Dinner on the Moon

PJ had been asking for a couple days that I help her color on her spaceship (a cardboard diaper box) to improve it, and Sunday evening we finally did. She instructed me to draw a steering wheel; allowed me to draw a throttle lever thing once I explained that pulling it would make her spaceship go faster; drew some gauges; and at her repeated and fervent insistence, plenty of buttons.

For future reference, the Crayola colors that show up best on brown cardboard are the sparkly jewel tones. Luckily these are exactly the colors you'd choose anyway to draw robots and spaceship consoles for your imaginative daughter.

In the back, she had me draw a robot "to sit behind me and be my helper" because, she explained sagely, "every spaceship has a robot helper." (Where does she get this stuff??) After proclaiming her satisfaction with my robot drawing, she packed her ship and we blasted off to the moon "where our robot friend lives, so we can eat dinner with him."

Once we landed on the moon, daddy told PJ her dinner was ready, so she stood to get out of her spaceship and--here is the part that completely blew my mind--she pantomimed taking off her space helmet, spacesuit, and space shoes. It was very obviously three distinct things, and I could tell what she was doing before she said a word about it: she lifted the helmet off her head, pulled down & climbed out of the suit, and then pulled off each shoe. I also had to take off these three elements of my spacesuit, PJ reminding me, "don't forget to take off your space shoes!"

She continued to talk about eating dinner on the moon throughout her real dinner. The completeness and level of detail in this whole spaceship saga was just amazing. I am in awe of this kid. Also beyond thrilled to have a cardboard box spaceship in my living room. Maybe next we can make a transmogrifier!

I was so blown away by PJ's pretend play Sunday evening that I was still gushing about it while Paul and I lay in bed late Sunday night.

Not to leave Max out, he is of course delighting us daily too. He had been back to 3 wake-ups to nurse per night since we left for the beach, but Saturday night suddenly only woke up once, and Sunday night I'll call it one and a half times because he woke up again shortly before 6:30, so I did lay down with him and doze a tiny bit more while he nursed before getting up. He can sit up unsupported for a minute or two at a time, something I really want to make him do daily now so that he'll get better at it, because what he wants to do while you're hanging out with him is stand. I keep telling him he needs to learn how to sit first, so maybe he'll get that memo in the next couple of weeks. He is very quick to grin and giggle, and loves when daddy puts him belly-down on top of daddy's head and rubs his belly. My favorite way to get giggles is by kissing him all around his mouth--he loves it and leans in, and I especially love it when he presses his slobbery open mouth against my face to give me kisses back!

PJ has been taking more and more interest in her little brother, and when she decides to play with him, Max loves watching her best of all. I love that she mimics us saying, "hey buddy" and "it's OK" to him. She also likes to ask him questions and then answer on his behalf, which is often hilarious.

Some success stories!

Well! As expected, I haven't updated the blog much. But now I have an update, so we'll just say it's because I didn't before.

I had been slipping on the no phone from 10p to 8a thing, and I didn't do great with that yesterday either, BUT last week at the beach I really did use my phone MUCH less. I left it in my bag, or even at the house, and went whole days without taking pictures to post instantly, and instead I engaged with my kids and family and finished two books on my kindle. AND the week or so before that I was using my phone less too, which I mostly credit to a third book I was reading that was very, very long and got quite exciting for the last third.

SO! Bored and Brilliant challenge-cum-lifestyle-change is going ok, and I have more books both Kindle and physical to distract me, AND I have a new non-electronic distraction: Paul is bringing home copies of the New York Times from school for me, and today I completed my very first crossword puzzle. Plus both KenKens, but those I've been doing for ages. So yeah, my new strategy is NYT crossword puzzles.

The new semester started yesterday, and along with it a new, earlier schedule. We got to bed annually early on Sunday night, so Monday morning went pretty smoothly, but then last night we were back to midnight, and this morning was a bit miserable. SO tonight, back to 10p bed time! I hope. That is my current top goal: to get to sleep before 11p consistently so I can get into work early so I can be home early.

The whole bedtime thing will be easier when Max gets back to sleeping longer. He was down to one wake-up for a few days before we left on vacation, but went back to 3 wake-ups a night as soon as we were elsewhere, and has kept up that unfortunate habit so far for the 3 nights we've now spent at home. Tonight I will try to encourage cluster feeding.

