Jacob Delivers and So Do We

Jacob passed a major milestone this week. After coming back from out trip out of town to Northern Wales, Jacob tried to poop in the potty. He sat and sat for a while and was successful! Jacob has finally earned the reward we'd been promising for almost a year now. We'd go to Target to buy him a toy.

The major obstacle to fulfilling this reward is that Target has no locations in the United Kingdom. They don't even have a knock-off version of themselves, like Walmart has ASDA. Luckily, we've found a toy store in town where we could fulfill our promise.

We'd been to the store a few times before to look around. We even bought a couple of Bob the Builder toys for Jacob. I figured that was what he would choose. The major obstacle there was too many options. Jacob couldn't decide between Roley, Muck, Lofty, etc. He wanted them all at once. He started to get frustrated.

Then he saw the Fireman Sam section that was right next to the Bob the Builder items. He saw a little lap top and his heart was set on it. I thought it was too expensive, so I asked if he wanted to save up. After another poop in the potty, he could get it. He seemed okay with that. He wasn't too happy though. "I guess I won't get anything," he said forlornly.

His heart's desire

Then I decided it was a once in a life time event and it deserved a little splurge. I told him we could get it. He was overjoyed. We picked one out of the back of the stack because Jacob and who knows how many other kids have played with the front one, wearing its battery down to a shadow of its former self. He carried it with a smile through the store as we searched for Lucy.

Lucy was debating between getting a bath tub or a car seat for her baby dolls. I convinced her the bathtub was the better purchase. Did I tell her that more caring parents are sure to wash their children often? Or that her dolls wouldn't be riding in the car, so the car seat was useless? Or that we don't even have a car the right size for the car seat? These occurred to me but did not cut to the heart of the issue like the successful argument did: "Lucy, you will have more fun with the bathtub. You have a lot of fun in the tub yourself, right? Baby dolls will have more fun there too." Lucy was sold so we purchased the tub.

We raced home as fast as two- and three-year olds can go (which is not very fast, no matter what they tell you). They both clocked some quality playtime before lunch was ready. Jacob loves the laptop and has already figured it out without reading the instruction manual. He is turning into a little man! We are all proud of him.

Now if we can only get some repeat business from him. And shop at a thrift store for his next toy.

[Editor's Note: the American price listed below is shockingly higher than the British price, even after GBPs are converted into USDs; we paid only a third of that price and thought it was pricey. No wonder Fireman Sam isn't popular in America!]

My Kingdom for a Washcloth!

One thing we need  for Jacob and Lucy's bath time is some sort of wash cloth. The temporary apartment we are in is fully furnished, including bath and hand towels, but no face towels or wash cloths. We looked in the local children's store and found what we thought was a pack of washcloths:

They get an elephant clean, so they have to be big, right?

Only, when we opened them up and took one out, it turned out to be both smaller and thinner than expected. They are just barely usable for what we want. No wonder the pack has 50 in it.

Clean elephant shown actual size

The kids will still get clean, even if it takes more than one washcloth to do it! We can't wait until our household goods show up. Or we find a proper linens store.

Achilles' Heels Aren't Just for Greeks Anymore

We had an epic errand run today that ended with a very important (but not entirely useful) discovery. Rather than bore you with all the details of how we went to the grocery store to stock up, dropped off some mail in a mailbox, went to the Borders in Annapolis to get a reserve book which is the subject of an awesome podcast, traveled from there to Third Eye Comics to get my comics fix, wandered from the comic shop to Best Buy where J could try out the drums, and ate lunch at Wendy's, I'll cut to the chase and say that I've discovered an Achilles' Heel for J.

If you don't know and didn't follow the link above, ancient warrior Achilles was made practically invincible when his mother dipped him as a baby in the River Styx. The water made his skin impenetrable but, of course, his mom had to hang on to something while dipping him, so his heel did not get covered. He became a famous warrior surviving many battles till that literally fatal day when he was shot in the foot with an arrow, killing him.

Lots of other nearly invincible beings have similar weaknesses. Think of Frankenstein's Monster who, like the Scarecrow in Wizard of Oz, is afraid of fire. Or Superman, who goes haywire in the presence of Kryptonite. Or werewolves, who are hard to kill unless a silver weapon is employed. Or 1950's housewives, whose mastery of the kitchen can only be vanquished by the presence of a mouse.

What about J? As we left Best Buy, I discovered that L needed a diaper change (no, a poopy diaper is not his weakness). So rather than try to make it home, which would take 25 minutes, and rather than change her in the van, which was freezing cold, I decided we should go to lunch at the nearby Wendy's (no, fast food is not his weakness). Our first stop would be the bathroom for a quick and refreshing change. As we approached, J shrunk back and asked if we could go in the ladies room. I told him we couldn't, and didn't understand why he was so reluctant to go into the men's room. Was he too used to going with mommy? Was he simply mistaken?

Then I heard the problem. Someone was drying his hands. The sound of hot air hand driers is often pretty loud and we could easily hear it outside that bathroom. J is quite cautious about them. So I told him we could wait until the drier was done blowing. The guy came out and we had to wait another minute before going in. It was the standard minimalist men's room: one stall, one urinal, one sink, one hand drier. We got into the stall and I went to work. Someone else came in, did his business, washed his hands, and started up the drier again. J paled. I told him we were safe in the stall and we would not leave until the drier stopped. As I finished up another guy came in and started it up again. So L's clean diaper was in place for a while before we were ready to leave the men's room stall. Luckily, we did make it out and had lunch.

It's nice to know that J has a weakness. The only problem is the lack of ways to exploit it. Really, we want him to be comfortable going into a bathroom. We want him to be able to wash his hands and not dry them on his pants. Further, the only real inconvenience was to me. Any suggestions on how to use this knowledge (other than writing a blog post, of course)?