Thanks, But It Would Be Better If You Would Just USE THE TOILET!!!

Why must motherhood involve so many graphic discussions of poop?  I'm sorry for this, but a) this is a pretty funny story and b) this IS my life, so if you want to hear what I have to say, it's gonna be smeared with poop every now and then.

Kate is showing all the signs of being ready to potty train.

Take just now for example.  She had a poopy diaper and I got out the supplies to change it and tried to call her over, but she refused to come.  Before I could manhandle her into coming over, I was pulled away by one of the other kids for a few minutes.  When I came back over, she had laid herself down on the changing pad.  She had taken off her own pants, set them nicely down on the floor next to her and had opened her diaper.  I found her in the act of trying to wipe the poop off her own bottom with some wipes.  There was a huge pile of about 10 wipes covered in poop as well next to her diaper on the changing pad.

Really Kate?  Could you just let me do it?  If you're so keen on taking care of this stuff, then why is it that every time you tell me you want to go on the potty, I help you sit down and nothing happens?  You brought it up, not me.  I have been stalling until you were a little older, because the idea of potty training a just under or just over 2 year old who barely talks makes me tired just thinking about it.

On the other hand, has this approach ever been tried?  I mean, diapers are expensive, but the worst part is the hassle.  What if I just train Kate to change her own diapers (but do a better job at it, of course - 10 wipes is a bit excessive for the average poopy diaper) instead of trying to coax her body to learn how to go when she's sitting on a potty?

Genius.  I'll let you know how it goes ;)
  

Contrasts

Scott still asks me to open everything for him.  Every granola bar package.  Every candy wrapper.  Every peel-back yogurt lid.  It's an area I think we need to work on this summer before he starts Kindergarten.

Kate, on the other hand, is quite resourceful.  In the time it took me to load my groceries onto the belt at the store the other day, she managed to reach into the basket and grab a package of yogurts.  This in itself was quite a feat because I pile everything on the opposite side of the cart from her.  She has a tendency to hug loaves of bread to death and such.  I'm sure people go by my cart and wonder why the side nearest the handle is nearly empty while the opposite end is like a teetering Mr. Everest of groceries.

After she grabbed the package of yogurts, she managed to pull one of the cups free from the carton.  Then she managed to peel back the lid.  When I turned back from the conveyor belt to make sure I got everything out of the cart, I saw Kate sitting there eating yogurt with her hands.

Lately when Scott asks me to open his bag of cookies, I tell him he can only have it if he opens it himself.  After all, Scott, your baby sister can do it!

Maows and Bows

Kate turned two!

She still obsessed with all things girly.  But she shows a definite proclivity for cats and hair bows these days.

Her name for cats is the sound they make, which she says, "Maow."  She has a little stuffed cat she likes to sleep with and when she asks us to find it in the depths of her blankets in her crib, she always pleads, "Maow."  M and I decided to name her little cat Chairman.  Now we both get a nice chuckle when we go searching for her little Chairman Mao.

No outfit is complete for Kate without a bow in her hair.  Preferably a clip AND a bow.

Whenever she sees me sitting writing something on paper, she insists that I draw her a cat with a bow.  

Logical birthday theme?  The most famous cat WITH a bow of all. Hello Kitty of course:

If you find yourself wondering how I made these buttercream Hello Kitty cupcakes, feel free to read on.  Or if you don't care, that's fine by me.  Go on your merry way.

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I used frozen buttercream transfers to make the little Hello Kitties.  I've always wanted to try this technique.  The results were fabulous (if I do say so myself) and it was suprisingly easy.

First, I found an outline image of the Kitty herself, made it the right size and copied it as many times as I wanted cupcakes.  (I didn't have to mirror the image like you normally would because Hello Kitty is ambi-drawable.)  Then I printed it off and taped some waxed paper over it.  I put it on a cutting board and then went at it with a tube of black frosting and a simple round tip.

I outlined the whole image first:

Next I switched to red frosting and colored in her oh-so-important bow:

 Then I filled the face in with white:

All the frosting color changes would have been a pain, but thanks to this idea, it was easy and not very messy at all!

Then I took the pink frosting I was going to frost the cupcakes themselves with and piped around the outside of Miss Kitty to support her little whiskers.  The main idea here is to think backwards.  Pipe the things you want to have look like they are on top first and the things you want to look like they are on the bottom last.  As my last step I piped a layer of the same pink as the cupcakes over the whole thing to give it some beefiness.  When I was all done I got my finger wet so it wouldn't stick and pushed down all over the design to make sure everything was flat and as air-bubble-less as possible.
 

Then I popped them all in the freezer for about an hour.  When I took them out, they easily came off the waxed paper in one piece.  In fact they were small enough that I could just pop them off the waxed paper and stick 'em on the frosted cupcakes like stickers.  Delicious buttercream stickers.

Peek-a-boo Pet Door

We don't have a pet, but there was a pet door out to the garage when we bought our house.  One of these days, we really should replace that door.  But until then, it sure is useful when Kate wants to check up on what M's doing out in the garage.  She is very disturbed by lawnmowers and always points at ones that are running and says, "Owie."  So this way she can see what he's up to when he's doing yard work without actually risking contact with the evil mower of pain and destruction.

Silence Isn't Golden, It's White and Really Hard to Wash Off

I had one of those, "It's quiet... too quiet" moments and went looking for Kate.  She was in the living room which is designed to be "safe" for her, so how bad could it be?

I called her name and she came toddling toward me.  I saw she had a little mess on her hands:

I smelled Desitin.  Clearly someone left the closet door open and she had gotten into the diaper changing supplies.  And she had a bigger mess on her foot:

So she played with the tube of Desitin and got some on herself.  Not too bad.  I can take that.  Phew.

Then I walked around to the other side of the couch to find the lid for the Desitin tube and saw this:

Kate had decided to change her baby's diaper.  That baby doll must have had some wicked diaper rash: