Top, Mommy, Top!!!

Charlotte can't say anything that starts with an "s." As she says increasingly more things, it leads to some hilarious results. In general, any time I sing I'm met with a very loud TOP MOMMY TOP!

It took me a lot more time than it should to figure out what she was saying when she came running to me yelling "Zizzy DUCK Mommy. Zizzy DUCK!" She pulled my hands, "come heeeeere Mommy, Zizzy DUCK!"

Well, Zizzy was duck. Duck in the dog crate. Who do you think locked her in there? That's right, the 2 yr old force to be reckoned with. Elisabeth was ok though - no worse for the wear. In fact, truth be told I think she was kind of enjoying her chance to play the role of Ginny the Crazy Dog.

And one of her favorite things to pretend to be? No White! I'm No White Mommy! (She also likes to say she's Tinkerbell, but I don't know if she's saying Tinkerbell or Stinkerbell - which is what I call her)

Strangely though, there is one thing she says over and over and over and over and over that begins with an S. She says it with such gusto and downright furor. ME SELF. DO IT ME SELF. She definitely separates the words, and "self" comes out loud and clear.

As an end to my hilarious "Charlotte can't say "s's" post: I know that this is a phase and all kids go through it - but the anger, the rage that this precious little two year old harbors within all comes out if you have the audacity to buckle the top part of her seatbelt. TOP MOMMY! TOOOOOOOOOOOOOOP! Me do it me self! nooooooooo! . Our last bout of Mommy vs. the Tyrant, The Seatbelt Wars ended with me getting a big, fat, bleeding lip. And then I had to go grocery shopping, with blood running out of my bottom lip. Grocery shopping with Charlotte is not fun in the best of days.

It took 3 days, but I finally got an "I torry mommy" as she touched my lip. Only after we read "Do Unto Otters" - because now apologizing is cool.

Top 10 Things I Have Learned the Hard Way This Week

In honor (??) of Dave Letterman... the Top 10 Things I Have Learned the Hard Way This Week:

10. Your inaugural trip to H-Mart (Asian grocery) should not coincide with the second biggest Chinese holiday of the year. (Thanks for the explanation, Lindsay!) I've never seen such craziness. Huge buckets of crabs clammoring around with people sticking their hands RIGHT IN THERE grabbing them out and throwing them in bags.

9. Rice cookers emit a starchy steam that covers everything within a 1 foot radius of the rice cooker. This starchy steam is especially bad with brown rice. As a consequence, my computer monitor looks tiger-striped. But I got a heck of a deal on the rice cooker (see #10) - you know if you don't count the money I'll have to spend to get a new laptop... (just kidding, I fully expect this starchy striping will come off with windex and elbow grease).

8. Baby Ginny (stuffed little yellow lab) absolutely must go into Charlotte's crib at night or else you will be on your hands and knees scouring your bedroom floor in the dark for a little stuffed animal just so that you don't have to hear the yelling. The fact that you've remembered to send Baby Ginny to bed with Charlotte every night for the prior six months does not earn you any goodwill with the 2 yr old in the middle of the night.

7. A 1.5 hr tennis lesson, after not having touched the tennis racquet in easily 6 yrs, leads to unfortunate results. First, your racquet grip will literally disintegrate in your hands. Second, when you think your bangs are in your eyes and so you'll just skedaddle over to your tennis bag and scavenge it for a hair band - that also hasn't been used in 6 yrs, you will be quite disappointed when the hair band also disintegrates in your hands. Third, while you might actually still fit in your pre-pregnancy tennis skirts, you do not look nearly as cute as the pre-kids twenty-somethings. Fourth, you will hurt - badly - the next day.

6. I cannot actually control both of my dogs on a walk, even with no pull harnesses, no matter what I tell you. Luckily I learned this in an area with no traffic and with a puppy that Maggie did not actually attack or harm in any way.

5. Rolling sushi ain't as easy as it looks.

4. My nearly year long new diet of more veggies, less meat, almost no red meat has led to some undesired consequences such as my inability to eat Costco hotdogs (although as Wendy pointed out, the problem is that Costco hotdogs are 100% beef and I should stick to the really unhealthy ones that are 100% gross stuff that you don't want to know about).

3. No matter how cute it looked on the plate, Elisabeth would not eat the blue rice that I shaped in a beautiful E with a cookie cutter. "Mommy! My rice is blue! Gross!"

2. When the food coloring doesn't easily come out of the dropper, squeezing as hard as you can is the wrong answer (see #3). I still have dots in my hair, on my neck, my arms, everywhere.

1. Eating a lot of Doritos minutes before falling asleep is a monumentally bad idea.