Mackerdoodle « Life More Abundantly

Mad Skills and New Independance

November 5, 2009 at 5:05 pm (Mackerdoodle)
Tags: bath stories, Mackerdoodle, toddlers

When my sister and her family were visiting, one of the big treats my mackerdoodle received was getting to take baths with her female cousins. Playing in the bath is fun, but playing in the bath with a slightly older cousin who can do cool things like get in and out of the tub by herself is downright inspiring! The mackerdoodle has been talking about it ever since. When I put her in the tub she says, “Beffa (her name for her youngest cousin “Bess”) do byself.” When I take her out of the tub she says, “Beffa do byself.” Sometimes I find her in the bathroom during the day trying to do a dry run.

Tuesday evening she dragged her little stool into the bathroom and managed, in very slow motion and under my constant supervision, to get herself into the tub. She was very proud of herself and talked about it all evening, but Wednesday she didn’t care to repeat the feat. I put her in the tub Wednesday evening and left her to play while I changed the Cheesedoodle into his pajamas in the next room. I could hear the happy sounds of splashing and chattering assuring me that she was safe and content. Then, as I was fighting the cheesedoodle to button the legs of his sleeper (he thinks it’s a game and keeps pulling his legs up and giggling) I heard the distinct “splat, splat, splat” sounds of small, wet feet on hardwood. I turned from the changing table and saw a dripping, smiling, naked – and still dirty – toddler.

She said “Beffa do byself. Mya (her name for herself) do byself. I all done.”

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Wordless Wednesday: He’s Tickling Her Feet

November 4, 2009 at 7:43 am (Mackerdoodle, cheesedoodle, wordless wednesday)
Tags: mac n' cheese, wordless wednesday

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What Would You Do?

October 27, 2009 at 4:40 pm (Mackerdoodle, parenting)
Tags: parenting

Our mackerdoodle was ten months old before she ever stayed in a church nursery, not because of a conviction on our part, but because the group of believers with which we fellowshipped at the time didn’t have one. One of the things that drew us to our church was the simple nursery set up and the openness they had to let me stay in the nursery with our daughter for the first few weeks to help her adjust to this new experience, and within a month she was happily going to nursery. In contrast, a sister church in the area has a very institutional nursery set up with clipboards and I think pagers (although I’ve never been given one) and just a “leave them at the door” approach to childcare. I know that works for a lot of families, but it doesn’t make me feel comfortable as a mama.

This particular church congregation hosts a MOPS program in which our church participates, so two weeks ago I packed up my kids and headed out to my first MOPS meeting. I quickly realized that I was not prepared for their nursery set up. I have one diaper bag, but my kids were going to be in rooms quite a distance apart. In the end, I left the mackerdoodle and the diaper bag with the very efficient, no nonsense worker in the 2 year old room. I notified the worker of the mackerdoodle’s allergy, showed her the mackerdoodle’s snack and walked away with the cheesedoodle in the wrap. It didn’t really cause anything more than a sense of embarrassment on my part, and a mental note to handle it differently the next time.

This morning I packed up the kids in monsoon like rain for our second MOPS meeting. The mackerdoodle was SO excited that she had her own little backpack with her just-in-case clothes, her snack and her drink that she could carry. She kept saying “we go mops. yay!” and I felt that despite the weather I was a little more prepared for today’s events.

Then we pulled into the parking lot.

The mackerdoodle began to cry the same way she cries when there’s a thunder storm. It’s a quiet, terrified cry accompanied with a slight rocking and hiding her face. She said to me, “Oh no. I no yike dis house. No dis house. I no yike dis house.” I asked her what happened to “we go mops. yay!” She looked at me confused and then began alternately making sweeping motions with her arms and pointing out of the parking lot, saying “we go mops now mahmee?” She was under the impression that we were going to mop something. (in a side note: could this really be a biological child of mine that is excited about the idea of mopping something?) The idea of going into that 2 year old nursery scared her.

So what would you do? How would you handle a situation like this?

I ended up coming home. What about you?

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Wordless Wednesday: He’s Almost as Big as She is.

October 21, 2009 at 9:16 am (Mackerdoodle, cheesedoodle, wordless wednesday)
Tags: mac n' cheese, wordless wednesday

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A Rainy Week Doesn’t Have to be Dreary

October 15, 2009 at 11:24 pm (Mackerdoodle)
Tags: Mackerdoodle, puddles

It has been cool and raining here since my sister and her family left on Tuesday morning. Our daily walk has been postponed indefinitely, the Chatahoochee river is back on the rise and everything is completely soggy. This morning I was wiling away the soggy dreary day by sorting through the hand-me-downs that my mackerdoodle recently received from her female cousins.

At the bottom of one of the boxes I found a pair of blue rubber boots, which the mackerdoodle seized immediately. “Oooooh,” she said. “yiddew boots. I plash in puddews?” Before I could explain to her that splashing in puddles wasn’t a good idea, her father looked up from his preparation for Sunday School and said, “Sure baby girl.” Hmmmm.

So, we went next door and borrowed our neighbors’ curb side puddle and the mackerdoodle splashed and splashed and splashed.

When the rain began to get heavier than just a few sprinkles, we insisted that she come inside. She gave us this look:

Maybe we’ll find some more puddles tomorrow.

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The Mackerdoodle’s Big Day

October 1, 2009 at 12:10 am (Mackerdoodle)
Tags: Mackerdoodle

With only two sleeps left until Nana and Papa make the trip back to close on their new house in Ontario, we decided to take our first cooler day in their visit to explore Warm Springs, Pine Mountain and FDR state park.

