men!
Is it just my husband, or do all men stop up the toliet constantly? I'm so tired of coming home from work and not being able to use the toliet, because Rob has not managed to get it unstopped yet. He pees about 3 times a day, whereas I pee about 15. He doesn't see any hurry to fix it because he's got plenty of time. Well, I don't. Long ago, I created a rule that if you broke the toliet, you had to fix it. That rule has been serving me well, but yesterday, I came home to a broken toliet again. Really, men - learn to use a preliminary flush or something.

P.S. I don't even make him put the seat down for me. We both always put the BOTH seats down. That way, the bathroom looks nicer, no one drops anything in the toliet, and we both have to put the lid up and down.

potty
We went to my mom's house last night for a little leftover Christmas. While we were there, Ally mumbled something about the potty - Here's the good part - BEFORE she peed in her diaper. So, we I got her to the bathroom and she peed in the potty. YAY. This was about 20 minutes before she let loose a really bad smelling poop in her diaper, but, hey, baby steps.

pissed off
Tripod (web host) must search my text for key words to decide what adds to put up. Today, there is a list of web sites at the top of my page that links to buying plush rocking horses. Dammit! I spent all last week pouring over internet searches trying to find a suitable horse, and now they go and put links at the top of my page. Bastards! Maybe if I cuss a lot, the ad search engine will find some truly interesting sites to replace the horses with?

she told me!
Last night, I was cleaning up the massive pile of toys that were laying around the living room floor. I tossed one over to the piles of Little People. Ally turned around, pointed her finger at me and said "No. Don't throw it" I just about cracked up, but instead, I managed to look contrite and apoligize. She's right, you're not supposed to throw toys. She doesn't get over things quickly though. She had to tell me about 20 times that those were Ally's people and we don't throw them. especially because they are Ally's people. And then she made me sing the reindeer song...

Ally's pile of new stuff
I can't remember all of what she got, but here's some of it:

Care Bear and movie
FurReal Kitty (it meows)
Dora hideaway tent
various puzzles
various books
3 Elmo dvd's
various other movies
Little People race track
Little People boating set
various clothes
rocking horse
dinosaurs
E-L-M-O elmo
hokey-pokey elmo
Mr Potato Head elmo
dress-up shoes and fairy wings
firetruck set
tea set (the teapot talks. Allt tries to feed it)
etc etc etc

rocking horse
We went to my dad's house for Christmas on Dec 11th. Leann has this wooden rocking horse that Ally wouldn't leave alone. She was rocking or sitting or climbing on it the whole time we were there. She absolutely loved it. So, I thought I'd get her one for her Santa present under the tree. Unfortunately, that was the 11th. Not much time. No big deal, I had seen a couple plush rocking horses at Kmart and Bergners recently. We looked at Kmart. Nothing tall enough. We looked at Bergners. No horses left, only unicorns. I don't like that idea. It's just not right. Rocking horses should be horses. It was the right height though, so I thought we were onto something. Checked the internet for that brand. Very expensive! (very on sale at the store) I checked Walmart, sers, penney's, sams, toys r us, babies r us, etc. Nothing acceptable. Rob decides that he doesn't really like the plush ones anyway. Ally enjoyed playing with the wooden one, so that's what he wanted. A guy Rob works with has a neighbor who makes them, so we called to see if he had any. nope. None ready until after New Year's.

Tick, tock, tick, tock

I gave up. I figured that Ally wouldn't really notice if she didn't have something like that under the tree anyway, and decided just to be disappointed. That was always my favorite part of christmas. I liked opening presents, but the best part was walking into the room and finding unwrapped already-assembled toys ready to play with.

Then Rob got a call on the 22nd that the neighbor guy would have one ready after all. I think he hurried one up so we could have it for Christmas. Rob was able to pick it up Christmas Eve while he was at work, and bring it home for under the tree before Ally woke up. He took off early just to make sure he'd get there in time. Yay. Ally really likes it. She quickly learned to climb up and down. It's pretty heavy, since it's made out of oak, so she really has to get her whole body rocking to make it move. The great thing is - it fits her now okay, but she'll also grow into it better. It's a long term toy. The bad thing is - it's rather large. Where are we going to keep it forever?

reindeer song
Ally and I both got our hair cut today. When we were done, I dorve over to McDonalds for some drive through lunch. Here's how our conversation went.

Ally: Sing song, Mommy.
Me: What song do you want to sing Ally?
a: reindeer song.
m: "rudolf the red-nosed......down in history"
a: again.
m: How about we sing another song? "Frosty the snow"
a: Reindeer song!!!
m: "man, was a jolly"
a: REINDEER SONG!!!
m: Ally, we already sang that one.
a: reindeer song, reindeer song, reindeer song...
m: That's not a very nice way to ask.
a: Please thank you
m: "rudolf the red-nosed.......down in history"
a: sing reindeer song?
m: Hoeny, we're almost to McDonalds, do you want some chickens?
a: yeah
m: (place order, drive up and wait)
a: chickens, chickens, chickens
m: hold on a minute. they're coming.
m: here's a chicken, Ally
a: (bite) sing reindeer song, Mommy, please!!

