Today's Tidbit

Molly: "When you go poop on the floor, you say, 'Mama! I have to go potty!'"

Pity Potty

I don't want to offend the potty gods by jinxing this, but on Day 6 of the Great Underwear Experiment, things are going better than expected. A week ago, we visited Molly's new preschool and talked to her old preschool teacher, who said "Just put her in underwear." We'd tried underwear a couple of weeks ago, but after one accident, Molly asked for a diaper again and I thought, OK, too soon. But Molly's teacher said, no, if Molly's asking for diapers she's ready for underwear. She also said that two of the little girls in her class were already in underwear. So, you know, she shamed us into it.

But damn if it didn't work. At least so far. The first day was kind of... challenging. We went through 7 pairs of underwear by late afternoon. It was messy. But it got better and better. Yesterday we were down to 3 pairs. Today, she stayed in one pair ALL DAY LONG. It was magical. She stayed dry through her nap. She was a potty rock star.

So, we'll see if this keeps up, but I have to give big ups to Molly's teacher. Maybe it's too easy, I don't know. If it does work, we'll have done it without the help of the "It's Potty Time" video, a time-honored classic that caused Emma (and Matt and me) nightmares for years. A bonus, for sure.

Suuummmmeeerrr

Summer is really a glorious time. Although 4 + weeks in, I'm still getting used to not getting up to go to work in the morning. Actually, that's not really it. After the first three days or so, my brain had totally adjusted to not getting up and going in to work in the morning. I went in the Tuesday after school let out to clean out my room, and that was that. I'm pretty sure that I left something big and important under a table, but can't think what it might be, so whatevs. Next year, I'm moving to a new school, a new grade, a new part-time schedule. It's all really good: the I'll be at my "home" school so I'll be close to home, and I'm hoping that there will continue to be a spot for me there so that I'll still be there in three years when Molly starts school. But even though it's exciting, it's also really weird. Especially the not-teaching-kindergarten part. I think I'm in denial right now. After I left, I think my brain shut off, because it's been very hard to remember that I ever WAS a teacher, much less what I might've actually taught anyone.

Weird, how quickly we readjust. Four weeks really isn't that long, yet it seems like forever since school ended. And at the same time, summer feels like it's flying. It's mid-July. So I keep reminding myself, "it's only July..." The upside of having a state government that's controlled by the bozos in the Wisconsin Dells, and who set the start of the school year for Sept. 1, meaning that the school year seems to last FOREVER (and those last few weeks really did seem to go on and on and on) is that we have ALL of August off, which is a psychological bonus right about now.

But the summer was accounted for before it started, and I have tons to do: About a million cleaning projects around the house, more every day as our cats have decided that every place EXCEPT the litter box is an appropriate place to pee. Work for KU. And now that all three kids are home all day, we have to organize excursions or we get a repeat of today: by noon, we were all home, done with errands and Sam's morning enrichment class, watching Demi Lovato on "Sonny with a Chance." I think my brain turned to pudding.

Oh, and I think I'm launching a new website for highschoolers. I'll keep you posted.

So in the meantime, we marked the second anniversary of bringing Molly home, which really deserves its own post, so I won't belabor it here. Emma's already been to DC with her eighth grade class. Sam's already finished his little league season. And Sammy and Em have already rehearsed and performed in their summer drama school production of "Annie!" which was honest-to-god-absolutely-phenomenal-and-I'm-not-just-saying-that-because-I'm-their-mother. I'm thrilled that the kids take after me with their affinity for drama and total lack of interest in team sports.

But that deserves its own post, too. So more later.

Molly and I have been hanging for the last month or so, and that's been really cool. She's exhausting, my little girl, but so smart and sweet, and especially when her brother and sister weren't around and she had me to herself, very fun and very dear. Molly has had no trouble adjusting to summer. Here's Molly, getting ready to head out to drop off Sam and Em and head to Whole Foods on a hazy, humid summer day in Madison:

Like Navin Johnson in The Jerk: "All I need is this lamp, and my thermos, and this pumpkin, and my dog..."

Ready for a summer outing in Wisconsin.

