purple pants & the big potty

some good news to report on the toilet-training front...

a) the bean has now been in panties (instead of nappies) for 1 week now. once she realised how much more comfy trainers are to nappies (with their bulk), she's insisted on wearing panties all the time. (although we put her in all-in-one nappies for night sleeps still.)

there is the occasional 'accident', when she'd come tell me she needs to go wee wee after she'd done it. but i try to stave off these incidents by prompting her very regularly: e.g. after breakfast, before heading out the house, coming home, after dinner or snacks etc.

b) although we have been ready to put the bean on the "big potty" (i.e. the adult potty) for some time - what with buying at least 2 children's toilet seats for her use - she was weepily resistant to using it, adamant to stick to her "small potties". in fact, she was so resistant to the whole idea, she actually threw a HUGE tantrum after i'd tried her on it for a few days, saying, "no more, mummy, okay? i don't sit on big potty."

but we had a breakthrough recently. our montessori under 3s facility has only 1 restroom - with a kid's toilet seat for use. i'd been observing the bean carefully the whole morning and noticed that she was getting a bit antsy and that enough time had elapsed from the last wee to warrant a visit to the restroom asap. so i brought her there. she was willing to come with me. but once i told her that there wasn't a small potty, only a potty with a child's toilet seat, she immediately said, "mummy go wee wee. i don't sit on big potty."

i then gave her a choice. i told her that she could either hold it till we got home, or she could wee in the big potty (with the kid's seat installed). i said that she must not wee in her panties as i would get extremely cross. she was by then halfway to the door then she stopped and came back to me and got onto the big potty! impossible to describe how pleased and proud i was. wanted to tell the whole world about it.

anyhow, since that fateful wednesday morning, she has been happy to sit on the big potty. i would now say that she uses it about 60% of the time.

...YAY!

i had a busy day mama

i love this classic phrase from the bean, "i had a busy day" that she trots out every second or third day.

she first used it on dh about 5 weeks ago when dh came home one evening and asked what she did at "school". he reported to me that she appeared not very interested in his question and merely replied, "i had a busy day daddy" and walked off.

anyhoo, 2 days ago she actually elaborated on her busy day by telling me the things and places she'd been to - a first! - "i went to toy library. i went to playground. i see xxx at school. i had a busy day mama."

1st baby proms failure?

took the bean to a baby proms at the opera house yesterday thinking that she would enjoy a different performance experience - one that combined art with music.

it turned out to be a rather more cerebral and staid affair although quite a number of kids did get 'it'. however, the bean was not so impressed and i had to keep prompting her on what was happening 'on stage' - really a large plastic screen on which a painter was trying to illustrate the story of a red dot. perhaps because it was a darkened room and the painter was a man (she has an aversion to any strange males of late), whatever the reason, the bean wouldn't keep still for long and at one point she even asked, "mama read me a story" and tried to rifle through my bag.

i asked if she enjoyed it when the performance ended and she said yes. but i wonder if she had really absorbed anything...e.g. the slightly abstracted trees that the artist painted the bean thought were "lollipops" and that the sun he painted was really a "starfish". so maybe the narrative eluded her.

maybe her initial enthusiasm to go to the proms was to see her other set of grandparents. whilst in the car she did shout, "we go see nai nai ye ye in august in opera house!" (i have told her that we would be seeing them in august, but she must take "august" to be an actual place.) well, perhaps her one lesson from this proms is the realisation that they don't reside there afterall.

beauty & the beast OR jekyll & hyde (the toddler version)

today was a pretty good demo of the bean's dual nature a la jekyll & hyde midget-style.

we had to go to a busy shopping centre to sort out our banking and have some "yum cha" (as they call "dim sum" over here). the bean behaved very well for most of the outing. she was happy to play with the bead frame toy at the bank for a while and to listen to a thomas & friends story before she got bored.

then after we took a queue number from the dim sum restaurant we paid a visit to borders. there was a nice children's section in the book store where we found a book about diggers. i told the bean to take it to the reading table and she obediently did so thus allowing me some time to browse the shelves without distraction.

shortly after, though, i thought i'd better pop my head round to see how she was getting on.

she was doing fine without me apparently and appeared to be entertaining 2 ladies who were also sitting at the table. when i came up to them one of them told me that the bean had been reading to herself and pointing things out to them. (she'd the book opened on her lap.) we were soon joined by dh and they asked us the bean's age. (she's the same age as one of the ladies' daughters.) the woman added as she walked away that the bean was very good to sit and read by herself.

at dim sum the bean attracted the attentions of the servers - even though she didn't put in any effort to charm - she was either too busy stuffing her face or turned shy and quiet. still, despite not cooperating, she was rewarded with a chocolate frog by one of the waitresses!

i think things sort of deteriorated after that. perhaps the bean was fatigued; perhaps she was bored by the grownup preoccupations; perhaps chocolate was the bean's kryptonite...whatever. in any case, carpark-bound, as i wheeled her towards an escalator she spied one of those dratted musical mini-rides (where you slot in a small fortune and get 10 seconds of canned music and the airplane/dolphin/car/etc makes vague bumps and shudders). she got very excited and wanted to get out of her pushchair pronto. i pretended not to understand and we wheeled her away kicking and screaming her lungs out, "noooooo! that one! that one! noooooo! i don't go home! i don't go home!" (repeat ad nauseum)

determinedly, i avoided eye contact with anyone as she carried on the titanic tantrum on our long walk to the car. and then when we had to get her out of the pushchair she became the kind of squirmy, screaming monster-toddler i'd always shaken my head and tut-tutted at, the kind one sees devil-spawned by other parents, the kind one thinks ah, but my little angel will never do that...until today.

there was a snowball's chance in hell that she would allow us to put her into her car seat and dh didn't even whisper the idea. i just sat her facing me and pulled the seatbelt over us.

she wailed for a bit more after i calmly told her a fib: the carousel was broken...that's why we didn't see any children on it...(repeat)... soon the lie worked its magic. she was still a bit sobby but she bought it.

once she was calmer i then told her that we were not supposed to let her sit with me: if a policeman saw us he'd get very cross with daddy and mummy and punish us by making us pay a big fine, which is a lot of money.

the bean didn't like that at all. she said, "no. policeman not hurt mummy, daddy. no. i don't let policeman hurt mummy and daddy." i thought that was awfully sweet...from a little demon.