Happy Halloween

Hope everyone has a safe and fun Halloween.

Lucky for me MLO is insisting on re-using her costume from last year - Arial.

It will be interesting to see how she does. Between the shyness around strangers, but all her daycare friends (we are all going together) around I will have to remember to write down here how it actually goes.

Sleeping Beauty

Ever since I bought the newest version of Sleeping Beauty MLO is in love with it. We watch it all the time, over and over again. I love Sleeping Beauty, well, at least I did.

My little princess, who loves the Disney princesses and will yell out their name whenever she sees any of them. Guess what her favorite part is:

The battle between Prince Philip and the Dragon. She is scared and I have to hold her so the dragon can't get her. However, at the end of the scene she yells, "AGAIN!" If I let it go on to the happy dancing on the part she wants me skip it.

My little princess just loves the action sequences. Take Robin Hood and the fighting (skip the wedding), take Enchanted and the fight with the dragon (skip the happily ever after scenes), take Ariel and the fight with the evil queen (skip the happy dancing and wedding) and on and on.

But she is a princess still.

Go Slow

Many moons ago (after all she is all of three-years-old) my daughter used to love going fast. We went to Mexico for a vacation and she loved how FAST the airplane went and for a time after insisted that everything go fast.

Well she has done a complete reversal and is now insistent on going slow.

Mommy must drive slow, eat slow, wash her hair slow, make dinner slow and even get back to daycare at the end of work slow.

It is so extreme that when I tell her I will come right back or do it really fast, she starts crying and tells me "no, do it slow". She then stops crying when I agree and say I will do it slow.

I was not surprised with the fascination with fast, I had it too and seems like a normal kid thing.

I have to admit, this slow thing has me a little puzzled.

Movie Rating System

My husband and I had a "date night" on Friday and decided to go see a movie. There isn't much out so we went and saw Max Payne which was rated PG-13.

I wasn't that hot on the movie, it was ok, there were some silly points where the story really expected you to make a leap of faith (like when the "stumble" on a new clue of a case three-years-old that must mean none of them were any good at the whole detective thing).

My biggest issue with the movie wasn't the movie, it was the rating. There is no way in h**l (sorry) when my daughter turns 13 will she be allowed to see that type of movie.

The violence was over the top, everyone got shot at least once, there was lots of punching and crazed drug-induced fights.

I would rather my daughter see a little more nudity and a little less violence (or better yet, neither) when she is thirteen.

That movie should have been NC-17 (I would let her see it, if she wanted to, at 17).

I am amazed at how messed up the rating system has gotten, someone needs to take a good look at it and quickly revise it.

My Sister's Birthday

We went to see my sister for her birthday, MLO came along and the whole drive down to see her she couldn't stop talking about seeing her Aunt.

We took her on a dinner cruise and MLO sang her happy birthday several times . Then another several times again and a few several times more until everyone else on the cruise was laughing and shaking their heads.

I got a tour of her campus (she is in college)

We slept on one of her room-mates beds in her little apartment (the room-mate was spending the weekend with her boyfriend). MLO loved her apartment and kept running around it (though it is pretty small).

Even more fortunate is that her apartment was across from a park with huge playground visible from the entrance to her apartment. So, while everyone got to sleep in on Sunday, MLO and I woke up bright and early and played on the playground for hours and hours.

The whole time we were driving home MLO kept saying over and over she want to go back to her Aunt's house. They have always been close and I am so happy that even when MLO goes month's without seeing her she loves her to pieces.

Showers and Boy Parts

MLO has decided she wants to take showers with someone in the morning.

Usually we would get up, I would set her up with some breakfast and then run to the shower. Now, she asks to come along and stands in the corner farthest from the water. She likes to stick individual body parts under the water.

This has made her addversion to baths a little less painful as then she just takes a shower with me in the morning.

One morning she wanted to go with daddy. We thought about it and let her go.

Afterward I asked him how it went and he laughed and said it really well, after the initial question of what was "that". To which he just told her that was what boys had (she has been having fun pointing out who is a girl and who is a boy for a few weeks).

Now I almost told him to wear a swimsuit while in the shower with her, but decided against it. I grew up with everything being very comfortably open and I think this made me very easy to talk about sexual stuff with my parents. I was very open and honest with them about everything.

She hasn't brought it up again and continues to take showers with me in the morning (daddy isn't always taking a shower at that time). She hasn't said anything about it or asked any questions.

Yet I have a little bit of a concern that I should have been more careful.

Oh well, hopefully I haven't scared her for life :)

Tried to Cut Out Naps

So MLO has been refusing to go to bed any earlier than 10pm. Even if I get her in bed, she stays awake until about 10pm.

I thought maybe this meant that it was time to cut out her nap. We have been trying for over a week, but she still doesn't go to sleep until 10pm and she is cranky ALL THE TIME.

Now a cranky three-year-old is not pleasant to be around.

So today I decided to let her sleep in until she woke up. This is the first morning she smiled when she woke up and was back to her usual please asking self.

I told the daycare to make sure she did get her nap and we will just try again maybe when she is closer to 3 1/2.

I like her much better when she is all happy and her sweet self. Oh well.

Disneyland

For my daughter's third birthday and combination potty training success we went to Disneyland.

I haven't been to Disneyland in over fifteen years and let me tell you it is very different when you are a mom with a three-year-old.

Seeing "the castle" that you see in all the movies was originally the big thing for her and she wanted to go in it more than you really can. She loved the Snow White wishing well and sang along with the music.

We did spend most of our time at just a few rides that MLO wanted to go on, over again and again.

Her favorites were the Merry-Go-Round, the Dumbo ride and the Nemo Submarine.

When we were first getting on the Nemo Submarine she kept telling me she didn't want to. She then told me she had told me she didn't want to, over and over. I answered that we would do it quick for me and then we would leave, to which she unhappily agreed.

The beginning of the trip doesn't really have any Nemo stuff in it.

However as soon as we heard Nemo's Dad's voice (to a three-year-old he doesn't get his own name) and then we saw Nemo she screamed enthusiastically at the top of her lungs "NEMO".

Yeah, then it was almost impossible to get her off and she wanted to wait in the 45 min+ line to do it again.

We somehow convinced her otherwise but my goodness.

We also got to have the real and in person Snow White tell us a story.

We of course ended the day with the fabulous fireworks show. This last 4th of July we didn't make it out to see fireworks, so this is really the first time she has truly seen them.

The whole time she was wide-eyed and uhing and ohing. Of course then Tinker Bell flies around the castle and she nearly tried to fly up to meet her.