Oh, That Panty-Wearing Girl!

Here's a glimpse -- front and back -- of Darcy's wonderful panties. She's very proud of them and insisted on wearing them to Las Vegas today after our original plans of a play date with Miles was canceled. She wore them the whole time, through many errands (grocery shopping, flower girl dress shopping, etc.), and agreed to put on a diaper only when we were about to head home. She usually falls asleep on the ride home and I wasn't sure how she'd do with bladder control while sleeping. She did GREAT.

Get Used To It

Yeah, I'm a proud parent. I'm not ashamed. Get used to victory posts about the potty!

So Darcy wanted to wear panties -- "like Adam" -- to go to Kelso this morning and I let her. I carefully packed an extra pair of panties and pants plus a plastic bag to bring wet clothes home in. And I just as carefully left it on top of the freezer in the entry when we left. I discovered this when we got out of the car. Great. That made me a little nervous.

We went in and said hi to everyone downstairs and then went upstairs to find Michael. While we were up there visiting with Christine and Julia, Darcy started pulling at her pants, so I took her to the staff bathroom and she peed on a big-person's potty. We ate a bagel and drank juice at the fully-operational lunch counter and then went back upstairs to see the trains and read her favorite book in the reading room. Once again, she started pulling at her pants and successfully used the potty again.

The end of this story is a happy one. Despite having a neglectful and forgetful mama, Darcy went on a long-ish outing that even included drinks and came home dry!

In other news, the Adam fascination has not diminished in the least. It is definitely part of the motivation behind wearing panties. Poor Adam -- according to Darcy he doesn't wear boxer shorts like daddy, he wears panties like Darcy. At least her training panties are more like boy shorts than women's bikinis!

Guess Those Parenting Books Are Right Sometimes

I was waiting for that miraculous time when Darcy would suddenly indicate in some way her readiness for giving up diapers. I wasn't convinced that there was some magic moment that would make the transition a piece of cake, but apparently, we've reached it! Darcy has spent the last two days in panties. One nice, stay-dry pair for each of those two days. She isn't asking to go potty, but she is peeing pretty much automatically every time I have her sit on the potty, which has been every hour and a half to two hours.

This morning, Michael got her up and she wanted a diaper, which is fine because we're going to the Depot in a little while anyway and I'm not sure if we're ready for pantied outings yet. Although, if she asks for panties, I'll give her panties.

Potty Training Seems To Have ARRIVED

Let the record show that amid great fan-fare and praise, Darcy wore a single pair of panties all day long (with a diaper for her nap) and peed in her potty seven times. Dry panties for twelve hours and almost instant peeing once seated on the potty. Oh, the joys of parenting!

And Her Parents Party, Too!

'Cause our girl wore panties for over four hours this morning and peed in her potty three times during that time. Enough said.

Darcy Parties!

Darcy has been a very social girl recently. She went to a birthday party in Kelso for her friend Sean. Party games happened, which made her very happy because she's seen them on Sesame Street. Here are Michael and Darcy playing musical chairs.

She also tasted her first marshmallows, in the form of these frog eyes. She loves a book called Stella and Roy Go Camping and they roast marshmallows, so she's been dying to try them. It was a thrill.

Last night, Darcy hit another party in Kelso, this one a BBQ with campfire at the home of two volunteers. Darcy loved the fire, the three dogs running around, and -- yes, again -- marshmallows. She and Michael roasted two over the fire. One slid off their fork and was sacrificed to the fire. The other was enjoyed very much by Darcy.

Teutonia Peak

Rocks. To climb.

Rocks. To sit under and snack.

Yes, if there are rocks, Darcy and Michael will climb them. Always. We took a morning hike on the Teutonia Peak trail a couple weeks ago. Part of the motivation was a recent mountain lion sighting about half-way up the peak. It's a rocky, wonderful habitat for mountain lions and it's exciting that one has been seen up there. Not by us, of course. We saw some wildflowers and some cacti thinking about producing some flowers. We had a good time scrambling around rocks and hiking.

And when we got home, we were back with our own carpet of teeny tiny flowers. They really are visible in the picture. Or, they were before I uploaded it to Blogger. You can get a bigger picture by clicking on it and then you're looking for itty bitty purple blooms. They're everywhere, but not actually native. They were introduced a few hundred years ago by those dang traveling Europeans.

And, just in case you missed the wonderful news today -- the EPA has suspended almost all mountain-top mining permits while they study the damage the practice does to the surroudning environment and watersheds!! Our new president might not be doing everything absolutely right, but he's doing some good, good things. Also suspended today? The Bush rules allowing concealed guns in national parks.

