Tackling the world, one Lady Pop at a time

Firstly, may I just say, I don't think T has inherited her mother's directionally challenged-ness. Believe me, that's a good thing.

Sadly, she has something potentially much worse. She knows where we are going based on what kind of rewards she gets.

I have always thought from the time T was a baby in the bucket seat, completely unable to see too far or identify landmarks, that she knew when we were on our way home. Whenever we'd stop at the last set of stoplights near our home, she would fall asleep, wake up, start to fuss or a combination of all three.

Lately, I've had what feels like a ton of doctor visits, chiropractor visits, classes for T or just plain old errands to run in preparation for the new addition (8 weeks and counting). Often at doctor's offices they have treats if you are among the junior set and you behave. I don't remember this when I was a kid.

Yesterday, it was a chance to get stickers at the OB's office. I swear if I hadn't watched her she would have taken a dozen stickers instead of just two.

When we got home, she gave the stickers temporarily to the baby...meaning Mommy got to wear them on her t-shirt so the baby got to 'share' them. They were later removed when she decided she wanted them back.

Fast track to today as it was no exception when it came to errands as I had a chiropractor appointment on the other side of town. When I advised T of this, she instantly started rambling on about how if she was a big girl and behaved, she would get a LadyPop.

She discussed with herself for a good 5 minutes about what kind of colour she would get. Mommy got to choose today so she got a red one (cherry) instead of a pink one (watermelon). That being said, when I told her what the plan was for today, she did say she wanted a brown one last night (which is coconut I think?) How fickle the toddler mind is!

For those uninitiated in T speak a Lady Pop is a lollipop. We have corrected her hundreds of times, but its still a LadyPop. My little individualist. While its a little irritating and very confusing to the unbaptized, its kinda nice to see that she is willing to be a little different than the norm. That's never a bad trait.

Later on this morning as our errands continued post Lady Pop, we had to go to Walmart.
On the way, we had to past the car wash.

T knows this place you see because if she's good and Daddy gets the Works package (meaning the car wash and the inside vacuumed out), she gets to wait in the waiting room and if there is an attendant there, she gets a Lady Pop.

The sheer joy that crosses her face is priceless. We were at a consignment sale not too long ago and when we went to pay, there was a big bouquet of lollipops.

Her eyes were as wide as saucers and pointed at them while looking at me for approval. I told her she had to wait until we were done checking out. The cashier had a good chuckle too, mentioning how excited she looked at the meer sight of the lollipop bouquet.

Truth be told, she was so well behaved that afternoon, she probably deserved about half a dozen but she got one. Her eyes were just a twinkling! She got a Lady Pop, she talked about it the whole way home in the car. She did inherit my gift of hating silence...I think this is divine payback...my mother is shaking her head, YES!

On a more educational note, she also tells me how to get to S's house, although they recently moved so she will have to get readjusted to the new location. She tells me when we are on the way to 'school' or when we pass the church where she had Kindermuzik class (also the place where she will go to preschool in the fall).

She knows the Blue Store (Lowes), the Orange Store (Home Depot) and the Purple Store (Babies R Us). Of course any store whose name has a capital letter that she recognizes is an instant hit.

Today it was Babies R Us, so we had a discussion on how there was a B for Bart. She was a little disappointed that there wasn't a T.

My kid knows her colours and how to shop but that's for another entry. Let's just say, its awesome!

The 3rd birthday that was...

It was someone's third birthday so of course, we had to have a birthday party. And of course, we thought it would be fun to have it at a local park. And of course, the day we chose was lovely, cool and very very windy. Like 30 MPH wind, windy.


Oh well fun was had by all at the Abby Caddabby (she's from Sesame Street) themed party. We had chocolate gluten free cupcakes with vanilla butter cream icing...it was strangely quiet for a few minutes while everyone downed their cupcakes.

The birthday girl!

T will eventually understand that only one person counts when you play hide and go seek.

S desperately tried to make Abby fly...even if it was just a napkin.

Yum!

Golden silence!

A new Dora book!

The Wiggles!

Dora stickers

A new little friend!

It was so windy we had to open the presents in the back of the truck!

Practicing playing with our new T-ball set!

I win!

Maybe its the hormones, maybe its that I'm not sleeping so well, or maybe its just she's so darn cute sometimes.

Lately, T has been learning lots of new things. New words, new ways to drive Mommy round the bend and new ways to interact with the world around her.

One such new thing is Iny Meany Miney Mo. I think she watched it on Little Bear because it was shortly after the show ended, that she came over to me with a twinkle in her eye. That twinkle can be very good or very bad. That twinkle is usually followed by her saying something that just cracks me up, even when its a bad thing.

