Multi-tasking

Some days, you don't have time to get everything done....so you are forced to do two things at once. You know, like catching up on the latest art methods and going to the bathroom.

The power of math?

Three months ago, I had no idea what/who Team Umizoomi was. Never heard of them. But suddenly, Lindsay was constantly asking for them. So, we built up our Tivo library of Team Umizoomi episodes and the rest is history. Lindsay is OBSESSED!

For that that don't know who Team Umizoomi is, they are miniature trio of problem-solvers who use their "Mighty Math Powers" to solve the "problems" of the citizens of UmiCity, who all live in a town paved with origami. Yep...you read that right. Between you and me, the "problems" they solve are more like annoying sidenotes in an adult's day than they are real problems, but I suppose to toddlers a parent being stuck in traffic with the cake for their birthday party is a real serious problem. Here's a picture of them for those that haven't seen them before (that's Milli, Geo and Bot for those keeping track at home).

Anyway, Lindsay is obsessed. I'm not exaggerating even the slightest when I say she asks to watch Team Umizoomi before she even opens her eyes in the morning. No "good morning" or "I love you"....it's "I wanna watch Team Umizoomi" and then she gets off her bed and groggily stumbles to the living room.

Her obsession reached a point of no return the other day. We've been trying potty train her for the last week or so. About three days in she is sitting on the potty chair and she looks up in the air and says, "Need help Team Umizoomi!" (That's what the "Umi Friends" say after explaining their problem to the trio.)

I almost fell over laughing. She was asking Team Umizoomi for help to go potty in the potty chair. However, I tried to keep my composure to see what would be next. She just stared into the air, apparently waiting for Team Umizoomi to appear in the bathroom. After about 30 seconds of staring into the air she looks back at me and says, "Team Umizoomi not coming" in the saddest, most dejected little voice you can imagine. (Those are the breaks, kiddo.)

So apparently Team Umizoomi can't solve potty training problems with their Mighty Math Powers....which is disheartening on some level because I consider it an actual problem. Or maybe they can because she did go potty before getting off the chair.

Could you resist?

I don't care how busy you are. If your 2-year-old offers you "coffee" during the middle of a task, you "drink it" and you enjoy it.

Dinner can wait, right?

Lindsay's lines

My Lindsay spent some time with our very good friend Lindsay (who is 9 months preggo right now) this past weekend. I was trying to explain to my Lindsay that our friend Lindsay is having a baby and that baby is in her tummy right now.

Low and behold, last night my Lindsay walked up to me, stuck out her belly and said, "There's a baby in there!"

I thought it was hilarious. Kevin said, "There better not be." Our friend Lindsay said, "She is HILARIOUS." Her response was over text though, so I'm not sure if she was laughing or just fed up with being pregnant. I'm guessing the latter.

Either way, I'm still laughing about it today. Sure wish I would've got a picture of her little belly sticking out as photographic proof though.

Parenting Mistake #2

Don't ever forget your child's favorite stuffed animal that she insists on sleeping with each night at the hotel you stayed at the past weekend.

I accidentally left "Beaver" at the Kelly Inn in Fargo this past weekend. Lindsay loves that thing. Never sleeps without it. Here's the photographic proof:

The good news is that they have it and my brother is going to bring it back to us this weekend.

The bad news is that last night was a disaster and her and I ended up sleeping on the couch all night and she cried off and on throughout the night. Maybe it is a coincidence and she just had a rough night of sleep as a function of very little napping over the weekend and lots of excitement the past 2 weeks.

I hope that is the case, but I'm not confident. This could end up being a very long week.

I'm no tough guy

I talked awfully big about my 2 kid-free weeks. All the fun things I would do and how great it would be to have all that peace and quiet.

While I've indeed had a lot of fun with Kevin and my friends, I have to say that I'm officially over it. We've golfed, went to a movie in the theater, eaten out, went to the State Fair, drafted fantasy football teams, went to sporting events and concerts and camped. All fun!

But....I want to see the kiddo. It's too quiet and I'm too old to have all that adult fun anymore. Sitting at home and reading kid books, watching Dora and playing in the sandbox is what I now crave more than anything else. I'm at peace with it. I'm old and I'm in love with a little blonde-haired, blue-eyed girl.

How could you not miss this face? Can't wait to see her this weekend!

Parenting Mistake -- first entry

Not sure I've made a much bigger parenting mistake prior to tonight.

Tip: NEVER show your 2-year-old new Dora sheets for her new big girl bed 20 minutes before bedtime.

Technology!

As a parent, sometimes you start to feel a little sorry for yourself (or at least I do). You know, like those times when you see younger, cooler people with no kids having fun or when you are busy running errands with a whiny kid and you see a retiree taking their time to stroll through the aisles of Target.

On a recent drive back to North Dakota was one of those times. It was just Lindsay and I in the car and not even 30 minutes away from our house, she became irritable and a downright crabass.* I had 9 hours in the car and we couldn't even make it to the western suburbs before the trip was a disaster.

