A Confession to Introverts

 Dear introverts in my life,
       I know I married one of you, but I don't understand you yet. I'm realizing all the rules to the game I've been charting and tracking all these years don't apply here with you. At times this leaves me feeling confused and uncomfortable in my skin, unsure of my next move, wondering if one more email or phone call or outing is smothering you with a little too-much-love and too-often-enthusiasm. It's a little risky over here wondering if you have the space to make me your friend. Because of course, I want you to be mine. When you're tired, you need to keep the world at bay. When I'm spent, I need to go to the bay along with you...and as many people as I can possibly talk into coming.
       I know you're a little frustrated with me, the extrovert, because even though there is no filter to keep me from saying what I really think, just when can you tell when I'm saying what I mean? When I've finally landed on my point? If I've stopped talking, then whatever was said last, this is my truth and my platform (for now anyway, unless I was distracted by something shiny mid-sentence). Do you have more to say after this, or are you waiting for me to ask intelligent, articulate questions to draw out the rest, to show you that I'm still interested? I don't have any intelligent, articulate questions. Those are for people who sleep. When I interrupt you, this doesn't mean that I don't care about hearing what you have to say. It means that the synapses in my brain are firing off connections that I deeply want to share with you for the sake of relational bonding and that I need to share with you before I orbit off into space, so my brain can be emptied and I can refocus on what you are telling me. 
       I know we inadvertently hurt each others' feelings sometimes, but that is friendship no matter which way you color it and I am oh-so-thankful for yours. Please hang in there with me as I talk over you and most likely embarrass you in public in the very near future. And just so you know, I think you're pretty swell and don't get all the praise you deserve in our culture that recognizes and rewards the extroverts. I'll try to put this big mouth to good use and brag on you more often.

All my love,
Jenny

Potty Training...For Real This Time

Dear Subway,
We apologize for that piddle puddle we left in your highchair. But we had just used the last babywipe. You should maybe rethink that non self-serve napkin policy.

If shopping with small children wasn't like a big game of hot potato before, it sure is now that the diapers have come off! Yes, without much preamble or preparation, we bought some 2T panties and said that was that. I took Selah Grace to the aisle full of toddler underwear and let her choose her favorite pack. After much oohing and aaahing over cartoon characters, a two minute stretch of clutching Buzz Lightyear ones (no gender constraints here), she VERY EXCITEDLY picked out her pack of Mickey Mouse Clubhouse undies. Her new chant is, "No more diapers! Yes panties!"

We've had a few days of loading up the washer with every pair of pants she owns. But I think we've finally discovered a reward that motivates her. Chocolate. I asked her what she would like more than anything as a reward from going on the potty chair five times and her answer was a chocolate drink! Together we made a sticker chart to put over her potty chair. She gets one sticker for her sticker chart with each use of the potty. One sticker to put on her shirt and one chocolate chip to eat immediately. After five stickers on the chart she earns herself a cup of hot chocolate. Hopefully the new chocolatey incentives will motivate her to give up the diapers. She's known how to use the potty for a while now, but just isn't interested in making the switch. No more dawdling. It's time to pay the cloth diapers forward to baby brother who has grown out of his mini cloths.

The potty in public is still kind of tricky. Public restrooms with big toilets scare her. Good instincts. They scare most of the rest of us too. Maybe we'll put a potty chair in the back of the Pilot and let her go there in the middle of shopping trips, but that leads us into a whole new conundrum...what to do if she DOES go? Bushes? Doggie bag it? The options seems slightly less than sanitary or legal for that matter.

We're trying to keep it fun and allow Selah to be a part of the process as much as possible, in what we hope is giving her buy-in to the whole situation. She chose the panties, the reward stickers, the reward chocolate.

Wish us luck! And you might want to start Lysol wiping your shopping cart if you don't already do so. We just may have been there before you with an, "oh well, next time we'll make it to the potty chair," kind of trip.

A Musical Nod

At 11pm last night as we rang in the New Year early so we could go to bed, Nate and I said goodbye to 2010 by singing a little pop-rock. We're a musical little family; Nate in that orderly left brain sort of way uses music as an expression of logic and mathematics and scale and me in that beautifully chaotic right brain sort of way that uses music as an expression of the intangible intuitive.

As stated in the previous post, we did the best we could with 2010, but in the words of Cee-Lo, "we're like forget you".



2011, we're ready for a Whole New World.