February 2009

Sg, I messed up the plan. We assembled your big girl bed today after yesterday’s trip to Ikea. Last night, while having dinner out with friends, AT and I concocted a plan to tell you that the paci had to go away with the crib. You know that the paci is only for night time, and you understand that, if you somehow get your paci out of the crib, you can either put it back in the crib or be put into the crib with it. So, we figured, you probably wouldn’t question the fact that bye-bye crib means bye-bye paci.

We tried to take away the paci at Christmas. Rather, we planned to tell you that we left them all at grandma’s house. (Some friends had used this technique and it had worked for them.) Getting packed up for the 12-hour ride back home was kind of hectic, as we were rushing to get out ahead of everyone else leaving for some kind of outing. Oh — and you had an ear infection. And did I mention the 12-hour ride ahead of us? It’s no wonder we didn’t notice that someone had slipped the paci into your mouth until we were a few miles down the road. It was only 10 minutes, but there was pretty much no way that we were going to be able to tell you that we left the paci at grandma’s. So that plan was aborted.

You were excited about the new bed this evening, and wanted to help build it. (You were pretty cute walking around the frame with a screwdriver, wiggling it in the general direction of a bolt and saying “I got this one.”) You were excited to try it out once we got it assembled. Right up until we told you we would be turning out the light after reading a book or two.

I won’t go into the details, but I read you some books, AT read you some books, and each of us took a 30-minute shift lying around and chatting with you in the dark. You were asleep when AT left the room, but woke up when the door closed. I was lying down to take a second turn when you said pretty much the exact thing you needed to say in order to get your paci (which you had not requested at all up to this point): “I want to sleep in my big girl bed; I want my paci.” Quid, meet quo. I said I would go get it.

I asked AT where it was and she wasn’t happy. “We had a simple, clear understandable plan.” This is true, but I kindly pointed out that our simple, clear, understandable plan wasn’t working. Besides, I worked a full day today while mildly hung over, all before wrestling with Ikea’s non-verbal instructions, and wasn’t inclined to spend another 30 minutes making up stories in the dark. AT convinced me to wait to see if you would fall asleep waiting for me to come back with the paci, right about the same time you popped your head out the door and said “what are you doing?”

So anyway, you got your paci and went right to bed. I’m writing this, in part, to stay awake long enough to make sure you’re really asleep, and I feel comfortable that you are. So I’m out.

The latest Partially Clips (click on the image for a larger version):

They don’t get onto the news broadcasts much either.

See original: Fair and balanced

We’ve been putting off giving her this leftover valentine’s sucker for days. In the morning, it’s been “you can have it after school.” In the evening she has forgotten about it until close enough to bedtime that we say “not before bed; you can have it tomorrow.”

Tonight we ran out of excuses and ended up learning that she calls a lollipop a “suckerball”. Huh.

Algeria, Bulgaria, Cambodia, Dominica, Egypt, Fr— Oh, hello. I didn’t see you there.

I was just sorting some photos of our trips to the aquarium (last weekend) and the zoo (this weekend). Would you like to see a few? I’ve posted some of my favorites below, starting with the aquarium. See if you can tell when the pictures switch from the aquarium to the zoo — it might be harder that you think!