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10 Things about Bridget

June 26th, 2008 · bridget

Bridget was tagged by her friend Matthew for this post.

TEN THINGS ABOUT BRIDGET

  1. She LOVES and collects PEZ dispensers.
  2. She is at the age where she wants to do everything herself – “No, let me do it.”
  3. She is really into friends. She asks daily to invite them over.
  4. She isn’t very picky about what she eats. She doesn’t care for ranch dressing, sour cream, or onions – but she’ll eat about everything else.
  5. She loves chocolate, she’ll choose it over all other candy most of the time.
  6. She really likes Playdoh, drawing, and dolls.
  7. She loves being outside. And she loves getting wet.
  8. She loves playing with Lucy (our dog), hugging her, and giving her treats.
  9. She loves to help me cook. Her most recent interest/accomplishment was to spoon pancake batter onto the griddle.
  10. She loves her daddy, and gets really excited when he comes home. She often runs up and gives him a big hug saying, “I love you so much” or “I’m so glad you came home.” Sometimes she’ll sing to him.

Bridget tags Pitcher Guy, Savannah, and Teylor.

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For the love of PEZ

June 25th, 2008 · bridget, random

In case you didn’t know…

Bridget LOVES PEZ!

As you may know, she was given PEZ dispensers as potty training rewards. But she also got them for various other reasons, or from various other people. And she’s developed quite the collection. So far, 23 PEZ dispensers in total (6 months ago, she only had three). And she still talks about others that she would like to get.

Here they all are…

Each PEZ dispenser has a (somewhat) unique origin and story. Most of which she can tell you.

We’ve found new and interesting ways to play with her and her PEZ dispensers. Games where she has to sort them by the color of their legs, or pull out all the ones with hats, or all the girls/boys, or all the ones with green faces, or black hair. It has proven to be an interesting challenge for her, but she loves it – and hey, she’s learning!

Anyway, the following “Meet the PEZ dispensers” section is more for us to remember where she got each of them… but if you are interested to know, please keep reading.

– Meet the PEZ dispensers –
(In display order)

  • Santa Clause – Given to her by her cousin Liz. The third PEZ dispenser she acquired.
  • Eyore – The last of the Potty Chart PEZ. (All she knows about Eyore is that he is Winnie the Pooh’s friend).
  • Shrek – Potty Chart PEZ.
  • Fiona – Aunt Holly gave it to her when she saw that Bridget had Shrek.
  • Arial – The first PEZ dispenser she got. June 2007. It was purchased as a distraction on an airline ride.
  • Aurora – Found in a Geocache in Ogden.
  • Cinderella – Potty Chart PEZ.
  • Emilie – Potty Chart PEZ.
  • Linguini – Potty Chart PEZ.
  • Skinner – Potty Chart PEZ.
  • Sally – Dave brought it back from a business trip to Denver as a gift for her.
  • Doc – Potty Chart PEZ.
  • Mater – Potty Chart PEZ.
  • Dash – Potty Chart PEZ.
  • Mr. Incredible – Found in a Geocache in Ogden.
  • Jack Jack – The second PEZ dispenser she ever got. Purchased randomly at the store before we started the Potty Chart. (Aside: Jack Jack once filled in for Jonah during a family home evening lesson)
  • Wilbur Robinson – Potty Chart PEZ.
  • Goofy – Given to her in California after she met him at Disneyland.
  • Mickey – Given to her the day we left for our Disneyland vacation.
  • Minnie – Potty Chart PEZ immediately following our return from California.
  • Donald Duck – Given to her in California for not having accidents.
  • Daisy Duck – Potty Chart PEZ following our return from California
  • Mike Wazowski – Randomly purchased just as we began the potty chart. Given to her without cause to kick start the PEZ reward program.

She is truly becoming a collector of PEZ dispensers. She even has a (short) list of ones she still wants to get – and we check for them each time we are at the store. She really wants to find Lightening McQueen and Guido from the movie Cars. So, if any of you are out and about and see them, please buy them and I’ll pay you for them. She’s also mentioned wanting “the girl incredible” or “Mr. Incredible’s mom” (a.k.a. Mrs. Incredible or Elastigirl) but they don’t seem to be as prevalent in her mind.

Here is another picture of her with her collection.

She’s such a cute little punk! We love her to pieces.

Oh, I should mention that these PEZ dispensers do everything with her… watch movies, go for rides in the car, sleep in her bed, watch her brush her teeth, etc. (usually she has to choose just one or two to do any given activity though) A couple of weeks ago she asked me to help her make a house for her PEZ dispensers. This is what we came up with. What do you think?


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Ward Campout

June 24th, 2008 · a day in the life, bridget, dave, family, tina

Father’s Day weekend was our ward camp out.

I’m a little behind on reporting on it. Sorry about that.

