Jokes and the Potato Head Family

Its interesting to see how Muffin's sense of humor is developing. What she thinks is a joke is weird, she'll say something like " A dog and… a rock". Then she'll laugh. I guess she thinks putting together things that don't seem to go together looks funny to her. We just play along and laugh heartily and she loves it. Lately she's taken to just piling on the words, and will keep going on and on.

She's rediscovered Mr & Mrs. Potato Head. First she had to take down Mrs. Potato Head's phone number in her phone book, then she had to get them married using her magic wand. I hear there's a store in Magic Kingdom (Disney) where they sell more parts for Mr Potato Head, we may have to hunt this place down!

Toddler Years

We've reached a new milestone. The one where Muffin gets really upset when things don't go her way. For example, we went to the mall the other day, and she wanted us to get inside via the pink store. We asked her what was it, she just kept repeating that it was the pink store she wanted. When we didn't use the "pink store entrance" she began wailing. WAILING? Our normally sweet girl, suddenly wailing? Daddy Muffin took her to the side until she calmed down, and then we entered the mall. Our whole visit to the mall was the same way, and Daddy Muffin again had to take her to the side a few times to calm her down. We've had meltdowns because I didn't put enough toothpaste on the toothbrush, because daddy cleaned her hands instead of mami, etc. I'm talking wailing, end of world meltdowns that take 20-30 min to calm down from. For toothpaste?

We hear from her friend's parents that they're going thru the same thing so apparently its very age appropriate. Hope she outgrows this phase SOON!

What's been confusing is that she's old enough that we can talk and reason with her, and so far that’s worked wonders, and its very frustrating that she's suddenly getting upset over such trivial things. If anyone's got any gentle parenting suggestions, we'll take them!!

Update 4/30 - I was talking with my hairdresser and she tells me her 6 yr old daughter is the same way. Others have told me this lasts years. O joy... (she is, the tantrums aren't...)

Summer Clothes

Now that we're planning our Florida vacation in early May, we started to go thru Muffin's summer clothes.
Last summer I went to a few garage sales & summer end shopping sprees, then a good friend gave us a boxful of girl shorts and shirts. PLUS, since she has lost much of her baby belly (snif! It was so cute...), she can ALSO wear many of her old pants/ shirts from last summer. Daddy Muffin and I have been sorting thru these for the last couple of nights, and we've come to the conclusion she's got TONS of clothes for this summer! Here she is modeling one of the outfits she was given last summer (thanks Kathy!).

Garden & Camera

Sunday was an uneventful day for the Muffin family, nice & quiet.

Muffin and I went shopping Sunday morning for pansies to plant in the garage flower bed. Then we planted the flowers together (sort of). She enjoyed taking out the old poitting soil from the container, and somehow kept covering the whole flowers with the potting soil as we were planting them. She even got to water them, now I'll be teaching her to watch the flowers as they grow. I tried to get her help in clearing out leaves from the garden bed but she was more interested in climbing over all of her yard toys. She does miss running back there, we need to start getting the yard ready for the summer. Can't wait!

In the afternoon, somehow Muffin got the idea that she wanted to take pictures. Probably because she saw Daddy Muffin taking pictures during the birhtday party we had just gone to. I offered to lend her my camera so she could take pictures of her most recent toy, and she did a pretty good job (with just a bit of help from me). Watch out Daddy Muffin, you've got competition!

Disgusting

When I came home yesterday evening, I was greeted by Muffin, who gleefuly declared "I'm DISGUSTING", while she danced around, smiling and clearly proud of herself. She seemed to think this was hysterical, and was having a blast being "disgusting". We asked her where she got the word, she said it was from Max & Ruby (a cartoon she watches sometimes). Clearly there was nothing disgusting about her (just adorable as usual). But she had a blast pretending to be disgusting. Go figure!

By the way - the spanglished word of the day is MILKA = which is her version of Milk in Spanish, she just added an 'a' to translate it. Yes, she knows the correct word is 'Leche' and clearly thought she was very clever calling it something else. She did tell me earlier today that she can sometimes speak in Spanish. I'll take what I can get!

Whining

Muffin seems to have entered a new developmental phase, the one where she thinks she needs to whine to get what she wants and she will not take "no" for an answer. Daddy Muffin came up with a great way to deal with this… when she wants something unreasonable, he just says yes, you can have it, but be aware of the consequence. So far seems to be working like a charm! Typical dialogues go something like this:

Muffin: "These aren't my pencils, I want my regular pencils." (spoken with a whiny complaining tone)

Daddy Muffin: "Those are your travel pencils. Sure, you can have your regular pencils, we'll just leave Nana's & Grandad's house, and drive home and get your pencils. Come on, let's get your coat now."

Muffin: "No, I don't want to get them. I'll play witht these"

It seems to work (so far), we'll keep using this as much as we can! Certainly much easier and gentler than saying "because I said so" or yelling. Go Daddy Muffin!

Cabin Fever

For someone who's been cooped up almost a week at home with the flu, she's done pretty good. It probably helped that we used TV a lot more than we normally do.... though we've been telling her that this is ONLY because she's sick. I hope she doesn't start pretending to be sick now so she can get more tv! We did have one evening when she was very contrarian, doing the opposite of whatever we asked her, I blame cabin fever for that. Daddy Muffin has been a trooper, surviving the flu himself, and playing with her a LOT.

Today is the day cabin fever ends - we think she's well enough to go to ballet class this morning, hurray!

BTW, if anyone feels like leaving comments, please feel free! Would be nice to know others are reading this blog ;)