Not Sure How to Respond to That.

Tonight our family was invited to a wrap-up picnic for a huge 18-month strategic planning project I've been working on at our church. I was looking forward to going as it was 1) a night filled with people I like at church and 2) a night I didn't have to cook.

The girls and I started getting ready about an hour before we were supposed to get there. I quickly threw them in the tub and that's when Jenna started acting up a bit, whining, asking who was going to be there, and saying "I don't want to go." By the time I was getting her dressed, she was really fighting me. She went through three or four dress choices but they didn't "twirl enough" when she spun around so they were not in contention. In desperation, I suggested she wear a skirt and shirt. We looked in the drawer where she has four or five perfectly fine skirts of all weights, lengths, textures and sizes but none would do. Finally I said- LOUDLY- "you pick something out. This is ridiculous!" and left the room. She then summoned me to show me her selection and I immediately knew it wouldn't work: the top and bottom were both too patterned to go together. I suggested an alternate skirt, which was just a hair different than the one she chose and she nixed that. Finally she agreed to wear a pair of plain white shorts with the patterned shirt.

After she put on the shorts, she marched into the bathroom where I was getting ready and announced: "All of MiMi's clothes are REAL and all of mine are FAKE!!!!"

(Yeah, don't try to make sense of that. Just let it kind of wash over you. Jenna is great for saying these declarative statements that make no sense, though you can kind of understand what she's trying to say behind it. Your brain is working so hard to decipher what she's saying that you can't come up with an appropriate response for a four year old to understand.)

And this is when I remembered, with not a small amount of glee, that my friend Judy says that she just lays out clothes for her sons and they just put them on. No big deal. And I thanked the Good Lord for knowing what my limits are and blessing me with a boy this time around.

And that's also when I realized we would all be better served if Dan stayed home with Jenna and just Michaela and I went to the party. So we did.

Earlier in the day Jenna had done the same thing. She is still not potty trained and so Dan tried to bribe her with the old "If you go on the potty for five days you can get any toy you want" kind of deal. She was really gung ho for the first 6 hours and then by 2pm was just peeing indiscriminately all over the house, which is understandable if you are two, but not when you are over four. So this morning Jenna was trying to figure out how she could not go on the potty yet still somehow get the toy (she said she wanted a baby doll). She offered every conceivable option between her underpants, MiMi's underpants, Pull-Ups, and diapers, some of which were pretty creative, but I was firm: you had to pee on the potty to get the toy.

She asked me if one of her friends, Emma, wears diapers. I told her no, she wears underpants and goes on the potty. I told her that all of her friends- Jack, Erin, Emma- they all go on the potty and none of them wear diapers. Her response, which, by the way, was entirely accurate: "Well, they're all three years old."

I just laughed.

By about noontime, completely out of the blue, she walks up to me and says, "I don't want another baby. I have enough babies."

Score: Jenna, 1; Potty training, 0.