In any case, the camping trip was lots of fun, and I was really impressed by the number of people that came. For the past 3 years I was part of the activities committee, making me among the first to arrive and the last to leave. This year I was off the hook – and I have to say, it was quite nice. It was nice to only have to worry about bringing up stuff for our family, not all manner of public camping gear. It was nice not to worry about advertising and sign up lists, or planning a menu, or scheduling the camp ground, or worrying about finding tents and sleeping bags for those that didn’t have them, or making sure the grounds were clean, or, or, or… The point is, I have a great appreciation for those that did all of those things this year. THANK YOU! You are all fabulous, and you did a wonderful job.

We brought a camera, but only ended up taking a couple of pictures. We should have taken more.

Bridget had a great time too. I think we need to go camping more, because when she sees a mountain she immediately says “See that mountain, that means camping.”

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Insanity

June 23rd, 2008 · a day in the life, bridget

Please. Help me. This has to end.

Its insanity.

I can’t seem to find a method that works to get Bridget to stop pooping her pants. She is averaging once a day. She lies to me about it, and she tries to hide it. When I ask her point blank if she needs to use the potty she’ll say no. . . 5 minutes later she’s had an accident.

Taking away PEZ dispensers hasn’t worked.

Taking away the privilege of playing with friends hasn’t worked.

Dave and I spent some time talking last night about all the possible reasons that she might be regressing so much. The best guess we have is that Dave isn’t around as much with his new school schedule. Changes like that are tough on kids. And despite the fact that he tries to spend as much time with her as he can when he’s home, it doesn’t compare to how much time and attention she got before he started summer school. We are guessing that the accidents are a method of getting more attention from daddy, even if it is negative attention. We spent some time last night trying to convince her that accidents make us sad, and that we are so much happier when she uses the potty. Hopefully that helps.

Our latest new attempt is to take away whichever toy she is playing with when she has an accident. We took her money away last night. And she’s hasn’t had her PEZ dispensers since last Thursday… though she asks for them back at least once a day.
Does anyone else have any suggestions? Have you guys gone through this with your kids??

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Perogies

June 22nd, 2008 · bridget, dave, food, tina

Its been a little while since I’ve posted a recipe on my blog, and I promised a couple of people I’d post this one, so here it is!

Perogies are a potato-filled dough that are popular in the Ukraine. Dave also had them frequently on his mission in Canada. The Wikipedia article provides various spellings for and various countries associated with perogies. Follow the link if you want to learn more.

In any case, perogies have become a pretty popular dish around our house.

Perogies are traditionally filled with a potato based filling, but it is also pretty common to use fruit as a filling. Once cooked they are traditionally served with sour cream. We like eating ours with ranch dressing (or cool whip, in the case of the fruit filled).

Perogies

The Filling (one option, anyway):

8 – 10 potatoes, peeled and cut into cubes (or potato pearls)
1 onion, finely chopped
6 Tbsp. butter
2 c. shredded cheddar cheese
2 c. shredded mozzarella cheese
4 – 6 strips bacon, cooked and crumbled
Salt and pepper to taste

Boil the potatoes until tender. Remove and place in a medium-sized bowl. Mash. Reserve cooking water for dough.
Saute onion in butter.

Add onion (with butter) to mashed potatoes. Add cheeses and bacon. Season to taste.

Set aside, and allow to cool.

The Dough:

2 1/4 c. reserved potato water, cooled to lukewarm (or just regular lukewarm water, if you’re lazy like me)
6 Tbsp. vegetable oil
2 eggs
6-7 c. flour
1 1/2 tsp. salt

Combine the water, oil, and eggs well.

Mix together the salt and flour, and add to the wet mixture.

Combine and knead, adding flour as necessary, until the dough is no longer sticky.
(If using a bosch or kitchen aide, the dough should pull away from the sides of the bowl)

Let down stand for 20 minutes.

Flour the counter top and roll to 1/8″ – 1/4″ thickness. Use a back of a dough press to cut circles from the dough. Fill and seal the perogies. (The dough press can be purchased at Kitchen Kneads, or various places online. We generally use the mid-sized press – 4.75″)

Place filled perogies on a wax-paper lined cookie sheet.

Once the cookie sheet is filled, place the tray in the freezer approx. 30 minutes. Once frozen, remove from the tray and place in zippered freezer bags.

To serve:

Remove the perogies from the freezer and drop into a pot of boiling water. Stir occasionally to keep them from sticking to the bottom of the pan.

Once the perogies float to the top, remove from the water and place in a buttered frying pan. Brown (as desired) on both sides. Serve hot with ranch dressing or sour cream.

