Lucy funnies

I have been meaning to write a post here for a while that has all the funny and sweet things about Lucy right now.  I don't want to forget them!

• She says "chippy" for chips.  So if she wants a chip, she says, "Chippy, please!" which I think is constantly hilarious.
• Her new favorite exchange with us is "Thank you, Mommy!" and "Thank you, Daddy!" and she says it so sweetly that it just melts your heart. 
• She loves to have conversations now (I can converse with her because I know exactly what she's saying ... other people, maybe not so much.)  I wish I could just write down all the conversations we have during the day, but I will try to recreate some of them here.

Scene:  Lucy going potty.

Me:  "Lucy, hold on to the potty, okay?"

Lucy:  "Lucy fall in.  Mommy sad.  Lucy wet."  (She refers to herself in the third person.  I blame Elmo.)  Translation:  I've told her before that if she doesn't hold on, she will fall in the potty and get wet and Mommy will be sad.

Scene:  Going to bed on a Monday night. (I have a Bible study on Tuesday mornings and my mom comes over and spends time with Lucy and Ian while I'm there, then we usually grab lunch together.)

Me:  "Tomorrow, Nana is coming over to play with you!"

Lucy:   "Mommy church."

Me:  "Yes, Mommy is going to church."

Lucy:  "Nana play.  Nana noodles."

Me:  "Yes, Nana is going to play with you and then we'll go eat noodles (pad thai with chopsticks, her favorite.)

She just always connects ideas that I haven't really talked about with her, or she'll remember things I only told her once (yikes!) and it is constantly amazing to me.

• She has a friend named Liam that she calls "Lee-mee."
• She loves to help with things.  When I'm cooking dinner, she wants to be right there.  When I sweep, she wants to sweep.  When I load the dishwasher, she wants to put the soap in and then press the button to start it.  I can usually give her an age-appropriate task to help me with whatever I'm doing, and it's so fun to see her help so joyfully.
• She enjoys telling me what Ian is going to do.  If we go to the park, and she wants to swing, she is sure Ian wants to swing, too.  When she eats breakfast, before she climbs up in her chair, she pulls out Ian's high chair and insists "Ian baby food" (meaning, Ian needs to eat baby food).  If Ian starts to cry or gets grumpy, she says, "Ian night-night."  Ian sure is lucky to have such an attentive big sister.  :)
• She loves for us to wrap her up in a blanket like a swaddled baby and then hold her, or walk around with her like that.  "Lee-lee (which is what she calls herself) baby!  Lee-lee baby!"
• She rarely wears clothes.  I make her wear clothes out in public, obviously, but it's a pretty sure bet that if she's at home, she is only wearing her undies!  I don't know what it is, but she hates wearing clothes.
• She has two things that she says a lot these days.  One is "Momma like" or "Daddy like" in regards to anything.  For example, if she puts on her rainbow socks and then shows us, we say, "Lucy, what pretty socks!" and she says, "Momma like!" as in, "Mommy likes that!"  She applies this saying to almost everything.  She also says, "Momma buy" if I talk about anything being gone or used up.  It can be very funny what she thinks Mommy can go buy, apparently.

She loves Elmo, playing with all of my kitchen tools, taking bubble baths, eating fruit snacks, going to the park, going to the library, basically going anywhere but home (LOL), playing with Ian, stacking her blocks, reading books, coloring, pretending to "go" somewhere anytime she find anything with a handle (as in, here's my suitcase, I'm going on a trip), buckling the top part of her car seat, only using the potty at our house or in our potty chair that we take in the car (grrrrrrr), putting on her "pretty" shoes and walking around the house, and singing.  Her least favorite things are taking a nap, sleeping in, stringy foods, loud noises, letting me help when she wants to do something by herself, and sharing some toys with Ian.

She is funny, loud, thoughtful, caring, independent yet needy, smart, observant, and just plain fun.  Our lives are much richer because she is our daughter.

Potty training, day 143

We haven't been doing potty training for 143 days.  It only feels like it.

Today marks two weeks, I guess.  And I will venture to say we're like 99% there.  She still sleeps in a diaper at night.  I tried to let her take a nap without a diaper today but she kept using the excuse that she had to potty to stall taking a nap, so I put a diaper on her for her nap today.

Today was also the first day that I took her out in public without a diaper.  I just stuffed the diaper bag with a few extra sets of clothes and panties and put the little potty in the back of the van, and we went to the park twice and to a library story time with no accidents!  I was very impressed.  Of course, a lot of times it was me saying, "Let's go pee pee now" and not her prompting me.   That's okay, though.  And she had an accident when we got home for who knows what reason.  But I have been very impressed with her.  I'm hoping she'll just get better and better at it and that eventually we can go to no diapers at all.  I have a feeling that nights without diapers may be the hardest hurdle.