I bet I sang that stupid song 20 times. I had to sing it to her at bedtime instead of her usual songs.

why did I ever want to do this?
Ok, so as I've alluded to before, my evenings revolve around my daughter's bathroom habits. I use the term bathroom loosely, as she usually pees in the potty chair in the living room (or where ever the hell she feels like it). What I've come to realize is this: Potty-training is not really going to make my life any easier. Cheaper maybe (and God knows I could use that), but possibly even more complicated.

Everytime Rob is at work and calls me, Ally tells me she has to pee and we have to sit on her potty. Or she tells me she already peed, and I have to sit her on the potty and get her clean panties. She even did it when his grandma called the other day. The only 2 times we've gone anywhere this week, Ally has decided that she needs to pee in the store before we're done. Once was at Penney's, where the bathroom was about a mile away from where we were looking at curtains. I knew she wouldn't make it, but what do you say? I can't tell her just to pee in her diaper - that's what I've been telling her not to do for a month. So, of course, we got about halfway there, and she says "Ally diaper wet" What a waste of time.

It's really got me thinking.

Is it all worth it? Maybe I should just leave her in diapers until she's...oh let's say...21. Added bonus, I won't have to worry about all those boys during her teenage years.

Think about all the time you spend in the bathroom. It's quite considerable lately for me. Very inconvientient. And the cleanliness of many public bathrooms leaves a lot to be desired. Gosh, who needs a bathroom anyway? Bring me a diaper too! Better make it soon, I have to pee again...

whoo-hoo
My boss just came around and told me we get to leave an hour early. Yay. I love working for the state. Only 12 minutes to go. I guess I've got to ramble on quickly...

la la la
Oh my God, I'm so bored. Does anyone have any suggestions as to some fun things to do at work when you don't ahve any work to do. I'm open. I haven't done a single thing today. I'm going to go bash my head in for a while.

Oh wait... I remembered something I've been meaning to talk about. Maybe I'll just ramble on a bit instead

in news unrelated to the kids
I'm finally gettnig curtains!! We got our windows fixed the other day (2 were cracked) and put up new roman shades (Thanks Mom). We threw our nasty old broken, sun-warped blinds away. Then we went to Penney's and ordered curtains. Yay! We originally bought the same shades for downstairs, but they ended up being too dark for a bedroom (flax), so we exchanged them for white. We still need curtains for the downstairs, and the kitchen, but we're headed that way. It only took us 3 years.

Have I mentioned how happy I am to throw away the ugly-ass blinds?

Little People
Ally has lots of Little People sets. They all come with fence pieces. You can connect the fence pieces to al the buildings and stuff. She finally figured out how to get them together and last night made a HUGE circle then she sat down in the middle of it and played. Everytime I was not actively participating in playing with her, She said "Come on Mama, Play with Ally" We spent most of th night downstairs rearranging her toy room. It's been a mess since the tree went up, becuase we had to send a bunch of toys downstairs. I've decided most of them are staying there. Plus, her little bookshelf no longer holds all her books. So, we moved all books to the bigger shelf downstairs. She's just going to have to learn to play in her toy room more and bring us books she wants us to read. The living room is getting too crowded

panties
This morning, Ally peed in her little potty. Then I tried to get her dressed, and she wouldn't let me put a diaper on. She insisted on "dry panties". So, I sent her to day care in training pants with a change of clothes. I don't really think she's to that point yet, but last night, she did tell me ahead of time twice. The second time, she couldn't hold it long enough to get to the potty though. Oh well. More laundry to do.

I give up
ok. Ally came in and slept in our bed this morning from 4:30 to 6. I don't want to talk about it.

christmas decorations
I bet we're the only house in Springfield that has a duck loofah on the christmas tree. See, Ally thinks that anything that has a string loop now, has to be hung up. Thus the christmas loofah. We take it off occasionally to use, but it makes it's way back after it's dry.She also likes to hang all the similar ornaments together on one branch. We have 2 very overweighted spots on our tree that are trying to hold 3 big silk ball ornaments each. 3 are red and 3 are gold. They match thus they must hang together.

(I don't know what's up with the use of the word thus. It just came out that way)

sonogram
No pissing on the sonogram lady, I'm happy to report. She didn't even make one move to draw on my pictures. All she did was write captions, which weren't too bad. stuff like profile, face, sucking thumb, and little girl. Everything measures well, and the due date seems to be on target. Yippee! I'm halfway there.

We talked about c-section vs VBAC, and the verdict is... whatever happens, happens. I can change my mind at any time, and schedule a section, but if I wait and labor that's fine too. If I don't progress like last time, they won't wait as long, or try to stimulate labor with pitocin, but until then, it's up in the air. I'm not especially worried about it, but would like to not have major surgery again if possible. Not with a 2 year old running around. She loves to jump onto my lap. That would hurt.

