Bribe of the week

As of Monday, Kinley is finally wearing "big girl underwear".  We have certainly had some accidents, but she is doing rather well.  Today (Wednesday), she is yet to have an accident.  My current bribery system is consisting of Pixie Stix and Fun Dips.  Both make excellent distractions while you sit on the potty and wait for some sort of a result.  I find the trip to the potty immediately following nap time to be the most challenging.  In an effort to lure her to the bathroom, I put the the last of the powder from the Fun Dip in a small cup.  Totally lame, right?  Well, it was a huge hit.  The pictures below demonstrate a total lapse in my judgment.  In the future, mom will hang on to the Fun Dip.  However, Kinley told me she "had a really great time with the Fun Sticks".  

Personally, I think with Kinley's disheveled looking hair and this mysterious substance all over her face, she looks a bit like a drug addict.  She does love her candy.

Distracted Driving

After a recent road trip to Utah alone with Kinley, I have decided that we should be less concerned with people texting while driving, and more concerned about cars that have one parent and at least one small child in them.  Let me just sum up my experience and see if anybody else agrees.

I wake up extra early to ensure that we can get on the road by 9:00 am.  I pack a nice selection of snacks, treats, toys, movies, and music to entertain Kinley.  We are loaded up and in the car by 9:15.  By about 9:45 we are in a major snow storm and the roads are bad.  At this point Kinley notices that we aren't going very fast and that mom seems to be concentrating extra hard on the roads.  So, of course, this would be the best time to become annoying and ask a million questions.  It starts out with a simple request, "I want some juice".  I reach into my bag to grab the sippy cup with juice while trying to keep my eyes on the road, then do the "go go gadget mom arm" trick I have learned and reach back to give her the juice.  Then she no longer wants to listen to the beautiful Mickey Mouse Club House music she had previously selected and launches into requesting movies she knows we don't have.  Finally, she wants to watch Monsters which we do have, then begins the ever so dangerous task of switching out the DVD player while driving (in a snow storm this is much worse).  Whew, she is quiet for awhile.  About 45 minutes later I heard some grunting sounds from the back seat and she announces that she has dropped her blankie and can't reach it.  Super.  I take a quick glance in my rear view mirror and I spot the blankie in the corner, luckily it is the only corner that my gadget mommy arm can reach.  Luckily, we are out of the snow now, but still, is it really safe to be reaching clear into the back seat for a blankie???  Definitely not.  Once the blankie has been retrieved, she mentions that she can't find Raffie either.  I tell her I can't see him and that mommy is driving and we will have to get Raffie when we stop for lunch.  Now she is mad at me and refuses to watch Monsters and insists that I put her music back on so we can "dance with the monkeys", meaning she wants to listen to the Disney CD, specifically The Jungle Book.  Once the CD is in place, she begins instructing me on how to dance with my shoulders.  Excellent, I have always wanted to know how to dance with my shoulders.  I then throw in an extra "whoa whoa" to the song and received a lecture on adding extra lyrics.  She said to me, "don't say whoa whoa.  There is no whoa whoa there.  Why would you do that?".

After a few movie changes and several uses of the mommy gadget arm to pass snacks back and forth, we arrived safely at our destination.  I am thinking that cars need to have some type of a mechanical claw device on the roof that you can maneuver around the car to retrieve items and pass things to you kids.  Or, maybe I will write to my local congressman and tell him that for the safety of others, it should be against the law to travel alone with a child.  Just a thought.

Kinley on Easter morning, she had a great time.

Letter to Great Grandparents

I'm sorry for the double posting today, but I needed to post this before I forgot.  For Christmas my grandparents gave Kinley a subscription to The Friend (a church magazine for kids).  She got her first one on Saturday and she was so excited.  She carried it around all day and talked about how special it was.  Today I told her to draw a picture for Grandma and Grandpa and we would send a thank you card.  She colored for a very long time.  When I asked what she drew for them, she told me it was not a picture, it was a letter.  According to Kinley, this is what the letter said.

To Grandma and Grandpa,

Thank you so much for the book about Jesus.  I really love it, it is so special.  I taked it to church to show the Bishop.  He thinks I am very pretty.  I like to eat ice cream with Grandma, she is so happy.  I'm coming to your house soon.  I love you.  From, Kinley - not Boogs, my Dad calls me boogs, but I'm Kinley.

