Whoops, I forgot to publish this one.

Emmy's going through a phase where she likes to take off her pants and then her diaper.

The other night, she spilled water on her pants, so of course, she had to take them off.  Then after dinner, off comes the diaper because "it's wet, mama."

It was almost bath time, so I suggested to her that she needed pants, but didn't pursue it further.  I did ask her not to pee pee on the carpet.

A few minutes later, I smelled a familiar odor.  "Tom, is that you?" I asked.  He shook his head.  I checked Emmy, and she was clean, so I shrugged and ignored it.

Then, a few more minutes later, Emmy gets a horrified look on her face.  "Oh, oh, oh!" she cries.  I look down, and my baby is pooping on the carpet.  She's struggling to look over her shoulder and see what's happening.

"Honey," I say.  "Don't just stand there.  Go sit on your potty!"

So, she runs over to her potty and plops down.

Shaking my head, I walk over to get a paper towel to pick up the poops.  As I walk back into the living room, I see my daughter stand up, pick up the bowl of her potty and dump the pee out on the wood floor.

At least she got it in the potty in the first place.  Right?

So, Tom and I are trying desperately not to laugh uproariously-- and failing miserably.  We pick her up and cart her upstairs for bath time.

We also want to encourage the potty use, so after she's in the bath, I ask if she remembers what happens when she pee pees in the potty.  She looks up at me and says, "I get m&m's, mommy."

She got her m&ms, even though it wasn't a perfect potty experience.

Brief Emmy Updates (It ended up not being very brief)

Emmy is so adorable right now!  Every single day, I think to myself, she can't possibly top this level of cute.  But then she does. 

And then she throws a fit and sobs for 20 minutes.  Because we can't watch another episode of Mickey's Clubhouse.  So it balances out.

Emmy is very excited about our plans to buy our Christmas tree and decorate this weekend.  Last night I told her we would be decorating, and Emmy said, "What we going to dec-or-ate, mama?"  I suppose she'd never heard the word decorate before, so she spoke very slowly and deliberately to get it out correctly.  I was so amused, I couldn't even answer her because I was grinning and trying to contain my laughter.

I told her we would get a Christmas tree and she said, "With lights?"

We tried to go see Santa two weeks ago.  It was an unmitigated disaster.  She refused to sit on Santa's lap, and when we finally decided to just have her stand beside him, the store made the decision to dump the photos before I could decide if any of them were usable.  I complained to the store manager, who essentially told me that it wasn't feasible to allow parents to review all the photos and pick the best one.  So, instead the 17 year old who is running the camera "decides" which is the best/most saleable photo.  Which means that the photo they chose for us was the first of 5 shots.  Rage doesn't even begin to describe my feelings.  I was so mad, I was shaking.  I was shaking so hard I wasn't sure I could say, "I'd like to speak to a manager," clearly. 

Sigh.  We won't be going back to that store.  Even if they do have the best looking Santa.

I decided that we won't be going to see Santa again until either a) Emmy actually wants to go see him or b) one of the grandmas decides to take the task on herself.  It's just not worth the hassle and rage.  Emmy doesn't get anything out of it, because she's just scared of this weird man in red.  And Tom and I just get to exercise our anger management.  A skill that neither of us is particularly good at when shopping malls are involved.  My rage meter tends to max out MUCH more quickly in a mall than in any other location.  Except the DMV.  And my polling place.  Oh, nevermind, my rage meter maxes out a lot.

Emmy has also gotten interested in cooking and baking.  She loves to help cook.  She's made cookies with both grandmas, and she helps me make dinner fairly often.  We also made a "pumpkin pie" for Thanksgiving.  She likes to stir, pour things into the mixing bowl, and she loves to crack the eggs.  Her egg cracking is a little, ahem, inelegant at the moment, but she'll improve.

I also want to mention her vocabulary and speaking.  It seems to have happened overnight, but my little girl is now speaking in full complex sentences.  It's an amazing transformation.  She uses the word because.  Correctly.  Most of her sentences have a comma in them.  There are still times when I have no idea what she's talking about, but for the most part, her communication has just taken off and she talks non-stop.  I don't even think I could count all the words in her vocabulary at this point.

For Christmas, she's asking Santa for a jack in the box, a dollhouse, and (according to the letter she "wrote" at school) for "Grandma to see Santa."