The Flower Search Continues

Flower season, while not as spectacular as last year's so far, is upon us in force now. A couple weeks ago, we had reason to be in Baker and took advantage of the proximity to Rasor Road for some flower hunting. We didn't find many exciting displays, but the lupine out there were just about to pop into bloom.

Michael and Darcy climbed rocks, of course, as they do when rocks are there to be climbed. They didn't find any flowers up there, but Michael spied some flowers on rocks on the other side of the road and I scrambled up to take a closer look because they didn't look like something we'd seen before. Michael is in uniform because he had just given a talk about Mojave National Preserve in Baker earlier in the morning.

As, indeed, they were not. These are beautiful Mojave asters, which we did not see at all last year except in our flower guides. They are a really beautiful flower and this bunch was situated in a little rock crevice at full bloom.


I get to go do our taxes now, so y'all will have to wait for the next flower installation. It is Flower Hunt: Teutonia Peak. Your sneak preview: we really, really wanted to find the recently-spotted resident mountain lion, but didn't.

Day Five of The Adam Obsession

So it's happened. Our little girl has her first full-blown crush. It's on Laurie Berkner's bass player, Adam (he's in the second photo). Adam wears a green shirt in one of the photos in the liner notes for their newest CD. Darcy has worn green shirts the last two days. Today, she carried around the liner notes almost all day. She held conversations with Adam. As in: "Let's play in the tent, Adam." "That sounds fun. I'll try it." She turned the pages in the liner notes and pointed to each picture: "This is the picture of Adam where he wears his green shirt like Darcy's." "This is the picture where Adam says whoa."

She runs on grass whenever she's near it because Adam says something about running on the green grass on the CD. When we were at Kelso Depot the other day with our friends Amy, Matthew, and Miles, she kept asking the "boys" to run on the grass with her -- like Adam.

Today, I convinced her to do several things by invoking Adam. She wore jeans because that's what Adam wears in his pictures. She put shoes on to go outside because Adam wears shoes. She walked to meet Michael on the dirt road because Adam runs on the sandy beach and our road is made of sand, too.

Our poor bookmobile driver/assistant had his every move monitored and narrated because he's a "boy" and everything that boys do these days is fascinating.

Train Play, Darcy Style

Trains belong in high places, apparently. When Darcy plays with her trains, she plays on top of this bookshelf or on my dresser 90% of the time. On the dresser, the trains often go to the piggery (she learned the term from a book), which means that they all cluster around her piggy bank at the far right of the picture. She will play like this for long periods of time, chatting to herself and the trains non-stop.

There was supposed to be more to this story, but Darcy got interested in the process. Gotta go!

Resident Assistant Gardener

Darcy has stepped up as the number one garden assistant this year. She has her own shovel and hoe. When she uses them, she says that she is "just like the Care Bears" because she has a book in which a Care Bear works in his garden with a shovel and hoe. She doesn't quite have the concept yet, but she tries and she has fun doing it, which is the most important thing.

I made a solo shopping trip to Las Vegas this "weekend" and visited, um, several Starbucks locations to collect used grounds. It looks like a lot, I know, but it just disappears once it's in the garden, I swear! My soil has its pluses -- hardly any rocks -- but also minuses -- not much organic matter. The coffee grounds are really upping the organic, water-holding content.

So that coffee got split between two beds, one of which I had done nothing to yet, and the other one has significant amounts of cow manure, grass clippings, and some coffee grounds already. This somewhat prepared one got a good topping of coffee grounds. Looks like a lot, right? Darcy, as you can see, LOVES the coffee grounds. She likes to crumble the individual discs. It makes her coffee-covered from head to toe, but she's washable.

But after five minutes of turning the soil over, you can hardly tell it had that many coffee grounds earlier. It's the one in the middle. The whole garden is smallish -- about 11 by 14 feet in total, but it's a good start and I have modest hopes for production this year: greens, herbs, tomatoes, snap peas, and maybe some hot peppers and/or cucumbers.

Flower Season Begins!

Welcome to Flower Season 2009! Darcy and I hiked from the post office back to our house the other day and our rewards were a fox or coyote jaw complete with teeth and a little fur on the chinny-chinny-chin and the first flowers of spring! These purple lovelies are a carrot family member called purple cymopterus. Apparently, there's no common name for them. There are two plants hanging out together, but I can't find more, even though I've tried.

Darcy and Michael took their own hike a week ago to the "Quiet Canyon" (Darcy's name), aka Banshee Canyon (the name that appears on maps). This is the land of holes in rocks and the place where the echoes live, so Darcy loves it. Anywhere she can play with rocks and dirt is a good place for her.

Stay tuned for more spring pictures of Darcy exploring the Mojave and flowers popping up everywhere!