Day 486 - An Independent Study of Child Bribing (a.k.a. The Attainment of Toddler Delicates)

As a guy, there are certain things that you're supposed to be uncomfortable with. For me, one such thing has always been wandering through a women's clothing department. It doesn't matter if Bethany is accompanying me or not. It just feels as if I'm breaking some kind of unwritten rule and it's only a matter of time until the proper authorities, or I guess, loss prevention agents, are called to deal with me in harsh fashion.

Of course, the women's clothing department isn't the only place I feel like I don't belong. As I learned this past Friday, the little girls' department also makes me results in creeper-esque feelings. Also, for the wordsmiths out there, can someone confirm that creeper-esque is a real (or real enough) word?

With Ellie deep in the throes of potty training, Bethany and I have been promising incentive after incentive to Ellie upon her success. Chocolate chips, blueberries, grapes, screen time, the great outdoors. All have been used to some degree of success. However, there was one thing we promised that really got Ellie excited for potty training: the promise of owning her very own underwear.

While we had every intention of buying Ellie her very own underwear, we expected it to be further on down the road in our potty training adventures. However, nothing changes a timeline like the Friday morning discovery that we only had three diapers left. Therefore, as soon as Target opened for the day, Ellie and I set out to stock up, not on diapers, but on training pants and Ellie's long-awaited underwear.

For the record, typing 'underwear' into Giphy is an unsafe proposition. Therefore, feel free to enjoy Baby Groot dancing.

The first stop inside Target was the baby department to find a box of training pants for Ellie to try. If I'm being completely transparent, the purchase of diapers always makes me a little uncomfortable as well. Yes, they're not for me or anything. However, it's just easier to not admit that the human body has a way of producing waste. For the record, I am more than willing to concede that yes, I am completely bizarre.

After picking up the box of training pants, Ellie and I set out on a grand quest to find underwear for her. Starting in the little girls' department, I was first overwhelmed by just how many varieties there are. Approximately 15 different princesses had their images gracing the front and back of underwear. In addition, there were also Star Wars and superhero-branded garments as well. Hardly what I expected to find in the girls' department. Despite all of the varieties offered, there was not a single one to be found in Ellie's size. With that, we wandered back to the baby and toddler section to search further.

It didn't take long for us to find exactly what we were looking for. With that, I released Ellie from the cart and set her down in front of the rack. My expectation was that Ellie would peruse the rack until she finally found that special underwear that would stand out to her above all others. To my chagrin, that's not what Ellie had in mind. 

Starting with a non-descript package of princess underwear, Ellie proceeded to enthusiastically toss package after package of underwear into the cart. It took a little time to convince her to stop but once I finally did, there was a choice to be had.

From my point of view, I found it unlikely Ellie needed to purchase approximately 42 pairs of underwear. Therefore, I helped her whittle down her choices until one remained: a 10-piece package consisting of different colors and designs. Lucky for me, there was not a single princess to be found in said packaging.

Now that it is three days after the fact, I can assure you that save for one very special pair of underwear, we are still relatively unsuccessful in our potty training venture. However, if that one pair can get us over the metaphorical hump, then we'll wash that pair each and every night. I guess all that's left to say is Long Live the Fox Underwear! #DaddyWrite

Day 483 - Four Simple Words

Do you ever just sit back and think about how complex the English language is?

Even though it's acknowledged as one of the easier languages in the world to learn, there are still a lot of intricacies to it. The whole past-present tense tends to trip up even the most seasoned English speaker from time-to-time. Also of note is plural versus singular; I vs. we and other things along those lines. Then, of course, we can't forget about verbs, pronouns, adjectives, etc. 

Confession, even as a 32-year-old adult, I still get tripped up anytime someone asks me to differentiate between the aforementioned three. Despite my shortcomings in that area, I still have the ability to speak and write well (or at least, I think I do).  

I've been thinking about this topic more often due to the fact that Ellie is becoming more and more fluent with her speech. In fact, I feel like she's been taking broad leaps just over the past week or so.

Ever since she first started speaking in sentences, Ellie has gravitated towards speaking in the third person. 

"Ellie eat apple."

"Ellie drink water."

"Ellie sleep stuffed animals."

"Ellie play Legos."

The examples could go on and on and on. For the past couple of months especially, it's felt like I've been trying to have a conversation with the Incredible Hulk while conversing with my daughter. However, despite any shortcomings, it's still much easier it is to figure out what Ellie wants since she started developing her conversational skills. 

However, this isn't a broad, overarching story about her conversational skills. Instead, it's a story about one sentence, uttered from her lips that served to warm my heart to the nth degree.

Aww.

