Pretty creative...

I was wearing a belted sweater, but it was unbelted at the time and kind of trailing behind me as I walked.

Kate: Mommy tail!

Gross

Cecelia (cat) was grooming herself.

Kate: Cece eat butt!

Glad I spent $100 on a play kitchen...

The following is a conglomeration of her answers to "What present you want Santa to bring you?"

Kate: A blue one.

A sucker.

Socks.

Dora fruit snacks.

Do they sell those?

She was running around wearing her Muno purse and pushing her shopping cart.

Me: Kate, are you going shopping? Whatcha buying?

Kate: Ummmm...grandma.

We'll have to work on that....

It snowed for the first time this year. We were looking out the window.

Me: Kate, what color is the snow?

Kate: Green!

Regarding princesses...

I didn't even know she knew the word "Princess".

Nick: Kate, are you a queen?

Kate: No. Princess.

-later-

Nick: You're such a little princess.

Kate: No. Mommy princess.

Me: Oh, mommy's a princess?

Kate: NO. Sam! Sam princess.

Good memory!

At the ripe old age of not quite 2, she has officially memorized her first book! Granted, it's not a very sophisticated or wordy book, but a book just the same.

Kate: Peek a....MOO! Peek a....BOO! Peek a....ZOO! Peek a....CHOO CHOO! Peek a....YOU!

I don't think Santa gives those out...

Little Brother had his shots today and I gave him some drugs when we got home. Not soon after, we had this exchange.

Me: So, what do you want for Christmas, Kate?

Kate: Sucker. Mouth. [pointing]

Me: A sucker in your mouth? OK. What do you think Sam wants?

Kate: More drugs?

Bluntness, Part 2

Since I had so successfully used the shower excuse at bedtime before, I did it again.

Me: I have to go take a shower.

Kate: BYE. [pushing me out of bed]

Me: You want me to leave?

Kate: Ewwww, dirty mommy. Grosssss.

You don't have to be that blunt...

I was putting her to bed and trying to explain why I had to leave.

Me: I have to go take a shower.

Kate: Dirty mommy.

Me: Ha, that's right.

Kate: Mommy dirty clothes.

Does this mean she thinks I feed her dog?

She was eating a hot dog and peas for lunch.

Kate: Hot dog!

Me: Yep, hot dog.

Kate: Hot peas!

Anti-nudity unless it's her own

Lulu was laying on her back, legs up in the air.

Kate: [pointing] Vagina!

[walks to diaper bag, grabs a diaper, opens it up, and places it over Lulu's lady parts.]

Kate: No vagina.

Fishing for sympathy

In the car, riding home from Wal-Mart.

Kate: [fake cough] I'm okay!

Me: Well, I'm glad to hear that.

Kate: [fake cough] Oh, I'm okay!

Me: Great!

Kate: [fake cough] I'm okay, I'm okay!

Me: Mmmhmm...

Poor kid will fit right in with Apple and Sparrow

Me: Kate, what's your baby doll's name?

Kate: Party Tummy.

One for the boyfriend in 16 years

As background info, she says "bite" when she wants a bite of something.

Her brother had just finished nursing but I hadn't yet put the, uh, equipment away. She walks up and points.

Kate: Bite?

Me: Um, what?

Kate: Bite?

Me: Bite?

Kate: Bite. Booby.

Me: Um...nah, I don't think that would taste very good.

Kate: Yucky.

Regarding Halloween...

We tried to work on "trick or treat". Instead it went more like this.

Me: [approaching a door] Okay Kate, say trick or treat!

Kate: [crickets]

Me: Okay, thank you. Can you say thank you?

Kate: [crickets]

Then we'd walk away.

Kate: Thank you mommy!

[approaching next house]

Kate: Hi, house! Hey! Candy!

Me: Okay, can you say trick or treat this time?

Kate: [crickets]

Me: Okay, say thank you!

Kate: [crickets]

[walking away]

Kate: Thank you mommy!

Worst Potty Trainers Ever, Pt. 2

We were at Nick's dad's house. Nick's grandma had given her a plastic pumpkin full of goodies. Naturally, she dumped them all out. She was standing next to Nick's dad, tilting the empty pumpkin up in the air, and said "Poop". We were all like, what? There's no poop in the pumpkin! She said it again and I thought maybe she was seeing the black paint of the jack-o-lantern on the inside of the pumpkin and thought it was poop. I don't know.

Five minutes later, she gives me this exasperated look, grabs one diaper and the box of wipes from the diaper bag, and heads off to the guest room, where we change diapers. "POOP".

Ohhhhh.

Pretty Awkward, Pt. 2

We were at Target, blowing time while Nick donated blood elsewhere. We walked past the lingerie department.

Kate: [pointing to bras] BOOBIES! BOOBIES!

Me: Um, yep.