Molly loves the splash park and she rides her trike like Danica Patrick. We've also been watching "Cinderella" on an endless loop, along with many many episodes of "The Muppet Show" on DVD. And I say it again: the 70s were a very strange time.

Catching Up... Maybe Not

Oh, my poor blog. I have neglected you so. Not for any good reason. Honest. I don't have any good excuses. Just crazy busy, crazy tired. Teaching, and toddlers, and sinus infections. But nothing too exciting or meaningful. I've missed my little blog and the catharsis it brings. Facebook status updates are a quick fix, but they're just not the same.

I feel like there's so much to say that to try to cover it all would just be stupid, so I'm not going to try. No recaps here. Can't post any pictures, because my computer is dead. Good news: I get a new computer. Bad new: my dead computer is sitting at our lovely IT friend's house until I figure out whether it is worth putting on life support for Sam and Emma. How much life is left in my 5 year old machine? It's been rebuilt so many times (new hard drive, new motherboard, new keyboard, new battery, new superdrive...) but now it needs a new display. Worth another 120 bucks to pass on to Sam and Em? They're chomping at the bit to get their hands on a laptop, so maybe. Me, I'm psyched because my new MacBook will come with a new iPod touch, giving me the capability to Facebook and blog on the go. So I'll never be off-line. :-0

Meanwhile, Molly is setting some kind of record for 2-year-old time outs. At preschool, she's fond of saying "I love poopies!" So they put her in time-out in the bathroom. It's not working. She comes home and says "I say 'I love poopies' at school!" And when we ask, "are you going to say it again?" she says, "yeahhhhh...."

Went to a retirement party last night for my principal and another teacher in my school. It was lovely, a nice tribute, both are very deserving. But as I'm leaving, my principal says to me, "You're going to be a marvelous teacher. But you need to put in more time. At least five years." Hm. Quite a ringing endorsement, wouldn't you say? I'll tell you: It made me feel super-good about my career choices and the work I've done. So thanks for that.

So whatever. Nine more days of school. And then I can spend the summer pondering all the ways in which I'm not "marvelous" and trying to figure out how to fix them so I can be marvelous by next year.

More Bear, Please!

Parent teacher conferences are barely over. Matt's out of town til Sunday. Sam's running all over town with choir and rehearsals for "A Christmas Carol." He gets to play the spooky kid "Want" who sits on the grave at the end of the play :-) I have a mountain of planning to do and lamination to cut out. And a million things to return to Old Navy. So weekends are not so much, well, anything but running around.

But that's not why I'm blogging today. Today I'm blogging about Bear. Not just any bear. Bear. See, Molly has had the great good fortune or misfortune (depending on your perspective) of landing in a TV obsessed family. We watch a lot of television. And so does Molly. Our DVR is filled with old "Daily Shows" and "Mad Men" and "Sesame Streets." Something for everyone. But Molly is a discriminating television viewer. She won't watch just anything. But the things she loves, she LOOOOOOOVES. And she wants to watch them again and again.

It started with "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report." She calls both shows "Obama," and she's generally perfectly happy to sit through them. Because she's got a finely-honed satirical comic sense.

But lately, things have gotten more stratified. We have hours of "Sesame Street" on the DVR. But recently, we discovered an episode where Oscar the Grouch is the anchor of GNN--"Grouch News Network"--and he goes around Sesame Street looking for the yuckiest, grouchiest news. Specifically, he discovers that Horatio the Elephant is stuck in Maria's bathtub. Molly has watched this episode so many times--hell, we've all watched it so many times that we can reenact it--but Molly's watched it so many times, that as soon as we pull up to the house after we pick her up from daycare her first words are "More Oscar Pleeeease." We have tried other episodes of "Sesame Street," but nothing is acceptable. Even the episode where Gilbert Gottfried is "Denny the Distractor" and his job is to distract Telly, who was trying to recite the alphabet as a contestant on Guy Smiley's game show.

