A slight miscalculation

Saturday night during bathtime, as I watched Alice wash herself, I said, "You're turning into such a big girl!"

To which she asked, "Am I a big girl now?" (pronounced: gull-er)

"yes!"

To Alice, though, a being a big girl is synonymous with being fully potty trained. All summer she's resisted potty training since she's still little. So after her bath she was pretty incensed that I was putting a diaper on her. "But I'm a big gull-er!"

Sigh.

Now that school is in (can I get a hallelujah?) and she's finally ready, in her words, "to be trained," she's actually cooperating with it. Makes all the difference in the world.

I'll leave school for a separate post for another day, but let's just talk about kissing for a minute. Peter kisses, specifically. He's just started giving them out, and they are an equal mix of adorable and disgusting. You get a whole mouthful of lips and teeth and always a lot of drool. But he's so happy. Now if I could just stop him "kissing" my shoulder. Because when he hugs my shoulder and leans his face in, I know it's going to turn into a big bite. He's leaving marks on my shoulder. Whatever he does, he does with gusto. And he's always so happy about it. Vampire.

And we did this months ago, but when we switched car seats so he could be forward facing, he was so delighted at the view. And the arm rest that he could finally reach. Now whenever we drive he keeps one hand touching the arm rest, just because he can.

And, talking. Mostly now he says "ball." Because if it isn't a ball or a phone, it isn't really worth his time. He likes the basketball hoop on the side of our new swingset. He'll get a ball and hold it over his head until somebody lifts him up to drop it into the hoop. It's adorable, but I wish he enjoyed the short hoop he could actually reach himself as well. And it doesn't even need to be a ball for him to enjoy it. Socks,  phones, anything can be called a ball. Today while I was trying to untangle a slinky (for the second time in as many minutes, but who's counting?), he kept pelting me with the folded-up wet diaper I'd just removed from his body, yelling, "ball!" If he weren't so sweet, it would have felt a little mean spirited. We'll have to have a family home evening about not bullying mom.