*Sidebar: Not that I blame her. Have you seen the carseats these days? I'm obviously on board with them because of the superb safety, but she may as well be in an enclosed padded box that is harnessed to the backseat. She can't see outside, can't reach for anything and has no one to play with back there.

Anyway, it was at that point I remembered that we had recently purchased a portable DVD player so that she could watch cartoons on long trips. Talk about a godsend. We pulled over, threw in a Nick, Jr. DVD and we were good to go. Even more of a godsend, that DVD had 6 episodes on it and automatically looped back around to the beginning when it ended! Check out this happy camper!

Yes, you read that right. I let her watch 6 episodes in a row and even let it loop back around to the beginning and start over. Judge all you want, but that was a phenomenal drive back to good, ol' ND! Happy kid and momma got to throw on her iPod and listen to P!nk, JT and Rihanna to her heart's content with no whiny interruptions whatsoever!

Honestly, I'm not sure how our parents made it without one of these miracle machines. One less thing for me to feel sorry for myself about. Guess I'm going to have to take my martyr business elsewhere.

Happy Birthday!

I make a lot of observations and funny commentary (well, poor attempts at humor at least) on here, but the truth is, I don't know what I'd do without my little girl. She's enriched my life more than I could have ever imagined. So a big HAPPY BIRTHDAY (which she still doesn't understand the concept of....to her it appears to be just a reason to sing a fun song) to my smart, independent, funny and beautiful girl!

A Whole New Level

After a weekend in which her babysitter (who had her all day Saturday and Sunday) said to me that Lindsay was awesome, easy and never whined or cried about anything, today was something else. After picking Lindsay up from daycare, she said she wanted a juicebox. I told her that she could have one when we got home.

And that's when all hell broke loose.

She literally lost her shit immediately after me saying "Sure, when we get home you can." I have never heard her scream so loud or high-pitched. I whipped my head around because I thought something had to have come through the door and attacked her or something.

But no, she was screaming a horror-movie quality scream while kicking her legs and pounding her fists. I honestly couldn't believe it was happening, let alone that she went from 0 to 60 in 3 seconds. I figured I had a good 10 years before I had to deal with this. Holy smokes.

It lasted for the next 90 seconds (a VERY LONG time when that noise is being made), at which time I decided I would take the time to stop at the gas station just so I could rest my ears for a couple minutes while the car filled. And wouldn't you know it, the second I got out and closed the door she stopped screaming. I guess even she couldn't keep up the fake drama of the 5-minute wait for a juice box.

I'm not sure if I won the battle or not, because she still got her juicebox about 20 minutes later.

She's no dummy

The other morning I was kneeling next to Lindsay and checked her diaper for poop. I asked, "Did you poop or was it just a toot?" To my delight, no poop.

Just then I may have farted. I'll deny it, but obviously there is a reason Lindsay did what she did next.

She walked behind me, pulled on my pajama pants, looked in my underwear and said, "Mommy poop?"

Another redneck moment...

If I've learned anything since becoming a parent, it's that you have to be flexible and at times, need to improvise. That lesson was never more prevalent than on Easter Sunday. Kevin and I had separate vehicles at dinner and he left a little earlier than Lindsay and I. Just before Kevin left, I changed Lindsay's diaper and put the bag back in Kevin's car. When he left, so did the diaper bag. And sure enough, Lindsay destroyed her diaper about 10 minutes later.

We were at my cousin Laura's house and being a kid-free environment, there weren't any diapers on the premises. We tried stuffing Lindsay's pants with paper towel, but that wasn't working so great. But then Laura came up with a genius idea.....a maxi-pad. Of course, that would never work for an extended period of time, but for a 45-minute trip home, it might suffice.

So we rigged it up:

Wouldn't you know it if it didn't work? We put in the maxi-pad, threw down some paper towel in her car seat just in case and hit the road. When we got home, no messes!

I can't say I'm surprised that it was another Pfeifer that was my partner in crime for this redneck-esque act, but I realized that redneck or not, improvisation can be added to my list of skills.

A face only a parent could love

We've spent the last 6 days basically quarantined inside our house with a sick child. And not just sick...vomiting and pooping kind of sick. After 2 days of it, our house smelled somewhere between a port-a-potty and the bucket next to hot-dog eating contest. Absolutely disgusting. Hope you enjoy that mental inhale. Thank goodness for the last couple of nice days so we could air this place out.

But now it seems we've turned the corner to just a cold. That is, if you can consider this just a cold:

In case you can't quite see it well enough, that is a layer of snot flowing out of her nose. That is what she looks like every single time I turn around it seems.

I do have to say that at least while we are home, it may be disgusting, but it isn't a pain in the butt. The other day I was driving her to daycare and she sneezed really hard. When I turn around, it's all over her face. Turn around 10 seconds later and she's wiping that stuff all over her face and into her mouth. Phenomenal. I honestly never thought I'd pull a car over for snot, but I couldn't have her eating the equivalent of a Playdoh container full of snot in one sitting. At least spread that out over a few days.