She proceeded to make me make clenched fists and she aimed for my fist with her fist (she missed, so her fist bobbed up and down), all the time muttering something completely incoherent. Now, I knew she wasn't having a stroke (I wasn't sure at first given the non-sensical babble) so my next thought was she is trying to play Rock Paper Scissors.

Nuts, I thought (okay I thought a word was a bad word that I must stop saying within ear shot of little ears), I have NO idea how to play Rock Paper Scissors, that's S's department. So I tried to play along by making the paper gesture. Nope, I was told and the fist thumping continued.

Gotcha, it was Iny Meany Miney Mo. I repeated the words to the rhyme and T did her best to follow. She's slowly getting the rhyme but the fist tapping, not so much.

She thinks that she is supposed to hit both of my fists, not one of hers and one of mine.

Today while we were outside, she tried again unsuccessfully to grasp the fist thing. I tried to show her how to do it. When it was my fist that got hit last, I said "I win!".

T liked this idea of 'winning'.

She tried it again. She hit my fist last, therefore following the rules I know, I should have been declared the winner (she was after all hitting both my fists!).

But no, in T-land, she won. She very jubilantly squealed when the 'rhyme' she recited ended, "T won!" with a mile wide grin on her face. I hardly had the heart to tell her she was wrong because she was so proud of herself.

But being the perpetual party pooper, I did tell her she was wrong. So we tried again, she got it wrong again but jubilantly screeched, 'T won!'

I tried to get this on video but as soon as I went to get my tripod and camera (I could not hold the camera because she wanted to hit both my fists), she decided she'd had enough outside for one day and we needed to go inside. Now that she's getting to be a 'big girl', she shuns the camera. I use the term "big girl" loosely as she reverts very quickly to acting like a baby.

She has taken to trying to see the baby in Mommy's belly by head butting me in the belly button area. Then she tells me she's too big to see the baby. God help us all when the kidlet does arrive...if it can survive its sister, it withstand anything!

I'm still not convinced that she is excited about being a big sister. She muttered something to the effect that when she was a big girl, she'd be a doctor and take the baby away.

I guess we still need to work on the concept of the baby coming home to stay....

I done know my letters!

Well, okay I know my letters. T knows M for Mommy, B for Bart, D for Daddy, N is for Nana and most importantly, the letter T is for her name. We are working on G for Gryffin and P for Phenix.

We were working on our letters and numbers today and it evolved into an exchange something like this:

T: What's this?

Me: That is an E, E for Elephant.

T: Right, very good Momma.

Me: Why thank you, I have graduated from various levels of education that have required me to master my alphabet.

Sadly, more often than not, my quips are lost on the cats and the kid.

I'm hoping once we tackle the alphabet in English, she can at least learn it in French...I will leave the Spanish version for Dora as I have absolutely no proficiency in Spanish. If hard pressed, I remember the words for bathroom and beer...not too handy for a preschooler...okay maybe the word for bathroom would be handy but not the beer.

On a side note, my two worlds, my Mommy world and my kid focused worlds are coming together. Urgh.

I get to watch very little Mommy TV that isn't PVRed these days but I do try to sit down Monday nights at 9pm CST to watch my beloved No Reservations. I get to travel the world through the glory of TV, laugh along the way and see what other folks get to eat. I swear T loves meat, more specifically pork, because I watched this show when I was pregnant with her. This next one did quite the little jig when I ate a pork sausage last night...so maybe this one will be the same.

The host, Anthony Bourdain, is a fervent lover of all things porcine and a little caustic for the sensitive types and unfortunately offends some. That being said, he has mellowed a bit since having his daughter, who is about the same age as T. Apparently he has to suffer through the same programming on Nick Jr. as I do.

I was watching last week when Bourdain travelled to Ecuador. Now, for the non foodies like me, guinea pigs (or cuy as they are called locally) are a delicacy. That is one creature that wouldn't land on my plate but to each their own.

When introducing the cuy segment, Bourdain burst into singing the Wonder Pets theme song. Oh my! For those not in the know, the Wonder Pets have 3 heroes, a duck named Ming Ming, a turtle named Tuck and a Guinea Pig named Linny.

Instantly, I was reminded of the time my father decided to share at the dinner table that we were eating a former named member of our barnyard (I grew up on a farm and on occasion we butchered a cow)...it momentarily turned me off my food but not for long.

Let's just say, I haven't been able to watch Wonder Pets lately without cringing a little...

This week, Bourdain travelled to Harbin, China. There was a scene where Bourdain and one of his local Chinese guides were discussing dumplings and their significance for the Chinese New Year celebration. Bourdain piped up that he had learned all about this tradition when Kai-Lan's (of Ni Hao, Kai-Lan fame) Grandpa (YeYe) made dumplings and one of the characters (HoHo, I think, whatever, the monkey) ate them too.