Kate: BOOBIES! MOMMY BOOBIES!

Close Call

We had the kids' pictures taken yesterday. They had all kinds of props to get the kids to smile- a stuffed cat, a stuffed frog, a football, etc.

We were in the car afterward, discussing the pictures.

Me: Did you like getting your pictures taken, Kate?

Kate: Fun!

Me: That's right it was fun, wasn't it?

Kate: Fuck.

At this point, Nick and I look at each other like, "Did you hear what I heard?"

Me: What was that?

Kate: FUCK.

Me:...um...oh, FROG? Did you play with a frog?

Kate: Mmhmm. Tickle!

Whew.

Blame it on the baby brother

Me: Kate, did you poop?

Kate: No! Elmo.

Me: Elmo? Elmo pooped?

Kate: Yeah!

Me: Somehow I doubt that.

Kate: Um...Sam! Sam poop.

Compound Words

Yes, we're still here. The arrival of baby brother has kind of put blogging on hold for awhile!

Her newest thing is putting two words together and acting like they're one word. I am referred to as MommySam 90% of the time. If Nick has Sam (rare!) he becomes DaddySam.

Then there's fallbooboo. She says it when she's doing something "dangerous" and I guess we've told her not to fall and get a booboo one too many times, because now she just cuts to the chase and says fallbooboo.

I'm not really sure how to get her to stop it, so I just try to say "Yep, you don't want to fall and get a booboo!" Or "That's right, it's Mommy and Sam!"...maybe "and" should be her next word.

That's pretty awkward

We were at Home Depot buying laminate flooring. Nick sat down with the flooring guy so I was in charge of keeping Kate occupied (for what turned out to be at least half an hour. Fun times at 39 weeks). We happened upon the display bathrooms.

Kate: Pee. [ushering me over to sit on the toilet and lifting up the lid].

Beth: No baby, I can't pee here.

Kate: PEE. [trying to drag me over]. MOMMY PEE!

Eventually I just kept her happy by letting her lift up all of the lids and put them back down. Then, in an effort to kill time, I decided I'd go to the real bathroom and pee.

We were not alone. She's in the stall with me.

Kate: VAGINA. VAGINA. VAGINA.

Luckily it doesn't really sound like the actual word, so okay. We then went back to the fake bathrooms and she climbed under the fake sink and closed the doors.

Kate: Hide. Hide.

Sigh. It was a long Home Depot trip.

She thinks pretty highly of me

Whenever she goes to pet a cat or a dog, I say something like, "That's right, pet her nice! Very nice", etc.

We were on a walk. She stopped, petted my leg, and said:

Niiiiiice.

Ouch.

At the park, there was a one year old named Adam. He was a pretty big baby.

Kate: [pointing at Adam] Cow. Mooooo.

On the emotions of carrots

In her Yo Gabba Gabba book, there's a picture of carrots who have sad faces. She always points to it and says "Sad". Well, we were reading a different book and it happened to have carrots in it- completely normal, emotionless carrots.

Kate: Sad.

Me: I don't think those carrots are sad, babe.

Kate: Happy!

Mind blowing. She knows that if they're not sad, they're happy.

You'll shoot your eye out, kid!

Nick was eating pie. Naturally, Kate wanted pie. So she sat next to him on the couch and they both had a fork. Eventually she decided to feed Nick some pie. And ended up poking him in the eye with her whipped cream covered fork. Nick didn't make a huge deal out of it but he kept his eye shut and there was whipped cream covering his eye. Kate was verrrry concerned.

Kate: Eye. Chocolate. Eye. Daddy. Eye.

Nick got up to clean it off (and for the record, she thinks anything dessert-ish is chocolate) and she sat in my lap, lip trembling, about to cry.

Kate: Sorry!

Awww. Her first unprompted sorry. Our hearts melted. She was actually sorry about something, was upset enough that she put whipped cream on daddy's eye that she apologized. It's the next day and she's still talking about the chocolate on daddy's eye.

She goes grocery shopping with me every week and when I'm done she gets to play in the (pretty lame) Wal-Mart arcade thing. It's basically a few games and then two little "rides" for little kids. Sometimes she likes it when I turn the rides on and other times she's terrified. This was one of the terrified times, but she wanted to hold her own quarters and try to put them in the slot.

So since she didn't want it to actually turn on, I just gave her one quarter to play with- the machines take two. She stood there, held her hand out, and said:

TWO.

Just blows my mind that not only did she know the machines take two, she knew she only had one and she knew to ask for "two"!

Not sure how to respond to that one...

We were reading her Yo Gabba Gabba book. For those of you who are lucky enough to not have to watch Yo Gabba Gabba every single day, DJ Lance Rock is the only human in that pic.

Kate: [pointing to DJ Lance] Chocolate!

I guess I never specified that she had to mean it...

