A Few Things About Peanut

There are a few things that have happened this week that I can't ever forget.

1. She pooped in the toilet all by herself! Every time I change her poopy diapers she insists on seeing it. It's like she refuses to think that she actually deposited a dirty investment in her diaper unless she can see proof. Well, I tell her: "Pen, you can see your poop if you go in a toilet," on the off chance that she might actually take me up on that offer. It's a strange incentive, I know.

Pen is pretty good at warning us before she makes her dirty deposit, but I've never quite been able to get her to do it on the toilet. I'll sit her on the toilet for a couple of minutes, she'll pee, ask for her diaper then poop in the diaper about 5 minutes later. This week I was determined would be different. I kept telling her when she was on the potty that I'd go & buy her lots & lots of candy if she pooped on the toilet. SHE DID IT. Funny thing, she wanted to look at her poop more than she wanted the candy. She even insisted on smelling the poop. Go right ahead, my dear. After she smelled it, she just kept chanting, "Eww, disgusting!"

Potty training victory will soon be ours. I just know it.

2. It snowed this week. Penelope LOVES playing in the snow; she especially loves making snowmen & snowballs. The morning after, Pen & I were in my studio working on a project when Penelope noticed the maintenance guys shoveling our walks. Clearly upset by their industriousness, she started banging as hard as she could on the window & yelling at them, "DOP! DOP!! NO CLEAN! NO CLEAN SNOW!!!" She did that for a few minutes before giving up, stomping into the hallway, plopping on the floor & pouting, "Dammit, no clean snow."

First, I'm not swearing anymore & second, she hasn't said that word since Christmas, so you can imagine my shock when she used it. I was also shocked at how well she used it, too. My little girl knows how to swear.

3. Penelope is now in a "toddler bed" a.k.a. her Pteranodon nest. She loves dinosaur train, so we call her tent her Pteranodon nest to get her excited about being in there. We've been laying down the law the last couple of weeks to try & keep her in her tent when she goes down for naps & bedtime. We've had quite a bit of success, too! Penelope now knows that if she gets out, not only will we turn off her doggy light, but we'll shut the door & give her a time out if necessary. We're NOT messing around here. I don't want to be dealing with bedtime training when Felix comes to town!

The other day, she woke up from her nap, got out of her tent, knocked on the door & ran back into her tent to wait for me to get her! I thought it was super adorable. She really is a good little girl.

Poopsicles

Last night after we put Penelope down to bed, I kept hearing whines coming from her room. Normally I let her sort things out on her own (she's a big girl) & fall asleep by herself, but this time I heard her ask specifically for me & water. I couldn't let her down.

I wobbled up stairs & went in her room to ask if she wanted water. Not wanting to make a fuss, I had intentionally left the light off in the room & allowed the light from the hallway to filter in. I couldn't really see much, but when I walked up to the crib to ask Pen what was the matter she said, "Poop!" I couldn't see anything, but I did know she wanted to go potty.

FYI: Penelope calls both pee & poop, poop.

So, I grabbed her to take her to the potty to see if she'd be interested in going & LO & BEHOLD!!! She was naked. Aw, shoot. I turned on the bedroom light to discover what she had been up to. She had taken off all of her clothes, grabbed the toy box next to her bed, emptied the box of its contents & PEED IN THE BOX. She didn't get all of her pee in the box, though; It sprayed all over pretty much everything in her crib.

Awesome. Welcome to potty training.

Penelope & Her Words

Penelope is funny with her words. She's pretty good at pronouncing most things, but every once in a while a few words come out completely wrong.

Here are some of those words:

Peanuts (plural) sounds like penis.

Chalk sounds like cock.

Frog still sounds like f#$%

Flag also sounds like f#$%

Shirt sounds like s$^%

And then there's one word that she knows & says correctly. Yesterday she was playing with something in her car seat & exclaimed, "dammit!" when it dropped on the floor. I wonder where she learned that from.

I've got to start washing my mouth out with soap.

Annie Get Your Gun

Over the fourth of July weekend we ventured over to Grandma & Grandpa Newton's for family dinner. Penelope & Ayden had a crazy fun time playing with the vintage dressups. Penelope especially enjoyed wearing the hard hat & holding either the toy machine gun or toy rifle. I thought it was pretty cute.

Ayden also has an obsession over Penelope's shoes, so she's wearing Ayden's cowboy boots in the pic. So cute.

Reason #18736 Why a Trustworthy Dentist is Important

Our dental experience in California was traumatizing to say the least. We went through one dishonest dentist after another before we found one that we could trust. Why is that?

Upon getting dental insurance here in Utah, I emailed my mom to see who her dentist was as she had been raving and raving about her dentist for years. Dr. Blackwood married the daughter of a family friend, so my mom knew him & always told me that she trusted his medical opinion. As soon as I found out they'd take our insurance, I booked appointments for all of us. Dr. Blackwood's secretary said that it would be okay for Penelope to hang out at my appointment. OK. Nice. I don't like the thought of finding a babysitter.

