Tara used the potty a couple times this weekend. We haven’t much been pushing her toward it, and for the last couple months she has acted like the potty was just a seat you sit on while pushing wads of toilet paper between your legs. I had the bright idea of taking the toilet paper off the holder and telling her that she could have it back when she put her pee in the potty. Sure enough, it worked the second time I tried it, and she has used the potty three times since. She still goes in her diaper too, though, but it’s clear that progress is being made.

The dark side of Tara’s maturing is that she’s picking up some undesirable vocabulary. Anna has been reading the Junie B. Jones series of books, and recently got some on tape¹ from the library. They’re funny books, but the language isn’t really appropriate for a two year old. Tara has been repeating phrases like “shut up” and “stupid dumb lady” with her usual cheery monotone. It’s hard not to laugh.

¹ Tara extracted the tapes into a big, spaghetti-like pile on two occasions. I hope they still work.

Tara is a very easygoing child, but for some reason she has chosen to be fussy about her food and her fingers. When eating, she can be very particular about certain types of food. Some things she won’t even try based on the look of them. Also, she doesn’t like to have bits of food on her fingers, which is unexpected for a child who will fingerpaint with yogurt if given the chance.

This morning, I reheated some crepes and spread them with lingonberry jam for the girls. Tara’s crepes I rolled neatly and cut into bite size pieces, forming little rolls. Tara sat and began eating. Pointing to the sliding door where she had previously seen a spider, she asked, “Where spider go?” “It’s gone,” I said. “It went to work. Spider went to work.” She then continued about eating her crepes and cereal.

At one point she had speared a bite of rolled crepe and was lifting it to her mouth when the end of the roll came off the tines of her fork and flapped loose. She scowled and gingerly tore off the flap, then held it out to me and said, “It’s icky.” I humored her and took the bit of crepe and placed it on her tray. Happily, she continued eating. When the same thing happened again, she again tried to tear off the bit of crepe but instead pulled the roll off her fork. Since she was still holding the end, the roll unfurled, spilling lingonberries into her cereal. Her eyes opened wide with horror and she yelled out “OH NOOOOOO!” We spent the next couple minutes removing tainted bits of cereal from her bowl before she would continue eating.

I keep meaning to make a note of the sort of talking that Tara is doing, because she’s doing it all the time now. This morning when I got her out of her crib, it went a little something like this:

Tara: Daddy, go downstairs.

Me: You want to go downstairs?

Tara: Yes. Go downstairs see Mommy.

Me: Mommy’s still sleeping.

Tara: (after thinking a moment) Go downstairs see Anna?

Me: Ok, we’ll go downstairs after we change your diaper.

Tara: Otay. (pointing to package of diapers) Lots of diapers there! Elmo diaper.

Me: Yes, that’s Elmo.

Tara: (rubbing her eye) Can’t reach it.

Me: Is there something in your eye?

Tara: Yes. This eye is spicy.

Me: It’s spicy? (wiping her eye with her shirt) Is that better?

Tara: Yes, all better. Thanks Dad!

I started back to work one Tuesday after a week off and I swear when I got there, I had no idea what I was supposed to be doing. A week off of work will do that to you. At least I remembered some of my passwords. After about two hours, I remembered what it is that I do: answer the phone, hold people’s hands, and clean up other people’s messes. Oh wait, no, apparently I’m supposed to be creating stuff.

I’ve been back at the low carb for a week and I remember now everything that’s good about low carb: a) it works, and b) I’m not hungry and c) I’m not tired. Everything else about it blows, but at least I’ll be done in a few months. So after the first week I’m down almost ten pounds, which will alarm people from the “anything worth doing is worthy doing slowly” school of thought.

This weekend (wild card weekend, for heaven’s sake!) I have felt like I’m neck-deep in children, for better or mostly worse. Some friends’ kids spent the night on Saturday, but their little one was a little out of sorts, and when one parent has “man coverage” on one of four children, the other parent has to drop back and play zone. Against three kids. End zone dance anyone?

Although Tara was a little touchy today, probably from getting up too early, she’s the most entertaining a person who still soils herself can possibly be (sorry, college buddies!). This morning playing puzzles with her, I could clearly see the influence of her older sister when she successfully inserted a piece into her shape puzzle, then held up her arms and said “Yay trapezoid! I win!” I fully expect to hear her say “In your face, quatrefoil!” before she turns two next month. She doesn’t have the clear speech that Anna had at this age, but she sure knows a lot of words. Also, at some point in the last week Tara successfully peed on the potty. Note that she did not pee entirely in the potty, but she was there, the potty was there, and the pee was definitely there and there and over there too.

Anna has long been inclined to do crafty sort of activities, but she is really starting to express herself in drawings and writing. Since she’s learning to read and write, she likes to make little books with her own text and illustrations. She sometimes asks for help spelling words and sometimes just wings it, and it’s still mostly intelligible. We’re going to have quite a library of her work eventually. Last week she made a bunch of flyers saying “I like egg,” which she rolled up and distributed to the neighbors with the help of her grandmother. They all have children so I assume they’ll understand when a five year old shows up at the door along with a lady they’ve never seen and hands them “I like egg” on a piece of construction paper. Who wouldn’t?

