The Life and Times of Baby Gordon

Superpotty

Maddie woke up last weekend and decided she was done with diapers. It was quite a surprise to all of us. After the initial success we had had with her peeing in the potty, she hadn't done it again. Occasionally she would spot the potty and decide to sit on it for awhile while I read A Potty for Me, the adorable Karen Katz book that I'm convinced ultimately helped Maddie make the decision. But mostly her attention span waned after a few minutes and she was off to other things.

This past Saturday, she was sitting in the living room watching morning cartoons when she announced, "I have to go potty." Although I've been a bit lazy about pushing her toward potty training (candidly, with travel and our crazy schedules the past few months, diapers have been more convenient), my rule is to never discourage her from doing it, so if she wants to try, we try. This time, she peed right away, and her face lit up. "I DID IT!" she exclaimed, in much the same way the little girl in the book shouts with joy. We clapped and cheered and made a big deal out of it. I asked her if she wanted to wear underwear and she said yes, wholeheartedly.

About an hour later she accidentally peed in her underwear. She was very upset by it, and cried and cried. Andrew and I reminded her of the part in the book when the little girl has an accident while playing outside, and told her "It's OK!" She seemed to be consoled by that, but afterwards wanted absolutely nothing to do with the underwear. When asked why, she said, "I make pee in underweah and I cry." She was traumatized.

Assuming that was the end of pottying for awhile, I put her in her diaper and we went about our business. But no: Maddie was resolute. Later that afternoon she asked to go potty, and made her first poop in the potty. Her face was priceless: she beamed with pride. I've never seen a kid so very proud of herself.

I started noticing after that that she was getting up in the morning with a dry diaper, and she began almost exclusively peeing and pooping in the potty while at home. I knew it was for real when, this past weekend, we all made a visit to a local garden center. While there, Maddie asked to go potty. Not sure what to do, I took her into the bathroom there. I was a little worried she would be freaked out by the strange surroundings or by having to balance on a big toilet, but she was very cheerful and confident about it. Since then we've successfully gone potty at restaurants and even the car wash!

Last night, for the very first time, Maddie woke up at 4:30 and called out that she had to potty. Rather than going in her diaper, she waited until Andrew took the potty down to her room and then peed in it.

I got her a Dora the Explorer sticker reward chart that is hanging on the wall in the bathroom and is almost completely full with stickers! After a few mishaps with pull-up diapers, we have finally bought Pampers Easy-Ups in the right size for when we're out and about, and she's still wearing diapers at night, but during the day she is in underwear exclusively.

I've been shocked at how fast it's all happened, and how we really had very little role in it. But everybody tells me it's a girl thing. While waiting in line for the restroom at Skipolini's Pizza the other night, the woman in front of me asked if we'd like to go first, since it was obvious Maddie had to go. I told the woman about Maddie's sudden resolve to use the potty, and the woman laughed. "That's a girl for you," she said.

Play-Dohs

A few weeks ago, Maddie and I enjoyed a "Maddie Monday" (a non-work day for me, no daycare for her -- probably one of the few we'll get together this year) and went to Studio Grow. It's been awhile since I've taken her, and it was fun to see how much she enjoyed many of the activities that she was too young to get last time. She particularly liked the arts and crafts room. At one of the tables, the studio had laid out Play Doh and cookie cutters, and we spent probably 15 minutes "making cookies."

A few days later, she and I were playing outdoors on one of our unseasonably warm afternoons, and I remembered that we had some cans of Play Doh that Maddie received as a door prize gift at a birthday party last year. She had been pretty indifferent to the stuff when we first brought it home, so I had stashed it in a cabinet in the laundry room. I pulled it out and got the Christmas cookie cutters that we had used to make sugar cookies together during the holidays, and we started making cutouts with Play Doh on the picnic table.

Thus began the Great Play Doh Obsession of 2009. Every morning after that afternoon, she came upstairs from bed and immediately went to the back door, asking to go "OUTside 'n' play Play-Dohs!" (even though it was still dark). Finally we allowed the Play Doh to move back indoors.

What has been so interesting about this "Play Dohs" obsession is that it's the first time I've seen her really use her imagination. She spent days making little cookies with the Play Doh, laying them out on her tea tray, and putting them in and taking them out of her little play oven – honestly, it's the most attention she's paid to that play kitchen since she got it for her birthday. Then she made us each birthday cakes and put her little birthday "candies" (candles) on them, singing "Happy Birthday" to us as she offered them up. She even made one for Bentley.

