Thank You Nina

for drinking the bottle of oil I was supposed to use on my hair clippers. That was awesome.

Is this troubling or impressive?

I asked Nina to make her bed and clean her room before she could watch a Barbie movie. She jumped up and said, "Sure mom!" then ran to her room and got to work.

Not bad huh?



So this is where I'm wondering if I should be impressed or troubled:



I'm sure she'll learn in time that stuffing it all under the bed would give an even greater appearance of a clean room.

"Click"

Me: Nina, please buckle your seat belt.
Nina: click
Me: Nina, that was your mouth clicking, can you make your buckle click?
Nina: Okay mom, click
Me: Nina, that was your mouth again. Please buckle your seat belt.
Nina: Oh, okay just one second. Click.
Me: Nina, seriously, buckle your seat belt
Nina: Just one minute. Click.
Me: Buckle your belt right now.
Nina: Okay mom, click.
Me: Funny joke, now buckle.
Nina: No
(me climbing back to her seat)
Seat belt: click

Mad that I buckled her myself.


Happy to have her picture taken. Did I just reinforce bad behaviour?

Maybe I should just throw in the towel

Obviously I know the saying, "you have to pick your battles". There are somethings that don't matter in the grand scheme of things. I recently picked, and lost, 2 battles that I thought were fairly important. This leaves me wondering, do I even pick any battles with Nina? She was blessed with a ginormously strong will and she has an equally strong determination to keep trying until she gets what she wants. Was I being too controlling with these two battles?

#1

It was like 6 degrees outside when we were trying to take Donovan and Howie to school. I had Nina dressed in pants, a long sleeved shirt, shoes and socks and a jacket. She told me she hated those clothes "so much", but I told her she had to wear them outside. I also told her she could change when we got back home, but that didn't seem to sit well with her. As I'm ushering the kids outside, I turn and find this:



Yeah, we didn't walk to school this time. Round one to Nina.

#2

Last night as I was putting Nina to bed she was complaining about how thirsty she was. I gave her a small drink of water and that held her over for maybe 2 minutes. Then I gave her a sippee cup to drink until I finished reading to the other kids. I went back, took the cup (which was almost gone) and put it away. She was not happy, but I closed the door and she eventually quieted down and fell asleep. However, at 4 in the morning, Matt woke up and noticed several lights on. He went downstairs and found this:



Who knows how long this door was open, could have been 5 hours or 5 minutes. Round 2 to Nina.

Nina's still Nina

I've been neglecting this blog, mostly because we are in a massive regression in potty training and I am partially insane. I'm pretty sure I'm going to stick her in pullups tomorrow and keep her in them until she goes to kindergarten...

Nina's on accident alert

Yesterday has been like most days lately. I am not sure how much further Nina can regress. If there is a record, I am certain she will break it. Let's just talk about yesterday:

1. poop in her underwear at home in the morning
2. pee all over the floor at Bass Pro Shops
3. pee all over her car seat on her way home from Bass Pro Shops
4. poop in her pull-up at the Chili Cook-Off

No extra underwear or pull-ups after that so we had to borrow a size 3 diaper. Awesome.



This is a picture from a game she and I went to last year. I wasn't in the right frame of mind to snap a shot of her and the puddle she made at the store. Love her!

Her purple umbrella

Not everything that Nina does is naughty. Besides the daily accidents we've had to clean up over the past couple of weeks, Nina has been pretty darn good. Of course we have some power struggles, temper tantrums, name calling and sneaky, suspicious behavior, but she is toning it down quite a bit. I searched the archives for some good behavior pictures of Nina. I liked these. Our old neighbor gave Nina a little purple umbrella. She wanted to use it all the time, but I usually told her to wait until it rained. That day finally came and Nina's reaction was priceless. When she saw the rain, a look of excitement mixed with panic came over her face. She froze for just an instant then rushed to her room to retrieve her umbrella. This was one happy girl:

I quit wondering why a long time ago

It makes things a lot easier for me. So when I see how cute Nina looks with her pretty dress, and her hair all neatly done...



I don't even open my mouth when she finishes off the outfit with these



For some strange reason, she thinks this is a great outfit for church

Why don't you have a shirt on?

"Because it was touching me"

Another busy day

Yesterday my mom and I were getting ready for a birthday party for all the November birthdays in our family. The Opportunist was ready and waiting.

The first break in supervision:



In the two or three minutes that we didn't have her in our view, Nina climbed on the counter, grabbed the sugar canister, tucked herself away in her favorite hiding place and starting spooning sugar into her mouth.

The second break in supervision:



No, Nina didn't make this for us. My mom made Howie a turtle shell bomber cake(from Mario Kart). What Nina did do, I didn't get a picture of. We were all in the kitchen, but somehow we didn't see Nina move the chair to the counter and wipe a finger-full of frosting off the front of the poor turtle. Luckily Howie didn't notice.

Then the normal pee accidents, one downstairs and one in her room. She told me that grandma said she could pee downstairs.

Caught with the scissors again.

A little name calling, none worth noting.

Am I missing anything mom?

Accidents and Incidents

Since yesterday afternoon, I have 3 accidents and 2 incidents to report:

accidents- nothing out of the ordinary, two pee and one poop. Maybe by the time she's in Kindergarten she'll be truly potty trained.

incidents - caught with a pair of scissors, luckily before any damage was done. Not like last week when she made a gave a few snips to our brand new bed spread. The other incident - gave Cameron a nice, bloody, fat lip in nursery by pushing him around on a toy when she was supposed to be sitting and listening to the lesson.



And she was totally posing for this picture. After I took it she smiled and wanted to see it. She didn't like the first one I took, so I had to take another one.

Uncle Mikey's Camera

Now I know this post is similar to one I just did on my other blog, but it's a Nina story and now must be documented.

So last night Michael stayed at our house so we could go to our race this morning together. The kids were staying the night at the Milligan's so he stayed in Nina's room. Before we left for our race Michael asked me if he should hide his camera somewhere high in case Nina came home before we did. I told him to stick it in her top drawer because she hardly ever opens it.






Except I forgot that Nina has some crazy ability to sense opportunities for mischief. After taking the above pictures, Nina brought the camera downstairs. I don't remember the exact quote, but she said something like this, "Look what I found in my drawer! I get to keep it." When Michael and I told her it was actually his, she said, "I found it first so it's mine." Michael kind of had to wrestle her for it. Eventually he was able to retake possession of his camera.

Opening Post

I have been considering creating this blog for a couple of years now. This isn't me playing favorites, maybe I'll get an itch to make a blog for each of the kids, but probably no time soon. No offence boys. This is different. I needed to create this blog for several reasons:

an outlet to channel my frustrations
a journal
blackmail
payback
a way to always remember what a unique and special girl Nina is

There is no one in the world like Nina. This blog will be collecting evidence to support that statement. I'm going to try to record all those fabulous Nina quotes as well as capture some of the naughty things I catch her doing. Now to be fair, I will also document the helpful, cute and great things she does too. My coverage of her will be fair and balanced, although it won't be my fault if the ratio between the good and bad things she does is not so balanced. Love ya Nina!



This is a picture of Nina sitting on the giant football at Invesco Field. Last year she and I had a girls night out at a Broncos game. She was a very fun and attentive date.