Have you ever thought about how commercialized our society is? I am always hearing about this commercial or that ad. We have the basic cable package, but only because having it makes our high speed internet a couple dollars a month cheaper. We almost never watch it. In fact it is not uncommon for the coaxial to remain unplugged most of the year. The point is that despite not watching much television I am still somehow aware of a good deal of what’s out there.

And so is Bridget. Which honestly is amazing to me. She knows who Spongebob, Dora, and Spiderman are – to name a few – yet none of these she’s seen on television. I’m sure she has friends that have seen these things and have the dolls or action figures. But the fact that she picks up on them and remembers them is amazing to me. She’s only 2. We can be out somewhere like Wal-Mart and she’ll see a toy with one of these characters on it and get really excited. . . and she has to have it. Most often it is with Dora/Diego items. I just have to look at her and say “But you don’t even know who Dora is.” But I guess she kind of does.

Sorry about the ramblings. . . She just came to me yesterday and said look, its spongebob – pointing to the graphic of a face in a square that was on the side of a box in our house. It wasn’t. But I guess it was close enough. Needless to say I’ve had it on my mind since then.

Do you all notice this commercialization that I am referring too in your kids? I didn’t think I’d have to even think about this stuff until she started school.

The other day Marissa was over visiting. She and Bridget came in and asked if they could have a picnic. Since it was a little cold for eating outside, I setup a picnic blanket in the living room. They had a great time.

We sure are glad to have friends like Marissa. Thanks for being so sweet with Bridget.

P.S. I never would have thought of having a picnic indoors during the colder months. Kids can be so creative. Great idea guys!!

Bridget is getting better at being able to control her bladder and her bowels. And the PEZ dispenser prize chart was working pretty well for awhile. She was going about a week to a week and a half without an accident.

But then she started regressing something serious – on the order of an accident a day for 3 days, then a day or two dry and we begin again. The only good news is that accidents usually only involve a small leak in her underwear now. We don’t have too many puddle accidents anymore. And she stays dry at night – that’s good.

She filled up one potty chart, and we started another. The sad faces represent days where she had accidents.

She has gotten 3 PEZ dispensers so far, but its been several weeks since she’s earned the latest one. Wilber Robinson has been hanging on the back of the bathroom door for the past three weeks.
Linguini – 2/29/08

Mater – 3/16/08

Shrek – 3/26/08

There was one day that was pretty hard. She had some sort of diarrhea that she couldn’t control. She went through 6 pair of underwear and a pull-up in about 2 hours one night. She had a couple of stars toward her goal that week, and I didn’t want to punish her for being sick with diarrhea – but how do you really explain to a toddler that this doesn’t really count as an accident?? Do you see where I am coming from? Anyway, I ended up neither counting that day toward her goal or against it.

Since then though, she’s had a rough time keeping dry for any real length of time.

ALSO, last Friday she decided that it would be a good idea to pee in a bucket in her bedroom. She came out naked from the waist down, so we put her on the toilet – later to find out that she’d already gone potty in a pink plastic Easter bucket. Argh! She did it twice again on Sunday – one of them even included a #2. The most recent time (Sunday evening) she peed in a small plastic drawer that belongs in her play kitchen. She tried to dump it out in the sink by herself before coming to tell me. Of course that meant that we had some carpet cleaning to do too. Have any of your kids done anything like this? Its disgusting, and its driving me nuts.

In summary, I think that while she has more control over her bladder/bowels, she is also more careless (or perhaps overly confident). I typically don’t have to tell her to go potty anymore – she’ll just do that on her own. I guess you could say that the progress is slow, but improving overall.