We started with one can of white Play Doh and one can of blue, and within several days we had a lot of funky, dried out light blue Play Doh because she had mixed it all together. With no end in sight to this Play Doh obsession (train set forgotten, all other toys sorely neglected, and her former obsession, "paintings" with the art kit from her grandparents, completely out of her mind), I went on the hunt for new Play Doh to replace the old stuff. I found a Play Doh Fun Factory at Longs, and I think I was as delighted to bring that thing home as she was to see it. Within an hour after its arrival the new yellow and blue Play Doh that came with the Fun Factory became one big green lump, and Maddie was making spaghetti and meatballs in her little pots and pans for all of us to eat for dinner.

The Fun Factory kit came with a little brochure advertising the other Play Doh sets available. Maddie got hold of this and pointed out everything she wanted (she was mostly enamored with an underwater themed one featuring a big purple octupus, as well as a Dora set and an ice cream parlor that costs $50), then spent the evening telling anyone who would listen about her wish list (including her grandma on the phone, who was probably confused as Maddie picked up the phone and greeted her in her bossy little voice: "I want oct-pus NOW, and Doh-wa, and ice cweam").

Luckily Maddie had some Amazon gift cards leftover from her birthday and Christmas, so that evening I got online and ordered her the octupus and Dora playsets. The Dora one arrived pretty quickly, and the Fun Factory was old news. (I got it out for her last night and she actually told me, "No, don't want this, put away!")

Play-Dohs are at the center of our universe right now. It's all she wants to do; sleeping, eating and going to the park are secondary priorities. Our biggest blessing is that the rug in our living room is already old and soiled, because now it also contains flecks of blue, green, and strange shades of purple that will be ground into it forever. I can't wait to see how long it will be before she moves on to the next big thing, or whether Play Dohs will always have a special place in her heart.

Life at 2

Mommy has been very negligent in the blogging department. 2008 has been a whirlwind year and overwhelming, and I'm trying to take measures to make 2009 less, or at least to try to handle it all a bit better.

Of course, since my last blog entry Madeleine has turned 2. Life with a 2-year-old is the cliché: action-packed, fun, amusing, stimulating, rewarding, challenging, frustrating and exhausting.

Not surprisingly, Maddie has turned to be an extremely energetic and curious kid, always on the move and endlessly busy with her little "projects." She is fiercely independent. (I wish I could tell you how many times she insists "NO, MANNIE DO IT!" as we try to assist her with impossible tasks throughout the day -- and how earnestly we are trying to teach her that asking for help is OK.)

She is also an early riser these days. She poops out about 8:00 every night, and by 5:30 a.m. she is usually calling out for us from her bedroom: "Wanna go UPstairs!" As a crutch, we have kept the bottle around for bedtime and wakeup time, with the fleeting hope that a morning bottle will help her put her sleepy self back to sleep for awhile, but it usually only works about 25% of the time. Bringing her into bed is not helpful either - she writhes, climbs on the dog, plays with the curtains, climbs in and out of bed, sticks her fingers up my nose and kicks Andrew until she finally decides it's "yogurt time!", and we have to get up and have breakfast.

Maddie is still spending most of her weekdays with Clelia, her nanny, at another family's house (we do a share with a family who has a 1-year-old). Clelia arrives around 8:15 in the morning and Maddie dutifully "goes to work," collecting the toys she wants with her for the day and waving good-bye to me. They usually spend their mornings at the park or on playdates, and on Wednesdays they go to storytime at the local library.

I recently had to pick Maddie up for a doctor's appointment during storytime and got to observe her. Clelia has always commented on how Maddie sits on her mat, hands folded, waiting for the stories to begin and listening to them with quiet attention, while the rest of the toddlers wander about and cry and make noise. It's true - Maddie hangs on every word. Lately she's been "reading" her books to us at home, and she likes to say some words and then pick up the book, turn it around and show the room the pictures, just like the volunteers at library storytime do!

She's also at an age now where she is beginning to play on her own a lot more. She now has a lot of toys that allow her to begin imaginative play, and she can tinker and play for 15-20 minutes at a time sometimes without needing guidance or intervention. It's fun to watch her start to lose herself in play.

I promise more Maddie action as it happens this year - you might even call it a resolution!

The first potty

Tonight, Maddie peed in the potty for the first time!

