Back on the Potty Train

So, we bought Annie some cute chocolate little bunny candy, because she informed me we needed to buy her some 'potty candy'. She's pretty excited now to use her potty and get an Easter treat for her success. So excited in fact that the kid has peed FOUR times in the past half hour. I think she has better bladder control than anyone I know! And she's well on her way to quite the sugar rush . . . we may need to rethink the rewards system . . .

She came out of her bedroom this morning on her 'cell phone'. She was just chatting away, and when I said, "Good morning baby," she held up a finger and shushed me. (It was kinda rude of me, trying to talk to her when she was so obviously on the phone.)
When she was (finally) done, she informed me she'd been talking to Iah, Doh-doo and their Mommies and Daddies. Approximately three seconds later, she suddenly ran to the top of the stairs and yelled, "Iah? Is that you? Mom, Iah's here! Yay!" I asked where Doh-doo was, and she informed me that he was at work. Of course. I keep forgetting these imaginary friends are much older than here . . . what with their cars, jobs and marriage.

All Kinds of Randomness (And, I HATE the Snow)

So, we're driving, and have been for awhile since all roads in the Salt Lake Valley are covered in deep, deep snow, and apparently all the snow plows are only doing WalMart parking lots or something, 'cause they didn't seem to be shoveling any of the actual roads I've been on the last two days. Not that I'm bitter. Anyway, back to the driving. Annie is in the backseat, chatting with her favorite conversationalist, herself, when I hear this odd 'exchange':
(Oh, and as a refresher, Doh-doo is Annie's imaginary friend she frequently mentions, and Iah is her lesser imaginary friend . . . it's more like Iah is Doh-doo's friend, that he just brings along.)

"Ewww! That's gross!" Annie says, horrified sounding. "Doh-doo licked me!!"
Um, OK.
"Doh-doo," she chastises, "Don't lick me. I like you, we are friends. Don't lick me."
Um, OK.
"Plus, Doh-doo, you are married to Iah!"
Ohhhh-kay. That's just odd. I told Greg, "At least we don't have to worry about her hooking up with this Doh-doo guy," to which Greg responded, "I'm MORE worried now! He's MARRIED!"

Annie amused me endlessly on our hellish drive down Bangerter though. She talked on the phone with her Aunt Talina for a little bit, and her side of the conversation had me cracking up. (Greg was less amused.)
"Yeah, we got stuck. Like three times."
"I think it was Daddy's fault."
"Yeah, our car was stuck in the snow."
"Daddy got our car stuck. We couldn't go."
"Yeah, he's crazy!"
Greg grumbled, "She never mentions the part where Daddy got us out of it!"

Awhile later she suddenly shouted out, "We on babeiter!"
"What, baby?" I asked, confused by the new, incomprenhsible word.
"Babe-it-er! We on babeiter!"
"What are you saying sweetheart?"
"BABEITER!"
"Um, OK. Yeah, you're right."
About 15 seconds later . . . "OH! On BANGERTER! We're driving on Bangerter! That's right!"
The fact my two year old recognizes stretches of road, and can name them, kinda blows me away.

Towards the beginning of our drive, we'd stopped to fill our gas tank (pretty much because after it had taken us like 7 or 8 minutes just to turn out of my parent's neighborhood, I was now pretty paranoid that we were gonna end up in a ditch, run out of gas and freeze to death (despite spending the majority of our drive on a major highway with countless other vehicles; but none of them were going to stop for us, you stop on these kinda roads, and you might never get going again!) So, anyway, I wanted a full tank for the drive.) Once we were within a few blocks of our house, we stopped off at another gas station to fill up a small gas can for Greg's new snow blower (more on that in a second). As soon as we pulled up, Annie, confused and thinking we are most definitely idiots said, "You guys! We JUST got gas! We don't need more yet!"