Even better is the paste that this stuff leaves on her face when she wakes up in the morning. I honestly feel like I need nail polish remover to get that stuff off. Lindsay cries and whines when I'm trying to clean it off and I can't say I blame her. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't enjoy a chisel and sandpaper to my face every morning.

So what I'm saying is, thank goodness spring is here. Because after the last few weeks of sickness, I'd been thinking about taking the best offer for her. Kevin's really had an eye on a projector television for the basement....and I can't deny it would be pretty sweet to watch full-size Kardashians on rerun.

Coming soon...

...to a blog near you. A blogger who updates her blog.

Sh*t My Daughter Says

Obviously the title is a total rip-off of the book I'm reading for bookclub, but it fits too perfectly. Lindsay has started "talking" constantly. She has a lot to say, but no one can understand any of it. And if I had to guess, I'd think she was constantly usingt the naughty version of the word "poop." Seriously, everything she says sounds like the word "sh*t."

Shut = sh*t.

Kip = sh*t.

Chair = sh*t.

Shoe = sh*t.

Lip = sh*t.

Chip = sh*t.

Stick = sh*t.

I could go on, but basically every one syllable word somehow comes out as the word sh*t. Greatly amusing to me. She's a 1 1/2-year-old sailor. I love trying to say what the babble is.

- If she's sitting in her highchair and talking, I'm certain she is saying, "I'm not going to eat that sh*t!"

- Changing her diaper..."Hurry up and get this sh*t out of my diaper."

- Looking out the window at all the snow..."I can't believe this sh*tty weather."

- Watching clips of Michelle Bachmann...."I can't believe the sh*t that comes out of her mouth!"

I doubt that is what she is saying, but just in case, her potty-mouthed mother better clean up the language from here on out.

Naked Gun(s) 1 1/2

For awhile, all Lindsay wanted to do was put more clothes on. She was constantly pulling on more layers of clothes by wearing onesies as pants or pants on her arms. Other than the fact that it was often the clothes I was trying to fold, it was a pretty cute habit.

In the last few weeks, that layering habit is no longer. Now it is a naked habit. She can't get her shirts off yet, but she is constantly pulling her pants down and even more often, completely removing her pajamas. This is what I walked into one morning when she woke up:

The pants coming off is really an interesting move. There seems to be no rhyme or reason to it. Kitchen? Pants come off. Watching cartoons? Pants come off. Picking up toys? Pants come off.

That is Lindsay on Christmas morning. She can't even keep her pants on for Jesus. Although, in her defense, tights are REALLY uncomfortable.

Now the pants is one thing, but the pajamas are a whole different ballgame. It's gotten to the point where we try not to put her pajamas on until right before bed because she'll just take them off and run around naked anyway. But the funniest thing is when she just unzips the front and walks around like some white-trash king. I feel like if we gave her a gold chain, she'd be pulling the look off perfectly. Check it out:

It's all fun and games for now, but I'm only giving it until preschool. She's not leaving the house if the tendencies continue at that point.

Gifted? Probably not.

The other morning I had a little time to kill before I could drop Lindsay off at daycare, so I decided to get out evening bath out of the way in the morning. I brought Lindsay in the shower with me and afterwards I put her little robe on and she ran out of the bathroom into the living room. As I was drying my hair, I see Lindsay walk back into the bathroom and take some toilet paper off the roll and walk back out into the living room.

I was more than a little curious because usually she just eats the toilet paper. I walked out to find her wiping something off the floor. Turns out she peed on the floor while standing there with her robe on, but no diaper on. She then proceeded to walk back to the bathroom, get some toilet paper, walk back to the living room and attempt to clean it up.

I couldn't believe it! Clearly, she must be gifted. Normal 18-month-olds just don't have these sorts of abilities. I was just getting ready to sign her up for classes for gifted children when Kevin pointed out that the fact she stood in the living and peed on the floor might be a sign that gifted isn't the word we should use to describe her.

Point taken. No gifted classes for now.

I've got no legs!

Or so you'd think. We have officially entered the tantrum zone. Sweet-natured 90% of the time, but that other 10% is proving to be equal parts hilarious and incredibly frustrating. One moment you have this staring at you....

....and the next moment you have this laying at your feet.

The first few times it was cute and funny....almost endearing. The next few times it was somewhat comical, but getting a little old. After that it was just downright maddening and absolutely ridiculous. And that was in the first hour of her starting this new trick.

I mean, look at this. Like really closely.


Did I push her off a chair? Did I abuse her puppy? Did I take her favorite toy away? No, no and no.

What did I do? Well, would you believe me if I told you that I took my shoes off? Believe it or not, that is what I did to incite this scene. Apparently she didn't like my socks. Or maybe I have smelly feet.

I'd like to say that it usually doesn't come out for something so mundane, but in all actuality, it is always because of something mundane. We shut the door....tantrum. We wash the dishes....tantrum. We take her out of her high chair when she is done eating....tantrum. It is probably 5 or 6 times a day that she loses all control of her leg muscles and collapses to the ground in an apparent bout of temporary paralysis. I just wish it were her lungs that were paralyzed during the tantrums.