Mittens!

 

TerraDactyl poses quite a conundrum for us.  She loves playing outside in the rain and mud.  And she has zero problems with getting her hands and mittens muddy.  BUT, once they're muddy, TerraDactyl no longer wants to wear them.

So.  What's a mom to do?  For a while I was washing her mittens by hand every day, since she only had the one pair.  Obviously, that was less than ideal.  I found a batch of mittens for like, a buck a pair.  So I bought 16 pairs.  SixTEEN pairs?  Doesn't that seem excessive?  

Nope.  Not at all.  At the rate TerraDactyl goes through them, that's just about right.  :)  She likes to play outside twice a day.  If there's mud (and there's pretty much always mud), she's just about guaranteed to touch it with her mittens.  And then insist I take her mittens off.  So I try to keep an extra pair of mittens in my pocket, just in case she'll allow me to put the clean ones on.  So, we go through like 3-4 pairs of mittens a day.  Which means, our mitten supply should last at least four days before I have to do laundry! 

 Not to mention, TerraDactyl likes to wear her mittens around the house, just for fun.  She's included them in her morning getting dressed routine:  Shirt, socks, pants, then mittens.  The picture below is after a five minute conversation: "honey, are your SUUURE you want to wear mittens while you eat breakfast?"

But let's be honest.  I'm lucky of we get to go four days without doing laundry.  There's always something that needs to be washed.  I can't imagine trying to raise a baby in an apartment or somewhere that I'd have to make a special trip to a laundromat. 

In fact, sometimes I think I wanted to buy my first house so bad because I wanted to have my own washing machine. It's not that I love doing laundry (although, it's not my least favorite chore), but I hated having quarters on hand.  And waiting for a free washing machine.  And coming down to find all my clean dry clothes had been dumped on top of the gross dryer (even if I was only 5 minutes late!).  Sigh.  I'm so glad I have my own laundry machines now.  Oh, and yes.  That picture above is of TerraDactyl putting mittens on Riley.  Mittens are so much fun!  Why wouldn't a dog want to wear them?

This video is Amazing.  And frightening.  And entirely un-staged and un-prompted.  TerraDactyl chose to put the bottle there and what to do afterwards.  She now regularly does this while fiddling with the locking mechanism.  This child is planning her escape and actively building the necessary muscle strength.  Watch out Steve McQueen, when they re-cast The Great Escape, TerraDactyl will be gunning for the lead role.