Tonight for dinner, Evie had 11 pieces of bacon. Then afterwords, she took a bath and we played with pirates. Isn’t parenting grand?
P.S. This is published post 666, the post of the beast. I hesitated to put a post about my daughter as the 666th post, but if you count private posts, it’s not really 666. I’m sure satan will take things like private posts into account.
Although she has flown two other times before (Arizona and Philadelphia) it was like flying for the first time to Evie. She was pretty excited about it, but Sara and I were a little dubious since she is a little more active (rambunctious) these days and this was a loooong flight. We had a layover in San Jose, so I think the whole thing was about 6 1/2 hours, not to mention getting to the airport before our flight, etc. We had some free drink coupons from the airline and Sara had the idea that we could pass them out to the people unlucky enough to sit in front of our kicking, screaming monster child. As it (always) turns out, she was the perfect little angel and here we sit with free drink coupons, unredeemed.
Evie was practically giddy with excitement as we prepared to take off, however, as soon as the airplane left the ground her eyes got as big as saucers and she gripped the side of the seat screaming, “Go down! Go down!” When the pilot refused to heed her cries, she moaned in dismay, “It just keeps going higher and higher!” By the time we got home, she was an old pro and enjoyed in particular the take-offs and landings.
The first part of our Seattle vacation was sort of the rugged, outdoorsy, adventure part of the trip. After arriving late and spending the night by the airport, we took a car ferry over to the San Juan islands. As I expected, this was probably my favorite part of the trip. Friday Harbor was sort of Mackinac-ish, with shopping and restaurants and an awesome port to watch boats. The rest of the island is a little more sedate, and we took some awesome hikes. We saw wild deer, 2 foxes, quail, a 6 inch slug (we have a picture to prove it), jelly fish, seals, and, of course, orcas. Unfortunately, we did not see any bald eagles, which are apparently abundant.
Not actually one of our pictures, not even the boat we were on
Of course the highlight of the trip was the whale watching tour to see the orcas (“killer whales”) which live around the islands. Unfortunately, the whales were waaay up in Vancouver, but fortunately the boat was willing to drive all the way up there. They said it was the farthest north they’ve ever gone in that boat. It was well worth the journey, because all 3 of the local pods were together in one “super pod”. There were around 85 whales in the water when we got there. You could see them in almost any direction and I saw several “breaches” (when they jump right out of the water). We got some pictures, but it was hard to capture the coolness. Unfortunately, since we had to spend so much time getting up there and getting back, we didn’t get to see much of the other native wildlife. We did see some seals on the way back though. We were on the boat for like 4 hours and Evie did a marvelous job, never getting cranky.
When we got back, we bought Evie a stuffed orca, Echo, and she became our constant companion for the rest of the trip. We helped Evie choose a name from the orcas that were born the same year she was. Evie was stuck to her like glue. Since Evie’s car seat was on the side of the car instead of the middle, we were worried about closing the door. We would say, “Fingers!” and Evie would say, “Fingers Echo!” I’m happy to report, neither Evie nor Echo lost any fingers in the door.
That was pretty much it for the first part of the trip, but I just wanted to mention (since we were talking about it) that we had an amazingly weird but amazingly tasty sandwich on the trip. The restaurant was Market Chef and the sandwich was “sister’s favorite sandwich”. It consisted of apple slices, cheddar cheese, sunflower seeds, sprouts and dijon mustard, all melted into a gooey deliciousness that is hard to describe. I know it sounds weird, but it was mouth watering!
As mentioned, Sunday was Evie’s second birthday. Our party was a little more low key than last year, with just family attending. We planned it so that we would have presents in the morning, eat during her nap, and have cake in the afternoon, so that people could come and go and everyone would get at least part of the party.
Before her birthday, Evie had only a few requests:
Sara: “What do you want for your birthday?”
Evie: “I want a gift with a prize in it.”
She was also very specific that she wanted a “pink cake” with “sprinkles”, which was delivered to her satisfaction.
She got a lot of good presents, probably better even than she knows. Being a kid, she was more excited about things like socks and purses than things like books, even though she will probably get more enjoyment out of the latter in the long run.
One of the cutest things was practicing with Evie how to stick two fingers up to show how old she is. She would concentrate really hard, staring at her hand until she put the correct fingers down, using her other hand. Then she would slowly cover them with her thumb to hold them down and take her hand away. Then she would get a really big smile on her face, hold up the hand and proudly proclaim, “Two!”
So Evie was kind of into ages and Sara asked her how old the day care lady was:
Sara: “And how old is Florence?”
Evie: “Too much.”
Evie had a blast all day, running around like a crazy person with a big grin on her face. We couldn’t believe that she took a nap, but she was so exhausted that she stayed out until we woke her up. It was a lot more fun than last year since she actually kind of knew what was going on and was excited about it.
So thanks to everybody who came, I hope you had as good of a time as Evie did!
Today’s the day, our big girl is 2! I can’t believe how much she’s changed in the last year. Here’s to 200 more!
I realized I hadn’t really had a good post to close out the potty training.
Evie is just the super most awesome in the world. She is doing so great. We had our rough patches, but we pushed through them. We still have some power struggles now and again, especially if we try to force her to go, but if we just leave her alone about it, she takes care of everything.
She hardly has any accidents, maybe one a week at most. She doesn’t wear a diaper during her nap and her overnight diaper is dry most nights. She has been going poo poo in the potty for weeks now. We discovered the magic formula for that was to put her on the potty, tell her to hold on tight, run and find Nala, toss her in the bathroom, go out and shut the door. Usually she was going before the door was even closed. The privacy part is very important, even though I am always a little nervous about leaving her perched precariously on the edge of the toilet.
She also knows that going poo poo means she gets to pick out a prize from the prize bucket, which is mostly stickers and toys from cereal boxes. Believe me, it doesn’t take much, one of her favorite prizes was a thing of travel size Kleenexes. Another good reward is singing the “potty song” which is a nice little conga that goes, “Pee pee in the potty! We listened to our body!” Sara is quite proud of the second line. 🙂
Evie has always enjoyed going out of the house more than in the house, so taking her to new places isn’t really a problem. In fact, the problem was that she enjoyed strange potties a little too much and would insist on going over and over again at every stop. I think the thing that fixed that was only allowing her to wash her hands if she actually went potty. She thinks that washing her hands is pretty exciting, and she especially likes to see what color soap a particular place has. I wouldn’t be surprised if she has every bathroom in the city memorized and categorized by soap color. Using this as a “reward” seems to have calmed it down to 1 or 2 trips instead of 4 or 5.
Evie is something of a clothes horse, so it should have come as no surprise when she started wanting to change her underwear about 10 times a day. It can be pretty frustrating, but we quickly learned to let her change whenever she wanted or else she would pee in them just so she could change them. This has been lessening lately though, and she has some days where she stays in the same pair all day.
She has even started going by herself now, I mean completely by herself, up until the part when she calls you in to show off her handy work. So I think we can say she is officially potty trained! Well, I would have said it a while ago, but it’s not official until it is on the blog.
In summary, hard work, persistence and out smarting your enemy, those are the keys to potty training!
Shane Halbach 