Mothering a 2-year old

Crystal is potty-trained enough for wearing underwear now. She will go on the toilet public bathrooms but she get's pretty stubborn at home. Usually, I can get her to sit on her potty herself with minimal fighting if I first give a warning: "go sit on the potty or I will drag you." The nicer version sometimes works: "can you do it yourself or shall I help?" It also works for other things. She loves her independence.

Also, I am still breast feeding Crystal but I have night-weaned her. This means that I give her only "milky" at bedtime, morning time, and throughout the day; not during the night. I sleep in her bed with her or in another bed in the same room most of the time. So whenever it's the middle of the night and she asks for milky, I say something like "no milk and if you cry, I'm leaving the room" and "it's still nighttime: you can have milky in the morning." Of course the threat only works after I have actually left the room immediately when she cried (and I return after only a moment). I then ask her "will you be happy? Say 'I will be happy.'" Then she wipes her eyes and says "I will be happy." So she believes me when I threaten her and she won't cry and will go back to sleep.

I've also stopped giving her milky during her 2-3 hour nap. When I'm done giving her first milk and she's still not asleep. I pretend that I'm asleep while repetitively telling her to lay down and close her eyes and stop talking. Again: "If you sit up or if you talk, I'm leaving the room." If she ever misses her nap, it makes for a very poor rest of the day, so I make sure that I do whatever I can to convince her to go to sleep for her nap at the perfect time each day: 12:30 unless she get's tired eyes and moody earlier.

Crystal was dancing at Zumba on Thursday and it was so sweet! We have so much fun together and I love her so much! She is such a wonderful little sweetie!

This is Steve and Crystal during General Conference:

How I Spend My Time

Lately, I've been reading the Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan. Each book is 800-or-so pages long. I started the first book shortly after my birthday or was it Christmas? Now I've just started the 6th book but think that I'm slowing down now.

For the past couple of days I've been practicing some vector calculus and I'm really enjoying it. Funny since I can't remember enjoying it much when I took it during a summer semester 7 years ago.

I'm tutoring math even more than ever and I am enjoying that also. My favorite students are my 9th and 10th graders taking algebra and algebra II. The most exciting subject for me to tutor is any of the college Calculus courses.

This year, I gave Crystal only a small birthday party and I gave Steve the bigger birthday party. In the 7 years of marriage, I had never given Steve a birthday party, partially because he hates big/long parties. But this year, he prompted the idea himself by suggesting that we invite his brothers over to share the cake. That's when I immediately started making the phone calls. For his cake, I followed the recipe for the "Red Waldorf" cake in the Better Homes and Gardens cookbook except that I left out the red food coloring called it "Brown Waldorf." Though the name doesn't sound too good, the cake was.