Pun'kins!

On a related note, does anyone know how to get Sharpie out of a pink sweater?



Discovery Playhouse and Words

We've spent some time at the Discover Playhouse the past 2 Friday afternoons.  Isla loves playing on the slides, with the toys, the books....everything.  Last week she climbed up the slide, slid down, stood...and fell flat on her face.  Twice.  After that, she'd go to the top and yell "Momma, catch!"  and wouldn't silde down until I was squatting at the bottom.  This week told me to catch her once, but when she came down, she twisted and stopped herself before hitting the floor at the bottom.  She was SO proud of herself!  She still hasn't explored the whole place--last week I made her leave the toddler play area to go explore other things but this week, I let her play there as long as she wanted, then she went to explore a little bit.  She hasn't even seen half the place yet so I'm sure we'll get lots of use out of our year pass. 

She's really into Mickey Mouse Clubhouse and Elmo these days.  She'll pick up the remote, bring it to me, and tell me which she wants to watch.  I try to limit the television to first thing in the morning and at the very end of the day.  She's kinda slow to get going in the morning (even though she's up early) and lazing around watching TV seems to be a good thing.

I've been meaning to try to make a list of all the words she knows, but I can't get them all down.  One morning last week I wrote them down as she said them but I was at 30 words by the time she finished breakfast and after that, I couldn't write as she said them.  P and I are going to see how many we can think of:  egg, cheese, milk, bowl, plate, spoon, cup, pan (to put her egg in when we cook it), waffle, snack, juice, down, done, hot dog, hot, rice, sausage, avocado, eat, up, down, mouse, boo-boo (means fart), tractor, walk, Momma, Daddy, back, book, read, Mimi, PopPop, bed, night-night, baby, blanket, Jonathan (or Johnnie), Grandma, Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Pete, Donald Duck, Daisy Duck, Goofy, Elmo, Big Bird, Ernie, cookie, more, please, thank you, light, blocks, one, two, three, chair, couch, house, nice, green, blue, white, Ashlee, shoes, socks, ball, swing, slide, play, write, dog, giraffe, monkey, hippopotamus, owl, fish, butterfly, mine, no, chicken, Isla, pig, eyes, nose, knees, elbow, trash, hi, bye, rollercoaster, dance, bear, Sprite, diaper.  I'm sure I'll come back and add more.  She also says some 2-4 word phrases....."I want it,"  "My ____ (usually Daddy)," "So good,"  "Here you go," "See you,"  "Love you,"  "I got ____," "Night Night Jesus."  And she knows so many more words.  She loves animal books and can point out all the animals in there, show you were all her body parts are (including her dancing phlanges). 

We had parent-teacher conference at daycare this week.  Apparently Isla says "mine" a lot.  She argues with a little boy in her class.  She also pushes at them, although I don't think she meant Isla actually PUSHES the other kids--surely if she did, I would have heard about it before now.  She also said Isla LOVES the books.  This makes me happy.  In the midst of playing with all the toys and slides at the Discovery Playhouse Friday, Isla brought me some books and sat down for us to read stories.  Sometimes she'll sit for an entire story, sometimes she keeps turning pages. 

Big news of the weekend....I cleaned my car Friday (enough of a novelty in and of itself!) and turned baby girl's car seat around!  She's 22 pounds (with clothes) now.  MO law says they have to be 20 to forward face, but our car seat says 22 pounds so we've waited.  And waited.  Actually, she just hit 20 pounds at her 18 month well baby so we haven't waited very long.  She got a huge grin on her face when she got in the car Friday and jabbered all the way to the playhouse.  She must have forgotten it was turned around because when she saw it leaving the playhouse, she got really excited! 

Here are some pictures from Friday afternoon's visit to the playhouse...

Melmo meltdown

Isla's favorite toys are books.  Consistently, she'll play with her books more than anything else.  She'll bring them to us and say "read" and she's getting much better about letting us actually read stories to her.  She has many books in her room and an assortment stay in the living room, stacked on a couple of ottomans, in easy reach.  Some nights, that's all she'll play with.  One night last week, I was in the bathroom and heard a meltdown.  "MELMO!  MELMO!!!!"  Crying.  Distraught.  Much, much drama.  I came into the hallway and saw her standing at the ottomans, looking for her new favorite book that Y got her.... the one about Elmo's babysitter.  The one we left in my car the previous night.  I reassured her that it was okay, Melmo was in momma's car and we could go get him.  She continued crying until we retrieved Melmo and she knew, in fact, that he was safe.  The next day, I picked up another Melmo book from Target's Dollar Spot.

Family pics...

Love the new way to upload pics to Blogger!  So much easier and faster so I thought I'd share some of my favorite family pics.  Thanks to Hope Carroll for coming to my parents' house and shooting us all!

Winston, Minnie Mouse, and more....

Winston pictures....

So I don't actually have this month's pictures ready to upload yet.  We just got around to taking them this morning.  Momma is slipping on that 12th of the month thing.  When I told her this morning that we needed to take Winston pictures, she went in her room and starting moving the other kids from the toy chest and trying to pull Winston into the floor.  Then she handed me the white onesie and actually STOOD STILL for me to put it on her.  Then she started pointing to the montly stickers on the wall over her changing table and telling me she needed one of those.  When I got out my camera, she positioned herself in front of the bear and started posing.  But I couldn't get the lens on my camera.  Once I did and told her I was ready, she sat back down and said "CHEESE" as I started taking pictures. 

M-I-C-K-E-Y....

