Dresses

The only things prettier than little girl dresses are little girls in little girl dresses.

The Princess and the Poo Poo Treats

I spend an impressive amount of time in front of the potty trying to convince little girls to go poo-poo. So much time that it finally occurred to me that it would be worth my while to go the route of poo-poo treats. I filled a plastic container with m&ms and put it up in a cabinet just outside the bathroom. Two m&ms for every successful trip to the potty.

Yesterday while Kimani was on the potty I found that we were out of m&ms (that post would be titled, The Pirates and the Poo Poo Treats.) So I offered her a cookie instead. While I was trying to bribe her with a cookie, my mom was offering to go buy m&ms and...



And then it happened. She signed cookie. SHE SIGNED COOKIE!!! She has never signed cookie before. In fact, she has not signed anything new in over a year, and during this past year she has hardly signed anything other than More.

I felt like crying. It has been hard watching her lose what little words and signs she had by age two. It has been so scary wondering if her cognitive development had stopped.

But over the last few weeks something strange and wonderful has been going on. I have noticed changes. She is focusing more. She is starting to engage in pretend play with her doll. She is being more cooperative. She is understanding more of what is being said around her, evident in her reaching for and putting on a bib when she heard my mom say that it was snack time. She finally knows that there are gifts inside the wrapping paper...



At first I could not believe what I was noticing. Coincidence, I told myself. But yesterday she signed cookie, and now I know that her brain is building new synapses, and strengthening what was left behind by the meningitis. I feel like God is giving her back to me one neurotransmitter connection at a time.

Get Outta the Trunk

Have you been following the Casey Anthony trial? Even if you weren’t interested, it was hard to miss. But I was interested. I was fascinated. I was right there in the trunk every night following it on Fox News.

It is difficult to believe that small missteps in the investigation allowed what seems like a murder to become a possible accident... reasonable doubt. One of the nights during the trial, there was a forensic consultant on t.v. saying that the prosecution should have tested the flies and maggots in the trunk of Casey's car to see if they had been feeding on little Caylee's dead body. Her DNA would show up in their teensy bug bellies if that were the case.

There were flies and maggots in the trunk of Casey’s car? Hellooooo, I have three year old french fries in the back of my van, along with an assortment of other “leftovers”, but no flies or maggots. I suppose bugs don’t prove a cause of death but they sure do signal that something grosser than a trip to MacDonald's went down.

At the very least the girl is guilty of more than just lying. And everybody knows it. And everybody also knows that she is not only getting away with it, but she is going to profit from it big time. She wouldn’t even dare take the oath and speak on behalf of her drowning story, and yet her lawyer has already hired a hot shot NY agent to help set up the most lucrative talk show deals. Who knows, maybe there will be a book or a movie forthcoming. Then she’ll be all set for the bella vita.

Or maybe not... maybe we could all get out of the trunk of Casey’s car. We could stop ourselves from acting like the maggots who gorged themselves on that rotting baby. We could boycott any shows Casey appears on. We could refuse to purchase any magazines that print her paid story. We could use our collective purchasing power to stop Casey from getting rich off her daughter’s tragic death.