Today was teeth cleaning day for the Esplin fam, SLC division. Upon walking into the office, Dr. Blackwood greeted me by name & asked all sorts of questions about my parents, Penelope, my family, etc. He even took the time to show Penelope the toys and play with her. Cool!

The dental hygienist took me to get X-rays & start on the cleaning process while Dr. Blackwood spent time playing with Penelope. I was afraid Penelope might cause a ruckus while I was gone, so I set her on one of the chairs with her blanket & my iPhone (which was playing Babe, her favorite pig movie).

While I was in the chair, the secretary came up to me & asked if perhaps Penelope would be more interested in Nemo on the big TV rather than watching Babe on the phone; I agreed, trusting that she'd probably put my phone somewhere. Maybe I should've asked for her to bring it to me, but I'm pretty sure my mouth was full of mirrors & a suction device to really say much of anything.

The cleaning went pretty well & the hygienist and Dr. Blackwood agreed that my teeth were doing really well, save a few broken fillings (darn you blasted crooked California dentists!) and a couple of minor cavities. Dr. Blackwood even went so far as to bust out his really nice camera to take close-up shots of my broken fillings. Yeah, those definitely need to be replaced. I left the chair feeling pretty empowered over my teeth (unusual for dentist appointments in my experience).

Penelope and I sat in the chair while the hygienist & Dr. Blackwood counted her teeth. She was so scared, but she did pretty well. Hopefully next time she'll be more receptive to strangers pointing gloved fingers in her mouth.

Once we were done, Penelope and I headed up to the front to gather our things & get the estimate on the work needed to be done. Where was my phone? I looked all around the lobby & couldn't find it anywhere all while trying to keep Penelope from spilling filtered water all over the floor. She was losing it. I was losing it.

Finally, I asked the secretary if she put it somewhere. She had put it on top of the refrigerator next to the water filter. Not there. The two of us searched through toy bins, under chairs, around plants & no phone. She called it. I called it. I knew the ringer was on, but I couldn't hear it anywhere! I was starting to panic. OH NO. I'm unplugged! What will I do without Tweetdeck! GoogleReader! MAIL! CATAN!!!!!

After about 10 minutes of thoroughly searching the entire office, the secretary started to call patients that were in the lobby around the same time. There was a mother that was there with her son, who could've mistook it for a toy & walked off with it. Perhaps? Nope. Now Dr. Blackwood caught wind of the missing iPhone. He sprung into action.

He recalled a woman (not a patient) who had been waiting for her friend (a patient-also a lawyer), and figures she was the only one that the secretary hadn't contacted about the phone. He called the patient and calmly said something like: One of my patient's is missing her phone. If your friend has it, could you please tell her to return the phone to the office by the end of the day? No questions asked. Otherwise, I'll be contacting the police to get this resolved.

What would you know, the phone was delivered to the dental office next door and in my hands in less than 15 minutes! Seriously. So awesome. I couldn't have been more overjoyed to see my phone! As it turns out this woman had deleted my mail information and was in the process of deleting all of my contacts. She was going to make it hers. What a tool. Who steals a phone? Who steals a phone from a 2 year old in a dental office? Obviously a crazy lady with red glasses.

Moral to the story: don't steal phones & make sure you have a rockstar for a dentist.

CHEESE

Penelope now knows that when I have the camera out she's supposed to say, "Cheese!"


She even puts my camera equipment up to her eye (like a lens or the flash or something) and faces my direction and says, "CHEESE!" like she's the one taking a photo. I tried to see if she would take a picture with my camera, but she backed out. Maybe it's because the camera weighs 15 lbs.

Penelope Video: Bowls for Shoes

Don't worry, I washed them before using them with food.

Siblings

At Scott's birthday party on Thursday, I made Chris, Scott and Lindsay pose for a family photo. Chris boasted of his muscles and Scott suggested that he and Lindsay test them out by jumping on Chris's back. Great idea!

Funny Penelope Videos

I've been emailing these videos around to the grandparents for the last couple of months, may as well start posting them here.



1. Penelope just randomly decides that she's a monkey in the middle of the line at Cafe Rio. She hung off the railing for a good 30 seconds before I could get the video going. Her attempt here is a little distracted, but so cute.



2. Penelope was insistent on wearing my coat sometime last month. She pranced around for a good 2 hours in it!



3. Penelope and I were at a birthday party where she discovered her love for frosting and cupcakes. Her messy face just cracks me up!

Muscles

Chris just bought a power rack for our basement. It's huge. I'm not sure we can fit much of anything else in the basement now.


Last night, Chris and I had a great time working out & being silly. Chris usually takes about 45 minutes to an hour to do his full work out, but last night. . . it took us two hours. My neon red unitard could have been a distraction. Not sure.


I just started the workout regimen that Chris has been doing for the last 5+ months; I'm super sore, but pretty excited about the whole thing!