I thought it was just so sweet, and I really do have the sweetest grandparents.  Kinley tells me that they aren't just "normal grandma and grandpa" they are "great".  

Spring for a day

Last week we managed to have one day that felt like Spring.  Kinley's Aunt Pam gave her this great little scooter.  Kinley was able to ride her scooter one day (while wearing her "summer shoes") and then of course the weather turned cold again.  She just kept saying, "I'm having a really good time on my skateboard".  It was pretty cute.

Kinley has been saying the funniest things lately.  Today, after I finished fixing my hair, she told me that I had really cute "puppy" hair.  I said, you mean poofy hair?  She said, no, puppy hair, like a puppy dog.  I'm really not sure what to make of that, but for now I am pretending that it was intended to be a compliment.

On the one good day last week, I took her to a playground that is right by the river.  Kinley told me it was called "Snake Lake" and it was filled with snakes, and she is "very afraid of snakes".  Then she suggested we feed them pine cones so they wouldn't be hungry, then of course, they wouldn't need to eat us.  I can't decide if she is creative or creepy?  At least she makes me laugh.

It's potty time!

Yes, that is exactly what you think it is, Kinley's potty chart chuck full of stickers.  Now quit laughing at what an ugly chart it is, poor Kinley is stuck with a mom with zero crafting ability and lousy handwriting.

At our house, we have been having this horrible battle over whether it is okay to urinate in the bath tub.  Rich and I are have taken the side that it is disgusting to pee in the tub, while Kinley is under the impression that it isn't a big deal.  In an effort to prevent a "pee bath", I forced Kinley to sit on the potty prior to getting in the tub.  I decided since the warm water in the tub seems to get the urine right out of her, I would give her a bowl of warm water to play with.  What do you know?  It worked.  Some how the excitement of this one successful attempt just heaved her into full blown potty training.  So, she has become, in her own words, "a big girl like mommy and a big girl like daddy".  I like to repeat the part about Rich being a big girl, I think it's funny.

We are now on our second potty chart since the first one is completely filled with stickers.  I'm just hoping that her motivation will stick.  We're stocked with bribes that seem to be working.  I am convinced that about 50% of motherhood is coming up with the correct bribe, and the current bribe of choice at our house are Peeps (I don't think there is a more delicious bribe out there).  So for now, we eat Peeps while we pee on the potty and then get ourselves a lovely little sticker.

A breakfast picnic

Every morning when Kinley and I wake up, I give her about 3 options of things to chose from for breakfast.  She typically choses to have a bag of cereal and a sippy cup of milk.   She then takes her little breakfast in my room and eats it while watching whichever cartoon she choses.  One day last week she asked that I take her "little red table" into her bedroom so she could eat her breakfast in there.  I said sure, drug the little table in, and went to get in the shower.  When I got out of the shower, this is what I found.

I asked her what she was doing and she said that she was just having a breakfast picnic with her friends.  Each friend had a pretty good sized pile of cheerios in front of them, except for poor Mr. Raffey.  He only got 2 cheerios.  Kinley said that Raffey told her he wasn't very hungry.  While I was finishing getting ready I kept hearing things like, "if you don't eat your cereal you will be in big trouble baby doll" and "can I eat your cereal Bear?  Oh, thank you so much".  The breakfast picnic was a huge hit with all of those lucky enough to attend.  I especially enjoyed the picnic because nobody (meaning Kinley) bothered me while I was blowing my hair dry.  I'm thinking Kinley may have a future as a party planner.

Possible Problem?

One day last week, while I was busy straightening up the house, Kinley went off to play in her room.  After a little while, she returned looking like this.

So, for those of you that have asked how potty training is going, I think these pictures should answer that pretty clearly.  In case it doesn't, well, potty training is not going so well.  Clearly she is not quite grasping the concept of underwear.  In the pictures, she is wearing almost every pair of underwear she has, most of which she has crammed both legs into the same hole.  So, we're taking yet another break from constant discussion of potty training.  I know she'll get it, she just needs it to be her decision, she's maybe a smidge on the strong willed side.  So for now, she will not be putting her pee pee in "the cage" as she is now referring to the toilet.