The Joys of Motherhood

  Motherhood is a complicated road to go down. Here you have this sweet little person that you love more than anything in the world. Yet kids are unpredictable and can do things that leave you, for lack of a better word, speechless. Sometimes it's in a good way, though sometimes it isn't. I think that after the past few months, I'll share some of mine with you.   We were at the park today, and I was swinging Madi. She was talking about random things, babbling on in her toddler talk like a normal girl. Then all of a sudden she stares behind me in astonishment and yells, "HE'S NAKED! HE'S NAKED, MOMMY!" So I quickly look behind me and there's a man jogging on the sidewalk about 10 feet from us. He stares at her and sort of smirks at me and quickly jogs away. He had long running shorts on but no shirt. For the next hour at the park she would randomly say "he was NAKED" and Mom's would stare in half amusement half curiosity.   Then later, we were having lunch at Chickfila when she decided she wanted to take her pants off. She was determined to take them off. Luckily my Mom had her and we both convinced her not to strip down in public. But that wasn't without shrieking as loud as she could until everyone was staring. You know, the amusement curiosity stare I mentioned.   For some reason, she also has a new word. "Turd." She uses it correctly too, I might add. We were in the car and all of a sudden she yells, "Mommy, you're a turd!" and then giggled to herself. She obviously heard someone say it and it was amusing to her to repeat it. She also likes to tell people they "smell like poooop."   The other day she called me into her room with an uneasy voice. So I quickly went into her room to see what was the matter. She held out her hand and rubbed something gooey on my hand while saying, "EW!" I, being the mother of a toddler, just took it from her and put it on a napkin and placed it in the trash. Then I got curious, I said, "Baby, what was that?" and she nonshalantly replied, "A booger. From my nose."   But then, they do things that leave you speechless in the best way possible. Like the other night when she woke up in the middle of the night. I stumbled sleepily into her room and kneeled by her bed. She looked up at me and said, "Mommy, hold my hand." So I gave her my hand and she placed it in the middle of hers and fell asleep. It reminded me of when she was tiny. I used to just sit and watch her sleep, thinking it was the most angelic thing I'd ever seen.   It also made me think... Wait... What? That little helpless baby has turned into this hilarious toddler who constantly keeps me on my toes. But, that's part of the joy of motherhood... right?  

Potty Training is Complete

This week has been hectic. A lot of things have changed around here and Madi and I are still adjusting. But I'll save all of that for a later post. I just wanted to let everyone know how wonderful Madi is doing with her potty training.   We encountered some problems in the beginning with getting her to go #2 on the potty but that only lasted for a few days. She just had to move at her own pace. Now she rarely has accidents. Usually they are at school when she is preoccupied with something their class is doing. But all kids do that.   I also didn't use a reward system. Madi LOVES candy, but I refused to use that as a prize to get her to use the potty. Instead, I found that she really responded to me getting excited. So every time she would go #2, I would do a psycho-happy-freak-out-dance for her and she couldn't stop giggling. She looked forward to that, and it worked for her.   She still wears a pull-up at night, I've decided to hold that off for Christmas break. However, she doesn't wear anything during naptime and has honestly never had an accident while napping.   It's been one month since the potty training began and I'm happy to say, we lived through it! Madi is such a smart and adaptive little girl. All the milestones that I've dreaded getting to, like taking the bottle away, getting rid of the pacifier, and now, potty training, she has handled them ALL like a champ! Thank goodness.  

(doesn't she look so big?!)

  Right now, we're piled up on the couch, sick as dogs. We both caught a stomach bug from her daycare.  

    But hopefully we'll be back to normal soon :)