Madeline's development marches forwards. She has become very attached to watching the Baby Shakespeare video which she calls "Purple moo cow farted on the TV". Her favorite scene is when the purple cow walks into a pasture with two normal looking cows then farts. Seth Godin would be proud to see that the purple cow is the most memorable and preferred, even in to a toddler. It does have to fart though. In the scene the normal cows are disgusted and walk away. A butterfly then flies down from above and is also disgusted and flys away. The scene is only about 30 seconds long but I think that Madeline could watch it a few thousand times and still find new meaning in it. The good thing is that it is at the end of the movie so she needs to watch the rest of the contents first before getting her treat. Oddly, the scene after the purple cow is a model train and the contrast and frustration that the scene she likes is over is so great that Madeline calls out "Don't like it - train".

For the past couple of days we have been trying to transition her from only being willing to go to sleep with Sarah rocking her to letting me put her to bed. Somehow over the past month Madeline has become more fiesty and difficult about this process and Sarah had taken over all going to bed duties. But this is not optimal so we are trying to modify Madeline's behavior to be more adaptable which in turn gives everyone more flexibility. So Madeline threw a tantrum just when we talked about having me rock her to sleep. So Sarah left the room with a crying baby and my solution was to feed her an M&M. Madeline then proceeded to split the M&M into three pieces. She ate one piece. She gave one piece to me. The third piece she commanded was for mommy and let me know that we had to deliver it personally by leaving her bedroom. So the M&M wasn't successful but I went for my new secret weapon. Madeline can't NOT be entertained if I sing the "Two little monkees sitting on the bed one fell off and he bumped his head" song accompanied by abuse of a stuffed animal where I either throw the animal in the air and let it fall or just knock the animal onto it's head. We played that for about 30 minutes. Then I sang her the "I'm a little teacup" book. Then I gave her a synopsis of my day which promptly had her snoring.