04.14.2003 10:00 a.m.
The 2-1/2 year old con artist

We got to play with my step-daughter this weekend. She is such a cutie! She's growing like a weed, too. Growing out of the millions of brand-new clothes that her Grandma has bought her in the past year. (Grandma's clothes obession has been transferred from herself to her granddaughter.) She's also becoming much more understandable when she speaks. She's learning new words like crazy. Putting together words that she knows to form sentences. It's amazing. I am so lucky to be a part of this little girl's life.

On Saturday we went to pick her up at my mother-in-law's house. She hadn't had a morning nap yet, so Sue (mother-in-law) put her down. She's now going pacifier-less all the time now. Even at naptimes. Getting her to calm down and go to sleep was a chore. Luckily, my husband was the preferred "ni-night" person, so I took a nap in a chair. It was nice.

(Side note:I really wish I would have been better about taking naps when I was younger. Rarely a weekend goes by now without me taking at least one nap a day. Usually it's two naps a day. If only I had known how lovely napping actually is then...)

Once she woke up from her nap, we got her ready to go back to our house. Once we arrived, she "helped Daddy" out in the backyard while he tried to saw the post off of this GIANT piece of concrete that the people who owned the house before us used as a laundry line pole. These people put together two poles, sank it in about a 2 cubic foot block of concrete, and then poured concrete down it. That pole wasn't going ANYWHERE! Alex had a good time putting shovelfuls of dirt back into the hole they had come from, while I dug in the dirt pile looking for worms. I think having children around makes people feel more free to act like children. *grin*

My parents came over and bought us all ice cream when the ice cream truck went by. Then they took her to the park to feed the ducks and play on the playground while my husband and I made a couple trips to Lowe's to buy retaining wall bricks for our side garden. We got that done in about two hours, and went to my parents' house for dinner and to see how Alex was doing. She had a great time with her grandparents.

We were eating dinner, and at one point Alex said, "Poop!" and took off for the bathroom. She actually pooped on her potty chair! *sigh* I never thought I would be so excited about bodily functions... She ended up pooping once and peeing in her potty chair a couple of times over the weekend. She's getting better! Whoo hoo! The last weekend we had her, she'd only tell us AFTER she had done something in her Pull-Up. Progress is a wonderful thing...

She is becoming quite the little con artist, though. I'm glad she's very intelligent, but it's a little scary sometimes. In the car, she doesn't like wearing her seatbelt, so she'll say, "Tight. Tight." We both know damn well it's not tight, but she keeps trying to insist that it is. We had to have a little discussion about why she REALLY needs to keep that on in the car.

On Saturday night, she wasn't in the mood to go to bed when it was time. She kept insisting she had to "pee" or "poop" so we'd let her sit on the potty instead of going to sleep. After about the third time, I asked my husband, "You know she's just playing you, right?" He said, "Yeah." We finally insisted that she didn't actually have to go, and that we were on to her. After about a minute of crying, she fell asleep.

All in all, it was a great weekend spent with loved ones, and watching a child grow right before my eyes...I can't wait to get to hang out with her again in two weeks...

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Ugh. More files. Work calls.

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