Travel

I know I always say that I don't like announcing trips on the blog, but I am seriously sweating over here. We have a trip planned to go see my parents and we are scheduled to leave tomorrow morning. Those of you not in a 50 mile radius of a TV might not know there is a huge storm coming across the midwest. And because weather is a fickle science, or St. Louis weather people suck, we don't know if we will get 1 inch or 8 inches. Ice, sleet, snow? Who knows? All schools were cancelled before the first snowflake fell. We have the market cornered on weather related frenzies.

And of course, this is the one time I was super-prepared. We shipped all of our luggage down ahead of time to avoid baggage fees and the risk of our bags not making our tight connection in Atlanta. I have a gallon ziploc full of ringpops, lollipops, goldfish, and fruit leather. We have stickers galore and movies queued up on the iPad for instant viewing.

Listen here, storm. You do your thing today, but get out of here with ample time for the yahoos at Lambert to get their act together. This is not a request.

Someone has a pretty sweet beach outfit and I will be damned if she doesn't get to wear it.

The Drama

Annie has a rolling suitcase that was a gift from Aunt Naynee (Chaney). It is supposed to carry dolls. She uses it to shuttle her wares from time to time, but mostly it is just used to look super-important whilst walking in circles around our house. Only very busy people use rolling suitcases. Toddlers pick up on these things. She'll start carrying a clip board any day now.

On Saturday, Annie was speedwalking with the suitcase. And screaming with with delight because, HOT DAMN, walking with a suitcase is a good time! No? Just her? Thought so. I digress...

After a few minutes of suitcase racing, we hear an epic crash and silence, then annie moaning. We rush four steps to the other room/other side of the house and see Annie prone on the ground next to the suitcase.

Mom/Dad: Annie! Are you ok?
Annie (in most pathetic voice ever): yaaaaahhhhh

And then she springs up and is back to it.

2 minutes later...CRASH! Repeat the above scenario/dialogue.

This happened about four times. We found it strange that she was a) falling so often, and b) recovering so quickly from these seemingly loud accidents. It is at this point that I realize we could have taken the suitcase away, but since she didn't really seem to be getting hurt-hurt, and was having fun while suitcasing, it never crossed my mind. We did have the presence of mind to start following her to see what was going on. After the fourth time. Quick learners, we are not.

Imagine our surprise when we observed Annie, just when she thought she was out of our supervision, hurling the suitcase to the ground with a thunderous crash, and then gingerly laying down beside it only to start moaning. We went through the whole "are you ok?" scene with her, but because we were laughing this time, instead of the concern in the previous events, I think she knew the jig was up.

So while we are thankful that our daughter is not as clumsy as we had originally thought, we now know she's an accident faking drama queen. Perhaps clumsy isn't so bad.

My Wild Valentine

Valentine's Day is all about love. And sweetness. And candy. And notes to your friends and boyfriends with candy and sweetness and love.

But when you are one and a half, it's about a doughnut for breakfast and a ring pop packed in your lunch along with some old school valentine's cards for your "friends" (also known as Sitter Jen's children).

But even when you are one and a half, you know to enjoy the sweetness on this special day.

A big sticky chocolate valentine's day kiss to all of you.

MWAH!

Look who's talking

I guess Annie's been "talking" for a while now. In between one hundred thousand "ella...ella...ellla...ELLLAAAAAAAA!" (cinderella) screamings and proclamations of "ahhh done!" I have noticed some real words. And some that have become "real" in the adult to toddler communication process.

For example, we only let Annie have one gummy vitamin. For some reason we feel this is an acceptable loophole to the guidlines on the bottle that you are supposed to give two gummies to children over 2. Our medical minds surmised that it surely is acceptable to give one to a one year old. No harm done, I'm sure.
Annie loves the gummies, and after having one, she always screams for more. But we always tell her, "No, you have had your one." To the point where the vitamin is now referred to as a "one". Annie's head might explode when she turns two and is allowed two "ones".

So there are lots of words, but half hardly mean what you think they mean. Or they mean something else and you have to be fluent in Annie to understand. Crayons are A-a's (long A). Binkie is mimi. Teaching a child to speak is a very powerful position, if you think about it. You could really screw someone up, if you were so inclined. Not that we would ever, but there's some potential there.

Which leads me to yesterday. Annie had casually been lolling around with her finger in her ear. Twice she looked at me, finger in ear, and said "huwt" (hurt). Being the aforementioned medical expert, I figured it was a self-inflicted wound from jabbing her finger in her ear. I mean, she just had an ear infection a month ago, which was treated properly with antibiotics. It can't be another ear infection.

But then there was the melting down at stay and play. And the melting down at naptime. And another "huwt" after nap. So I started wondering if my child actually spoke english and was trying to....communicate something to me. Something other than the crazed desire for her cinderella doll or being all done with her dinner.

Doctor was called, appointment was set up, and away we went to get the ears checked. I sounded like an insane person telling the nurse practitioner that annie "told me" her ear hurt. Yes, eating, sleeping, activity levels are all fine. Just that my 20 month old told me. Yes, with words. I noticed a slight sideways glance as she picked up her pointy ear light inspector thing, probably thankful this was the end of the day and she had a limited number of loony mothers with too much time on their hands to deal with. Light goes in the right ear....

"Well, it seems we've got ourselves a good communicator here!"

I try not to rejoice at the fact that my child has an ear infection, but I did do a little inner Mommy happy dance. Sweet, sweet vindication. Bad, bad ear infection.