I'm sure you were wondering, so there it is.  :-)

Potty training, day 4

Today was sort of an off-and-on day.  We had a doctor's appointment this morning, so we took a break and put on a diaper.  Then we came home, and put her back in panties, and then it was out to lunch, so back in a diaper.  I'm not brave enough to do the public stuff yet.  Then when we came home it was time for her to nap so she was in a diaper for that.  After her nap, I put her back in her panties and I just stopped setting the timer.  Every so often I would ask her if she needed to go, and if she said no, I believed her.  Then eventually even if she said no I would make her go, and she would usually pee in the potty.  We only had one accident today and it was really silly.  I was about to put her in a diaper for bedtime so I said, "Let's go pee-pee before we put your diaper on for bed."  So she walked in the bathroom, and stood in front of the potty and just peed all in her panties and shorts. UGH!  So silly.  So I had to clean her up and the floor, too.

I think tomorrow I will take her pee-pee maybe every 30 minutes and see if she can tell me if she has to pee.  That's the only way I think I will be able to tell if she's really getting the hang of knowing when she has to pee and holding it long enough to make it to the potty on time.  Just may mean more accidents to clean up.... oh well....

Potty training, day 3

I promise these potty training updates won't last forever!

Today Lucy poo-pooed in the potty for the first time ever!  I was so excited.  She just said, "Poo-poo!" and we ran to the potty and she went and she was so excited.  The things you get excited about as a parent... sheesh.  haha.

I guess I will start tomorrow trying to stretch the times out even more.  I suppose eventually you have to  stop taking them to the potty every 10 minutes and just see if they can tell you when they have to go.  That's the goal, anyway.

Potty training, day 2

Day two went so much better!

She only had one accident, and she did so well.

I am still taking her to the potty every 8-10 minutes, though, so I want to try to stretch that out longer if I can...

Potty training, day 1

I thought I would just jot down how things went yesterday (the first day we tried potty training) so I can come back and read this for posterity.  I'm sure no one else is very interested.  haha.

Our system is very simple:  I bought some panties for her, and some M&M's and jellybeans.  We've had a little potty for her for a while.  I originally set a timer on my iPod for every 15 minutes, and I let her pick the ringtone she liked the most.  She did really great at first.  No accidents for the first few hours, and she even ran to the potty before the timer went off and took off her own panties and went pee-pee.  Then I don't know what happened ... I even set the timer to go off every 7-8 minutes because she started having accidents.  I don't know if she was too focused on playing but it seemed like every time she never made it until the timer went off.  Then I had to put Ian down for a nap, which means I go nurse him in his room and lay him down.  It usually takes me about 15-20 minutes, so honestly I expected to come back and she have had an accident.  But she had peed in three different places and had pooped in her panties during that time.  So after that I just put her in a diaper because it was naptime and I needed her to have a good, uninterrupted nap time for both my sanity and hers.

I also had a very complicated dinner I was making last night so after she got up from her nap I let her wear a diaper the rest of the day.  Call me lazy, but I needed the break.

So that is how our first day went.  Not the greatest, but I know she understands what to do, and I also realize it's the first day EVER in her life that she's been asked to pee-pee or poo-poo anywhere else but her diaper, so that's a big thing to get used to in just one day.

Six month follow up visit with Dr. Lambert

We went in today for Lucy's six month eye visit.  As usual, it takes a lot of work to get there and keep both kids happy while we're there, for what seems to be not a lot of information, but I'm used to it by now.

They had, and always have had, a hard time getting Lucy to look at things they want her to look at so they can test her eyes.  First, the assisting doctor tried to put a piece of tape over Lucy's eye (instead of one of those black eye cover things they use at the grown up eye doctor...) and Lucy was NOT having it.  Imagine this scenario:  you put a bunch of sticky tape over a two-year-old's eye, then ask her to look at a small TV monitor all the way across the room with a small picture on it and then seem disappointed when she neither knows what the picture is or even cares where the TV is -- all she wants to do it get that tape off her eye!  haha.  So we moved on to the black eye cover thing, but that didn't work any better.  All this time, Ian is sitting on a blanket on the floor of the room, crawling away every minute and trying to grab the paper off the printer, etc.  LOL.  They ended up trying to turn on a movie for her to look at (she could care less) and then they brought in another nurse to try to do silly dances for Lucy to look at.  I guess they got what they wanted (finally!) and Dr. Lambert took a look at her and said everything looked great.  Then they had to dilate her eyes, and we had to go out and wait in the waiting room until the drops worked.  Then they had to try to get her to look into this machine so they could measure her eyes (that tactic barely worked!)  Dr. Lambert looked at her once again, then we were on our way home, only 2 hours after we arrived.  Poor Ian.  He was so tired because it was during his nap time.  He got passed from doctors and nurses to try to make him happy while I helped them try to make Lucy do what they wanted her to do.  I just realized today that getting a two year old to do anything they don't want to do at the doctor's office is nearly impossible, especially when it involves looking at something.  I can hold her down or hold her head all I want, but I cannot physically make her look at something.

It's over, and we don't have to do it again for a year, so hopefully she will be much more compliant and Ian will definitely stay home next year, even though he will be in a very different state next year, I'm sure.

I will say that it was very nice of all the doctors and nurses to sense my inability to deal with both Lucy and Ian at the same time and offer to hold him instead of just leaving me in a lurch!