It was a really good thing to be able to fall back into the regular work week today. The nanny got her car problems straightened out, and I was able to get into the office and start getting caught up on what I was already behind on before I had to unexpectedly take a day off from work. Tara is feeling better today; her fever is gone and she’s not coughing as much as the last couple days, but still has a hoarse voice. She has been so cute lately that I captured some lousy video on my phone just to get something to post, so please enjoy.

Update: somehow I had borked the audio on the movie, but it’s fixed up now.

Anna, who has never been able to play a game of Chutes and Ladders without becoming distracted and making up new rules, has taken an interest in chess. She has learned how to set up the board and knows how most of the pieces move, but she’s a little overly focused on capturing pieces rather than developing a workable position. She’s young; I’m sure we fit a few classical openings in before bedtime stories.

Tara is taking advantage of Anna’s focus on chess to take in a few games of Pretty Pretty Princess.

This notion of having a child in school is turning out to be quite the new stage of life. And I’m not talking about Anna–she’s already adjusted to it–I’m talking about Jen and I. First of all, it’s a new thing that our child has to be somewhere every weekday at a given time. We’re just not used to that sort of rigidity. Further, there are all sorts of school-related activities–PTA, volunteering, fundraising… all the stuff that my schools used to burden my parents with. I suppose I should be thankful that the fundraising consists of writing a check and sending it to school. I’ve always thought the selling of candy bars/magazine subscriptions/gift-wrapping paper was a big waste of time and money, not to mention being a burden on one’s friends, neighbors, and co-workers. I remember going door-to-door selling greeting cards; cute as a button though I was, I don’t remember raising enough money to offset to the amount of humiliation and rejection I endured. I suspect it was all a ploy to build character.

Anna continues to love kindergarten and her teacher, and she’s been excited about becoming friends with the other kids in school. Most of all, she’s very anxious to learn how to read.

Tara continues to love reading as well. At bedtime, we read Goodnight Moon as well as Mercer Mayer’s “All By Myself”. Both books have mice on just about every page, which Tara points out at the turn of each page by pointing and saying “Mou.” The pages of Goodnight Moon which do not have the young mouse pictured she quickly assists to turn the page. No time to waste, there are mice to point out.

Today Tara is 18 months old. At her checkup today, she clocked in at around 75% percentile for both height and weight, though we suspect the height measurement was a little generous. Last night we tried to think up how many words she knows; we counted at least forty, but I’m sure there are more. She loves music, and loves to sing. Yesterday, I was trying to get her to sing “Yo-ho, yo-ho, a pirate’s life for me!” She said “yo-yo yo-yo” over and over, and even this afternoon she was still doing it in the car. I’m now trying to get her to say, “What up, dog?” as I figure it will go well with the “yo-yo.” She is a happy and healthy little girl, and although we can see the beginnings of the terrible twos around the corner, she is still an absolute delight.

In other news, the City of San Diego doesn’t seem favorable to the idea of putting fluoride in the water, but apparently poo is A-OK! On Saturday night, the mayor issued a “boil water order” because there was e. coli in the water due to a water main break on Tuesday. Apparently, we had five good days worth of drinking tainted water before they figured out what was going on. All the restaurants in our part of town were ordered shut down. Jennifer and I were out on a date when all this happened, eating dinner in a part of town that was not affected, so we didn’t find out about it until we picked up our kids on Sunday morning. That’s what we get for not watching TV nor reading the paper. Finally on Sunday evening the boil order was rescinded. I’ll be turning on all the taps now.

The other afternoon when I picked up Tara from M.’s house, she said as I was putting her into the car: “I missed you.” Actually it was more like “Ah mist choo,” but I know what she meant. Even so, I did a double-take. “Did you just say, ‘I missed you?’” I asked. “Yeah.” says Tara. I believe this qualifies as her first official sentence, at a week short of eighteen months.

Jennifer and I were not planning on Tara staying home sick this week, but she made new plans for us anyway. She started out on Monday with a fever, followed by a cough, followed by a running nose, and a couple rounds of vomit. I suspect there’s going to be some diarrhea involved in the finale, but don’t let me spoil the ending for you. It could be anything.

Jennifer stayed home with her on Monday, her usual day off, and we split Tuesday through Thursday, trading off at lunch each day. Today was also supposed to be a split as well, but Jennifer decided to cheat by not eating lunch and thus spending the whole day at work while I busied myself with cleaning blort off the crib sheet, the baby, and myself. Combine that with some night waking and it’s business as usual here at We’re So Tired. I guess I don’t have to worry about changing the name of the blog any time soon.

Tomorrow, we’ll be meeting another nanny; I think this is the seventh prospective nanny, but who’s counting. She looks great on paper, sounds great on the phone, and hopefully will be equally great in person. It would only figure that we find a good nanny now that Anna is all accustomed to going to ESS. This morning there was some bargaining, but no actual tears shed at drop-off time. She was cheery as could be when I picked her up, and she seems to be very attached to the “teacher” there with the piercings and the big tattoo on her chest. One of them anyways.

I’m glad we don’t have a whole lot going on this weekend; after this week of being housebound, and with my trip to D.C. coming up, the last thing we need is to be scurrying around from place to place with a sick baby.