What’s she got against pumpkins?

“Pumpkin’s not a veggie!”

That’s what my daughter keeps saying before she throws the plastic pumpkin across the room. See, we were at Target, and she found some cheap, plastic veggies in the dollar bin, and wanted them. We bought them. It is a strange collection of veggies: a green pepper, a jalepeno pepper, and red chile pepper, lettuce, eggplant, celery, broccoli, what I believe is bok choy, and a pumpkin.

I’m not sure why she insists the pumpkin is not a veggie. Heck, now I am not even sure it is really a vegetable…

Thanksgiving Recap

I survived the Thanksgiving holiday… I will have a recap of my days in the non-Internet zone later.

Right now, I wanted to talk about my observations on the toys at the two grandparents houses. My daughter has two sets of grandparents whom we get to visit with on holidays (conveniently, they live at the same houses as my mother and Ms. Kaz’s parents!). My mother has three grandchildren, the oldest being 17. Ms. Kaz’s parents have one grandchild – my daughter.

As one might expect, this creates a vast difference in both quantity and quality of toys available at each house.

Thanksgiving Holiday – Day 3

Today (so far) has been a great day… especially in the behavior department. My daughter has been almost an angel. Well, at least for her. Of course, the first part of the day (the pre-nap part) was spent mostly at the Strong Museum here in Rochester, which bills itself as a museum of play, and is a fantastic museum for kids.

I want to do a separate post just on the museum itself, because it is so wonderful, and my daughter has such a great time. Most of the play is geared toward learning, but for someone almost 2-and-a-half, like my daughter, it is just a giant playground.

I am a little worried, because we’ve been relying on a lot of tricks in getting her to eat: “If you don’t eat your pasta, Uncle is going to eat it!”, “I would really make Uncle happy if you ate another piece!”, etc. I’ve already offered my brother-in-law a room at our house, if it’ll mean she’ll continue to eat well.

After the nap, we make our way to my mom’s house. Hopefully, we won’t have to go through the whole re-entry (re-adapting to a new place) process we had to go through here.

Oh, and about my mom’s house – it is a neverland of internet connectivity. Oh, she has dial-up, but no way in heck am I gonna blog on a dial-up connection. Next update will be days 4-6.

Thanksgiving Holiday – Day 2

Today went pretty well. Our daughter had plenty of people to help entertain her. And a dog. “Shelly the dog,” as my daughter likes to call her.

Dinner was pushed back to 4:30pm to accomodate our daughter’s sleep schedule. And she did nap well today. I think the excitement of being here settled a bit, and she became more comfortable sleeping somewhere other than her own bed.

For those of you wondering about Thanksgiving for vegetarians, we had: fried tofu, with a vegetarian gravy, beet and apple puree, cranberries, vegetarian stuffing, brussel sprouts, and mashed sweet potatoes. And plenty of good wine, of course.

Of this wonderful meal, my daughter ate: one cranberry, and one small bite of tofu. She usually loves tofu, too. We did eventually get her to eat a fair amount of vegetarian hot dog. Enough to earn some chocolate pie (actually chocolate tofu pie – trust me, it really is quite good – you’d never know if was tofu) and some ice cream.

Speaking of pies, for 6 adults, we had 5 pies – chocolate tofu, apple, sweet potato, pumpkin and pecan.

We had talked to her about Thanksgiving and giving thanks leading up to this year’s celebration. When we were putting her to bed, we thanked her for being such a good girl today, and for being a wonderful daughter. She responded by saying, “Thank you, momma. Thank you, dada… for giving me pie.”

We put her down for bed just a short time ago, and so far, so good.

Thanksgiving Holiday – Day 1

Today was a lot of driving, and no nap. Ms. Kaz says this is the first time we’ve travelled back (6+ hours) that our daughter hasn’t taken at least a short nap. We tried all kinds of bribes: “no ice cream and Nonna’s house if you don’t nap!”, “It’ll take much longer to get there if you don’t nap!”, “You won’t be able to stay up and see Uncle when he gets in!” Nothing worked.

This, of course, led to her being over tired, trying to fall alseep in a place which isn’t her room and her bed. So, we’ve made a ton of trips up there for songs, na-na’s, and shushing. I have a feeling it is going to a be a long night.

My father-in-law had three great bottles of wine ready for dinner tonight. That might make things a bit more bearable.

We’ll see what tomorrow is like, with the craziness of getting Thanksgiving dinner ready.

Quick Update

Things might be a tad slow these days. We’re getting ready to head back to our our parents’ houses for the holidays. I am sure that will create plenty of good stories to share. In the meantime, here are some random thoughts:

•  Our daughter has been waking up more than usual lately, saying, “want light on!” meaning the night light on her sound machine. We decided, and I don’t know if this a good idea in the long-run or not, to get her a nightlight that stays on. Since the location of the plugs in her room is not really great for a plug in nightlight, we went to Ikea to get a wall-mounted one. She chose the moon one. Even with a 4w bulb, it is a little brighter than we thought it might be. She loved it, though.
• Our daughter also appears to have begun talking in her sleep lately. The other night, she woke up, calling for “mommy.” When mommy went in, she asked, “mommy, wanna go to playschool with me?” then went back to sleep.
• The Christmas hype has begun. My daughter has started singing, “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” on her own… and she’s doing quite well with the lyrics.
• Anyone know where we can get nice snow boots?
• Our daughter has also moved to the stage where she wants to sit at the table, instead of her own strap-on high chair. She now wants booster chairs in restaurants, and to sit in the “big chair” at the dinner table. For now, she’s agreed to sit in her chair without the tray on, but at the table.
• She is also into manners… occasionally. When she’s behaving, she’ll sometimes tell us, “I’m being nice to you. I’m not being fresh to you.”

