Practical & Conscientious Parenting
Good Times
Growing Up
14 years
It really hit me yesterday that Mehalia will be nine soon – halfway to official adulthood, at least the beginning of it. She’s been wanting to do a lot more grown up things, like trying a mojito (no rum, extra sugar).
Trying her first (non-alcoholic) mixed drink
Towards the end of second grade, she decided that her style was scarves and headbands, and she had to wear them every day. Of her own initiative she took a shower the night before her first day of a new summer camp, since she wanted to make a good first impression. A few weeks ago she was really happy to help out with her great-grandma’s garage sale, insisting that she be the official money taker.
Calculating change for her customers
I love that she is one of the most creative individuals I’ve ever met. Since she was a toddler she’s been crafting toys from paper, boxes, string, and rocks, and recently she’s developed a signature card design (I’ll have to get a picture of one later).
She knows she wants to be a singer; a few years ago she learned a couple songs with her pop accompanying on guitar, and last year she started looking up lyrics to songs she’s heard and practicing them. I could go on and on about all the things I think are cool about her, but definitely the best part of being her mama is the inspiration she offers to express my own creativity and be the coolest person I can.
She makes new things with everything she finds
Surprise Potty ‘Training’
14 years
Note: Edie is probably going to ask me to remove this post when she’s older…
So, in a previous post I wrote about how we picked up a BabyBjörn Little Potty for Edie when we were in Seattle. We got it thinking it would be nice to have for when she’s older, or maybe for the summer when she can run around with just a diaper on and no diaper cover. We decided to give it a try, though, just for kicks. And…
We have not had a poopy diaper in four days!
We had been noticing that Edie has mainly been pooping in the morning, so we’ve been sitting her up on her Little Potty as soon as she wakes up. She actually seems to enjoy sitting on it a lot, I think because she has a little longer reach into her basket of toys. And like clockwork, about 3-5 minutes after sitting on her Little Potty, she puts it to good use.
Now, I know we don’t have Edie potty trained by any means, but we sure are getting closer to getting ourselves potty trained as parents! It kind of makes me wish we had tried elimination communication earlier, but I feel like Edie is just now falling into a schedule, with her sleep and everything else. It almost feels like it’s been too easy to get her using it. Ashley has started putting her on it after she wakes up from her naps to pee, also, which I think I’ll start doing as well. I’m not confident it will last, but for now it’s pretty fun, and it’s really nice to know that she doesn’t have to sit in poopy diapers!
New Friends
14 years
We spent the weekend before last filming a music video in Kennewick – my bandmate Jonathan’s fam lives there, and he scouted out a sweet spot for filming while he was on a run. A perk to filming there was we got to spend more time with Jonathan’s family, all of whom are mega cool. It also provided an opportunity for Edie to hang out with a little one closer to her age. Jonathan’s sister April and her husband Cameron have a beautiful little boy Grey, who is about 11 months old. It was really fun to watch the two of them interact at such a young age.
A highlight for me was when they had a long stick that each of them wanted in their mouth (of course – where else does anything go?). It looked like this:
- Edie: I want this in my mouth (puts stick in mouth)
- Grey: I want this in my mouth (pulls stick from Edie and puts in mouth)
- Edie: There’s that stick again! I want it in my mouth (pulls stick from Grey and puts in mouth)
- Grey: There’s that stick again! I want it in my mouth (pulls stick from Edie and puts in mouth)
It was something I could imagine older kids fighting or getting upset over, but it seemed like neither one of them understood that the other was taking the stick away.
We also were fortunate to get the requisite bath-time photo:
Edie also got to be in the music video. I selfishly hope that she’ll find this way cool when she gets older, instead of saying “you had me sit on the cold dirty ground with nothing on but a diaper when it was 55° outside just for your weird music video?!” That’s Ashley in the background of this picture with the mouse head on, btw:
