Do I hold or do I go? Day -- 852

Anna is in the process of potty training -- though this seems to have been happening for about a year now. She actually went potty at school and held it long enough to get to the toilet on time, and that was a first. Usually she goes in her diaper, THEN she tells us that she has to go, so the sequence is still off a bit. Sure, this isn't a problem, but she then demands to sit on the toilet, which amounts to her just sitting there for around an hour and giving up because there is nothing in the bladder.

While in Texas I bought her some big-kid pants and you should have seen the smile on her face. It was priceless, but then I had to tell her that she would need to wear them over her diaper until she potty trained herself. She resisted a bit at first, but now thinks that is a cool alternative while she works on the timing issue.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that when she went potty at school, she told her teacher that she was going to get a call from Elmo. If you remember, I had scheduled a call from Sesame Street, so Elmo called her and told Anna how proud he was of her. Her teacher thought that was a neat thing and was thinking of introducing that into her class.

One major benefit of potty training is that I have a bit more leverage. The whole child raising game is often just a series of leveraging attempts to get her to do what you want her to versus what she wants. Of course you want to do this with the least amount of effort and without making things worse.

Recently, Anna has been rebelling against me and my punishments are having diminishing returns, but you should have seen her get in line when I said I would take her big-kid pants away because that's what a 'baby' does. That was one silent baby. Of course, I am probably doing something harmful and setting back potty training, but I will have to deal with that later on I guess. For now it is working.

There comes that time when you don't want her to be 'toddler' and still want her to be 'baby', but there also comes the time when the advantages of transforming her into a toddler (i.e., big girl) are more than the advantages of baby nostalgia. This time has definitely come.

As for other news, on Sunday we went to the Gospel Brunch at the Corcoran art museum. It was really nice and having a bunch of loud gospel singers belting out tunes meant that Anna was in no way the loudest person in the room. Actually, she loved it so much she would clap her hands, dance, and generally get excited. After she was done eating, we went up to the singers area and Anna then played peek-a-boo with one of the singers. She got a lot of smiles and then would tear off towards Dad as if she was being chased.

Another funny point was when she came to the realization that the songs -- a lot of which were Christmas songs -- were talking about baby Jesus. Anna lets out a loud commentary at one point saying, "They are singing about Jesus." She was so proud she knew what was going on. Anna has been learning her Christmas story not only from some books we have, but also from an olive-wood nativity scene we bought in Jerusalem a few years back. Unfortunately, Anna has determined that Jesus' room is on the roof and he regularly takes a brutal tumble and slides across the floor. Jesus is taking his licks. Oh yeah, Jesus is also a girl and has a Nya-Nya just like hers.

As for the Christmas shopping, our eBay Fisher Price stash is growing. We pretty much have Christmas done and now I have my eye on a few birthday presents. I figure this may be the last chance to get some of this stuff before we go overseas.

Just some other tid-bits. Anna's identity is currently a pilot and her favorite place to go now is the National Botanical Garden, which has set up some really great train sets. It is even better than last year. They also have a display where you can smell various spices, which she loves and the whole garden is filled with models of the monuments of Washington, DC made entirely out of wood. Yesterday, a lady was showing how they made them and let Anna feel pine cones, moss, cinnamon and other materials used in making the wood models.

The pictures are from Texas. The first is of Anna riding the plane at what she called the 'yellow park', the second one is of Dad and Anna (there aren't too many of these), and the last one was during the Texas Grandparents' 40th anniversary party. Anna calls her lego structures 'mountains'.

Well, I had better go. Below are several links to videos that I took while in Texas using my digital camera. There is no sound, and each is only about 15 seconds long. It will give you some idea of Anna's first experience with the beach.

Sand 1
Sand 2
Sand 3
Sand 4
Sand 5
Sand 6