Milly’s done a lot of entertaining stuff lately, and she was pretty much on fire today so I’m going to start this post by just listing things Milly has done today.

Milly was awake around 7:30, but I ignored the fact and stayed in bed.  She settled down and I went to go get her at 8:00.   I usually knock on the door if I know she’s awake because she’ll laugh or screech and knock back.  She’d been quiet for a while though, and when she’s quiet it (usually) means she’s sleeping, so I like to slip in quietly and wake her up gently.

Well, I couldn’t open the door this morning because Milly fell back asleep against the door.  I did manage to get it open enough to slip in, but she was dead weight.  It was obvious that she was awake after I pushed her and the door a little, but I guess she was tired and she didn’t want to move.  She was wide awake once she did though, and she was ready to go downstairs.

We had a fairly typical morning: ate cereal, played with some toys, watched a little TV including Curious George and Pistachio, which is what she calls her favorite episode of Veggie Tales.  For play, she had Yellow Beetle and I had Yellow 4, which is the small car she got in Rochester.  She wanted them to play and take walks (drives, really, since they’re cars) and they ended up taking a walk on the kitchen table.  I think she’s seen The Lion King too many times already because she had Yellow Beetle slip off the edge of the table and cried out for Yellow 4 to help a couple of times, then had Yellow 4 do it too.

I put Milly in her panties for the first time yesterday, though I didn’t keep them on her too long.  I put them on her again today and she peed in them.  It’s a shame, because I know she can hold it.  I usually let her run around nekkid so that she’ll hopefully use the potty, but she just holds it the vast majority of the time.

She did, while naked, ask me to change her diaper, and that generally means she’s going to poop.  I convinced her to sit on her potty by giving her half a candy corn and promising her the rest when she’d actually done something on it, but after a while even that promise wore off and she didn’t want to do it anymore.  At one point she sounded kind of frantic, so I asked  if she’d sit on the big potty with me and she said she would.  I scrunched myself (fully clothed) back on the seat as far as I could go and held onto Milly so she wouldn’t fall in or anything.  No go with that method either, but at least she sat there on the toilet for a while.

At one point this morning I was standing up and having a nice stretch.  Milly tried to stick a raisin in my belly button.

Later on she said, “Hi kitty cat.”  At first I figured she wanted to watch some YouTube videos of cats, which she likes to do sometimes.  I figured it out a minute though.  “Hi kitty cat… do you mean Hello Kitty?”   to which she replied, “Yeah.”  I think Amanda showed that to her a time or two on YouTube.  So anyway, she watched a few short Hello Kitty cartoons.

Barry’s office premiered a commercial today.  Amanda, Milly and I were all in it and I recorded it when I saw it so we could show it to Milly.  When we asked who she saw in it she said, “Zach and B.”  She calls me Zach at random now and then, and has started to call me Dad and Amanda Mom, though it’s rare.  When she calls me Dad she usually says it over and over again, so I answer her back by calling her Mill.  Anyway, she saw Mommy and Milly (not Mimi) on the TV too and wanted to watch the commercial several times.  They got a smile forming on her mouth in the last shot of her.  I was also struck by how curly my hair is.

Amanda took Milly to Mayfaire today in part to get out of the house, in part to use a coupon at Ulta, in part to pick a few things up from Costco (which is nowhere near Mayfaire, but it was all in the same trip), in part to go to Barnes & Noble and Brilliant Sky to play with trains and other toys and in part to meet up with her grandparents to eat at Atlanta Bread.  Amanda let Milly pick out her clothes, which consisted of a brown sleeveless shirt with flowers on it, black dress shoes and a purple tutu.  She was also wearing some pink tights, but that might have been Amanda’s contribution.

While they were out G.G. (which stands, if you don’t know, for great-grandma) bought Milly some Gap clothes.  They were 40% off the clearance price, so they got some nice stuff.  One of the shirts, which Milly picked out herself, had a cat standing on top of a dog and talking on the phone.  There was also glitter on it.  Later on as I was hanging up her shirts I asked her what was on the shirt, and she said it was Hello Kitty.  I guess since the cat was talking on the phone I can see where she’d say that, though the cat itself looked nothing like Hello Kitty.

Amanda dyed her hair tonight and after she washed it out wanted me to put Milly in the shower with her because our girl was filthy.  She told me she wanted to go for a walk this evening, so the three of us went out.  Our neighbor, Dave Narron, was at the mailbox so we talked to him for a minute while Milly chased his dog, Cream, around our yard.  She ended up playing with and sitting in the sandy runoff that piles up at the edge of the road all up and down our street.

We only ended up walking to the cul-de-sac.  Milly found a stick on the way and decided the stick was going to get me and Amanda, so she chased us around the end of the road.  Bonnie, Dave’s wife, was coming home and saw us so she drove up and talked to us for a minute.  Milly wasn’t too interested in conversation, but she was fine to say hi and bye and the like.

Before I put Milly in the shower she was playing with her zoo, which is a toy she got for her first Christmas.  It struck me what lasting power it has to keep her interest as much as it did today after two years.  Then she pulled her rocking chair by the door, sat in it and had me sit in the big one.  She was just rocking back and forth and I told her, “I love you, Milly.”  She said, “I love you too much.”  I laughed and so she said it a few more times.  Thinking on it more now, my guess is that she confused “I love you, too,” with something Amanda used to say.  Sometimes when I would pick Milly up and give her a bunch of kisses to the point of obnoxiousness (which would either make Milly laugh or get annoyed) Amanda would say, “Milly, tell Daddy ‘You love me too much!'”

So, back to the shower.  After Amanda got out Milly wanted to stay in and play with some bubbles so Amanda ran the water enough to give her maybe an ankle’s depth to play in.  Milly splashed and played with bubbles, drank some bath water while we weren’t looking (we were in the bathroom, just not looking at her at the moment).  Then she got on her tummy, and this is the point where she’ll usually tell us that she’s swimming, but tonight she said she was swimming like a mermaid.  Where did she get that from?  I have no idea, but it was so adorable.

At bedtime Amanda read Milly I Like Myself and when she was done Milly wanted to read it to us.  She got some of the words, inflection and gestures that Amanda does on certain pages down pretty well.

So that was what Milly did today.  I stayed pretty busy with some sales leads and helping guide Scott in making changes to Barry’s website redesign, which went live this afternoon.

Zach Dotsey