In addition to filling up gas multiple times on one car trip, we are also doing other things to help stimulate the economy. We are the proud new owners of a snow blower. It was our one big purchase the day after Christmas (it wasn't even on sale though, so I found it very unsatisfying!) After everyone getting stuck, repeatedly, in our driveway on Christmas, plus the nearly two feet of snow we still needed to tackle on our sidewalks, and after Greg spent 45 minutes digging out our gutter (since there was like three feet of snow the plows had pushed up, leaving our car out in the narrowly plowed streets until he nearly killed his back moving chunks of ice around), Greg woke up first thing this morning, drove to Home Depot and bought us snow blower. A really nice one. Not quite the cadillac of snow blowers, but it's up there. Once we got home tonight (luckily in one piece, no thanks to Bangerter Highway and it's several attempts to kill us . . . Greg'll say I'm being overly dramatic, but I think not), Greg got to work on our walks and the new snow fall on our driveway (since it's NEVER going to END!) He came in after about an hour and said, "There's a problem with the snow blower." My heart sank, this thing cost more than three or four of the small home improvement projects I wanted done! He then broke into a grin, "I ran out of snow!" He was like a kid at Christmas (or adult male with a cool new toy on the day after Christmas in this case) . . . I'm really surprised he's not out there right now finding people who haven't shoveled to dig out. Except that now he's downstairs making fudge with his cool new saucier pan and candy thermometer he got for Christmas, so the big toy'll wait 'til tomorrow. We'll most likely have more snow to plow then.

Oh, and to end things, here's an excerpt from Annie's prayer tonight (which she said all on her own, completely unprompted, 'cause that's how she rolls these days):
"Thank you for this fun day. Thank you that we got to see family, and play with my kitchen set, and see Karine and Robert (that's my parents first names, she's big into everyone's first names right now, even saying, "Hey Hilary, can I have some of your water," the other day.) Thank you we go to see Grandma Verla. Thank you we got to go to the hospital. [LONG pause, scrunched up look on face. Realization dawns]. Oh wait. That wasn't today. We didn't go to the hospital. That was something else." Maybe you had to be there for it, but that totally cracked me up.

Little Too Computer Savvy

"Mommy, I am 'posed to use the mouse! I need to email you about the blog, 'cause I don't have any other blogs right now on pbskids.com."
Um, OK.

Annie also has been telling us a lot more about her imaginary friend Doh-doo, and his best friend, Iah (Eeee-ahh). Apparently they both live in houses far, far away. Iah lives in a house with an Iah car, and Doh-doo lives in a house with a Doh-doo car. And Annie has set aside some of our Halloween candy in her Elmo basket because she is "waiting for the other kids who live far, far away to get to our house." I'm apparently not allowed to touch or try to put away said basket until these long traveling wisemen of Halloween make it to our home.

And Annie during her bath today was playing with her different toys, and giving them all names, when I noticed she'd named her washcloth Jesus. Funniest, mildly sacreligious, one-sided conversation I've heard her have in awhile.

It's Official

Annie has an imaginary friend. Doh-doo. She first started mentioning him awhile ago, but he's becoming a more frequently referenced person in our household. On Halloween she refused to go to bed before Doh-doo came to our house trick or treating. We finally compromised, and Daddy promised to stay up and wait for Doh-doo to come to our house and pick up his granola bar, if she'd go change into her pajamas.
She also talks to him on the phone a lot. Tells him about her day, what she's doing, sings him songs. The other day she was taking a bath and mentioned Doh-doo.
"Where does Doh-doo live?" I asked.
"Um, far, far away. In a house," she responded.
This took me by surprise, since past conversations led me to believe he lurked in our house or something. "How does he get to our house then?"
"He drives a car."
"Wow, a car?"
"Yeah, a blue boy car."
"He can drive a car? How old is he?" I asked
"Um, like, five years old. Yeah, five."
Greg's response when I reported this conversation to him: "Oh great, an older boy."

Good Mom/Bad Mom

You know what makes you feel like a bad Mom? Let's say you'd accidentally dropped a big ol' forkful of spaghetti on your five month old's head during dinner. Hypothetically. Then you wiped off her bald little head with a wipe. Only to notice the next day while out with your kids trick or treating at your sister's work that she has a large patch of red-stained skin on her head. Good hygiene there.

You know what makes you feel like a good Mom? Watching your two year old singing softly to her baby doll and cooing, "It's OK, I'm right here, don't cry, I'm here. I love you."

You know what makes it look like your two year old is a freakin' genius? When you're out on a walk around the neighborhood and you stop for a little bit to talk with the Primary President, and some ducks land in the driveway of the house next door and your two year old calls out, "Hola patos." Of course, it's the one and only animal she could've named in Spanish, but having her say it like that sure made her look like a bilingual prodigy.