She's been sitting on the potty for longer and longer periods lately. This weekend she hunkered down with a pile of books, but nothing happened. We bought her a Karen Katz flap book about going in the potty, and she's been concentrating on it really hard whenever I read it to her. She definitely got the idea ... but nothing was happening yet.

Tonight after she got out of the tub she went straight for the potty, lifted the lid and sat down. "Book!" she demanded, so I left her there to go to the living room to get a pile of books for her. A few seconds later she came running down the hall, naked and flapping her arms, visibly worked up.

We went back into the bathroom and checked it out. Sure enough, there was some pee-pee in the potty! She was very proud. We hugged her and made a big deal out of it. Then she got to participate in the aftermath routine ... the wiping, dumping, flushing, rinsing.

I guess I'm going to need to read up on potty training -- I didn't think it was going to happen so fast!

Three tales of Maddie

Maddie is doing so many cute things these days that I simply need to be more on top of updating the blog. A couple of priceless moments from the past couple of days:

Let's do lunch
Last night was a cool, windy evening (typical of the Bay Area in summer), so we went for Chinese food and then took a long walk to this new ice cream place Andrew's been reading about. We decided to forgo the stroller and let Maddie walk/run the several blocks to the ice cream place.

It was getting pretty dark (Maddie took a late nap yesterday and was up way past her bedtime) on the way back from ice cream, and Maddie was having fun looking in all the windows as we walked. At one point we passed a restaurant where a lot of people were still dining. Maddie exclaimed loudly: "People eating lunch!"

"Hey Stacey!"
Also during the walk, we stopped at a busy street corner with a long light and stood waiting to cross. A restaurant I really like is on the same corner, and I wandered away from Maddie and Andrew to peek at the menu in the window. I heard Maddie calling me -- "Mama! Mama look!" -- and admittedly was ignoring her ... so she shouted "STACEY!" When we tested her later, we found out she also knows to point to Daddy when asked where "Andrew" is.

An elephant never forgets
About four weeks ago, Maddie and I joined Caroline and Eli (Maddie's buddy from Italy) for lunch at Rick & Ann's in Berkeley. The Savages were visiting California for a few weeks and Maddie had been clamoring to see Eli again. After lunch, as we walked back to our cars, a man walking behind us on the street spotted Eli's beloved blue bear that Caroline was carrying in her arms. "I see you have a Gund bear there," he said.

Caroline nodded and commented how it's hard to find similar bears like that these days. The man replied, "I could refresh that for you if you want to follow me to my car."

It was a strange comment (a little "Want some candy little girl?"), and we hesitated as the man walked past us. "Uh. Why?" Caroline asked.

"Because I'm the local Gund rep," the man said.

Sure enough, his car was parked around the corner, and in the back was an entire box of Gund stuffed animals and dolls. He got out a stuffed monkey for Eli, and a beautiful doll wearing a purple corduroy jacket and pink stockings, which matched Maddie's purple and pink outfit to a tee.

We were so grateful -- it was such a kind gesture, even if it had been a little suspicious as first. But after the man drove away and Caroline and Eli walked to their car, Maddie watched Eli depart with his new toy and complained: "Monkey? Monkey?" She wasn't interested in the doll much; she was aware that Eli had a monkey that was much cooler.

The doll, like many of Maddie's toys, took a little hiatus for a few weeks (I think she was inside the tent). This morning, when Maddie was starting to get tired and whiny, I noticed that the purple and pink doll baby was sitting in Maddie's doll stroller, so I grabbed her and handed her to Maddie to hold on the changing table.

Maddie took one look at the doll and said, "Eli: monkey! Mannie: doll!" She got one glimpse of that Gund monkey four weeks ago and still remembers it whenever she sees the doll. We returned home after being out for a few hours this afternoon, and again when she saw the doll she said, "Eli. Monkey!"

I wonder if this is going to be one of those things that comes out in therapy one day when she's an adult.

Guitar hero

Before Andrew and I knew each other, he was trying to learn guitar. He owns both an acoustic and an electric guitar and used to take lessons. Then I came along and he got a little distracted, to say the least.

After we got a little water in our basement over the winter, we moved the guitars upstairs and under the bed in our bedroom. A couple of months ago, trying to keep Maddie entertained one afternoon, Andrew pulled them out and started showing them to her. They're horribly out of tune, and all the sheet music is stored away someplace so he can't play any songs. Nevertheless, as you can imagine, Maddie was 100% fascinated.