Variations
There are a lot of variations you can make to the filling. Don’t be scared to get creative… see what you like. We’ve tried strawberries, apples, blueberries, sausage & eggs, and various combinations of mashed potatoes with other ingredients. (Note: when using fruit, cut it up small and add sugar and flour – to sweeten and thicken)
The wikipedia article suggests even more fillings… sauerkraut, fish, cabbage, onion, rice, hard boiled eggs, cottage cheese, etc… Most are specific to a certain country or group of people. The sky is the limit.

Here are a few more pictures of the perogie making process.
Cutting circles out of the dough.

Filled perogies on wax-paper lined tray.

My messy child.

Perogies browning in the frying pan. Just before serving.

Thanks Sandra and Elizabeth for making these with me the other day. I had tons of fun, and it was great to try new ingredients!

If anyone makes these I’d love you know what you think. And if you get creative with the fillings, let me know how that turns out too!

By the way… I have another sister celebrating a birthday this month. Today is Francine’s birthday. She’s 18!! A regular adult. Can you believe that??

Happy birthday Franny, we love you!

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Dreadlocks

June 21st, 2008 · bridget, random

A couple of weeks ago I thought it might be fun to put Bridget’s hair in dreadlocks… is that what they are called still?

Mostly I just wanted to see if she would be patient enough with me to allow me to do it (and because she actually has enough hair for crazy stuff like this). She was! We took a couple of 5 minute breaks, but I think she did awesome for a two year old. And every little girl has to get her hair done in lots of little braids at least once, right?

Anyway, here’s how it turned out:


Dave wasn’t much of a fan of the hairstyle – It took a really long time – And Bridget kept pulling out the elastics… so I don’t see myself trying it again anytime soon. But hey, it was a fun little summer hairdo for a day.

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Potty Talk, Volume VII

June 20th, 2008 · a day in the life, bridget

You would think I would finally be finished reporting on the bathroom habits of my toddler… but sometimes it just seems like we are still not quite there.

Let me just start by saying that Bridget had been accident free for over a month… until recently. We were pretty excited for her, and even stopped bringing spare underwear everywhere we went. We considered ending the potty PEZ chart, but I still had two more PEZ dispensers in the cupboard, so we thought we’d finish them out.

But then… the past week or so Bridget has had a really hard time finding her way to the toilet in time for #2. The first time it was diarrhea, and I thought that maybe she was just feeling a little sick. But then she did it again the next day… and the day after that… and the day after that… and… It was getting to be pretty ridiculous, and I was getting pretty sick of cleaning out her underwear. The worst part is that she would hide it from me. The first night it happened I didn’t know until I started to get her ready for bed. She wouldn’t let me take her pants off. She wanted to do it, and she purposely walked across the room and kept her butt away from me. I turned her around to find a disgusting display of wet-caked on CRAP! I wanted to vomit. And I was so mad that she didn’t tell me. We had a long talk while I was cleaning her up. I put her in a pull-up that night.

In the days that followed, each time she pooped her pants, I told her that I was going to have to put a sad face on her chart. It didn’t take long before she was having an accident and then quickly commenting, “Its okay mom, you can put a sad face on my chart.” It became very obvious that the PEZ chart didn’t hold the same motivation for her that it once did. And oh, was it frustrating.

So we decided that it was time to take down the potty chart. We waited until she had an accident-free day, then gave her both of the remaining PEZ dispensers. When told her that we would give her the PEZ dispensers, but if she had any more accidents that we would take away ALL of them. She seemed to get it, but was more excited that she was getting two new ones. Since that time, we’ve had to take them all away twice. Both times she complained, and begged for them back… but she still didn’t seem terribly emotionally affected by it. What is a parent to do??

The first time we took them away, we sat down and had another talk. I explained to her that if taking away her PEZ dispensers wasn’t enough to get her to stop having accidents then I would have to take away her friends. She looked confused, until I explained to her that if she didn’t stop having accidents that we would have to stop letting her friends come over… and that her friends don’t like to play with a girl that poops her pants. “Oh,” she said, “that would be sad. I just want my friends to come over.” That was on Monday. Tuesday she had an accident while a friend was over, and we kindly asked that friend to go home (as well as taking away the PEZ dispensers again). She was a bit sad, and promised she would try harder. So far, so good… hopefully it works.

Do your kids have these extended moments of regression in their potty habits? She was doing so well… how do you handle it?

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Little Monkey

June 19th, 2008 · bridget, family, siblings

Lately Bridget has been climbing up on the weirdest things.

I’ve seen her standing on top of her bounce and spin zebra while she holds onto the wall. I’ve found her on top of her bookshelf in her room – trying to look out the window. She regularly tries to hang from the railing on our stairs or from the headboard in our bedroom. And she pretty commonly climbs onto the counter in the bathroom. She’s everywhere… and constantly saying “look what I can do.” She also loves to try to swing from doorknobs, and walk on ledges or edges of various things.

And then there was this…

“Watch this mom. Look at me.” Naturally, I made her do it again so I could take another picture.