You know what are the moments you'll never forget? Driving home from Grandma Ruth's office after some daytime trick or treating, and listening to the nonstop 15 minute conversation Annie had with herself, that included stuff like this stream of Annie thoughts . . .
"I like trick and treating. It's fun. Do you like it? Yeah, me too. I'm a pumpkin. I like pumpkins, so does Ellie. Ellie is an orange pumpkin. But not right now, now she's a ghost. My hands are sticky. Are your hands sticky? Yeah, mine too. It's sucker. How about you, do you like suckers? Yeah, so does Doh-doo (her imaginary friend). Doh-doo, you like yellow suckers. And that song. 'Four and twenty blackbirds baked into a pie.' Manahmana. Yeah, I love that book. Stop dogs, it's a red light. Stop, dogs, stop. Look, it's a green light now, go, dogs, go. Oh and "Pizza Pat," I like that book, all the mice eat Pat's Pizza. Poor Pat. Dumbo likes mice, look Dumbo, your friend is a mouse! I like mice, like Pinky and the Brain. MOM! I want to listen to Pinky and the Brain!"

Flying Elephants and 'Toucumbers'

Annie and I were looking through the ads today. She was pointing out everything that was "only eight dollars" (the price everything is in Annie-land.) Then looking at the Wal-Mart ad she excitedly called to me, "Mommy! Let's get a dog and a kitty for the backyard. I'll pet them. It costs only eight dollars!" Stupid dog food ads. I told her it was better to just go to neighbor's houses and pet their dogs. She seems skeptical.

The girls and I went to the park to play on the playground. Annie was up and down the slides, laughing and running and playing like we were at Disneyland or something. It's amazing to watch her so thoroughly enjoy everything she does. I suggested we go roll down the grass hill. Annie thought that was a great idea and took off running for the grass. As soon as her feet exited the bark-filled playground area, she hit the ground and started to roll herself across the completely flat area 15 feet away from the actual hill. The whole time she was shouting, "Whee! Wheeeeee!" Imagine how much fun she had when I actually got her to the hill to roll down an incline! She then ran back to the swings for awhile, then over to the ride on animals. Which brings me to my current very favorite Annie-mispronunciation. You wouldn't think a two year old would have much need for the words 'Toucan Bird' in her day to day life. But Annie happens to have a toy, a watering pail in out bathtub, and this ride on animal in the park, that are all shaped like toucan birds. Annie always refers to them as 'Toucumbers." Cracks me up every time.

Earlier in the day Annie watched her first full-length Disney movie today. Well, full-length might be a bit of a stretch, since it turns out that Dumbo is only like an hour and six minutes long. Heck, watched might be a bit of a stretch since she'd get up and pause it and wander around the house every fifteen minutes or so. But we did actually get through the whole movie. When her Dad got home from work, I was having her recap the movie for him.
"Annie, what did Dumbo do?"
"Um. He pulled things. He sleeps. Um. He plays. There was a train."
"Annie, did Dumbo fly?"
"Oh yeah, that too."
Not like it's the point of the movie or anything.

Annie was sitting by her ride-on horse, putting on her shoes when she turned and looked at me and said, "Mommy, my horsy is so proud of me! I did it all by myself!"

We've started putting Ellie in the Exersaucer. It's amazing how teeny tiny she looks in it, like this little miniature person barely sticking out of it. Annie still likes to get in it occasionally, making Ellie seem even littler in comparison. I can't believe she's already old enough to be hanging out in an upright toy already though. Time flies!

Annie was talking on a toy phone with someone named 'Doh-doo'. She was telling him that Mommy was on the 'puter, and Daddy was holding Ellie. Greg asked who Doh-doo was and she said, "He's JUST a friend Dad!" That phrase will freak us out in another 13 years or so! Apparently Doh-doo is a 'nenius' (genius) and he is 'hiding at our house.' And she made a play date to 'play at your house later Doh-doo.' Then Greg spoke Spanish to Doh-doo, and Annie just stared at him like he was crazy. I don't think Doh-doo is bilingual.

Annie is currently standing on the bed next to me, dancing and singing, "Shake, shake, shake. Shake your booty!" She does this often. Most amusingly when she ran out in the front yard, bare naked, shaking her little tushie around and singing it at the top of her lungs. Greg asked, for like the millionth time, "What do you teach our daughter when I'm not home?!" Lyrics to KC & the Sunshine songs. Obviously.