ugh

This morning with Casper was sort of reminiscent of the bad old two year old days of screaming fights over getting dressed. Or the bad old four year old days of the same (remember that time mr. flea had to drive Casper to school in her underpants?) She did not want to wear any of the choices she had (i.e. everything that was clean - I was not limiting her choices). She ended up going to camp in a YMCA t-shirt and plaid shorts that she likes but I agree are a little bit too small, and there were floods of tears and I had to basically leave her there crying, with no support from the stupid (male) counselors (and no help from Casper at pulling herself together).

We've had a lot of trouble with clothes this summer. Nothing is right. A couple of weeks ago I went through all her clothes with her and pulled out everything that didn't fit or she said she didn't like. (Including two brand new pairs of Gap Kids shorts that she picked out.) This left nearly nothing, with a special shortage on the bottom. This weekend she picked two new pairs of shorts at Old Navy and I told her that was it as far as me buying her new clothes this summer. But of course they are both in the laundry, and I refuse to do extra laundry simply because Casper can't frickin decide what she wants to wear.

I have no idea what the problem is, and while I'm somewhat sympathetic, I feel like we are offering her as much autonomy about clothing choices as is reasonable. She can wear anything she owns - even jeans even though it's 90 degrees - and at this point she has had input into the purchase of almost all the clothes she owns. I explained this morning about the laundry and the environment and the fact that doing laundry is work for me.

I think some of her social anxiety about the YMCA is getting focused onto the clothing issue. I just don't know what to do about it, beyond what we are already doing.

Dillo at 2 years 11 months

Since we do have another kid, although he causes much less angst than no. 1 (whether by virtue of temperament, birth order, gender, neglect, or all of the above), hereforth: Dillo is nearly 3!

He pooped in the potty for the second time this morning, and won his prize of 3 M&Ms. (Casper cried.) We're trying to work with him in the evenings and mornings to sit on the potty; it's really hard, and if we had a week off work to focus on it I bet we'd make more progress. (Casper got the major part of potty training down at daycare, but Dillo is not picking it up there.) He does a big pee in the mornings, so I have been sitting him on the potty after he wakes up. He insists there's no pee, puts on a pull-up, and pees 5 minutes later. I'm seeing a lot more awareness of when he is going, even in the past week, though. I talked to him last night about moving up to the Primary Room with Miss Debbie when he uses the potty, and hope that will motivate him as well. Several of his friends have moved up to Primary, and he gets to visit, and likes Miss Debbie.

He likes to eat yogurt, and gets it out of the fridge himself and can open the Yo Baby cups, but not the tubes. He fetches his own silverware and can get the milk or juice out of the fridge while I get the cup. He's distracted about food in the evenings and often doesn't eat a proper dinner. He loves fruit (grapes, strawberries, blueberries, watermelon, cantaloupe, apples) and pasta and rice, not big on pizza or anything spicy or cheese or tomato. He eats cheerios for breakfast, mostly.

He won't nap at the weekend unless taken out on a country drive, but does nap at day care. Getting him to sleep is a fairly big chore - he's rarely asleep before 9:30pm, and can chatter away with the best of them. But he almost always sleeps through the night, and is up at a reasonable hour, usually 6:30-7.

He likes to run in his "faster sneakers" (we recently got him new ones in a size 8 - his feet finally grew!) and ride his big wheel and play with the squirt guns outside. He's been playing with our neighbor Spencer (turned 4 in May) much more lately. He and Casper have been building hideouts with blankets by the couch and he likes to do whatever Casper does. He enjoys painting. No figural drawings yet. We can read longer books (The Roly-Poly Pudding; he was quite concerned about Tom's fate!) and I need to switch things around on the bookshelves a bit to keep up with his newer interests. He can sing the ABC song and recognizes a few letters (A, O) and some numbers (2, 4). Knows a lot of songs from school - John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt, Five Little Ducks.

He's still very cute and charming. Round, open face, round head. Definitely stockier than Casper was at this age. We weighed him at my mother's and he was about 32-33 pounds. I need to figure out what we're going to do for his 3 year checkup (thinking of finding a pediatrician rather than go back to our doctor - they are just not set up for kids, no kid flu shot last fall, etc.) And his birthday!