No accidents!

Emily went all day today, in big girl underwear, with no accidents! We're rewarding that, against all my good judgement, with Smarties. I didn't mean to do that but I told her that if she went accident free for a day she'd get a treat. By "treat" I meant the cheapo Barney doll hidden in my closet but to Emily, at least since Hallowe'en, "treat" means candy. Oops. So, while she was pretty taken with the Barney (hey, the guy's wearing a swimsuit - fullpiece!), she was pretty insistent on candy. I saw an opening for some major strides forward re the toilet and went for it. It seems to have paid off. Every time she takes her underwear off and uses the toilet, she gets 3 Smarties. You do what works if it means that you're not cleaning shit off a two-year old bum. Really, it may as well be adult poop at this point. Nasty.

Speaking of poop, Emily has had none of it for going on 4 days tomorrow. I'm concerned and am now lacing her drinks with Colace, a stool softener. This coincides with Hope going down to one big poop a day. Odd.

Hope has also entered an odd phase regarding going down for naps. She'll have none of it easily all of a sudden. Until yesterday, I popped in the soother, laid her down, gave her a kiss, walked out and came back an hour or two later. Now, she cries, grunts and kicks her legs like a ninja master. I worked on it for about 40 minutes this afternoon and did succeed in having her fall asleep on her own, without rocking her (I'm really trying to avoid that) but I couldn't do that tonight. She was so worked up (our fault - we dragged her to the mall when she should have been sleeping late this afternoon) due to lack of sleep that the only thing I could get to stop the crying was t.v. She isn't a crier by nature at all so this was unusual. Poor kid.

We went to the mall to do two things: buy a new dishwasher (finally!) and have Emily check out the big guy himself - Santa that is. Last I checked God was not resident at St. Laurent Shopping Centre. Anyway, Emily had a whale of a time - she was mesmerized by the decorations, all the activity, getting to use the mall toilet, and seeing (other) kids sit on Santa's knee. I didn't offer the chance to her and she didn't ask. Saved me $8.99.

I'm truly pumped about the new dishwasher. Ours has been limping along for over a year now. I think it is original to the house being built in 1988. No kidding. The top rack does not get clean now. The bottom seems to be on its way out too. So, while it might seem extraneous to some, we bought another one. I just don't have enough time in the day to want to use it doing that many dishes.

My first six months home with Emily I never used the dishwasher. I was totally against it unless we had guests. I took the moral high ground regarding the environment and did the dishes everyday. It took me about 30 minutes. Emily napped for 40. That sucked. Then one day, after we had some people over for dinner and we used the dishwasher I decided to screw the environment and embrace the beautiful technology that was sitting in my kitchen. I never looked back.

Well, enough rambling. No photos today but I'll try and get some good ones tomorrow. Hope is humongous. Cute but humongous. I'll try and capture that and show you what I mean.