And finally, a new goal: plan our meals for the week so that lunches are easier to pack, eating out is less tempting, and grocery shopping is less frequent. Paul does the overwhelming majority of cooking and grocery shopping, so another part of this is increasing my contribution a bit, maybe so I'm preparing one dinner a week? It's not that I'm a bad cook; Paul is just home, and also much, much more efficient in the kitchen.

Hey, in other news, we no longer have to buy pull-ups! Because PJ is fully daytime potty trained!! FINALLY. She made the switch at almost exactly 3.5 years old, and just like my mom told me, it was pretty much overnight. She didn't even have a single accident at the beach, and she's already doing most peeing totally on her own, by herself in the bathroom, even away from home with no stool. "I need my pwivacy," PJ says!

And so, as promised, tonight we will be taking a family trip to the pet store to get PJ a beta fish. I hope she's not disappointed when she realizes she can't actually play with it.

More PJ-isms from this morning

PJ trying to open a tin of lip balm on my bedside table: "I'm too little uh do it"

After "Effant" (her stuffed elephant) helped her climb onto our bed (actually me lifting her as she held elephant): "Effant help me kime up!"

Once up on our bed, after thanking Elephant for helping her up, she gives Elephant a big hug and says, "I love you, Effant." I said, "Can I have a hug?" so she shoved Elephant up under my chin. Because obviously I was requesting a hug from Elephant. I requested a hug from her too, and so she crawled up and hugged me and Elephant, exclaiming, "Hug all of you!"

Once she's gone out into the living room, she starts her usual chorus of requesting to watch something on TV. This morning it was "Watch Let It Go! I need Let It Go. I need uh watch Frozen!"

As she's eating her breakfast, she holds up a half-eaten slice of toast and says, "You a chair? Hello, chair! Chair in my mouf!" Then she held up a whole slice of toast and said, "It's like a frigulator! It's a toast. Now it's a frigulator! Now it's a toast!"
 

PJ Bathtime Conversations

Oh hi Elsa! Oh hi Frosty uh Snowman!
You're different. A good different! (Straight out of Frozen. All snowmen are Frosty the Snowman to PJ.)

Go to uh doctor? Sure.
Oh hi doctor! My boo boo hurts. I need some medicine.
Oh no, no medicine for you, I want to go home now.
Cover up my boo boo. Oh sank you, doctor!
Oh doctor, don't float away, doctor! Doctor, where are you? Oh there's my doctor! There's a bubble doctor!
(We don't know where the doctor conversation is coming from! A TV show perhaps?)

Oh excuse me, I'm talking here. (Paul & I have needed to say this to her frequently lately, so no mystery where she heard this!)

Penguin going to seep. Tuck him in, and here's a bear.
Let's go to seep penguin. One two free go seep.
Read a book for me penguin ok?
Go seep on my back? Sure.

More PJ Jabber

Almost a month after Christmas, PJ is still requesting "frosty snowman" and singing Jingle Bells to herself. This is how she says it:

Jin-ul bells, jin-ul bells,
Jin-ul aw da way way way!

But sometimes other phrases tip her into jingle bell territory. Tonight at dinner time, I heard "dinner time, dinner time, dinner all da way way way!"

And then in the bath, she pointed to my nail polish and said, "finner nails, finner nails, finner all da way way way!"

Then she requested another bubble beard:

PeneloJabber

Penelope's starting to string 3+ words together pretty frequently. A sampling from the past few days:

Pointing up to the owl ornament hanging from the small Christmas tree on our mantel: "Oh-lul tee up der!" (Owl tree up there!)

Indicating her huge creepy plastic inherited baby doll that we keep on top of her bookcase: "Baby seepin up der!" (Baby sleeping up there!)

This afternoon as I finished up working at our computer with the door closed, from the hallway I heard: "Mommy workin now!"

Other favorite exclamations lately:

"Oopsy daisy oopsy daisy!" when anything is slightly different than she thinks it should be

"AbaDABa!" which she uses to refer to her wand, and also says while waving her wand, along with "poke pocus!"

"Happy BOOTday!" which she says repeatedly while holding an electric candle, and also says to refer to the candle.

"No touchin!" and "One fin-doo" (finger), which she often says when she knows not to grab something...often while she's grabbing it anyway.

"Yight on!" when she wants to play with a light switch

"House" is anything she bunches together, such as puzzle pieces; the same puzzle pieces (or, last night during dinner, green beans) in a line become "train!"

It's also so fun to get her to repeat stuff, like when we spun her around in the office chair Paul got her to say "inertia" and "angular momentum"!

This whole toddler thing is pretty entertaining.