Big change of plans for next year

I am so disappointed. I just got an email from the masters program that I had applied to telling me that I hadn't been accepted. They did attach a brochure for a similar program that is run through the same school (in conjuction with another foreign university) and ask that I apply for that course instead. I had a quick look through the information and its true that the actual program might interest me more, but the price tag is pretty high. I'm pretty unconvinced that it would be worth it for me to pay that much money, considering that I am doing the course more out of intellectual curiousity rather than a real job market need.

I'm trying not to get too sad about it all because there are two other courses that I applied to with the same application and I think that they may be sending their decisions separately. And I even if I had gotten accepted, I didn't know how I would pay so I hadn't gotten myself really committed to the idea of going back to school. But I think that I had sort of stopped thinking about any other possibilities for the next year, which sort of makes this a bigger disappointment than I thought it would be. At this point, I would really really enjoy studying again. I've never been a Great Thinker but motherhood has almost definitely melted my brain a little bit. Between nearly killing myself with the microwave the other day and my inability to open childproof medicine bottles, I'm wondering whether my IQ has drifted into the double digits.

Like I said, I need to look through this new brochure and I need to find out what is going on with the other courses before doing anything more. I'm just still feeling really blah and the energy that it takes to make plans is more energy than I can manage right now. Ella is sick today so I think that these last few days I was actually fighting off some bug and not just feeling tired from my little vacation.

BUT on a more positive note, Ella has started potty training herself. Just before I left on holiday, she came up to me and said "Maman! Potty!!" We ran in the bathroom, where her little potty had been sitting unused for months, I turned her around, lifted up her dress and saw that she had already taken off her diaper (I still don't know what she did with it... ). I sat her on the potty and, like a pro, she did her business, reached for some toilet paper, wiped herself, and then threw it in the big toilet and flushed. Since then, I have been leaving her diaper off when in the house and she has been using the toilet. We've had a few little accidents, like one morning she asked for the potty and then said no. But when I saw the look on her face (concentrated stare into the distance) I grabbed her and dashed to the toilet. When we got there, she did a little poop but still was frantically shouting "potty". I kept saying, "No, its fine. We're done." and she was getting more and more nervous. Finally, I realized that it was because there was an enormous turd in the leg of her pyjama pants. B and I conferred as long as we could over how exactly to get it out, since Ella was completely freaking out about it by this time. I regret to report that all three of us needed a bath after a disasterous extraction plan. Clearly we are all novices at this potty training thing.

All the same, I did risk a trip to the park on Thursday with no diaper, and Ella did super. She refused to pee behind a tree (I was getting nervous over how long she had been playing and was trying to avoid having to clean the entire stroller) and instead held it til we got home. We then tried going to daycare with no diaper, but she only managed to tell the workers after the fact, so fairly close to success but not quite there. Still, we've only been at it for about a week now so I am pretty happy with how its going.

Of course, one of the hurdles we still have to get over is the fact that she doesn't like wearing panties. I'm trying not to make a big deal out of it, since I figure it is more of a detail. However, yesterday at playgroup, we were trying to take some photos of the kids. Ella had taken off her underwear, so while she was smiling nicely in the center of the photo with all the other kids, her pose was just a bit...x-rated. Not sure anyone will be printing out those shots to pin up on the refridgerator. Like I said, I'm trying to just ignore it for now, but possibly next week I'll have to start working on a scheme to keep her from flashing her cha-cha at the world and his wife everytime we leave the house.