to go potty, do you?” She says, “No. I mean, yeah.” “You really do?” “Yeah.” “You’re REALLY going to go pee pee?” “Yes.” Fine. We go potty. With leftover popcorn and drinks with us. Yuck. (Just taking food in public restrooms completely grosses me out. Of course it’s not touching anything, but still, just–yuck.) She doesn’t pee. I KNEW it.

~We get in car and I call my mom to see if she wants us to bring her some lunch. She decides to come meet us at La Madeleine, which is right across the street from us. We sit in the parking lot there and wait for her. I call Kellen and tell him how crazy the day has been so far, then get out to head in, and as I look through the back door at Jacey–she spills her fruit punch. All over herself, her doll, and her carseat. It is dripping through her carseat onto the van seat beneath her.

~I almost scream.

~Relatively cleaned up, we head inside. I order. Employees help me get our food and my kids to the table. Jacey says she needs to go potty. Sigh. Abandon bag and food at table, take both kids to bathroom. Again.

~Mimi shows up. Jacey changes her mind about who she wants to sit by. Too bad for her. Make three separate trips to get enough utensils, bread, and drinks for all of us. Finally start to eat. Jacey barely eats, then says she needs to potty again.

~Lunch continues in much this same fashion. By the time we head home, Jacey has made five, count ‘em, five trips to a public restroom. I can’t remember how many times she actually pottied. Get home, unload, send her to wait at the front door while I get Rylan, the bag, and our leftovers out, when–”Mama, I need dry panties.” Yes, folks, that’s right, she peed in her panties AT THE FRONT DOOR before we could get inside.

Ridiculous.

She better remember this stuff.

(The one redeeming part of the day for me–she did poop in the potty for the third time ever later that day. But then, too bad it’s now Monday and she hasn’t pooped since. Cue the once-a-day-for-a-month Miralax.)

Remember when…

Jacey’s memory is really starting to astound me. She remembers things we say in passing for days–now we REALLY need to be careful about what we say in front of her!

For a while we’ve been able to tell her, “If you ____” (are sweet during church, finish your spaghetti, pick up your toys) “you get a treat afterwards!” And she remembers five minutes or an hour later and demands the chocolate milk or popcorn or Chapstick we promised her.

But now… now it goes way past five minutes or an hour! On Sunday night, walking up to the front door after church, I told Kellen, “Pick her up! There’s a frog; she’s going to be scared.” A frog was hopping along the wall up on our porch, headed for the front door, and Jacey’s scared of them when they’re still and tiny; much less when they’re huge and hopping! Kellen thought she wouldn’t see it, but… well, despite attempts to get her to sing her “I’m a great big frog and God loves me” song from school, which is one of her favorites, we still had a very scared baby running in the door to get a way from the frog, terrified that it would follow her in.

The next day, as we headed out the door to go drop her off at Daddy’s work before my ultrasound, she immediately started clapping her hands together and say, “Big! Big! Big!” But because “Big!” sounds more like “Bi,” which means lots of other things, too, I couldn’t understand her. It wasn’t until I got her buckled in that I realized–OH! It was a great big frog!

She knew Dada had wanted her to sing that on the porch last night, but she was too scared. So as soon as we got out there the next day, she sang it anyway!

Then, on the way to his office, I said, “We’re going to go to Dada’s work! Are you going to eat lunch with him?”

“No,” she said. “Mu-mu.” Which means, “Movie.”

The day before as we talked to her about what was going to happen tomorrow, Kellen had told her she could “come to my work, and we’ll eat lunch, and you can meet my friends, and we can watch a movie, and you can color!” Clearly, she picked out her favorite thing out of that list to remember!

Of course, as it turns out, her favorite movie–The Little Mermaid–wasn’t there, so she wasn’t interested in that movie, after all. But she sure did remember that she got to watch one!

I’m so interested to see, in the months that come, what she’s able to remember and when those remembrances pop up in our every day conversations!

The giggles

Two nights ago, at bedtime, as, as a family, we said our prayer, Jacey Dae yawned. Being that she was sitting in my lap and I had my head bowed low, her mouth was right next to my ear, and her lips closed gently on the top of my ear. That tickled. So I laughed.

And then she giggled, that adorable little two-year-old giggle she has when she’s really tickled about something.

Which made me laugh more. My laugh, of course, was a more grown-up, not-so-cute, almost-soundless intake and outtake of air. But, since she was still sitting in my lap, she felt and heard it all, so she giggled more.

Poor Kellen paused in his prayer, then continued. But it was too late. We had the giggles, and there was no stopping us. So the prayer ended prematurely, because we certainly don’t want to teach a toddler that it’s okay to laugh through a prayer! And we exploded with laughter and explained to Dada that she tickled me with a yawn and I just had the giggles.

The next night, which was last night, then, I said, “Okay, who do you want to pray for?” And the giggles started again, and Jacey opened her mouth wide and aimed for my ear. Too funny! But I held the giggles at bay and kept her still and quiet for the prayer, and then I let her “get” my ear. And then she got Dada’s ear. And we both got her ears. And we all giggled.

What a strange bedtime routine–eating each other’s ears! But I must say, it is nice to go to bedtime, which is usually just sweet and sleepy, with a little bit of raucous giggling, too.