That’s it for now. Sorry for not having something more substantial.

The Weekend “Stunk”

The other day, I was standing in the kitchen and, well, uhm… I had to… I mean I did… uhm, well… around these parts, we now call it a “toot”. Since we always try to reinforce good manners with our daughter…

Me: Oh, excuse me!
Daughter: Excuse you, daddy! … Daddy, you STINK!

I know she was too far away to smell anything. And hilarity ensued…

New daddy blog…

Congrats to Zygote Daddy for making the transition from Daddy-to-be-Blogger to just plain Daddy-blogger.

Stop by, congratulate him and his wife, and check out the rest of the blog. I look forward to his observations on being a dad. I will miss his dad-to-be posts, which were so cute the way he thought everything is going to work out just the way he planned.

The word we must not speak…

There aren’t a whole lot of words we don’t let our daughter use. First of all, she’s only 27 months, so she doesn’t know a whole lot of bad words. One of the words we don’t like her using, however, is “stupid.”

And she’s been good. She hasn’t said that word in quite a while. Not in front of me, at least. Until tonight…

Daughter: <somethingsomething> stupid…
Me: Hey! I don’t like that. It’s rude, and if you say it again, you’ll get a timeout.
Daughter: …

At this point, she’s figuring out a way in her head that she can say the word again…da

Daughter: I won’t say stupid again.
Me: Good.
Daughter: I won’t say stupid again.
Me: That’s enough.
Daughter: I won’t say stupid again.
Me: Okay, now, see, you’re still saying it.

And she stopped. At least long enough for her to figure out another way of saying that word again. And, in the middle of looking at books, and singing to her, she finally figured out a way.

Daughter: Sorry for saying “stupid,” dada.
Me: Thank you for apologizing, sweetie, that’s very nice.
Daughter: Sorry for saying “stupid,” dada.
Me: Okay, that’s enough.

Kids can be impressively smart for their ages, but they aren’t quite smart enough to outsmart us.

Greener Holiday Cards

I still love the holiday photo cards at MangoInk.

But I also love the greener cards at Greene Street Greetings. Some of the designs are very nice. Some are neat, but generally not the type of card we look for when choosing holiday cards. However, they do allow you to upload your own photo, then they will work with you to turn that into your own holiday greeting cards. The bonus here is that you are not restricted to a single, non-fold cardstock — you can create single-fold cards with your own photos, which allows you much more room for a personalized greeting.

What is really great about these cards, however, is just how green they are.

These cards are made from 100% post-consumer waste recycled paper. The inks they use for printing are toxic-free soy and vegetable derived inks.

The company runs its website on a server which is powered by solar and wind power. And if that wasn’t enough, they purchase carbon-offset credits from Terrapass for additional energy overhead.

So, if you’re looking to go green this holiday season, check them out.

(via TreeHugger)

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas

My daughter is almost as bad as the retailers. She’s already talking about Christmas and sitting on Santa’s lap, and walking around singing Jingle Bells (although, she did ask yesterday if she could go trick-or-treating).

So, I ask her:

Me: What are you going to ask Santa for for Christmas?
Daughter: Toys!
Me: What kind of toys?
Daughter: Uhm… choo-choo train!

Fair enough. But what I really want for myself think she really wants is a pirate ship tree house! This thing is sweet, and I would have a blast she would have a lot of fun playing in it. It has a swing, a fireman pole, a ladder to climb up into the ship part of it (although the crow’s nest is inaccessible), and, according to the description, an “oversized log”. On a green note, they use an actual log from an already fallen tree.

If you aren’t already convinced, the website also offers you a list of benefits of treehouses, such as, uhm, adding “value and curb appeal” to your home..? As well as, being “incredible conversation pieces.” (I guess, that would be something like, “You paid WHAT for a treehouse?!?”)

Yeah, that’s the drawback… the thing costs $18,499 (oh, and another 99 cents on top of that). I need to let the in-laws know that I really want my daughter really wants one of these for Christmas.

I mean, c’mon… it involves pirates. The only thing that would make it better is if it included a live monkey!

Get your very own at Costco for, again, a mere $18,499.99. And be sure to allow 6-8 weeks for delivery. And you’ll need to sign for it. Oh, and you’ll need a 6′ x 8′ x 4″ concrete slab (rebar-reinforced) to put it on. And your own forklift.

Behind the Curve

I used to think my daughter was ahead of the curve. Her language skills are very well developed for her age. She certainly surprised the heck out of me with the things she remembers, the things she thinks up, and the things she deduces.

I used to think she was ahead of the curve.

Then I heard about what Lily Capehart had accomplished by the age of two.