'Weather' We Like It Or Not, It's Trike Time

We’ve been having some mild weather, which is perfect for getting out and doing things, and Brigid loves going outside. The other day, Jack and I took her for a ride on the tricycle she got from Santa this year. It’s a Radio Flyer that comes with a handle you can help steer with. Brigid was starting to get the hand of pedaling but steering? Not so much. So the removable handle came in handy. After working our way down the sidewalk, we went to the playground at Oak Street School so she could run around a little bit and swing on the green swings. By the way, the red house in the background of the swing photo is ours. Never the best time of year to view it.


It’s still quite wet out, so there’s not a lot of playing on the equipment yet. But a tricycle ride was the perfect after-dinner activity, especially since Margaret and Patricia were at their friends’ house for the night. The Sangers are a maple syrup family, and the sap is boiling. The girls were invited to help in the maple house. Next weekend is the famed Sanger’s Pancake Breakfast – or, as Judy Sanger says, pancakes in a tent. It’s the harbinger of spring. People wait for it like the do the sighting of the first robin. In fact, last year at this time, Uncle Chris was visiting, and we took him to the pancake breakfast for dinner. Can’t beat breakfast for dinner!

Brigid had her well-child visit last week and is doing well for her height and weight. The diaper question isn’t resolved – the kid has absolutely no interest, almost a revulsion at the thought of getting on the potty. She’s perfectly happy to be a diaper girl. She’d much rather be a naked girl, but even that plan backfires because when she is a naked girl and needs to go, she asks to be a diaper girl. You can’t even coax her on the potty. But her sisters were both 3 when they decided it was time. I’m concerned that a recent spate of constipation may be getting in the way. But I’m not worried that we’ll be sending her to school in diapers – I am looking forward to not having to buy them, however.

Margaret, Patricia and I spent last Saturday at a scrapbook crop in town. It was the third this group has held as a fund-raiser for their ministries. As far as we’re concerned, it’s not long enough, but we’ll take what we can get. It was a lot of fun for the three of us, and I’m hoping we can go to a shorter one this Saturday in town as well. Both Margaret and Patricia enjoy the activity, which is something we can do together. And we get work done on our pages. We’ll see if Daddy can weather one more Saturday with Baby B on his own.


B O N U S P H O T O
Brigid decided the other day to just put her bike helmet on and go about her business. Here she's investigating photo negatives.

More Pretty Princesses Than You Can Shake a Scepter At

Well, our toddler is now officially 3, which explains everything. Three-year-olds are mini-adults -- they know everything and they know nothing, they relish in their Bossy McBossy-ness and they vacillate between being a super help and a super hindrance. Brigid enjoyed her birthday, which began on the actual day, March 12, with a balloon bouquet to greet her in the morning. She wore her Baby Gap birthday girl tee shirt and birthday cake pants to school and really enjoyed being the center of attention. She was very cute, telling everyone she was three on her birthday. I made cupcakes that said Birthday Princess on them and she and her friends at school got to have them at snack time. When she returned home, she found three pink roses waiting for her with a card, Happy Brithday Brigid, from Your Secret Pal, another tradition mysteriously being upheld. Whoever this Secret Pal is, it's costing her or him big bucks by the time all three have collected over the years.

At dinner, she opened presents from us and I made her a brownie cake. The girls gave her DVDs -- "Kung Fu Panda" (don't ask) and "Robots," both of which she has seen and enjoyed. I also got her a DVD version of "Babe," because the video tape version we have is bad. And, we gave her a pretty princess dress that is actually a real dress she can wear for Easter, if it lasts that long. Easter dresses are less expensive than play dress-up princess dresses. Go figure. After a round of "Happy Birthday to You," Daddy had to go back to work, but Brigid went to bed with a smile on her face because she was now three (although when you ask her, "How old are you?" she'll still say "Two." Old habits are hard to break.)

We had Grandma and Granddad Downs and the Godparents, Auntie Shell and Uncle John, over for dinner and presents on Saturday. Michelle's boys, Josh and Jacob, were also in attendance, which as great because they -- especially Jacob -- played with Brigid all night, much to her delight. She loves Josh and Jacob. And Jacob has a real affinity for Brigid. Auntie Shell gave Brigid a very cute Fisher Price baby doll and equipment set, with a stroller, a baby swing and bassinet. Note to Michelle: If you ever again give Brigid anything in miniature that takes longer to put together than it's real-life-size counterpart, you'll be over putting it together yourself. In the end, with bloody digits bandaged and equipment cleaned, the play set was very cute and much loved. Uncle John gave Brigid (read: All of us) a gift card to the movies. Being three and a non-licensed passenger in the car, I'm afraid any movie she takes in will have to be with the rest of us. Oh, well, another case of the whole benefiting from the one. Grandma and Granddad gave our pretty princess plenty of pretty princess dress-up clothes. She is all set for any ball that may come her way. One of the "hightlights" of the night was cutting into the Princess Cake, at least it was for me.