Dear God, can't I have one hour of where my non T time isn't invaded by T? I love my kid but sometimes, I just need a break or maybe a set of earplugs or a cheat sheet of whose who in the Nick Jr. world.

BTW, does anyone have any suggestions on convincing a nearly 3 yr old that despite the sun not being in bed (aka being dark outside) at 7:30pm, she needs to be in bed? All I get is "I'm done waking up!" Translation: Don't you dare try to pull a fast one on me, Mommy! The sun is still out so I don't have to go to bed until the sun does. Sheesh, I wasn't born yesterday.

I swear my next career will be union negotiations. That's gotta be easier than trying to reason with a 3 yr old who has a very strong opinion on just about everything...hmm, I think I can safely say she gets that from both sides of her family...although her father would ardently dispute that fact!

I rest my case.

Our first zoo visit of 2010

Yesterday was the first nice day in what seems like months...so of course we had to make our first trip to the zoo of 2010!

T got new Hello Kitty rain boots and seeing as its been raining constantly, I figured it was a good idea for her to wear them...maybe that wasn't such a good idea.

Shortly after (like 2 seconds) this picture was taken, during T's attempt to get off the bear statue, off fell the boot...into the pond behind her.

Pre boot pond baptism


Post boot pond baptism (in a much faster, less wetter posed shot)

Thankfully our fellow zoo companions, M and her three kids (D, B and 6 week old G who slept the whole trip in her carseat) saved the day. M is about 5 inches taller than me, has longer arms and isn't 6.5 months pregnant so she was able to fish out the boot.

T wasn't impressed to have to wear a wet boot but seeing as brainiac Mommy didn't bring any shoes, that's all we had if T wanted to walk (which she did).

We continued on, visiting the bears, otters, eagles and eventually the tiger exhibit. B and T had quite the time while D, B's brother tried to keep up with the little ladies who squealed and loved nothing more than to run a mile ahead of the rest of us.

B, T and D

T and B

Ms. T has a secret...

Sorry for the delay in posts but its been quite a bit of a start to 2010. Shortly after the calendars changed, my family experienced the loss of a family member very unexpectedly back home in Canada. It has been a bit of a trying time but we are making slow progress getting back to normal.

One thing I've noticed that nevers stops despite the rest of the world turning upside down is the laundry pile...it just never stops growing.

Anyways, back to the entry.

When I was a little kid, my paternal grandmother (her name was Millicent; you'll get the connection in a minute) gave me a book. It was called Millicent Has A Secret. (I think she was secretly excited to have found a book with her name in the title, who wouldn't?)

In the book, Millie went through her neighbourhood like a pied piper, telling every child she met that she had a secret. And if they wanted to know what the secret was, they had to follow Millie. So that's what all the kids did. What kid doesn't want to know a secret right?

The secret turned out to be that Millie's cat was having kittens. Isn't that a nice surprise?

Ms. T has a surprise too! Can you guess what it is?

Sorry, no we aren't moving back to Canada despite folks' comments that it was time for us to move home.

No, we didn't get another new car and are not moving.

And no, S is still employed and working crazy hours at work.

No, no, we aren't being transferred to France, although that would be nice too!

Scroll down to see Ms. T's news.....

Keep scrolling!

I'm going to have to change the name of this blog to be Canuck Kittenz in Kansas! Yes, Ms. T will be joined sometime in June by a new sibling who is currently kicking its mother!

Our due date is June 23rd, but we will likely have this one a little earlier by the same method as T. Seeing as we have to import grandparental assistance, it makes easier to know ahead of time when we need the help to arrive. Its also safer given we've already been down that path with T because of her short cord/breech presentation. And well, we know what to expect from that method of delivery in terms of recovery.

True to toddler/preschooler behaviour, the nice picture (above) is blurred but the 'yo, yo I'm kicking it old school' picture (below) is focused and clear. Go figure!

While T hasn't completely come around to the whole idea of what a new sibling means, she will get there. At least once a day, she asks me if there is a baby in my tummy. When she gets the affirmative answer, she gets all pouty and says the baby needs to go home. When I remind her that the baby will come live with us, she gets kinda excited then all needy/whiny. June should prove interesting!

The cats have been uber lovely dovey with me like last time and I think they have a pretty good idea of what is about to befall them again. Time will tell if Gryffin does his 'ignore the small screaming creature and sulk in the bedroom routine' until its 2 years old and if Phenix will be a furry little walking baby monitor that she was with T.