But it doesn't stop there. A couple of weeks ago, we watched an old episode of "Teletubbies," featuring a little Punch-and-Judy-type Italian handpuppet who runs around a house and sings, badly from the windows in an operatic voice. Molly calls him "Bear." She loves "Bear." She thinks "Bear" is the best, most entertaining singer she's ever heard. She would watch and re-watch "Bear" for hours, if we let her. "Bear" even caused a major blowout between Emma and Sam, because Sam got really sick of "Bear" and he accused Emma of goading him by continuing to play "Bear" for Molly. When Molly watches "Bear," and he's done singing she cheers "Yay, 'Bear'!" Or she says "Oh, 'Bear,'" with a kind of affectionate mock-exasperation, like "what have you gotten yourself into now, 'Bear'?"

But really, I can't even do "Bear" justice in a description. You really, truly, have to see him for yourself:




You can see the appeal.

It's mutated from there, of course. Now Molly's really gotten into all the opening theme songs for the shows the rest of us watch. She likes the part of "The Simpsons" where Homer says "'Doh!" so she says "More 'Dope'" and we watch that over and over. Sam and Emma like to yell "Gone!" at eliminated contestants in the opening credits of reality shows so now we watch "More 'Gone'" at the start of "America's Next Top Model." She discovered the theme music for "Mad Men" where the guy's falling, and so now we have to watch "More Song." The other night we had to watch "More Opening" to see the title credits of "The Office" 3 or 4 times. It's a wonder we get to watch anything at all. :-) Perhaps that's her diabolical plan.

Nature's Perfect Food

As I write this, Molly is sucking down MY cup of coffee. Full disclosure: my coffee with tons of sugar in it, so it's really more like a lukewarm liquid coffee lollipop. But still. She grabbed it away from me and screamed and cried when I tried to take it back. Emma took a sip and she slapped her hand til she had the mug again. She's an addict. This morning she woke up saying "Bunna. Bunna. Bunna." Which is the Amharic word for "coffee."

Matt has these horrible stories about when he was like 3 and supposedly he went around one of his parents' dinner parties when everyone was out of the room and finished off all their drinks--toddler Long Island Iced Tea. No one's feeding Molly alcohol (and even the veracity of Matt's story is hotly contested within the family). But I can't help but wonder what kind of effect all this fully-caffienated bunna is having on my daughter's developing brain. As she is slurping, she occasionally stops to babble urgently. I've never heard her speak so quickly. And this is what she's saying:

"A beee bee da bunna bin."
"A bunna be bunna be coffee. Chocla milk."
"A kiki juice. Bunna."
"Emma aggiggiggiggiggi bunna bunna bunna bunna ababa."

Should I be concerned?

I'm thinking diaper time will also be interesting.

Auf Wiedersehen

On a recent episode of "Sesame Street," Elmo is talking with Heidi Klum about the word "cooperation." Molly, who only half-watches SS most of the time (Elmo and Cookie Monster are interesting, Maria and Alan, not so much) got very animated pointing at the screen and yelling "Mama! Mama!!" This has happened again on several repeated viewings. (Have I mentioned that the TV is a wonderful babysitter?) so I know it's not a fluke. Yay for me! I am Heidi Klum! Now Molly has identified lots of people as Mama and Daddy (incl. Daddy=cowboy singer/sometime actor Vaugh Monroe in the 1952 movie "Toughest Man in Arizona." Still, this is encouraging.

Daddy?

The resemblance is striking.

Sleeping and Other Pipedreams

I've been putting off posting because the weekend before last we went with our lovely friends Will and Jennifer and their gorgeous children, Eli and Max, to an Ethiopian "culture camp" (which sounds somehow like an indoctrination facility and which I can't say or write without quotation marks) in Lake Geneva. I have many adorable pictures, mostly of Eli and Molly pulling around a rope. But I need to make room on my hard drive for the new pics, and since that day doesn't seem to be coming yet, I thought I'd post quickly (ha!) here.

Not much new, really. Sam has been free and easy since his drama camp ended a month ago. He's honing his mathematical and shopping skills simultaneously by obsessively watching "The Price Is Right" and toting up all the prizes he would have won if he'd been a contestant. Although Drew Carey is such a disappointment; his heart's just not in it when he weakly reminds us to "spay and neuter your pets--it's really important." Emma is babysitting like a babysitting fiend. Part of it is for her "mitzvah project" which is her "good works" project that she has to do as part of her Bat Mitzvah preparation. For that, she's volunteering over at Molly's old preschool and she comes home with many stories of the political machinations of three-year-old girls.