Now whenever she remembers them, she demands that Andrew pull out the "tar." Yesterday, about a half hour before bedtime, Maddie and I were reading a Dora the Explorer book called When I Grow Up, featuring scenes of different things Dora and her friends want to be (firefighters, teachers, archaeologists). In one scene, Dora was on a dude ranch. We looked at the horses, the cows, the cacti, the turtles. Then Maddie noticed that Dora was sitting by the campfire playing a guitar.

She immediately leaped off the couch and headed into the bedroom (where Andrew was resting), chanting "Daddy. Tar. Daddy! Tar! Tar!" With this kid, there's no putting her off; once her mind is made up, that's it. So Daddy dragged out the "tar." I recently found his electric tuner and replaced the battery, and he began to tune it while Maddie helped. In the meantime, Maddie discovered the pitch pipe in the guitar case and learned how to blow into it.

I always wonder if we'll look back someday, when Maddie chooses her calling in life, and remember moments like these -- her early fascination with the guitar that led her to choose music as a career, maybe. Of course, I also believe she's going to have a future in gymnastics: the other day I laid out a bunch of tiny wooden blocks all in a row, and she grabbed my hand, hoisted herself up on them with one foot, and put one foot in front of the other as she walked across them like a balance beam!

Potty talk

A couple of months ago, Maddie started getting interested in what Daddy and I (and others, so I hear) do on the potty. She would come into the room with us and sort of watch shyly. Then she wanted to help flush, or tear off toilet paper. We started talking about pee-pee on the potty, and she was very interested.

Andrew went to Target one weekend (I believe I was home sick) and bought the least offensive toddler potty he could find -- it plays music when its sensors sense something wet. (The others talked and shouted and spat out stickers, all too creepy for his taste.) We decided to at least have the potty in the house so we could start talking about what to do with it.

First, Daddy showed Maddie the music feature by using a bath toy to pour water into the bowl, which prompted her to want to put "agua" in the potty and splash around in it every time she came into the bathroom. We finally broke her of that habit. Then we asked if she'd like to sit on it. So she began raising the lid and sitting down on it fully clothed.

But when we asked if she'd like to take off her pants and diaper and make a pee-pee in the potty, she has always said with great gusto: "No!" A couple of times when I tried to place her bare-bottomed on the potty, she has whined and fussed and resisted. So we've just been letting her warm up to the idea.

In the past couple of weeks she has been bringing her "babies" into the bathroom, setting them on the potty, then tearing off tiny squares of toilet paper and "wiping" them. She often ends the routine by shoving her more flexible stuffed animals and dolls down into the potty and closing the lid on them. (Maybe that's what she thinks is going to happen to her.)

Only a few days ago, we finally got her to sit without pants on the potty. It didn't last very long, and I think she was a little freaked out by the whole idea. The funny thing is that I know she knows what to do; she's just not really interested in doing it yet.

The beauty of small sentences

Maddie will turn 21 months on Saturday. She's talking like crazy -- something that start shortly after we got back from vacation.

Most of her communication is in single words, but we've been noticing that lately she's started stringing words together to convey more complex needs. This morning she did one that blew my mind.

Our routine after Maddie wakes up is to have a bottle in Mommy and Daddy's bed, then get dressed and go to the kitchen to fix yogurt for breakfast. The getting dressed/changing diaper part usually upsets her along the way, possibly because she's just ready to go and I'm holding her back, so she cries bitter tears. I usually end up carrying her into the kitchen because she's sulky.

This morning I set her on the counter and opened the cabinet where we keep her dishes and cups to get a bowl for the yogurt. She looked into the cabinet and said, "Duckie. Duckie." (I thought she was saying "doggie" at first.) "What doggie honey?" I asked absentmindedly.

She pointed at the cabinet and said: "My duckie cup, agua." Sure enough, she has a plastic duck straw cup in the cabinet (which we rarely use). I grabbed it, put some agua in it, and she drank enthusiastically.

We've come a long way from pointing and whining!

Life at 18 (months, that is)

Yesterday Madeleine turned 18 months old. It feels like such a big milestone! We are almost to 2, and it's starting to show. This headstrong kid not only knows exactly what she wants, but now knows how to express it.

