Our Brilliant Child

Tuesday, February 20, 2007
I am happy to report that potty training is going well. Chloe is taking herself off to use the potty. Of course, she has an incentive, gummy bears. She likes to negotiate on how many gummy bears a pee-pee is worth. She usually starts out at 4 but always settles for 2.

She really is quite smart and brilliant, and I am not saying that just because I am her mother. She knows that if she goes potty that she will get gummy bears. So, today she is trying to maximize her gummy bears by not doing all her business at one time. She will go potty, get her gummy bears, eat them and then go back to the potty and repeat the process. So, we have been on the potty virtually all day. I realized that she is not completing her business on the potty but holding some back so that she will get more rewards in the end. Clever girl. So, I have had to change the rules and call her bluff. If there is not much in the potty then it is only 1 gummy bear. This change in the rules has allowed us some time off of the potty this afternoon.

I am hoping that Chloe will get better and better each day. I know she will, it just seems like a long process. Last night, Chloe told me that she wanted her diapers back because she didn't want to be a BIG girl anymore. But, so far so good. She is using the potty regularly (of course, a little too regularly in hopes of maximizing her gummy bear consumption).

On another note, I ran down to the basement this afternoon to check on something and left Chloe playing in the living room. When I came back upstairs, I found her with the dust pan and sweeper cleaning. She made a little mess with some rice earlier and I guess she felt compelled to clean it up. I certainly didn't. I have actually had people comment that I must be a neat freak because Chloe is one and she must have gotten it from me. NO she didn't. I just want to set it straight that I don't have my 2 year old cleaning up the house. This is something she enojys doing. I'm really shocked that she knows how since I am her mother.

Anyway, when I saw her sweeping I laughed because she would sweep and as she stood up she would dump all the contents of the dustbin out. I grabbed the camera and was lucky to capture her cleaning technique. I attempted to post the video but the file is just too large to download. I tried editing it in Adobe but the file came out even larger. I guess I have learned that I should use the video camera to record video and not my digital camera. The file is enormouse, too large for You Tube or Google Video to handle. Too bad because it was darling.

No comments