After a morning of playing at the park, Ellie and I returned home to eat lunch together before I sentenced her to a nap. I say 'sentenced' because to her, a nap sometimes feels like an actual prison sentence instead of the good thing that it is.

First of all, I gave Ellie the option of choosing what her lunch would be. I had always planned on leftover sloppy joes for myself with Ellie getting to finish off our leftover pasta. Ellie would have none of that, though. In her little mind, it's not fair for us to be eating different things. I'm not sure if it's because she feels like she's getting slighted or feels like I'm getting slighted. Regardless, the end result was both of us eating pasta.

I heated Ellie's pasta up first, allowing her to sit down and eat while I heated up my own. It's a good thing I did as by the time I had sat down, Ellie had already polished off her plate of pasta and was asking for more. With little alternative, I shoveled a couple of scoops of my pasta onto her plate. It quickly disappeared too.

While conventional wisdom would make you think Ellie would be full after polishing off both plates of pasta, that was not to be. With my daughter still requesting more food, I opened our increasingly bare refrigerator to look around before settling on a lonely apple in the crisper drawer. After slicing the apple up, I brought the slices back to our table to share with Ellie. 

Shortly after I finished eating my four slices of apple, Ellie again noticed a discrepancy in our food supply. Therefore, she proceeded to rectify the situation by loving feeding me bites of her apple. When I asked her why she would do such a thing, her response was heartwarming. "I like my daddy." 

**Stock photo**

It's nuts how four little words can mean so much. First of all, it's just really cool to see my daughter speaking in complete sentences and getting all word usage correct. Second, and much more importantly, I've always felt like Ellie values me less than she values Bethany. Given the option, she will always choose to hang out with her mommy over me. Therefore, to hear her say that she actually does like me means an awful lot.

Now, I think I'm just curious to see what she says next. After all, it's not a far stretch for her to go from saying "I like my daddy" to "I appreciate my father", or more likely, "I can't stand you, Dad!" #DaddyWrite 

I'm too cool for the likes of you, Dad.

Day 479 - Ellie Versus the Potty

I've recently become aware of what is likely a little-known parenting insight. The older one's child becomes, the more time and effort it takes to keep up with said child. I know, I know. It's groundbreaking information! 

If you need further proof, check out the #DaddyWrite blog archives. Over the past year, my musings have dropped from 3 to 4 times a week to a miniscule 1 to 2 times a week. The fact that Ellie now only naps once a day for a couple of hours combined with pure exhaustion on my side has led to me not making writing a priority. In all honesty, that's a decision I'm certain future Jesse and future Bethany will lambast me for.

However, I still feel the importance in marking certain occasions in Ellie's life. It just so happens that this occasion is one marked with more pure exhaustion (for Ellie and me) than any that has preceded. The time has come to tell the epic tale of Ellie versus the potty.

I realize that the majority of my reader base has successfully potty-trained a child at one time or another. However, I never realized just how exhausting the process could/would be. In all of my naivety, I believed Ellie was a magical child capable of one day deciding to use the potty for herself with no training whatsoever (Wouldn't that be the best?). Now that she's two years old, it's become evident to me that she is likely incapable of single-handedly training herself to use a toilet. Therefore, Bethany and I have been forced to step up and train her accordingly.

Don't get me wrong here as we've been working with her on using the potty over the last couple of months. That being said, we've really been encouraging her much, much more over the past week.

As is the case in learning any new skill, persistence and consistency is the key. Apparently learning to urinate and defecate in a porcelain bowl is no exception to the rule. Therefore, in order to practice the persistence and consistency that is much needed, today marked Day 1 of a new teaching aid: the 30-minute timer.

To paraphrase the "great" Vin Diesel, today, we're living our lives 30 minutes at time. In between potty breaks, we can do whatever we want. We can swing or play with Legos. We can read books or watch Curious George on TV. We can even make a quick Chick-Fil-A run to get breakfast (Ellie's idea, not mine). However, once that timer blares with the intensity of a siren, Ellie and I both know what it means. 

What? Is it because I called you "great"?

We'll quickly bound up the stairs to the bathroom, me first with Ellie shortly behind. Once there, I will sit down on the floor and help my daughter remove (as she likes to call them) her sweater pants and her diaper. Ellie will then (irrationally) remove her shirt before hopping up onto the toilet via her stepstool. There she will sit as I read through two or three of the six library books we currently have. As you can guess, by the time noon rolled around, we had already been through all of the books multiple times. If that's not a path to insanity, I don't know what is.

Once the deed has been done, she'll hop down from the toilet and allow me to put her diaper back on. Then she'll redress herself before returning to playtime with the knowledge that we will be repeating the process again in 30 minutes.

