Holy cow toddlers are tiring when you are the only one on duty all the time. Den is away on a short business trip right now and the evenings are just so hard! I’m used to handing her off for at least a little bit – not literally, but at least knowing that someone else is in the room watching her so I can actually do the dishes or make dinner or whatever it is I need to do. Today I was chopping onions and garlic while running into the living room every ten seconds to see what the heck she was doing now. (This climbing phase is kind of scary!) I tried occupying her in the kitchen with me, but that failed. I’m trying to avoid turning on the TV every time I need to do something, but man. It’s hard.

The food/water thing really is driving me crazy right now. I am so confused. She asks for food then refuses to eat it. But then asks for food. And refuses to eat that. And asks for cheerios, but I am not giving her cheerios if she won’t eat anything else. Last time I ate chili on a salad I gave her chili in a bowl. She did not want her chili in a bowl, she wanted my chili on a salad. Okay, fine. I fed her from my bowl (or at least faked it really well). She ate it happily. So this time I was smart! I made chili on a salad for her, too. I gave it to her. “No.” Ummm. Okay. I offer her a bite of mine. “No.” Errr. What? I finally convinced her to eat a bite of mine. Then she proceeded to pick the lettuce off of every forkful I offered her. Not to discard it – to eat it. She ate JUST the lettuce. She absolutely refused to eat the beans or meat. What the heck??? What kid does that?!

She won’t eat any fruit right now. Strawberries, pears, peaches, oranges – all previous favorites, all refused at first sight. I even mixed yogurt with pear chunks as a “new food” – which she took a bite of. Then she made a horrified face and refused to open her mouth again. Oh, I take that back, she will eat apple… but only with peanut butter, the way I eat it. Plain apple slices like she used to eat like crazy are dropped to the floor.

The dumping of water continues. I can only give her water or milk while I’m standing there, and the very second she is done drinking and makes a move to dump the cup or make a mess with the sippy I take it away from her. I have cleaned up a LOT of water and milk in the last three days.

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Today it snowed pretty hard so we stayed in all day. That’s a long day for both of us, I usually try to at the very least run an errand or something to get us out. But we found some ways to keep busy. I brought in a tub of snow for her to dig in with her shovel. I love snow; it’s fully edible and doesn’t stain anything. I just have to mop up water when she’s done. So she had fun with that for a while. I brought up an old toy from the basement (which sadly did not hold her interest for very long, damn). We read books. She stuck stickers in her art pad (she apparently loves stickers now that she’s figured out the trick to them!). She took a long bath and played in the water. She also took a very nice 2 hour nap, which I appreciated. So really it wasn’t a bad day! I didn’t have the energy to actually bundle us both up to go outside, but I did that yesterday in the inch we had already. She enjoyed that until the big dog knocked her down in the snow, then she changed her mind.

Why does it always snow when Den is away? I remember when he went on a week long trip the December I was pregnant with Kate. “It won’t snow,” he said, rolling his eyes at me. It snowed. This time he left off the eye roll. It still snowed. I guess he’s just not allowed to go away December through February anymore. We do live in Massachusetts, after all. (Not that these storms are really a big deal. I still get highly amused by how efficient everything is. Snow falls, plows come through an hour later, everyone snowblows their driveway, people continue on their business.)