Catching Up

It's been really busy these past few weeks...doing what, I can't really say. So, my posting has been a little spotty but we are back on track! So, a quick review of August! We had a wonderful visit with cousin Sienna. She and Ruby hit it off beautifully and Sienna was a great help with her, reading her books, helping her with her bath and getting her ready for bed. We went camping one weekend and she and Ruby, being the only kids, entertained each other and enjoyed the scenery.

Mmmm...Corn with handles!

I was off work for a full week because the library was closed due to budget cuts. Though the loss of one week's pay as well as a week's worth of library service was difficult, it was nice to have some time to catch up around the house. My mom was on furlough too so she came up and helped out and we were able to can peaches and she made tomato soup and spaghetti sauce - Yum! Ruby loved having her Grandma Genie around! Ruby played a lot with her little friends. Here are the two girls, Ruby and Kayla, playing train in some boxes. Boxes are the ultimate toy! She also got a good playdate in with Carden. Here are the three of them being thoroughly entertained watching a fly that was trapped between the screen and window. Who needs tv? We had some cool temps and rain, prepping us for fall but we are now back to summer! Thank goodness -- we were not ready to say goodbye to sunshine and clear skies!



Ruby has been singing a lot. Her favorites are the Slippery Fish song, Twinkle Little Star, ABC song and Jingle Bells is still in heavy rotation. However, she's also added some songs of her own that she's made up and loves to listen to The Beatles' Let it Be album as she falls asleep. You have never seen a prouder papa when she identifies and requests the Beatles! Good taste girl!



As she approaches three, she is getting more savvy about things around her. She knows most of her colors and shapes, counts to ten in English and Spanish and can identify about 5 letters of the alphabet. She also loves making comparisons to things i.e. "Just like Daddy's!" (her hat). When she sees the baseball stadium she calls it, "Daddy's baseball," and she is obsessed with washing her hands, probably not a bad thing in these times of the swine flu.



One thing that Ruby has done a few times (and where we fight to remain serious and not laugh) is put herself in time-out. On three separate occasions, she's gotten frustrated and hit or tried to hit someone. Once it was me, once it was Ari and the last time it was Dustin. Each time, immediately after she did it, she hung her head and said, "I need to go to time-out," and gone off to her room where she remains for about 20 seconds and then announces, "I'm done!" She then came out and gave kisses and apologies for the target of her frustration. Nice to see that she recognizes that she's done wrong and needs some time away but hopefully this will someday translate to doing the time-out first, before the lashing out.



Well, that's a quick run-down of the current events. Potty training is scaled waaaaaaaaaay back and we are just looking for signs. I am getting bigger and bigger and feeling this new little girl's kicks and body rolls. I promise to have more frequent updates!

More soon!

Potty Wars Part I

It's my parenting Waterloo.

We attempted our potty weekend, hoping that we'd make some kind of headway and at least get this process started but we were faced with some obstacles to our success are facing a big fat FAIL for our efforts.

1. First, we weren't able to start first thing on Friday am and while we did talk about it ad nauseum for weeks ahead of time, we couldn't get the thing going until after we dropped Sienna at the airport.
   
   
   
   
2. Friday, she woke up with a cough that developed into full-on croup, including a midnight trip to the emergency room. We had to put a diaper on her at that point since I couldn't see having her pee all over the floor at the hospital. So much for consistency. Did I bring a diaper with me to the emergency room other than the one I put on her? I did not. Did she fill her diaper with poop one hour into the three and half hour emergency room visit? Yes she did.
   
   
   
   
3. Saturday she was clearly not feeling well but we continued working on all of that crap (bitter? moi?) that you read about in books: treats, positive feedback, no criticism of misses, talking about the potty, potty dances, potty books etc. In a fit of desperation, I ran to Target and bought a doll that pees (it was Baby Alive who I wanted desperately when I was a kid but my mom said the good thing about dolls is that they DON'T pee and well..she was right). She loves playing with the doll and putting her on the potty but not so much for herself.
   
   
   
   

Still, here we are in the middle of day three after many hours of Elmo, many cups of chocolate milk and she still does not care. She doesn't care about wet pants, poopy pants, she doesn't care that she just peed all over Elmo. She's happy about the treat she gets but thus far has not connected the two events.



So, where does this leave us? Give up? Continue? Do it half-assed? Invent a time travel machine so that my grandma could potty train Ruby in the outhouse as she did with me? I don't know at this point. I just know I am ready to put this weekend behind me and focus on a better one and find better strategies that work for us to get this going.

Goat Nibbles

Ruby has an unfortunate encounter with a billy goat.

Ruby and Ally

Ruby and Ally made friends on our camping trip this weekend. Here they are sharing secrets.

Ruby is Going to Have a....

....SISTER!

La Playa

Yesterday afternoon, after having a short rest (and no nap thank you very much), Ruby was a little cranky as was mummy. I didn't feel like entertaining her, she needed to be entertained. I asked if she'd like to read a book and she requested "the playa book," a book we've been reading of late that's actually titled, ?Cómo iremos a la playa/How Will We Get to the Beach? After we read it, Ruby looked at me and said, "Vamos a la playa?" At that point, there was no question that we were going to get our tushies to the beach! It was a gorgeous afternoon and we grabbed a bucket and shovel and hopped in the car and were at the beach in 15 minutes (yet another reason why I love Seattle!). We met a nice little boy, played in the water and then the Dad came to meet us and we all had dinner together. A great way to end the weekend!

Walking to the beach

Digging in the sand

Getting the feet wet

Fresh Figs!

Our fig tree produced mountains of deliciousness over the weekend. At first, Ruby was reticent to try one but she was soon asking for "More figs?" and loves plucking them off the tree and sticking them right in her mouth. Is there anything more satisfying than seeing your child eat fresh food that she picked herself from your own yard? I think not!