Yesterday after church CootieGirl and I went shopping. CootieDad and I realized she had no long pants that fit her and now that winter is approaching it’s definitely on the “must have” list of items for her.

So we arrived at Target and walked over to the toddler department. I told her we were there to buy long pants, and took her over to a pair of psychedelic purple pants. “Do you like these?” I asked.

She shook her head. “No, Mama.”

I walked over to a pair of jeans that had sparkles in them. “Do you like these?”

Her eyes lit up, “I like those, Mama!” So in the basket they went.

We went around the department like that for a couple of minutes, with her saying yes or no to the pants she wanted. Then she exclaimed, “Look, Mama! Barbie!”

She pointed over to a rack of nightgowns that had some Disney characters on it. They were bright pink, which probably made her think they were Barbie-related.

I said, “We’re not here for Barbie, we’re here for pants.”

“Okay, Mama,” she answered, going back to looking at pants.

Once we had five pairs of pants in the basket that she approved of, I led her over to the nightgowns. “I like this!” she said, stroking the velvety nightgown. I looked to see if they had her size, which they did.

“Do you want this, CootieGirl?” I asked her, pulling out the one in her size.

“Oh yes, Mama! I like this! Princess!” (the nickname she calls all Barbies or Disney female characters).

“Okay, you can have it.”

She was so excited that she wanted to carry it to the register herself, and once we got home she demanded to wear it immediately. And putting her to bed was the easiest thing last night because she was so excited about her new nightgown.

So CootieGirl had a general physical the other day. Her pink eye is pretty much gone (although she’ll still get drops one more morning). She weighs 33 pounds (which is the 75th percentile) and is 37 1/2 inches tall (also in the 75th percentile). As CootieDad said, “She’s in perfect proportion!”

Her speech continues to get better and better – I can now understand about 85-90% of what she says, although I still occasionally have to make her repeat things. I’d say I only act as translator for CootieDad about half the time.

Potty-training? What’s that?

She’s been very emotional lately – it’s part of her earnest independence, though, so it’s not like it’s out of nowhere. She hates it when we raise our voice at her – her face just crumples and she goes running to the non-voiceraising parent. However, I believe CootieDad and I have been diligent about backing each other up instead of giving in to the tears. The other night CootieGirl was digging around the dishwasher while CootieDad was loading it, and he snapped at her to stay away. She began crying and asking for me, and CootieDad informed her I was upstairs with CootieBoy. She came running up the stairs and I asked her what was wrong. The way she cried, “Daddy!” made me think that maybe he had slipped and fallen and knocked unconscious or cut himself with a knife. Since I was in the middle of changing CootieBoy’s diaper, I gently told CootieGirl to calm down, and half hoped that once she stopped crying she’d sudden be able to speak clear sentences and tell me what was wrong. You know, like this:

Me: Okay, so now that you have calmed down, tell me what happened.

CootieGirl: Daddy was making dinner and slipped while grabbing a knife from the drawer and accidently sliced off his finger. There’s blood everywhere.

Me: Okay, let’s call 911.

Instead, I got this:

Me: Okay, so now that you have calmed down, tell me what happened.

CootieGirl: *watery sniff* Da-haddy!!! *sniff*

Me: Okay, let’s call 911.

Actually, what I did was bundle up CootieBoy (who still didn’t have a clean diaper completely on his body at this point) and go to the stairs, where I hollered down to CootieDad, “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, why?”

“CootieGirl’s up here freaking out.”

“Yeah, that’s because I yelled at her twice for eating mashed potato off a dirty spoon in the dishwasher while I was loading it.”

I went back into the bedroom and finished diapering CootieBoy, then gave CootieGirl a hug and said, “Daddy was upset because he asked you not to do something and you still did it. You need to obey Daddy.”

She was teary the rest of the night, God bless her. She hates being yelled at, especially since we so rarely do it. It’s shocking to her when we finally get het up enough to raise the volume a bit.

It seemed to happen overnight. CootieGirl has gone from this cute little post-toddler to a full-fledged kid. She speaks sentences now – not just two or three words, but actual SENTENCES (no I can’t quote anything specific). She’s polite as all get out (which, if you know my own manners, is hilarious in itself). She sneezed, I said bless you, and she thanked me! *lol*

Because she’s a little sick right now she has this awesome throaty voice – made worse by the screaming when CootieDad and I pin her down to put the eye drops in her eye to help get rid of the pink eye she’s suffering from (although it’s MUCH better today). I would love to videotape her with this voice because it’s so fun to listen to.

She loves to fake like she’s sleeping. She does it all the time now. Today she and CootieDad were laying together on the sofa watching sports and as I came around the corner she quickly shut her eyes and began faking a loud snore. I just stood and watched her until she finally peeked with one eye and began giggling when she saw me looking at her. She did it again tonight when I started to take her upstairs for bed. She dropped her head on my shoulder and began “snoring” quite loudly.

CootieGirl’s speech is outstanding. Occasionally I’ll have to translate for CootieDad, but for the most part I understand everything she says. I admit we gave her a tough name to learn (not as easy as Marie, Grace, CootieMom, or any other one or two syllable names). No, we gave her O-Liv-Eee-Uh. Four whole syllables for her to learn.

At first she could only say “Viva”, which I thought was the cutest thing, and I was determined for that to be her nickname (although I only called her that in private – never in front of friends or CootieDad). It didn’t stick though. Over the weekend we asked her to say her name, and it’s now up to three syllables: O-Viva.

This weekend CootieGirl earned a lot of tattoos. By yesterday she had one on each arm and one on each leg. However, the two on her legs got washed away last night by the chlorine in the pool at the Y.

Two times we had to wait a LONG time for her to use the potty (over 30 minutes), but twice she went within 5 minutes of sitting down.

She had fun at the pool yesterday. She actually used the noodle floater by herself – I showed her my hands and told her that I wasn’t holding her and she kind of freaked, but was okay for about a minute before saying “Hold it, Mama”, which was her way of asking me to help her. Family swim was packed yesterday compared to last week. What made it gross were the two dads who TOTALLY needed to shave their upper bodies. Nothing is worse than uberhairy dads in pools. At least put a t-shirt on, fellas.