Maxed Out

I think Cubby's preciousness is maxing out at this point, as it's really inconceivable that we could possibly love her any more. When we leave the house, she runs ahead of us yelling, "Vamonos!" and when I read her Fancy Nancy, she gets teary-eyed on the page where Nancy falls down and drops the parfaits. Whenever she takes off her clothes and goes streaking and giggling through the house, I yell, "Get back here, you stinker-butt!" so now she declares, "She's being a stinka-butt!" when she gets undressed (and it's nice to have fair warning). When someone on TV is being mean, she says disapprovingly, "I think he's not being a good wiss-ner [listener]." She calls pita bread and hummus "hita and pummus." It's just one precious thing after another these days, which is sickening, really. How are we going to make room for a whole second batch of this stuff come April?

And hey, good news: I've been debating over whether we're up for the potty training thing yet, which would be a re-entry into the world of cluelessness on my part, after a year or so of pretty confident parenthood. I thought I might read a few books first and decide on a strategy, since my last half-hearted attempt went something like this:

Me (putting Dora underwear on Cubby): "Okay, now don't go potty on Dora!"

20 minutes later: Cubby goes streaking naked through the house, and I discover a puddle under the dining room table. [Technically, she did follow my instructions and did not go potty on Dora, but at this point I decided Mommy was not ready for potty training yet.]

But behold...two nights ago, when Bear set Cubby loose after her bath, she came running out to me and said, "She wants a sucker!" I told her it was too close to bedtime, and she added, "She went wets on the potty!" Well, that's a horse of a different color, now, isn't it?

Here she is, enjoying her reward while I read her one of the If You Give A... books:

I swear she consumes actual, mostly healthy food, but here she is enjoying more than her share of Daddy's chocolate shake a few nights ago:

And this is her rocking out at her new playgroup today:

Oh, and speaking of being maxed out...I'm now 3/4 of the way through the Twilight series, having read the first 3 books in the span of a week or less, and am now trying to resist wolfing down the last book and having to face the withdrawals that are sure to follow (it's apparently impossible not to make vampire/werewolf puns when discussing these books...or is that just me?). So far, my spoiler-free thoughts are as follows:

• If the new NKOTB cd is like musical crack--perhaps not exceptionally high-quality, but addicting beyond belief--then Twilight is literary crack.
• Books 1 and 3 were great reads (#3 was the best so far) and Book 2 suffered prolonged bouts of lameness but was still entertaining. This is apparently an opinion shared by every other Twilight reader I know.
• For an author who's been criticized for her amateurish writing style, and as a reader who's pretty sensitive to bad writing, I don't think Stephenie Meyer is nearly as bad as Anne Rice. I tried reading Interview With the Vampire once and felt like I was reading the work of a junior high kid. Blasphemy, I know, but I stand by it.
• I think I'm a Jacob person. We'll see if that changes after Book 4.