Thank Heavens for the Internets.

Chris and Scott had fun ripping in half the only telephone book we have in the house.
Of course, Scott was disappointed that we only had one lying around.



Good thing we've got the internets.

All Grown Up

I swear Penelope aged a whole year on her birthday. She just seems so old to me now.



Last Thursday, Penelope and I thought we'd hit up D.I. on our way back from a blogging brunch. While we were browsing the shoe department, Penelope snatched some green rain boots off the shelf. She frantically tore off her shoes to put the boots on.


I tried to take them off, but she wouldn't budge! Well, I guess Penelope needed a new pair of boots. We bought them. She wouldn't even take them off to take a bath! I even tried hiding them from her by putting them on a high shelf in her closet, but she found a way to get them down.

Finally, on Friday we figured out why she had this obsession with her boots. While Linnley was baby sitting, they were watching Kipper (Penelope's favorite show) and Kipper has the same pair of green rain boots! Penelope pointed that out to Linnley by pointing and screaming, "BOOTS!"

Happy Birthday, Goo!

Penelope is TWO now. I just can't believe how fast that went.

My new flash was put to good use this morning!

This morning Penelope woke up at 6am all ready to start her birthday festivities. I made some yummy sticky buns that we used as her "cake". She needed no direction from us to blow out the candles besides a few shrieks of warning when she tried to touch the flame.

Before the sticky buns were done, she was whining and whining. This was our conversation:

Me: Do you want a nana?
P: NO. (more whining)

Me: Do you want some milk?
P: NO. (more whining)

Me: Do you want some candy?
P: NO. (more whining)

Me: Do you want some toast?
P: NO. (more whining)

Me: Do you want some chocolate?
P: NO. (more whining)

Me: Do you want to open some presents?
P: OKAY!!

Oh my goodness. This girl cracks me up.

P.S. Notice the photo is just slightly darker without the flash?

Thanks for Bailing me out, Chris!

Wednesday, Linnley took out her endowments at the Bountiful temple. The night before, I had made arrangements to carpool up with my grandma, and she said, "Missy, just make sure you have your temple recommend before you go!" I'm thinking, "Uh, yeah, grandma, it's ALWAYS in my wallet, and I NEVER go without my wallet."



Just as we finished the 30 minute drive to the temple, I checked in my camera and searched the contents of my purse for my wallet. MIA. It wasn't there! Immediately I figured out that I had taken out my wallet to book some hotel reservations and failed to put it back. As soon as Chris answered his phone he was in action. I have the sweetest husband, to just drop everything and drive up to the temple with the P in tow to give me my golden ticket.


I was happy I brought my camera with me, because it helped to pass the time. It was just beautiful on the temple grounds!


Thankfully, Chris delivered the recommend with plenty of time to spare. We had a great session and now Linnley is one step closer to getting married! I can't believe it's just over 2 weeks away.

Squeaky Clean

Thanks to Chris for bringing me my camera during Pen's bath. Penelope was really cute today in the tub. It sure is a great remedy for a sour mood.

The Awful, Rotten, No Good, Stinking Rat

A few days ago the Esplin laundry room started smelling a little foul. It started out smelling like moldy towels or dirty socks. Nothing new. Then a day or two passed and the smell went from bad to much, much worse. Molly Poop? Possible. Vomit? Likely. So Sunday afternoon, when the smell was starting to spread past the laundry room, brave, stomach-of-steel Linda decided to smell it out. She needed to find out what had gone terribly wrong.

She quickly diagnosed the problem was with the dryer, but couldn't quite find the source. She set Cordell and Chris to work. Cordell plummed the innards and Chris inspected the behind to find a dead rat.

Exhibit A:

The rat somehow found his way to the dryer vent and died, but not before losing control of his bodily fluids. By the time Chris and Cordell found him, he had started to bloat and his insides liquify. Looking at these images really brings back the smell.

Exhibit B:

Farewell dear rat. You will NOT be missed.

Lucy Lower Lip

When I was little, my nickname was Lucy Lower Lip, because I had a pout that had no equal. My parents thought it was the funniest thing [I hated it, because I was so distraught and didn't want my parents to take my woes so lightly]. Penelope did it last night. We all were a little wired last night, and Penelope wanted to let everyone know this was NO laughing matter.




I also thought it was HILARIOUS to see her face go bright red. I couldn't contain myself while I was filming/editing the video.

Blow Out. Big Time.

I wouldn't be a good mother if I didn't talk about Penelope's poops, and take the occasional poopy photo. She's never really blown out of her diaper before, not until Friday night, anyway. We had just finished dinner, some friends had come over to hang out and Chris smells some stink. We're both thinking it's all normal, until Chris pulled off her onesie to discover green avocado/grape poop all up her back.


I was SO glad that a) we weren't at someone else's house b) our friends were there to witness this hilarious mess and c) Chris was home to help out. It took us a good 30 minutes, a bath and two showers to consolodate the mess. Wow. So funny.