A Few of My Favorite Things

My sweet little family. This is the crew on Saturday morning watching General Conference. But...

When you take in the entire picture, you see who dominates my, (mind you, it is MY) home. A 2-year-old. Would you believe that she was able to do this in about an hour's time? When the house gets like this, I can't hang out, but Dad sure doesn't seem to mind...

I love when my kids want to cuddle with Mommy. This scene happens at least once a day. I'll be rocking Judd in the La-Z-Boy (best investment ever, BTW) and Ellie will climb on and wedge herself in the nonexistent space betweem the armrest and me. But do you see what's wrong with this picture?

Yes, the 2-year-old with the pacifier. This is one of our best kept secrets. Ellie is a very bright girl. She articulates incredible complete sentences. She knows the alphabet, can almost count to twenty, and will spend hours looking at books. But this child refuses to give up: (1) the pacifier; (2) the bottle (another closely held family secret); and (3) DIAPERS!!


Here's part 2 of the potty training saga. Ellie refuses to use the potty altogether. She absolutely will not use the potty. Except for this one time a couple of weeks ago when she took the initiative and went all by herself. The potty training book mentioned in a previous entry instructs parents to also teach the child to dump the peepee from the child potty into the adult potty and then flush the toilet. I had really strong misgivings about this aspect, but I decided to approach this whole training thing the same way I approach a recipe I have never used--go strictly by the book. MY INSTINCTS WERE CORRECT. That one time Ellie used the potty? Well, you guessed it, she not only missed the big potty, the peepee also found its way, well, EVERYWHERE.

Another reason why that book sucks.


Enough griping. Just when I think I'm at the end of my rope, holding the last straw, or teetering at the edge of the cliff, I see something like this.
My kids, cute as can be, doing something strange, but doing it together.

The rope grows another foot, I get five more straws, and the cliff is once again a safe distance away. Such is motherhood.