"But I don't want to use the potty again in 30 minutes, Daddy." (In all truthfulness, this pic was taken a week earlier when Ellie got her hand slapped for pinching Daddy.)

I'd be lying if I said I was enjoying the process of potty training my daughter. However, I couldn't be more proud of her progress. She actually went from 6:00 am this morning until 2:30 this afternoon without a diaper change. When I finally gave in and changed her, it wasn't so much a result of a wet diaper as it was the sticky parts of the diaper no longer stuck.

Of course, once Ellie 100% masters potty training, I'll have a whole new set of problems. Chief among them is having to find my daughter a bathroom with an open stall approximately every 30 minutes. If you're a guy, then you realize that's not the easiest proposition in the world. That leaves me with 2 options: tell her to hold it or swallow my pride and knock on the women's restroom begging for admittance. Truth be told, I'm not looking forward to either option. 

Although, if sitcoms have taught me anything, it's that women's restrooms always have a couch. So I guess that's a positive. #DaddyWrite

Day 473 - This Day Bites

Actually, 'bites' wasn't my first choice for a title when writing this blog. However, I feel it's important to make sure I'm keeping #DaddyWrite on the PG level, PG-13 at worst. The way I see it, if there's a word that I don't really want Ellie to use as a two-year-old (since she repeats everything), then I should probably avoid using it, even if it is just in print.

Not Bagel Bites...although those would be pretty awesome.

I realize there's plenty of folks out there who read #DaddyWrite semi-regularly and feel like I'm living the dream life. After all, staying at home all day and playing with a toddler can't be all bad. There's definitely good and bad days though and today marked one of those bad days.

It all started this morning with a free Breakfast Scramble Bowl courtesy of Chick-Fil-A. Ok, I admit any story beginning with free Chick-Fil-A generally doesn't constitute a bad story. Around the 8:00 hour, I loaded Ellie up and the RAV and headed towards the west end of Barry Road to claim our prize. After a quick run through the drive-thru, I had our breakfast in hand and headed back home to eat it.

Now, what happened next really is my fault but that doesn't make it any less irritating. For some reason, I was feeling lazy and wanted to watch some television while sharing the Breakfast Scramble Bowl with Ellie. Therefore, we set up shop on the couch right next to each other, alternating bites. 

MMM...scramble.

When we reached the bottom of the bowl, Ellie promptly hopped down from the couch and took it upon herself to grab our trash off of the footstool despite my many objections. It wasn't so much her desire to help that bothered me. Instead, it was the opened packet of salsa laying on the lid that happened to have trails of salsa running down the sides of the bag. It was that very bag of salsa that Ellie chose to place directly on the footstool leaving a small puddle of salsa for me to then clean.

I will admit that I'm 97% certain I was overreacting to the situation. However, that didn't stop me from verbally chastising my daughter for her inability to listen as I cleaned off the footstool. What was Ellie's reaction? To throw herself on the ground, face down, and repeatedly scream "Nap!" over and over. So with that, Ellie went to bed to take a morning nap.

While the morning nap was once a thing of beauty for yours truly, it has now become a sheer horror. With Ellie generally only taking one nap a day, the existence of a morning nap means it is unlikely she will sleep again before bedtime. If you're doing the math, that makes for a very, very,very long afternoon.

Because math...

In this instance, that very, very, very long afternoon was filled with a seemingly overabundance of energy coupled with an enormous lack of listening. In other words, there was lots of screaming, crying, and throwing of toys throughout the afternoon...from both of us. Actually for the record, I didn't throw toys. That was all Ellie.

Finally, at long last, 4:30 had arrived and it was time for our traditional afternoon phone conversation with Bethany as she drove home from work. At least I thought that was the case as approximately five minutes into our phone call, I received a phone call from a friend. Viewing it as out of the ordinary, I hung up with Bethany and answered the phone call to hear some very tragic and disheartening news.

I don't want to trivialize said news by mentioning it in a blog post as it's neither the time or place as family and friends are undoubtedly still coming to terms with it. However, I will say that it really provided me with some much needed perspective. Even though I have rough days with Ellie, the truth is that nothing she does is really all that bad. If anything, I just need to ensure I'm enjoying every moment I have with her.

Because sometimes one's blog needs cute pictures.

I'll close with this (even if it does seem a little dark for #DaddyWrite standards). I don't care who you are or what you're doing right now. Take out your phone and put the following number in your contacts: 1-800-273-8255. That's the number for the National Suicide Prevention Hotline. I feel positive that I'll never need it for myself. However, I want to have it ready in case I ever need to give it to someone else. I hope you feel the same way. 

Until next time. #DaddyWrite

Because sometimes one's blog needs more cute pictures.