Almost there...

She pooped on the toilet! She's using the big toilet without the toilet seat insert! She's used the toilet at someone else's house! She's not had an accident in 2 weeks. All that's left now is nighttime. I think that may be a while, but she could surprise me.

The pit

I remembered a funny story this morning from a couple of weeks ago. We were at gymnastics. At the end of class the kids can get into this big pit full of foam blocks. I asked Dillon if she was ready to get into the pit. She asked me "The pit, but not the arm pit?" I had to laugh, which made her laugh and assure her that it was not an armpit. Granted, the foam is pretty smelly, but not really armpit smelly. The instructor thought it was funny, too and said that no one has ever asked that before. :)

Pictures

Here's some pictures of the tree that fell. We're estimating that the part on the ground is around 60 feet and the part still standing is around 25 feet. Big tree! There's alo a picture of Dillon in her beloved flying horse costume. It's getting small, so she can't wear the hat very long before it gets uncomfortable. That's her equally beloved penguin she's holding.

Hide and Seek

Dillon: "Let's play Hide and Seek"

Mom or Dad: "OK, go hide."

Dillon: (hiding in plain sight on her bed with the door closed, giggling)

Mom or Dad: "Where is Dillon?"

Dillon: "I'm in here hiding on the bed!!! Come find me!!!"

The logic of a child

I just opened the fridge to find 2 sanding pads in there. They are in there with the 2 empty cups of applesauce that were placed in there by Dillon & Lydia on thursday. Why? They are birthday cakes because friday was Lydia birthday, so they had pretend birthday cakes. That explains the applesause cups anyway. I'm not sure about the sanding pads- it was done while I wasn't here. I'll have to ask her because the answer will be interesting.

She's also taken to rationalizing things. She'll see a picture of a flying horse, so that means she needs to watch the flying horse movie that night (aka Disney's original Fantasia). Or she'll see a picture of a lion or zebra, so that means we need to watch Madagascar that night.

A little under an hour ago, a rather large tree fell behind our house. A small storm came through, mostly just strong winds, but this tree was already damaged by pileated woodpeckers, so there were some big holes in it. Most of the tree is not really on our property, but some is including all of the branches. It's quite a mess back there. I'll have to take a picture and post it. It's kind of interesting to see the woodpecker holes from this perspective, too, though.

By George...

I think she's got it! We were home all day with the exception of about an hour and a half for gymnastics. She used the toilet several times throughout the day- no accidents whatsoever. Even went diaperless to gymnastics. About half the time I asked her if she needed to go and the other half she told me she needed to go. She even went a couple of times and told me afterward. Very excitedly, I might add. She's as proud of herself as we are of her.

There are still a couple of steps to go before I'd consider her fully potty trained, but hey, we'll get there. Namely, she's got to conquer the fear of falling into the big toilet- even when there's a smaller kiddie insert thing on top. I'm not pushing it. Where we are now only happened when I stopped asking her if she wanted to pee on the toilet all the time. The more I asked, the more resistant she was. Maybe I'm a tad lazy, but I have to admit, I prefer this method of waiting until she can pretty much do it herself, then just being the support staff. I have a couple of friends that have been potty training for months and it just seems tiresome for everyone involved. My opinion, of course. In any case, I think she's well on her way to being potty trained!

The questions are evolving...

Now one of the more popular ones is "What's she/he/it NOT doing now?"

How on earth do you answer that?

"I'm not sure honey, maybe you can tell me" is the best I've come up with so far.

Potty count- twice yesterday- once all by herself, of which she was quite proud.