It kind of reminded me of times I climbed doorways when I was a kid. Bare feet, bare hands… slowly making my way to the top. All of my siblings did it. Did any of you ever do that? Do your kids?

…Anyway, I really need to get her into gymnastics. Too bad she has to be 3… guess I have to wait a bit longer.

One more thing…Today is my sister’s birthday. She is turning 20!!… and I can’t believe it. Happy Birthday Alice! We love you. And we think you should move to Logan.

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Boiled to death

June 18th, 2008 · a day in the life, family, random

So, we killed our fish.

It really was unintentional. And pretty sad.

For those of you that don’t know we had 5 (very large) fish in our 44 gallon tank. They were probably all between 6 and 8 inches in length. Two of them – the sucker fish – had been around longer than I have (Dave had them before we got married). The other three we got in December of 2006. All of them were classified as ‘tropical’ fish, meaning they like to have the water in their tanks heated at 75-80 degrees – roughly 10 degrees warmer than the air in the average house.

Our largest fish was an Oscar. He was HUGE (big enough that people made jokes about frying him up for dinner). And he had attitude – when he was hungry, he would jump out of the water and hit the lid to the tank so that it would open and shut – making a loud noise that would get our attention. He was also pretty mean (or at least scary), he liked to bully the other fish, and if we stuck our hand in the tank he would immediately make attempts to attack it – probably trying to scare us out of his space. We named him Belthazor.

The final two were thin silver fish with light orange tails. They were fast, really fast. I think that’s what saved them from Belthazor the bully. When we got them they were only about an inch long. When they died, they were pretty close to six inches. They did not have names.

Anyway, about how they died…

Our tank was in need of a cleaning. We try to do it every 3 weeks or so. We should have done it around last Wednesday… but with the crazy schedules we keep around here we kept putting it off. Meantime the water level in the tank was decreasing (as it naturally does), we didn’t fill it because we were going to clean it. Saturday night, we decided that it would officially be set as a Sunday evening project… but when we got home from church they were all belly up. Thankfully Dave found them – I don’t think I could have stomached it. It took a little while to figure out what would have killed all 5 fish at the same time. But after a little investigation he (Dave) figured out that the water level had gotten low enough that the sensor on the heater was no longer getting an accurate reading… so it just kept heating the water… until all the fish had boiled to death.

Looking back, it was a little bit weird that Belthazor didn’t make a big fuss when I fed them that morning. And on Saturday I did notice that there was a bit of leftover food remaining in the tank – but I figured I’d just fed them too much that time.

And we probably should have had a thermometers in the tank… but the last one we had was destroyed by our bully fish, Belthazor. I guess he didn’t like it, because whenever we put it up he would ram into it until the suction cup gave way – sometimes he would even push it around the tank. He eventually broke it. We never bothered to replace it.

Anyway, despite the lack of significant emotional attachment to the fish, I do find myself missing them. And its weird to have to push away that inclination to go feed the fish each day. I don’t know what we are going to do when Lucy dies – she’s a much bigger part of the family.

So, please everyone, learn from our mistake… keep the water levels in your fish tank adequately filled. And don’t let your big fish bully you out of a thermometer.

And please, don’t call PETA. It really was an accident.

—

On another, somewhat related, note. I’ve found myself thinking a lot about that little story you hear about the frog in the pot of water that will swim and swim, not trying to jump out, as the water is gradually heated. The moral, of course, being that as we subject ourselves to this or that in our lives that we may be slowly desensitizing ourselves to worldly views. Its interesting to see that real life example in our deaths of our fish – and it has me wondering if there is something more I am to learn from this.

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Father’s Day

June 17th, 2008 · bridget, dave, family

Preparing for Father’s Day, with Bridget, this year was lots of fun. She’s old enough now to express her love for her dad without prompting… and she’s even pretty conscience about what things he likes.

One of my favorite things, though, is when she gets excited when he comes home. Her face lights up, and she runs downstairs. She’s even getting pretty good at singing “I’m so glad when Daddy comes home.”

At any rate, it was great fun to work on a special Father’s Day project with her.

Here we are preparing her present:


And here is Dave and Bridget on Father’s Day. With him wearing his “Happy Father’s Day shirt” – as she called it. (Can you tell it was still pretty early in the morning? Both of them were still in their PJ’s – with their morning smiles on. lol)


She was just thrilled that he was wearing it, and pointed out that he was several times throughout the day. And she probably said “Happy Father’s Day” to him at least 20 times. It was pretty darn cute to see.

Yesterday, when we were making the bed, Bridget saw the shirt that she had made sitting by Dave’s side of the bed. She quickly said, “Look its Daddy’s Happy Father’s Day shirt. That was so nice I made that for him, huh?”

Anyway! Bridget and I just wanted to shout out our love for you, Dave (Daddy). Hope you had a great Father’s Day!! We love you lots!

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