I was getting something out of the car tonight and Isla started saying "Mi'Mouz."  I looked down and there was a little Mickey Mouse figureine.  When we went inside I asked her if she wanted to watch Mickey Mouse on tv.  "Mi'Mouz! Mi'Mouz!"  and she went to the television and started to turn it on.  She has a Minnie Mouse doll in her room that we play with and she's been calling her Minnie for awhile, but I think it's because we call her Minnie.  Today, Mickey Mouse was a definite recognition of the commercialized cartoon.  And so it begins.

Oh, and she also knows who Elmo is and will point him out in her books. 

Isla's really big on pens and paper (or pens and clothing, the table, whatever....) these days.  We write her name with her a lot and do a sing-songy "I-S-L-A.  Isla!"  Tonight when she started writing, I asked her how to spell Isla.  She answered "IIIIIIII."  My kid is so smart!

Where'd it go?

One of Isla's favorite phrases.  Usually accompanied by upturned palms and big, wide eyes.

But I don't know where my background design went.  I clicked somewhere when I last updated and things changed.  I haven't been able to get it back quite right.  I'll keep clicking and see if I can find something I like. 

Baby Girl!

So much is going on these days and it's hard to keep up with all the changes.  Every since we went to Branson with Grandma and PopPop at the beginning of the month, the chattering has exploded.  Isla can put 2-4 words together...."where'd it go?"  "where's the pig?"  Every day there seems to be new phrases and words. 

We're still having fussy times with getting dressed and changing diapers.  I think it's mostly that she doesn't want to take the time and slow down to do such mundane things. She'd much rather look at her books (especially the animal books), color, or steal Momma's phone or the 'mote. 

Sleeping is going okay.  She cries out during the night some, but usually we check the video monitor and she hasn't really moved.  Occasionally we'll have to go check on her--last night P went in to check on her and she told him "no, no, no" and laid back down.  She let him put her blanket back on her and went back to sleep. 

She's pretty attached to the chenille blanket her godmother made her.  She wants to play with it sometimes, but doesn't really carry it around.  For the most part, it stays here but we take it to Grandma's when we spend the night there.  Grandma forgot to send it back last week and it wasn't a big deal, but this week when we had it here but it hadn't made it back to Isla's room, she didn't get to sleep when Momma remembered and took it in there. 

PopPop is still her favorite person.  We pull up into my parent's driveway and before I can even get out of the car, she starts saying PopPop.  We'll go inside and she'll go to my mom but immediately start looking over her shoulder for PopPop.

She's also a big fan of her Mimi, but P's mom moved back to Washington state this week.  Isla's really going to miss her.

Grandma's been teaching Isla things.  You can ask Isla who she loves and she'll start naming Momma, Daddy, MiMi, PopPop....  Sometimes you get the whole list, sometimes she sticks with one or two.  A few days ago I asked her and she said "Momma."  I asked who else?  She said "him" and pointed to her Daddy. 

So sleepy!  Early bedtime--more updates later!!

And more pictures...

Weekend pictures....

Great Weekend!

We took Grandma and PopPop to Branson over the weekend. Isla did so well for the long car ride! She kept putting them in the backseat next to her and jabbered and jabbered and jabbered. We stopped in Springfield at the zoo. It's a fairly small zoo, but very clean, nice, and not crowded at all. Plus they had electric scooters for rent so my mom was able to stay off her feet. We all had a great time--I'll post pictures later.

The second day of our trip we noticed a HUGE difference in Isla's speech and language. She was parroting everything my parents said, putting together new combinations of words, and speaking more clearly. She even got hippopotamus and kookaburra out fairly clearly! Of course, "PopPop" was said many times. She did well while we did some shopping and sat still for the first half of a variety comedy show we went to see. The magician in the show kept letting birds fly overhead so she LOVED that. After intermission, we moved to the back which was a good thing--no birds in the second half. She and I had to leave the theater 10 minutes before the end of the 2 hour show. I was so thrilled with how well she behaved!

Sunday we went to Butterfly Palace and she got to see many butterflies flying all around us. The place was really neat, but overpriced. Still, she had fun and we got some great pictures.

Today we were back in the car all morning again--she slept almost half the way home but before that, she kept wanting momma to sing more and more. She's learned gestures for Wheels on the Bus at daycare and also likes If You're Happy and You Know It. She tries to sing along to other songs which is so cute. Oh, and I've started to sing Apples and Bananas to her while she's eating and she's actually eating those two fruits now! Yeah!

One thing she's doing that I'm not so thrilled about is asking for the TV to be on. Some mornings when she's up too early, I've turned on her videos so she'll sit and watch so we can stay in bed a little longer and she has quiet time. She really only seems to want to watch when she's tired, but I'm not sure I like the idea of her asking for that. I guess we'll just watch and make sure she doesn't watch too much TV and make sure we turn it off during normal play time.

Tomorrow it's back to work for momma. I've gotten some of my things to do list done in the past month, but not everything. I think some more structure will be good for me. I'm going to work Tuesdays and Thursdays. This Wednesday it's field trip to the fair with daycare.

...and

She calls Speckles "Nice" most of the time. She's been told many times to be nice to Speckles and it seems to have stuck. Other times she just calls her Dog.

Blogger's been tempermental and won't let me post pictures. Hopefully it resolves soon.

....and

When we kiss boo-boos we have to kiss each hand. If the ouchie is on her knee, we have to kiss each knee, then each hand. If it's her head, we kiss her head, and each hand. So. Stinking. Cute.

And while I'm here, I'll upload a couple pictures. Cause she's so. stinking. cute.