Some 'this and thats'

Little Princess and her mother have been here for a couple of days and here are some thoughts about the visit:

The first day we all met up at McDaniel Farms which has a nice little picnic area. Nice and quiet without too much pedestrian traffic and quiet enough away from the road traffic. Little Princess really enjoys the picnics. She fed the birds and squirrels all the scraps she had dropped on the ground. She tried to attract the attention of the fellow picnickers with all her cuteness. She is a bundle of energy that must be expended by her round the table trips. She even shouted out, "Bye!" to one couple who was leaving. They loved it and told her they were coming back, which they did, when they met what appeared to be one of their daughters.

It was almost time for her nap and Mommy had to go in to work for the afternoon, but Granddaddy and I took time to walk Little Princess through the park, up to the house, picking up chestnuts, little fairies with their caps on and off (acorns, for those of you with no imagination!) and a few rocks along the way. It was just good fun Grandmomma/Granddaddy/Granddaughter time before she grows out of it.

She's becoming more and more interested in 'potty training'. We're trying to make it more fun for her without really pushing her. She's still a little young at this point, but she has her ambitions. She is rewarded with a sticker when she tee tees and we've decided maybe on giving her a bigger sticker when her ambitions are bigger. She gets to pick her sticker, which most of the time she promptly adds to someone's clothing or one of the baby dolls.

I suggested we start a notebook for her showing the date and letting her add her sticker to the book so she can see her progress. I wanted her to line them up properly in a neat little row, but for some reason her mommy didn't see a need for her to re-align them. Teach them right while they young, right? Little Princess decided she liked my idea better than her mommy's so she removed her sticker and placed it neater. Atta girl, baby. Another of your first rebellions against Mommy.Now this same mommy who didn't want me to have her do it correctly to begin with, insisted we note not only the date, but the time she earned the sticker. Well, you have to give in to some of her wild ideas sometimes, I guess.

One time we reminded her to go potty and she literally did a little jig in several places trying to get turned around so she could run. She was funny. Had to turn those corners and doing so in a hurry can be pretty complicated.

She'll get there. I had suggested earlier maybe she needed some big girl panties to encourage her. She's really catching on, but of course, still having accidents when she gets busy playing. That's all part of the game. She will learn, I have no doubt.
Her mommy has balked on getting her big girl panties, I think in part because she is afraid she's losing her baby. It is sorta sad. But we were going today to see about getting some, except it was raining so hard we just didn't want to get out into the bad weather.

Mommy thinks I should get into the middle of the 'dursing' problem and thinks I should encourage LP to give it up. She's got another good two weeks, and I don't see the reason to rush. Let's not warp the baby. But I did mention to her that big girls don't have to 'durse'. She says, "Baby Adie durses. Baby Ella durses." "But you aren't a baby anymore, are you?" Anyway, this conversation went on among the three of us with her carrying on a pretty good conversation. I don't know that we've really convinced her, but who knows.

She gets into the junk food stash she knows Granddaddy keeps around. This drives her mommy insane. They carried on quite a conversation with LP trying to convince her mommy she did, indeed, need something nice and junky before dinner.

I reminded her mother even though Little Princess can be pretty persistant, at least you know you aren't stiffling her future leadership skills. She won't be one to take no for an answer and that will go a long way in life in the future. Do we really want a world full of followers? Somebody has to take control and LP is certainly putting forth her best skills.

Back to the potty training for a second...at one point she was trying to get to the stash of junk food, running to the other room to find it, when her diaper started falling off. She runs back to us hollering and in a panic, "Di-pas down, my di-pas down!" But she continued to run toward us for help. And then it fell off, all the way. You had to be there to get the full impact,but it was completely hilarious and left me laughing a long time.

Everytime her mommy left out the door she would call out, "Bye, Mommy, bye,Mommy".
She doesn't mind staying without her mommy most of the time, however, she did have a small melt down the other night when Mommy came home. She had eaten but Mommy had not and she didn't take too kindly to waiting for her mommy to eat her food. She instantly said, "Hold you, Mommy, Hold you, Mommy!" That always cracks me up to hear one of the grandchildren say that and everyone of them has at one point. It's such a comfort to them to "Hold you, Mommy," or "Hold you, Ganmommy."

I think I mentioned earlier that she says she will be "free" her birthday. Well since that time she's learned she's going to be "two" and she's learned/learning how to tuck those fingers back behind each other and hold up those two little fingers. That's pretty hard to do, you know, in case you don't already know it. She really shows concentration in her little face as she continues to strive to hold those two fingers up. Gotta love that determination! She already been practicing blowing out those candles, and I think that's perfected.

And she's learning her name. That's no small accomplishment when you have a name as long as hers. She was very clear as she told me what her name was, then her mommy asked her what her last name was and after telling her, she remembered it. Then came adding the middle name. She was saying all three of her names without help. At one point I asked her if she had said her name was "Jezebel". That's the name of one of her mean kitties. She said, "No. Annabelle". One time it also came out as Daddabelle. I think we had just talked about where her daddy is. She said he was on "the choo choo chain". I wonder if she thinks Daddy never gets off that "choo choo chain" all week until they pick him up again at the end of the week. That's the last place she sees him every week end as he leaves for out of town work.

Her mommy also taught her what mommy's name is. That's important, I think, just in case a kid gets lost or needs help. They should know those things. It's a beginning point. Much later she asked her again what mommy's name was and surprisingly she knew. And mommy doesn't have an easy name to say, either.

If she's sitting in the high chair and I reach over and play with her leg, she says, "Itsy-bitsy boublala, Gandmomma" or something, which means, sing "Itsy, bitsy spider, Grandmomma". And of course, she is always full of "Read books to me, Grandmomma."

She slinging those words together in three and four words with little problems. She's just been silently storing them away until she's ready to let them out. Just like her Mommy did, once upon a time.

Another thing that happened, but something her mommy said has already happened when they were around her several weeks/months ago was when she and I were playing on the porch. She took one of her babies and tried to sit it in a little small chair. Baby's legs didn't bend easily so she was standing in the chair for a minute. Little Princess took her and gently reminded her, "Bottom, Baby." She's heard that enough in her life time...to sit on her bottom. She's such a good mommy. And she's a sweet Grandbaby, too.