Thursday Cinderella Blogging 010710

SteelyKid is seventeen months old today, and how does she celebrate? By scrubbing the floors in the mud room:

i-c1177710e86f16ee2ee6bc27b3903d2b-sm_cinderella.jpg

Honest to God, she does this all on here own. I think it's driven by the same impulse as the tissue relay-- she'll grab a tissue or a paper towel, run into the mud room, and energetically mop up the bits of slush that Emmy and I track in after our walks. She'll do this happily, for an astonishingly long time.

God only knows where she gets this from. It's not from me or Kate, that's for sure-- neither of us has ever happily scrubbed a floor...

The traditional Appa shot below the fold:

i-1eee4cb4e5103cd0f96446136f66349e-sm_week74.jpg

She's got a bunch more words than she used to, now, and will distinctly say "No" when offered something she doesn't want. She's not quite as good at telling us what she does want, alas, leading to the occasional meltdown when Kate and I don't cycle through the possibilities quickly enough...

She's also started dancing, which I will do my best to get on video soon. I think the cuteness might destroy the Flip camera, though.

More like this

The Pip turned one month old yesterday, so to celebrate, here's a picture of the whole family: OK, it's not a photograph, but look! SteelyKid drew that all by herself! (The labels on the drawing were done by one of her preschool teachers; the printed text was added by me when I obscured the given…
At lunch Friday, I was talking to a few colleagues about how smart our pets can be. I haven't done gratuitous dog-blogging in a while, and it's been a long week, so here are some of the more impressive of our Emmy's intellectual achievements: She's managed to learn two or three English phrases…
For this week's Baby Blogging, we have a shot of Kate helping SteelyKid with her new favorite game: It's called "Take off my shoes, and put them back on." She can play this for hours. It would be even cuter if she could do the putting on and taking off herself, but alas, she's still kind of…
Another day, another DonorsChoose incentive claimed. I'm actually late in responding to this one-- I missed my self-imposed 24-hour deadline because we're visiting Kate's parents outside of Boston, but I'll try to make up for it with the answer. Anyway, Helen asks: How did Emmy become part of your…

Wow, she's really dwarfing Appa these days! You were right when you said some of the other pictures were for the HUGE baby effect. LOL

Is she successful yet at getting things of off the kitchen counter?

By Lauren Uroff (not verified) on 07 Jan 2010 #permalink

My youngest granddaughter (3 now) does this, although her preference is to scrub the furniture. Neither her mom nor her dad are careful housekeepers, so she came up with it on her own.

A kid does something, and we say, "she's just like her mommy (or daddy)," and then she surprises us by demonstrating that she is also an original.

I suspect she has seen you wiping off things once or twice. My husband and I are not the best housekeepers, but necessity means the kitchen area stays fairly clean. When my little one was, well, smaller, he observed my husband wiping off the kitchen table. He figured out fairly quickly where the dishcloths were. He'd regularly go grab one and wipe up the floor under his high chair or the kitchen table. I wish we could've bottled that.

We got endless hours of personal time by letting our kids loose at the kitchen bar with a spraybottle of water and a paper towel. At this age, "helping" is a really big deal. They like having a job to do. "Steelykid? Can you please move every one of these blocks from this container over to that container over there? Thank you. Do you think you could now move them back? Thanks so much. That was a big help."

I miss toddlers.

Thursday baby blogging is the high point of my week. Thank you so much for keeping up with it!

P.S. I'm up to the QED chapter in the book. I don't' have a dog, but if I ever get one, I will be fully prepared to teach her physics!

By Elizabeth (not verified) on 08 Jan 2010 #permalink