Cold Feet and Dishwasher Soap

So, it has been one of those weeks at my house. First of all, Preston was out of town for most of it, which is a total bummer for me. Not only do I miss out on most of my daily allowance of conversations with multi-syllable words, but I also have nothing to warm my feet up on in bed at night.

Anyway...the week started out a lot like the past couple of weeks have: with Arden asking to watch "Vooodeeee and Buzzzz!" about a thousand times an hour. She has never watched really any TV before; we would turn on Sesame Street, but she really wouldn't pay much attention to it. Then a couple of weeks ago she was looking at a book that had a picture of the Toy Story guys in it. She kept pointing to it (no idea why) and so I told her their names were Woody and Buzz. Maybe she remembered Buzz from Disneyland, but I am not sure. Anyway, she seemed to really like them and kept saying their names. I asked her if she wanted to see a show with Woody and Buzz, and she got a big smile and shrieked "YES! YES!" So, I happily tracked down the DVD and popped it in the machine, thinking she would watch it for her usual total of 35 seconds before moving on to something else. Little did I know what was I was getting myself into. She was absolutely riveted. She stood completely still and just watched open-mouthed for a full 15 minutes before she gave me her movie review "Vooodee, Buzzz! Yay, yay, Vooodeee Buzzz!" Since that moment, I hardly go 10 minutes around here without hearing about Vooodee and Buzz, except when they are actually on the TV screen. She actually wakes up in the morning, and the first thing she says to me is "Vooodeee? Buzz?" Not, "Good morning, mother dearest, how did you sleep?" or "You look fabulous this morning, Mom!" Nope, just "Voodeee! Buzz!" Even when we are in the car or at church or a restaurant with no TV in sight, she still asks for them. Needless to say, I am getting more than a little tired of good ol' Voodeee and Buzz after watching them nearly every day for the past 2 or 3 weeks.

I do thank my lucky stars for two things: 1) There are two Toy Story movies to switch between, and 2) at least Arden isn't addicted to Barney or Dora the Explorer (Side note: I remembered from my nursery days how much the kids loved Dora, so a few months back I turned it on for Arden while she was eating her oatmeal one morning. I didn't last 10 minutes. Why the heck is Dora always yelling EVERYTHING she says? I can hear her just fine. I think her parents should really have her hearing checked or something. Also, she obviously has some sort of mental problem that makes her repeat everything at least three times "SAY VAMOS! SAY VAMOS! SAY VAMOS!" I just wanted to yell back "SHUT UP DORA, AND STOP TELLING ME WHAT TO DO!!!" It is my fervent prayer that I can somehow shield Arden from ever finding out that Dora the Explorer exists. That show hurts my brain. Back to my week:)

Arden is really a sweet, helpful little thing. She is sooo helpful that sometimes she gets herself into trouble. The other day she was "helping" me sweep the floor. She liked it so much, she got out the broom, the swiffer, the mop, everything. Sooooo sweet. The next morning I was talking to one of my friends on the phone, and noticed Arden getting the dust mop out of the closet. I figured she was just going to "sweep" again, so I didn't think too much of it and kept talking away. After a couple of minutes I thought she was being waaaay too quiet (always a bad sign), so I wandered over to see what she was up to. She apparently thought the floor wasn't nearly dirty enough for a good sweeping, so she decided to dump out a bunch of dishwasher soap onto the floor to make the sweeping more interesting. Oh yeah, and by the way, she figured out how to open the "child-proof" cabinet locks we have by the time she was 18 months old, how "child-proof" is that???? I guess it's time to move the dishwasher soap. Here is a picture of my little helper in action:
We had a few more adventures like that this week, including Arden trying to "tape" a DVD she broke back together, Arden drawing a beautiful picture on a friend's kitchen tile with some scrapbook markers (thank heaven that it came off Phew!!), Arden proudly showing me how she went pee in her potty by splashing her hands in it and holding them up so I could see, etc. etc. etc. She certainly makes life interesting, but we love her anyway! But Preston is home now, so at least I can get a little sympathy and have warm feet tonight!