Speaking of which, I just checked my class list for the new school year and as of right now, I have 7 boys and ONE GIRL. That will change, for sure (for one thing, they wouldn't let me have a class with only 8 kids, they'll let me go and absorb my class first) and in our school, mobility is so high that the class list I see today may not bear any relationship with the one I find on the first day of school. But still. Last year, I had 9 girls and 5 (then 4) boys and it was a Mean Girls Fiesta. I felt like Tina Fey in a class full of Rachel McAdamses. I won't have that problem with 7 boys, they're just not mean and petty like that. But they do like to run around a lot and hit each other with blocks. Good times.

Molly's pottying proceeds apace, and I couldn't be prouder. She peed yesterday, pooped this morning. If I were home with her on a permanent basis I'd be tempted to just put her in underwear and upholster the house in plastic wrap. But since that's not the case, and since she's not yet 2, I figure we'll let it ride. I'm so proud of her; she's WAY ahead of Em and Sam at the same age.

Molly's latest trick is to take off running any chance she gets. But when she does, she announces it, yelling: "Running! Running!" She's pretty fast and I figure she's got a genetic predisposition to be an Olympic marathon superstar. I like to think of her at the 2028 Olympic Games, chugging down the road in wherever the hell the games will be, far ahead of her competitors, yelling, "Running! Running!"

In less impressive news, my lovely youngest still will not go to sleep in her own bed. It's becoming a real problem. She's 20 months old. Because of her particular history, I have been even more reluctant than I was with Em and Sam to plunk her in her crib and close the door and let her cry it out, "SuperNanny-style." We tried to "Ferberize" Em and Sam this way, with less than stellar results. (I slept on Emma's floor for years.) In Molly's case, since she had so much early loss, it quite literally breaks my heart to let her cry in her room, as I did for a little while tonight until I couldn't take it anymore. Matt's solution to get her to sleep is to take her out in the car or the stroller until she falls asleep. I think it's sort of the ANWAR-drilling approach to baby sleeping: a quick fix but one that doesn't lead to long-term independence. Of course, I have no better options. Tonight she was quite simply exhausted, screeching, rubbing her eyes, whipping herself around, it was painful for me to watch how tired she was. She wouldn't settle on the couch, she wouldn't fall asleep in the mei tai, so I finally took her to her crib and put her in. And left the room. And she wailed pitifully for 2 minutes til I came back in. Thanks, Dr. Ferber. Then I tried one more time, with equally horrifying results. I couldn't take the crying and the "mamas" and "daddys" and finally the "all dones" coming from her room. So we came back downstairs and, finally, she settled on her couch with all her accessories: blanket and blue doggy toy, and finally finally fell asleep. But it was painful. And she still can't sleep alone. Apparently she falls asleep fine at preschool. I also know at preschool (because I've seen it) that even if she's crying pitifully when I leave, she stops within seconds of my being out of sight and is perfectly happy and content. So why is sleeping time so different?

At this rate, I'm not sure what we'll do. She goes into her crib generally when she's already asleep, wakes up halfway through the night, and comes into our bed, where usually she can sleep just fine. I worry that she not feel abandoned. This is actually my deepest fear for Molly, that she not feel abandoned. And so I'm inclined to let her keep up this ultimately unhealthy sleep pattern until she's old enough to sneak out after curfew.

Maternal guilt and other certainties

Big doings at the Cibula household. Well, not really, but we did set up the kiddie pool and the slip 'n' slide in the backyard. Everyone had a grand old time, although Sammy's still perfecting the art of slip and sliding--he goes down the track on his knees.

Yesterday we bought Sammy a brand-new bike for his birthday. This was especially exciting because Sam is only now learning to ride a bike. He'd hate me for printing this for all the world to see. But he takes after his athletically challenged mother's side of the family. We never really saw the point in all of this "exercise" and "locomotion." Until recently, Sammy has had no interest in learning to ride. But out of the blue last week, he announced that his goal this summer is to learn to ride a bike. So it's a really big deal for him. We got him a beautiful new blue Trek bike as an early birthday present (after mean mommy rejected the yellow and gold "Low-rider" that Sam and his dad found :-( ) and I'm happy to say that Sam's doing just great, thank you.

