I love Trader Joe's!

Mabes and I went to Trader Joe's because we needed blueberries, bananas, and milk, but of course wound up with way more stuff in our cart. I was very excited to see that they are still carrying jasmine rice, as they've been out of it the last 8 times I've been. Basmati just wasn't cutting it.

I grabbed a few more things to try, headed to the register, and the cashier said, "Your total comes to $33 even. And you know what that means!"
Me (with blank stare on my face): Uhhh...no....
I was sort of expecting her to say that it meant I was super cool, here's your balloon, and have a nice day. Weird, but I'd be fine with that.
Cashier: It means you get your choice of free chocolate or flowers!
Me: Really?
Cashier: Yep!
Me: No, I mean, REALLY? Free?
(It must be understood that the concept of free anything is pretty much the greatest thing ever to me.)
Cashier: Yes, feel free to take a minute, look through the flowers, go through all the chocolate above the freezers, and take your pick!

So in a move that I'm afraid will make Rachel disown me, I opted for the flowers. The reasoning is, I'll buy the chocolate, but flowers are a luxury I don't buy. And I still have TJ's chocolate covered raisins and M&Ms speckled eggs to last me quite a while. I opted for a potted plant, since it would last longer. And I can keep the bulbs. I love tulips, and I can't remember what the other one is called, but they smell really good!


So Happy Leap Day to me. Even if my child has napped all of 40 minutes this whole week (she's currently in her crib singing "Happy Birthday to Mabes!"), the flowers made my day. Yay, free stuff!

Child Labor

Mabes loves to help with the laundry, so when she was throwing a fit yesterday, I distracted her with laundry. I'd give her a shirt or some socks, and she'd run to the washer, throw it in, and run back for more. At one point, as she ran off to the washer, she yelled, "Thank you, mama, for helping me with the laundry!" Hopefully by the time she's 3 she'll be able to do it by herself. She was so proud of herself and her housekeeping abilities that we moved on to unloading the dishwasher. Sarah said that Donovan, who is 5 months older, is really good at unloading the utensils. Brilliant! I didn't know if it'd be over Em's head, but she thought the sorting game was fantastic. What other cleaning can I make her do?

And while we're on the subject, I'd like to once again apologize to my mom for calling her "Miss Hanigan" when I was little. I was obsessed with Annie and apparently once, when I was 5, my mom had the audacity to make me clean my room, so I decided she was Miss Hanigan and I was poor little Annie. I'm just waiting for the day I get my payback.

But proving that Mabes gets to do more than housework, here she is with her most recent work of art.

And she's modeling her hair. She's decided that a small ponytail is an "Ainsleigh ponytail" and refuses to wear her hair any other way. I love those curls!

Well, that's just ridiculous

I love Costco, perhaps a little too much. But who on earth thought packaging milk like this was a good idea?

I mean, really. I know not all Costcos do this. My mom buys a two pack of Kirkland milk in perfectly normal containers in California. They have the same thing in Oregon. So why do we get these ridiculous looking milk cartons? Is it an East Coast thing, a North Carolina thing, or a "let's gang up on Allison and make her buy stupid looking milk" thing? Well, the joke's on you, Costco, because I'm going to spend 50 cents more and keep getting my milk at Trader Joe's. Their milk has a normal-sized spout. Perhaps if we drank out of buckets, the Costco milk, with it's fist-sized opening, would be fine. But I need a funnel to pour milk into Mabes' cup.

And you know what's kind of disconcerting? Looking out your window and seeing this:
Seriously, right out the window. I've seen these guys jump, they could easily make it to our balcony. Stanley, on the right, appears to be watching me as I type, while Clifton, on the left, is calling out to his friends, "Yep, that's her! The lady that threw her flavorless, dry waffles into our forest!" In my defense, while the waffles really sucked, we figured the squirrels, possums, or birds might enjoy them. Guess not. Or maybe they knew that I made really good waffles the other day, and they're upset that I didn't share. I'm watching out for the squirrel army...

Naptime Shenanigans

In the last 2 weeks, Mabes has had 3 stints of 2 no-nap days in a row. She had been skipping a nap maybe once a week, but this much? Boo! But no, she didn't stop there.

When she was supposed to be napping on Tuesday, I peeked in her room to sniff, because sometimes she poops in her diaper/pull-up and can't sleep. I mean, really, would you be able to sleep with a load in your pants? Probably not. So I went in to change her, hoping that catching it early would then still allow her to get a good nap. As I turned to face her crib, I realized she was standing in her crib, pull-up on the mattress next to her. Oh, no no no no! I thought we had successfully dodged that bullet! You see, Mabes has climbed out of her crib before. My sister's kids never did that, or fecal fingerpainting, so I figured having had 1 of those would mean I would be exempt from the other. But no.

In all fairness to Mabes, there was no fingerpainting involved. She just pooped, took off her pull-up, then I'm guessing she must have stood up and sat down numerous times, getting butt prints on her sheets, pillow, and Winston, her big stuffed dog. Her hands appeared clean. I changed her sheets, washed her up, and then she actually did go to sleep while I frantically did laundry and tried to figure out how to spot-clean Winston with anti-bacterial soap. He's a little traumatized, but he's fine.

And then today, she was jumping in her crib instead of napping. I was about to go in and tell her to stop, when I hear a loud "pthunk." I went running in to see that she broke her crib, and one end of the mattress was almost on the floor. She wasn't the least bit upset, just a little peeved that her jumping had to stop. Much to my relief, it was simply a screw that had popped out and it's fine now. Phew. I know I should start thinking about a big girl bed, but seriously, if you know anything about Mabes' sleep habits, you know why this is a silly, silly idea. Crazy. The girl would never sleep again, which is why I'm going to try to keep her in a crib until she's 18. That's not weird, is it?

Ouch!

We went for a walk on Friday, and Mabes decided to run. But then she tripped, scraped up her nose, and bruised her forehead. I can still hear the sound of her forehead hitting the sidewalk. In true Mabes fashion, she cried for all of 45 seconds while I held her, then she wanted to get down and run some more. As you can see in this picture, she's clearly broken up about the whole thing.

I feel terrible. I know kids fall, they get scrapes, big deal. And she's fine. But I keep thinking about all the things I could do to prevent this kind of thing from happening, and the only conclusions I've come to are either a) completely pad our apartment and never let her leave or b) let her leave only when wearing knee pads, elbow pads, wrist guards, a helmet, and perhaps a catcher's chest protector. And maybe give her a rolling backpack (you know, to prevent scoliosis) when she heads off to school. But given her parents, she'll already be enough of a huge nerd, so why give other kids ammo?

This is what sucks about being a parent. I knew I'd hurt when she hurts, but I'm still sad for her after she's moved on. Knowing that I'm not able to keep her from experiencing pain is incredibly difficult, and yet I realize that's kind of the point. She has to have those experiences, and I have to let her.

It's pretty cute when she looks in the mirror and says, "Oh, no, I have messy on my face!" When she woke up from her nap, I heard her say, "I take owwie off," I thought, "huh, wonder what that means?" It means she's picking at it--gross! So it'll probably be there a while!

Someday...

When we build our dream house, I'm going to have it carpeted with bubble wrap. Okay, maybe not Mabes' room, because she's a light sleeper and that would make checking on her difficult. But I definitely want at least a bubble wrap room. I pulled out a square foot of bubble wrap and it kept Mabes entertained for a good 25 minutes. Imagine a whole room--floors, walls, chairs--covered in bubble wrap. And then I'd eat sugary cereal and bread dough for dinner and laugh that all my childhood dreams had come true...