A compliment

On sunday, we went to the first birthday party for one of Dave's anesthesia classmates. It was from 1-3, which is right at Dillon's naptime. As it happened, she woke up about an hour and a half early that morning. Several times throughout the party, Dillon would become quite indignant that one of the babies that were there (all around a year old) would come up and take a toy from her. She would come to me and express just how offended she was at how "that little boy didn't ask- he's SUPPOSED to ASK!" It was tough for her to understand that they were just learning how to share things and could talk yet to ask for things. So, her solution was two-fold. First, she would take the toy she wanted to play with to a chair out of the reach of the babies- pretty good, I thought. Second, she'd go grab a piece of a cookie off the table. The food was out of the reach of the little ones but just perfect for Dillon's reach. I think she must've eaten 3 cookies while we were there. She was very excited for Clayton to open his books we got him. Much more than he was, so she opened them for him and showed them to him. When that didn't get the desired response, she took them to his mom, who was appropriately excited, which thrilled Dillon. She was started to get really tired and having more trouble with coping with the babies, so we were loading up to go home, at which point she just absolutely melted down. We made it home and she took a much needed 3 hour nap. Interestingly, though, on Monday, one of Dave's other anesthesia classmates that was there made a point to let Dave know how well behaved they thought Dillon was and that she did a great job of being gentle and sharing with the babies! Wow- perspective. It isn't that I thought she was not being well behaved- she was- I guess I just recoginzed it as more of a struggle for her that it must've appeared. In any case, it was a nice compliment.

And as for the potty chair use-- twice yesterday- none today so far, but we had to be out of the house for a while this morning, which throws her off. We only have one brief place to go tomorrow, then nowhere thursday, so she'll have plenty of opportunity to get the hang of this!

Woo hoo!

We had a success with the potty chair tonight! We borrowed one from Dillon's friend Emma since she's finished with it. Thus far it had been used only as a stepstool, but over the last couple of days she's been putting her various animals on it. Tonight, she said something about needing to pee. I offered the toilet or a diaper, both of which she refused. A little while later I heard her in the bathroom and walked in to find her sitting on the potty seat. She requested that I read her a book, gave me a little smile and peed! No telling how she'll feel about it tomorrow, but tonight, that's one less diaper I have to wash!

Why?

Are we ever in the why stage! I should count, but I'd be willing to bet she asks "why?" 200 times a day. While I understand it's a stage and it's normal and it'll pass and blah, blah, blah, I'll also admit that it is exhausting. She will absolutely disect an event- why did he open his eyes, why did he close his eyes, why did he open his mouth, why did he show his teeth, why was he standing, why did he sit down, why did he make that microscopic movement to the left when the sun was shining over his right shoulder during the last leap year? The only time I've ever been so profoundly at a loss for answers was when she was a newborn! I must say the words "I don't know" for at least 100 of those questions each day. Sometimes the questions are just so out there that there simply isn't an answer- why is that the ground, why is that a rock, that kind of thing. Then there are the ones that are kind of fun because you get to see her learning something- do planes flap their wings, how can helicopters fly when they don't have wings, why is the sun hot, why to animals on movies use their front feet for hands when real animals don't do that?

We really do try not to say "Stop asking why!" because we do want her to ask why, and also, really, the reply would just be "why?" So there are a lot of "that's just the way it is" answers. So many, in fact, that if I try to pre-empt some of the questions by asking them of her, she'll say "It just is!" regardless of the whether that makes sense or not.

We played outside for a while today. We got her some snowshoes this year. She put them on a few weeks ago, then promptly fell down. Of course, that association stuck and she has steadfastly refused to put the on. The snow is now deep enough that walking around on it really is easier with snowshoes on. No amount of asking and pointing out that she was falling down without the snowshoes on was going to persuade her to put those things on today until I said that we could pretend that they were ice skates. Suddenly she was interested. I ran with it and quickly put them on her. She got the hang of it pretty quickly and we had a good time walking around the yard. She still fell a couple of times, but so did I. She was smiling and seemed to be proud of herself, so we'll see how it goes the next time I mention them.

We went to eat Mexican food tonight. It wasn't very crowded in the restaurant & there are some chairs with a sun and moon painted on them that she wanted to see. We let her walk the few feet over to the chairs to look at them, then she came right back. A few minutes later, they seated some pople at that table. She was highly offended that they would even think about letting someone sit in her chairs. We had to do a little talking to convince her that they belonged to the restaurant and that the poeple could sit there. She seemed to buy it, but they got dirty looks every time she thought of it. Right up until the chocolate desert arrived. This, of course, made those chairs suddenly very unimportant. Funny how chocolate does that!