Last weekend, Sam lit up the stage as the Third Knight in the Children's Theater of Madison production of "Once Upon a Mattress." He was bitterly disappointed at not getting a bigger role, til he learned he had a line. Such a diva. He also got to write and perform an original monologue in one of the shows where he explained his character's back story (he informed us all that he was "Sir Juan the Disgruntled O'Mayhem" and the rightful heir to the Irish throne). He had a totally fantastic time, and much to his chagrin he apparently became the mascot/pet of all the middle and high school girls in the show. They liked to "hoist" him and carry him around. Unfortunately, if he wants to continue in theater he'll have to get used to that. Emma's doing a class at the Four Seasons Theatre and she's performing a musical dance/singing dealy this week. As part of her class, they brought in professionals from different aspects of theater so she not only learned how to slam someone's head into a chair, but she also got made up like a geisha. Take a look.

Emma as a geisha. She had a wig on, too, but they took that off before the picture was taken.

In other major news, Molly started her new daycare this week, which has led to much guilt, angst, and consternation for, well, me. As I've said before, I believe that the entire daycare/preschool process is fraught with peril. The preschool Molly attended last year was fabulous, but I knew that because both Em and Sam went there, and the teachers haven't changed since they were there, which is rare enough in itself. But last year, when I was searching for a spot for Molly, I visited some places that were pretty damn depressing. Last year, Molly did a daycare hybrid. She spent 3 days a week at the old preschool and 2 days first with her dad and then with our friends and their little boy. Which worked out really well. But our friends just brought home their second little boy from Ethiopia and needless to say, they're a little busy. And we wanted to send Molly to the same place every day. The old preschool didn't have a 5 day spot, so we had to find something new. Originally, my plan was that we wouldn't have to start a new daycare til the fall. After all, what's the point of being a teacher if you can't spend the summer with your own kids? But best laid plans, blah blah. The daycare that we chose had a guaranteed opening in July or not at all, so last week I loaded her up and sent her off.

There are some really nice things about this new place. They feed the kids lunch, which means we don't have to pack it, and the food is actually really nice; homemade scones and pasta and ratatouille and lots of fresh fruit. An astonishing amount of meat, but they have a vegetarian option every day, so Molly's taken care of. They sell fair trade coffee to the parents, which is a bonus. They have music and Spanish classes for the kids every week. It's cheaper than the old school and drop-off time is earlier, which is a bonus since Matt and I both work on the other side of town and I have to be at work at 7:30 :-(. That's a.m. I think if we get ourselves organized Matt and I can actually carpool to work this year (which we couldn't last year because the preschool opened too late) and save a buttload on gas.

And to be very honest about it, although I love hanging out with Molly, I think she was getting pretty bored with her mama. Don't get me wrong, I think she likes me fine, but 6 hours a day going up and down the stairs gets old. The park is fun, but my tolerance for swinging isn't nearly as large as hers. And my tried-and-true strategy of getting her to nap by setting her on my tummy and putting on a Lifetime movie to bore her to sleep may be effective, but probably isn't in Dr. Brazleton's book of childrearing tips. When we visited the school, I kept my eagle-eyes peeled for signs that they beat the children or subcontracted them out to soccer ball factories, but so far no evidence of any wrongdoing. And Molly, who spent so many of her early months surrounded by peers (not to mention the last year while I was working) loves all the stimulation, different things to do, and the little toddler-size sink where she can wash her hands 150 times a day. Drop-off time is still hairy. After about Day 2, she figured out that I might leave, so although she trots happily into her classroom, once we get there she tries to make sure that I stay there with her. Good news is that, since it's summer, I have more time to spend detangling myself from her, and hopefully by Sept. it won't be an issue anymore. I have to sneak out while she's washing her hands for the sixth time in order to avoid major problems, which makes me sad, but the day I tried to make a big production about saying goodbye it was way worse. When we pick her up at the end of the day, she's showing no signs of PTS or trauma. Usually she's just riding a Big Wheel. So I think all will be well. Her Lifetime network viewing has dropped substantially. On the other hand, Emma's seen the light and the joys of the Lifetime "Moment of Truth" movie. When one door closes, another opens.