Once we got to Warm Springs my Dad was thrilled to discover a motorbike museum had opened since his last visit to the area. We spent more than an hour exploring the historic bikes and watching Dad re-live his biking glory days.

Much to his delight, my mackerdoodle seemed almost as excited as her papa. She matched him step for step, ride for ride.

After a great barbecue lunch, the mackerdoodle went from quarter ride to quarter ride, never realizing that the insertion of a quarter would make the object do something. She was perfectly happy to sit on the carousel horses, turn the wheel on the Pink Panther paddy wagon and push the buttons on what she called the “Ice Cream Bus”.

After such an exciting morning, one would think that things couldn’t get MORE exciting, but if one thought that, one would be wrong.

Arriving home after our motorbike and toy riding palooza, I began to fold my clean laundry and discuss supper with my parents while my mom settled into reading Go Dog Go to the mackerdoodle. The idyllic scene was interrupted by my telephone ringing and a Realtor asking if she could show my home in 15 minutes. I countered at an hour. They arrived in 45 minutes. While Mom, Dad and I ran around like crazy people trying to get the house ready, the mackerdoodle happily swept the front porch and generally stayed out of our way.

As we left the house to the potential buyers, my mom and dad suggested we go down the street to Burger King for supper. Because clearly the toddler hadn’t been given enough entertainment opportunities during this long day, I decided to let her run a little in the play room. I mean all she ever does is climb a few steps and laugh at me through the mesh.

Until today.

Today she climbed up the stairs and happily disappeared into the overhead tunnel maze. By disappear I mean DISAPPEAR. The cheesedoodle was exhausted and wailing and all I knew was that my mackerdoodle was happily playing, all by herself, in a collection of plastic tubes suspended a story above the Burger King kids room. I climbed the ladder myself and called to her, but to no avail. I really thought I was going to have to army crawl through the colored plastic to find her. I really didn’t know if I could do it.

Fortunately some older children in the tunnels were happy to look for my mackerdoodle and she was happy to join them in their journey through the tunnels and eventually down the slide. She looked at me and pointed back at the tunnels saying, “I yike tunnews. I yike kids.” as we walked her sleepy brother out to the van for home.

Wordless Wednesday: Mackerdoodle Watching Hoppers and The Hopper Being Watched

September 9, 2009 at 2:51 pm (Mackerdoodle, wordless wednesday)
Tags: Mackerdoodle, wordless wednesday

Mackerdoodle Moments

September 7, 2009 at 9:36 pm (Baby Stuff, Mackerdoodle, cheesedoodle, parenting)
Tags: funny child stories, mac n' cheese, parenting

My two year old daughter has become a fountain of continual amusement. There are so many cute moments, that I often can’t remember all of them to pass them on to my family when they call, or to her daddy when returns from closing the Chick-Fil-A. Here are a few that have stuck in my mind:

One afternoon I flopped onto the couch beside Jonathan and we both said at the same time “I’m tired.” We laughed about it, and then our cheesedoodle woke up from his nap. At the first sound of his cry, the mackerdoodle looked up at me, as she always does, and said “Baby. Kyin.” and then she said something completely new: “I get him.”
The next day I heard cheesedoodle wake up, and as I was moving toward the bedroom, I encountered my mackerdoodle trotting in the same direction calling out “I comin baby. I comin.”
She has clear memories now of events, and will often remember the strangest things, narrating back in her broken language events I had forgotten, or are no longer relevant to me. Just last week she was telling me that “Daddy. Hairguck.” (Haircut) Jonathan cut her hair a month ago, but she felt the need to mention it as a current event. After I acknowledged the haircut, she put her hands under her chin, framing her face in her hands, then tipped her head sideways and looked up at me, saying, “I booifoo.”
The cheesedoodle is enjoying the chance to sit up and look around, and when I am holding him in the upright position the mackerdoodle will often come over and gently hug him. The first time she realized that she could do it, she reached her arms around him, rested her cheeks against his and then said “I yike it baby. I yike huggin.”
One day while sorting laundry, I looked up and found the mackerdoodle very diligently removing Jonathan’s clean socks from his sock drawer and placing them in the dirty laundry hamper. A week later, I came into the bedroom and she had the basket into which I had tossed the clean underwear and socks and was pushing everything – socks, boxers, nursing pads, nursing bras, etc. – into the same sock drawer. Both times, she looked up at me with her contagious smile and said “I help.”
Jonathan already blogged about this one, but it deserves a double post. Mackerdoodle’s favorite part of family worship is singing. Every day we sing “Praise Him Praise Him” because she asks for it every day. Last week, we thought she was too tired for a long family worship, so we jumped straight to our closing doxology. After the first line, the mackerdoodle stopped us by asking “Where Praise Him Praise Him go?” She looked high and low before finding, and carrying to us, the hymnal and saying “Praise Him Praise Him.” How can a parent resist? We sang Praise Him Praise Him.
Today while I was talking to my mother, she held up her band aid to the telephone so Nana could see.
After supper she was trying to explain what she wanted. She said “Mo’ skip . . . spik . . . sr . . . ” then she hopped up, and ran into the kitchen where I heard her saying “white dere. white dere.” to the rice krispie treats. She knew what she wanted, she just couldn’t make her mouth say Rice Krispies.
She fell asleep sitting on the couch eating the Rice Krispies treat. When I shook her to wake her, she just put the treat into her mouth and kept chewing, never once opening her eyes.

There are so many, but if I keep going, I’m afraid I’ve already bored everyone but my sister and my mom. I feel like I miss more than I catch, even being at home full time with them, and it feels like the cheesedoodle’s life is going so much faster than the mackerdoodle’s has. I can’t even imagine how fast the first year of a fourth, fifth or subsequent child’s life must be.

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