**Stay tuned for the news on whether to think pink or blue! The appointment is today at 4!**

Potty training

It is not my favorite thing right now.

A while back… maybe right after her birthday?… we started putting Jacey Dae in Pull-Ups and helping her go on the potty. And, after a short time, she’d tell us, “Pee-pee!” (which really sounds like “Bee-bee” and is very similar to how she says “Baby” which occasionally led to some confusion) and we’d run down the hall and help her sit on the potty and she’d get really still and start to half-smile, and she’d pee, and then she’d grin all-out and say “Pee-pee!” very excitedly and clap for herself. And I was happy, because clearly we were in for big girl panties sometime very soon.

But. Lately, she seems to have forgotten how to tell us when she wants to go potty–unless, of course, we’re in church and she wants to leave the auditorium. Now that’s a fun trick. Especially because she’s afraid to sit on the big potties at church and is absolutely terrified of the loud flush they make, so she won’t go on her own if I do take her and I have to sit her, crying and begging “No!” all the while, on the potty, and then she only goes if she’s been holding it for a while.

Whoops, got off topic there. Anyway, right now, she won’t tell us when she needs to go, and if we don’t remember to take her anyway, she just pees right out of every Pull-Up we put on her. I don’t remember the last time she ended the day wearing the same clothes she started out in.

I want to spend a weekend at home with her wearing big girl panties or no bottoms at all, because as one woman at church put it, “There’s just nothing like pee running down your leg to teach you when to go.” But we’ve been so busy lately,we haven’t had a weekend to stay home! And I don’t want to stay home and clean up puddles of urine all day long all on my own, so it’s not going to happen on a weekday.

I’m seriously considering putting her back in diapers until we have the time to do some serious training, but I’m afraid we might undo the progress she made in those first few weeks–even though she’s ignoring that progress now.

Sigh. This is one of those times I wish kids had a switch you could flip. Like, “Wakes up all the time” to “Sleeps through the night,” and when the child is old enough to not need to eat all night, you just flip the switch and it’s all better. “Sits in own filth” to “Fully potty trained,” with one simple push of a button… wouldn’t it be nice?

Well, there goes that technique…

Remember how I said counting was an awesome tool to get Jacey to do what she needs to do? How I can just say, in a menacing voice, “One… Two…” and she hops to it before I even get to two, much less three?

Now, she’s almost two years old, right? So we’re also working on teaching her to count. We hold her and say, “Wanna spin?” She says, “Yeah!” We say, “Okay, you gotta count,” and she says, “Duu,” and we say, “One,” and she says, “Duu,” and we say, “Two,” and she squeals, “Deeeeee!” and we say, “Three!” and spin.

Now combine those two.

“Jacey Dae, get in your carseat.”

Laughing. “Nnno!”

“Yes, please.”

More laughing.

“Jacey, get in your carseat, or I’ll do it for you.”

Laughing.

“One…”

“Duu… Dee!”

Oh. Rats.

Pool days

Jacey Dae LOVES the pool her Nunu and Papaw got her for Christmas. Even though the tall flower doesn’t shoot water unless you turn the water pressure up so high that the short flower, which DOES shoot water, could take an eye out and shoots way over the pool.

Anyway.

Sometimes we put the slide in the pool. But she doesn’t really like to walk on grass to get to it, so…

And, of course, she loves to wet her hair in the water.

Her favorite pool time, though, is when we add a cousin to double the fun!

On the Fourth of July, we brought her little pool over to Nanny and Grandaddy’s house and she got to swim with my youngest cousin, Alyssa. Alyssa tried to show her how big girls play in the pool by splashing poor Jacey Dae incessantly and telling her, “Dis is what we do at ‘plash day.” Jacey wasn’t pleased. But, later…

Can you guess what’s about to happen?

Over and over again, Jacey got even for Alyssa’s splashing. And the whole time, Alyssa sat with her hands over her face, patiently waiting for Jacey to finish filling her cup and pour it over Alyssa’s head.

I wish I would’ve had my camera instead of just my phone!

In any case, pool time is becoming at least a weekly event for us.

Summer

It’s summer! And that means…

~Ballgames with cotton candy

and family, who, for a few minutes at least, aren’t too scary.

~Popsicles, for the first time ever

She LOVED it. Even though she always looked serious because it was hard to squeeze the popsicle up the tube and suck it out.

But when she finally got it, it was so sweet.

And, when she had dropped most of blue popsicle on the ground, I let her go get my green one and finish it, too.

~Water, water everywhere. Whether getting a drink to wash down popsicles,

learning to spray a hose,

or taking an outdoor shower,

Jacey Dae is a water baby for sure. We’ve already gone through an entire package of swim diapers! And she’s getting so brown. As Mimi never fails to point out when she sees Jacey’s skin against mine. But, hey, I’m a redhead; I can’t help it!

In any case, whatever the activity-

Thank goodness for summer! (Even though I wouldn’t say no to a quick trip to Alaska to escape the heat.)

If you give a one-year-old an applesauce…

she’s probably going to want to feed it to herself.

And if she feeds it to herself…

you’re going to have to do some laundry.