Today is St. Patrick's day, and it's unfortunate that any of the Disney princesses didn't hail from the Emerald Isle because then she'd have been able to wear a green princess dress. As it is, she went to school this morning wearing a green velvet holiday dress. I may have said before in this blog that I've decided if she wants to wear her "special occasion" dresses, she can. I have too many memories of dresses that Margaret and Patricia wore once because I was going to "save them for special occasions," only to have them outgrown before those occasions came around again. So, she'll go to school in velvet and taffeta any time she wants as long as she's already worn the thing at least once before.

Testing Limits -- of Patience and What the Human Body Can Endure

Brigid hasn’t had a very good time of it lately, being sent home Friday from Sibley 45 minutes after we dropped her off. The center called around frantically trying to reach one of us to say she had thrown up three times in the 45 minutes after we left her on their doorstep. Jack had the car, so they finally got him at home. He brought her home and spent the rest of the day sitting by her side while she threw up and spiked a fever. I got a ride home from a co-worker and took over the sitting part. She had her last bout about 8 p.m. – just about 12 hours after the first. It was weird. All of the sudden, she was fine. She went to bed, had no problems, woke up Saturday raring to go.

That Saturday afternoon Jack and I went to Lowe’s to check out refrigerators (more on that later). Then, I went to the Y to walk on the treadmill and Jack took Brigid and Patricia to the rec swim. Margaret had her friend, Natalie, over for the night. They hung out while the swimmers were gone, then, once they got home, Jack took Brigid out to stomp in mud puddles, which she loves to do. After dinner, we all went to the mall for a few hours to burn off steam and let the girls hang out on their own but not really since we were there, too. Brigid loves running around the mall, and has learned how to skip with one leg. It’s a weird, hybrid mix that’s not quite the young toddler gallop and not quite a true two-legged skip. But she’s miles ahead of either of the other two at this age, who only learned to skip once in Miss Nancy’s tap class. That, for Brigid, is six months off.

Sunday we had our weekly replacement of the refrigerator ritual. I think it’s the way to keep a new appliance in the home – buy one, call them to come and get it a week later, then do it all over again. We’ll never have an old refrigerator this way. It’s actually a major pain. We got rid of our old frig after about 15 years (it was used when we bought it before Margaret was born). In the end, the thing was held together with duct tape. So, hooray! We got a new one. Lowe’s delivered it two Sundays ago. We went bold – it was black! It matched the façade of our dish washer. I felt so cosmopolitan! Then, after it got up to temperature, it sounded like the dish washer, so in that, it matched. You could hear the thing out in the living room. I thought it would “settle down” or something. But after a few days of living with the loudest refrigerator I’d ever heard – even our old one wasn’t that loud – I called Lowe’s to complain. They didn’t give me a hard time, and I was armed for bear in case they did. The refrigerator was responsible, in part, for the day care center having such a hard time tracking us down. After we dropped her off that Friday, we went up to Lowe’s to look at other models, thinking maybe we needed to trade up. But the price difference between the model we had and a “better” one was about $300. They weren’t better, ie., they didn’t have any sturdier shelving or brackets. They were just bigger and some had ice makers. But we listened to the model we did have, turned on, in the cavernous store and it was silent. We left to think about our options, and that’s when the plans for the day changed and Brigid came home. That’s why we were looking at refrigerators on Saturday. They came on Sunday to exchange the unit, and we spent another Sunday morning taking things out of a refrigerator while we waited for delivery of a new one. At least this time, we’d already cleaned and dumped all the old stuff, so it wasn’t as much of a pain. They brought the new one and it hums along the way it was meant to.

So, Brigid returned to school on Monday no worse for wear. She had a great day, and has been talking every day about her upcoming birthday and being a pretty princess for her birthday (she’s a pretty princess everyday.) Tuesday morning, I no sooner got to my office when the phone rang and it was the center saying to come get Brigid. She had a huge explosion in her pants – big, huge. I guess it was quite the mess. So, for the second time in four days, we were picking the baby up from day care. I got her home and she was absolutely … fine. They said she had to be 24 hours diarrhea-free, literally. 24 hours. So, at 9:45 a.m., I dropped her off today. I think it was just a combination of too much juice and raisins. But, we’ll see. So far, so good. No frantic calls saying to come get our kid with the bodily fluids problem.

Meanwhile, through all of this, Margaret and Patricia have been gearing up for state math testing while Brigid has been gearing up for her own testing – of her limits and boundaries. She’s got an “A” in almost-3-year-old behavior.