Our half-birthday weekend has been full so far of pre-vacation errands as well as visiting with Aunt Stacey, who is in town from Denver. Friday, after she woke up from her nap, Maddie and I drove up to Berkeley to look for some "real" shoes. Lately she's only been wearing her red Crocs (her "shooz," or "zapatitos," as Clelia calls them), which are perfect for her days grubbing it up in the park. She loves them because they're loose and airy. I bought her some sneakers and sandals from Target but she has expressed a definite dislike for both, so knowing we're on our way to Europe where she'll probably be doing a lot of running around in piazzas and cathedrals, I decided to make an investment in some sturdy and comfortable shoes. We ended up with the Lola style of See Kai Run shoes (don't faint over the price ... Maddie's feet do not grow quickly). She's still not thrilled with them, so I know the Crocs will probably be our footwear of choice most of the time we're gone.

Yesterday we shopped for last-minute toddler gear for our trip, including a new changing pad, some little toys to entertain on the trip (she'll get a new one each day on car trips and on the airplane) and a portable booster seat that folds up into a tiny packet and then auto-inflates when you need it. After a good nap, Maddie was a charmer at dinner last night for her grandparents and Aunt Stacey, who hasn't seen her in months and couldn't believe how much she's grown.

A couple of new things that Maddie is doing these days:

When Andrew plays music on his iPod (especially the song clips from the upcoming Mudcrutch album ... which he's been playing a lot since we went to the concert this week), she shakes her rump and spins around. Anytime you mention "dancing" to her, she shakes her shoulders and head.

She's really into "riding the horsie," which started with riding on Bentley (climbing on him while he's sleeping and bouncing up and down) and riding on Daddy and me when we're lying on the ground. Yesterday at the toy store she found a stick pony and rode him around the store. And today she saw a picture of a unicorn on a block at her grandparents' house and bounced up and down.

Since I was away for five days last week, she's been going through a bit of a mommy separation anxiety, which means if I try to put her to bed at night she cries and carries on when I walk out of the room. (She does this in the daytime too, but it's most frustrating at night.) A trick that her grandpa discovered while babysitting the other night is that if you sit in the glider in her room and tell her, "I'm right here, Maddie. Lie down and go to sleep," she'll relax, put her head down and be asleep in a minute or two. I'm hoping it's a trick that will work in Italy too.

The kid is 100% devoted to books. She is a book freak. I've been working with her on how to express that she wants "more," rather than whining and pointing, but she's taken the concept a little far at bedtime. We sit down in the chair and she immediately points to her shelf and says "Book book book," and if you don't choose exactly the one she wants she gets very fussy, meaning we have to let her get down and choose the book herself. At the end of the book, she holds up one finger and demands "One more!" Andrew stops at three books, but I'm of course a sucker for the book-lovin' and read her seven or eight and wait until she's really rubbing at her eyes before I finally put a stop to it. She also demands books during breakfast, and again is very choosy about the titles.

We're getting really excited about Italy and can't wait for Maddie to see Eli again. Even though he's a little older than her, I think they'll have a lot in common. Maddie right now is very into "cahs" (cars), and I was proud that we finally bought her a little VW Beetle to play with, but the day after we brought it home we did a video chat with Sam and Caroline, and Eli showed us his gigantic Barbie Ferrari that they found in the storage space in their apartment. Maddie is going to have a field day with that car. I think they're going to have a blast together.

And of course, before we arrive in Italy we are doing a stopover in New York, where Maddie's going to meet our cousins for the first time, experience her first (and my first) Passover dinner, and meet her cross-country buddy Katie at the Central Park Zoo. She seems to do so well with new people and situations, getting over her momentary shyness to become the charmer and entertainer, so I think as long as she isn't floored by the jet lag, she's going to have a fantastic time on our vacation.

Running hot and cold

Maddie is beginning to grasp the concept of temperature. When I fix myself a cup of coffee in the morning, she walks up to it very tentatively, lightly touches the side of the mug and says, "Hot." She also knows when her own food is too hot to eat, and pretends to blow on it like we do.

She knows enough to know that temperature is causing the food to be unpleasant to eat or drink, but she doesn't yet really grasp the difference between extremes. The other day I made her a smoothie, a new attempt at getting different kinds of fruits into her diet. I blended it up with crushed ice and gave it to her in a cup with a straw. But because she's cutting so many teeth, drinking cold beverages is hard for her right now, so when she tasted it she looked at me, shook her head and said, "Hot!"

"No, it's cold," I told her.

"Hot!"

We talked for awhile about the differences between hot and cold, and eventually she said, "Co." But I am not sure she quite understood that the reason the smoothie hurt her mouth was not because it was scalding, but because it was ice-cold.