BrooklynGirl

Suggestion

It's time for the election to end. This kind of shit needs to stop.

Or maybe we just need to have a news blackout until the 4th?  Until then we can all focus on Halloween and its aftermath.

AWOL

Apologies for my absence: I've been potty training.  These past few weeks have tested my parenting mettle like none other: how to encourage without pressuring yet subtly conveying to The Boy that he HAD to use the potty if he wanted to keep going to school (and he really likes school).

Mostly, he's been successful (I wonder if I can find balloons to mark this milestone).  He's been in underwear during the day for two weeks and though he usually has at least one accident everyday, he saves those accidents for home. 

It has been draining for us both.

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We have an offer on the apartment.  It is both a relief (every conversation with our lawyer seems to conclude with him saying, "Do you know how bad the market is?) and a disappointment, as this makes our exodus complete.  We're trying desperately to get to contract.  We'll see.

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Now 16 months, The Girl is at a hilarious and frustrating stage where she is trying so hard to communicate and yet falls just short of making herself understood much of the time.  My favorite of her behaviors:

• She stands in front of the CD player and points at it, shaking her hips from side to side to let us know that it is time to dance
• She loves to jump and though she has yet to succeed in getting both feet off the floor at once, after each earth-bound attempt, she congratulates herself by clapping and yelling, "Yay!"

My least favorite behavior: 

• She is routinely up at 5:30 a.m., loudly demanding a bottle.

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I have yet to really find my groove here.  One by one, the days are not so bad, but I still often feel like I'm in survival mode.  If this deal with the apartment does go through, we will have to make some more permanent decisions about where we end up.  It more than likely won't be here and wondering where it will be makes me tired.

How are you?

The Balloon Thing

I am still confused about the balloon thing.  I spend a truly bizarre amount of time contemplating balloons tied to people's mailboxes.  I am missing something.

For example, yesterday I spied a Boston Red Sox balloon tied to the mailbox at a nearby house.  First game of the ALDS, I know, but how did this one balloon get there?  Is the person who lives in that house such a Red Sox fan that s/he has a helium tank and cases of balloons just begging for the post-season?  Did someone send the person in this house a single balloon just for the occasion?  Are there more Red Sox balloons in the house?  Did the person who lives in the house wake up that morning and say, "Hey!  ALDS--gotta get my balloon!" 

Maybe the person in this house was hosting a huge baseball watching bonanza, but the game started at 10 ET, and I can't imagine it was a huge crowd here in the sleepy, sleepy suburbs.  And the house was awfully quiet when I drove past it at 8:45.*

I don't know why I care, but I wonder about the balloons.  All the time.

Any avid balloon fans out there who can explain the phenomenon to me?

*I wasn't actually stalking the balloon: I was on my way home from Open House at The Boy's school.

Wednesday Wrap Up

I have been remiss in thanking you all for your advice.  I've read everything you had to say and more, and I've done...nothing.  

Well, almost nothing.  I've adopted this basic plan: I've stuck to whole milk, but reduced the amount she drinks (from roughly 24 to 18 ounces per day).  I've been choosing snacks and foods that are lower in sugar (for example, oat bran pretzels instead of animal crackers).  I've been serving her vegetables as the first part of her meal and experimenting with different preparations (right now we're big into roasted carrots and zucchini). 

We'll see what happens.  If you have further thoughts on the subject (beyond, "My God, you've been giving her animal crackers?"*), I'm all ears.

*****

Otherwise, I spend most of my time wringing my hands over the state of the economy and the election and the same things everyone else is worried about.  Our apartment in Brooklyn is on the market, which is such spectacularly awful timing that it makes me laugh when it doesn't make me weep.

As my husband observed, no one's going to buy an apartment (even one as lovely and well priced as ours) without the Bailout.  Is anyone even lending money anymore?  Yet I'm still not sure I can really get behind it.  I mean, I never even took Econ 101, but aren't free markets supposed to be free?  Aren't complete financial meltdowns the (incredibly high) price we have to pay for that freedom?  

   

*Only rarely!  As a treat!  And they were organic!  Sheesh.