She's started hitting. I know it's a pretty normal toddler thing so I'm not overly concerned, but it is kind of annoying that she only hits me! Not Nick, just me. And once her high chair, when it did...something to upset her.

Obviously hitting is not something I want to encourage, so I struggled to figure out what to do about it. I can tell by the gleam in her eye that she just wants a reaction- she hits me, then stands back and looks me in the eye, like "I dare you to say something, mommy!". So after some trial and error I figured the best thing to do is just say "No" and then get up and walk away (quite a feat at 35 weeks pregnant)- completely disengage, and teach her that no one wants to play with someone who hits. Then when we resume playing, she has to say she's sorry. But I don't make a big deal out of it because that's what she's looking for. Drama queen.

It was working pretty well. She didn't mind the first couple of times when I left, but after that I could barely make it out of the room without her chasing after me, hugging my legs and saying "Sorry". But now, it goes more like this.

Beth: [minding her own business, reading a book or singing a song]

Kate: [SLAP] Sorry.

Or take last night. I lay in bed with her for a few minutes at bedtime.

Beth: [laying quietly next to Kate]

Kate: [SLAP] Sorry.

Get the picture? So now she thinks as long as she says "Sorry", she can totally slap me all she wants. It's really hard not to laugh, actually. But I don't, because obviously that's not going to help!

Worst potty trainers ever

So we're eating dinner. Kate's running around. Not unusual- she's not a big eater lately. She's playing on the stairs, which are right next to the dining room (and there's a gate halfway up so it's fairly safe, in case you were worried).

Kate: PEE. PEE. PEE. PEE. PEEEEEEEEE.

Nick: Why is she saying pee? Did you pee earlier?

Beth: I don't know. Maybe because she's near the bathroom?

Kate: PEE. PEE. PEE. PEEEEEE.

[This goes on for 10 minutes or so. She gives up trying to go upstairs. Picks up potty from the family room and brings it to Beth.] PEE.

Beth: [quickly depantses Kate. Discovers poop]. Oh. She meant poop. We suck at this.

Poor thing was trying to go upstairs to get her diaper changed and we were totally oblivious until she PICKED UP THE POTTY and brought it to the dinner table.

At least it wasn't the other....

In the Target bathroom, at the top of her lungs, with it echoing off the walls.

Kate: PEE! PEE! MOMMY PEE! EWWWW PEE!

[flush]

BYE PEE!

Somehow I doubt that

She brought me a book that I didn't recognize...

Beth: Where'd this book come from?

Kate: Butt (pointing).

Miscellaneous

I'll make this one big long post since it's the first.


Beth: Kate, it's the Wonder Pets! Wonder Pets! Can you say that?

Kate: That.

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Beth: Kate, how old are you?

Kate, holding up one finger: One!

Beth: That's right, one! One!

Kate: ....two....

(Okay, doesn't sound that exciting. But we haven't really worked on counting with her so we were shocked that at 18 months our child can count to two!)

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Last weekend we went swimming at Nick's mom's downtown Chicago condo with my sister and her husband and their 5 month old Jackson. Kate loves the pool and asks to go at least once a day. Unfortunately we don't have time during the week/it's not warm enough anyway. But, it's going to be 90 something this weekend so we're going to try.

Beth: And then we'll go swimming this weekend! That'll be fun!

Kate: Pool?

Beth: Yep, the pool.

Kate: Baby! Baby Jaaack. Pool. Baby.

Everytime she mentions the pool now, she follows it up with baby. I don't have the heart to tell her that baby Jack doesn't live at the pool.

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Nick has a......liberal view on farts. After a particularly disgusting one, I was going "EW!" and covered my nose with my shirt. Kate said "eww" and...proceeded to cover her nose with her shirt. Then she got up and insisted that Nick cover his own nose, too. Now whenever she farts, she covers her nose. Well, at least she gives us warning.

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She's big on animal sounds. Nick used that to teach her that the sound grandma makes is a big "Pfffffffft" raspberry thing. AKA a fart noise, really. So I was trying to get her to eat something while Nick's mom was in the other room saying something to Nick. Kate looked at me very seriously, pointed towards her grandma, and said "PFFFFFFFFFFT."

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She loves for me to sing the ABCs...before I'm even done she's going "MOOOOORE." So I asked her to sing the ABCs and got "B I P I T C" in a sing songy voice. So proud. Not bad for 18 months, I'd say.

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We were reading the Very Hungry Caterpillar. At the end, he gets into his cocoon.

Kate: Bug! [pointing to cocoon] Chocolate! Mmmmm.

Gross.

Starting Over

Okay, instead of complaining about my INSANE job, I'm going to switch gears and just blog about the funny things my kid does. Because there's a lot of small yet amazing things that I just have to tell someone, yet never have anyone to tell. Ha.