Anyway, the countdown continues...

manners
I'm getting tired of being hit in the head with a book while Ally yells "Read book Mommy" I've decided that if I don't get asked nicely, she can cry for days without getting her way. So, instead, we're working on manners. If she demands that I read, I say "Ally honey, that's not the nice way to ask someone. What do you say when you're being nice?"

(Or sometimes, I say "Damn. Ally that hurts. We don't hit people with books. That's not nice." but that doesn't work as well, because then she gets her feelings hurt. I still can't help myself though, because some of her books have sharp corners, and really hurt.)

But I digress... So then she gets this angelic little smile on her face and says "Say please and thank you" We worked a long time on that one with much pouting on her part. Next we're working on saying please first and abolishing the hitting of people - especially me - with books.

Anytime that she hits of throws things or does anything else that I feel she should apoligize for, I usually tell her "That's not nice. We dont hit [Mommy/poke Daddy's eye/throw cars at people/etc]"
I tell her to say sorry. Then she gets a sad look on her face and comes over to give you a hug. Then she leans back and says "Mommy's happy now" and goes on with her business.

I can tell we do this a lot, because the other day when Lane (my nephew) poked her in the eye, she pointed at him and said "Say sorry". Unfortunately, he's a little too young for that still. She felt the injustice.

pedophile
I feel like a pedophile. About every 10 or 15 minutes at home, I feel my daughter's crotch. I have a legitimate reason for doing this, but it seems very strange.

Ally didn't seem to care if she had a wet diaper on. We've been using Feel-N-Learn's now for quite some time, but it is still a diaper and absorbs most everything. So last week or so, I decided that it was time to step up the training. When we're at home, I put her in training pants. That way, she can feel if she's wet a lot better. I'm hoping she'll be horribly uncomfortable and start telling me about it so we can get to the potty.

We make a big production out of it too. A lot of the time, she has to go when we get home anyway, so she sits on the potty, and if she goes great, but if not, I tell her that when she "feels the pee-pees coming" she needs to tell me so that we can "keep those panties dry" That is our new motto at the Swaner house: "Keep Those Panties Dry!"

50 times a night I ask her "Are your panties dry?" If she says yes (or more often Yeah) Then we do a happy dance and remind her to keep them dry and tell mommy, etc. I feel liek an idiot. Half my evening, I hear myslef saying these stupid-ass things that would be really funny if it weren't so serious. here's some examples:

"Let those pee-pees out"
"Hold those pee-pees in. Don't let them get out til we get to the potty. Hold those pee-pees!"
"That's right. No poo-poos on the floor"
"That's right. No pee-pees on the floor"
"Those are such pretty panties, Let's keep them dry"

For some unfathomable reason, (I never said it before she started to) every time we take a diaper or training pants off, Ally says "Don't poo-poo on the floor!" I have no idea where that came from, but it's good advice, so I always agree with her.

Anyway, I think we're having some success. She's telling me the instant she gets done peeing that her panties are wet. Even last night, while we were at Applebee's and she was wearing a diaper, she told me her panties were wet. Twice after we got home, she said "Don't pee-pee in the panties" so I grabbed her and we made it to the potty. She tries reall yhard, and sometimes, right when she's relaxing a little she says "There it is" or "There's some" It's very funny.

Did I just spend that long talking about toliet habits of my daughter? Oh my god, I've go to go shoot myself now because I'm too pathetic to live

leopards vs jaguars
Ally thinks all spoted catlike toys are leopards. Who can blame her. It's really hard to see thedifference The only problem is that she learned long ago that they are leopards, but now she's got all these alphabet teaching things that use the what looks like the same thing as a jaguar. She picks it up and says "Leopard. J." It's just a little too subtle for her to grasp.

We have 3 Little People cat-things. 2 of them are a darker orange than the other, so I'm trying to teach her that one is a leopard and the others are jaguars, but hey, I could have them mixed up too. Or maybe they're all the same. Does it really matter?

Plus, they are really reaching for some of the animals that are in the zoo. For instance, there are about 5 different birds. Ally knows they are all birds. However, none of them are for the letter B. We have a Nightingale, a penguin, a vulture, a quail, etc. The B is actually a polar bear. Which Ally knows is a POLAR bear. Couldn't they have used a grizzly (which is the default meaning of the word bear in my mind) or something else? Also, for U, they use a "Uriel" (I don't really know how it's spelled) It's a mountain goat or something. Ally thinks it's a goat.And, she thinks the iguana is a dinosaur (which she really likes. She's obessed with dinosaurs lately).

I guess it doesn't really matter. She is learning letters. If you ask her to find the letter X for you, she looks at the letters on the animals and brings back the "X-ray fish".

genius
Ally is a genius. I swear;. I don't remember what marvelous feat she accomplished the other day, but I was so proud of her I scooped her up and gave her a big slobbery kiss. While she was trying to get away, I told her she was a genius. She just nodded her head and agreed that she was in fact a "dingus". She's not at all humble.