Presents from Grammie and Grampie

Grammie and Grampie came to visit last weekend. R had the best time. She gets SO excited to see them walk in the door, and she spent the weekend goofing off with both of them even though she was a little bit under the weather.

They always come bearing presents, no matter how often J and I say we don't really need anything else. Here she is opening them. Notice her reaction once she figures out what's inside the tissue paper.

Row, Row Your Boat

J taught R to play "Row Row Your Boat" a few weeks ago and now she loves to do it while singing "row row row row row row" with an occasional "me-ey me-ey" or "steam" thrown in for good measure.

Singing

This is usually what happens when we ask R to sing us a song. . .

Starfish

Another whole week gone by already?

Sorry for the lack of posting this week. Work has picked up like crazy, and J and R have both had colds. We finally took R to the pediatrician today, who diagnosed her with an ear infection and bronchitis. She's back on another round of antibiotics and eye drops for the conjunctivitis in both of her eyes. I've been trying--but this is nearly impossible when her nose is running every 10 seconds--to keep her from rubbing her eyes right after wiping her nose with her sleeve. So far my efforts have been mildly successful. She frequently asks for a tissue instead of wiping her nose herself. It's kind of cute. She waves her fingers in front of her nose and says, "Ti-SHOE! Ti-SHOE! Ti-SHOE" until one of us rescues her.

More posts coming in just a few minutes...

20 months

Dear R,

You are a new child now that you are in your new day care. You started just three weeks ago, and already you are busy demonstrating at home all the things you are learning at school every day. It's really quite amazing. There was a week of adjustment, but once the adjustment period was over, you were thrilled to go in, and you often walk around saying the names of the other children in your class.

You've mastered your animal sounds, and now we're working on numbers. You recognize the signs for all the numbers from 1-10, even if they're still very hard for you to do because your fingers aren't coordinated enough yet.

Whenever we sign "I love you" to you, you hold your hand up in various poses, trying (but failing) to get the sign right. But it's still utterly adorable to see you saying it back to us.

You have really gotten into songs, especially songs that have hand movements. You love to have us read you "The Wheels on the Bus" and you do all the hand movements-- "round and round," "swish swish," "move on back," "beep beep," "wah, wah," "shh, shh." You also love to sing "Ring Around the Rosy," which you often call "ringa ringa." Your favorite line in that song is "ashes ashes" and you will sing it randomly. You love to make us play Ring Around the Rosy with you, but you never want to fall down at the end! We always have to pull you down with us, or you just run around. Sometimes, you do sit down very delicately. But usually we just tug you down with us.

Your favorite goodnight song is still "Bye-O," and you sometimes sing it to your dolls, or to the banana you're eating for breakfast, or to a piece of cloth, or a tissue, or anything, really.

Bye-O!
Love,
Mama

Animal Sounds

What J Gave Me for Valentine's Day

Happy (Belated) Valentine's Day!

Love,
R

Happy Birthday, Little Frog!

Love, R.

Alphabet Soup

More of R's day care artwork!

Adjustment

I think R is adjusting to her day care-- it's taken about a week, but she's really settled down. For the first week she was very upset when we dropped her off. Today, though, she settled in happily with her teacher as soon as she saw her and didn't cry at all when I left.

We're working up to having her nap at day care (currently we pick her up and bring her home to nap right after lunch) and J has been picking her up a few minutes later each day. Today when he went she was actually laying down with the other kids although she eventually saw J talking with one of the teachers and got right up. But it looks promising! We hope by the end of the month she'll be happily napping at day care.

She seems to LOVE all the toys and activities they have there. I have to admit I am very impressed with how well-stocked the room is. There are just tons of awesome toys, fun arts and crafts, and books and dress-up and imaginative play items. Just tons of stuff.

We're also really impressed with the teachers. Both of them are amazing with the kids, and seem so knowledgeable about children and what they are capable of doing and what they should be aiming for. We really loved both of the teachers from the first time we met them.

R is the youngest child in her room-- I think the oldest is almost 3 and that most of the others are close to 2 if not already 2-- but the teachers think she's doing fine and learning a lot from watching the other kids.

Diapers

We used cloth diapers almost exclusively on R until she was about 14 months old and we moved from Texas to Delaware. I thought we'd get back into the cloth diapering after the move settled down. For awhile we kind of did, but we pretty much exclusively use disposables now. Part of the reason is because she uses disposables at day care and we didn't use up enough dirty diapers in the half-day she was home to warrant all the effort of diaper laundry. Part of it was also just laziness.

So I was pretty excited to hear about this alternative:

UPDATE: There was a video here but I've deleted it because it's no longer available. It was actually under copyright and taken off of YouTube, and I checked on the NBC website and couldn't find it there, either. Oh well! For those who didn't get to see it, it was a Saturday Night Live fake commercial for "Chewable Pampers", diapers that are totally ecofriendly because they don't get thrown away-- they transform into edible biscuits after being used. YUM!

Twice

Twice, now, R has told us she needed to poop on the potty, and then proceeded to actually poop! It's pretty exciting!

Baby Names for D

My friend D is expecting her first baby (a boy!) in June. Because I love talking about baby names, I am always sending unsolicited name ideas to D. At dinner tonight, J and I were asking R what names she thought would be good.

Here are her suggestions for D and her husband, Aviator, to consider.

Emmy
Dappy
Brett (or maybe this one was Bread?)
Brat
Birthday!

Visiting Grammie and Grampie

We visited Grammie and Grampie the other weekend. R had a great time. She loves running all around their house and playing with their toys. Grampie especially enjoys finding things for R to play with, like Grammie's ski equipment.
R got a belated Christmas gift from GiGi and PopPop. It's a little stuffed cat in a purse. Cutest thing ever, and R loves to carry it around the house.
This is the first thing she did with the cat once she got it out of the purse. (You can't really see it very well because she's laying on top of it).Grammie and Grampie also gave R an early Valentine's Day raincoat.

Grandma and Grandpa's Latest Visit

My parents came out a couple weekends ago to visit. It was great--we always love having visitors, but especially grandparents who love to spoil R. She just eats up all the attention.

On Saturday, we went to a really good Asian restaurant in town. Thank goodness we went early because by the time we left the place was so crowded we had to literally push through the crowd so we could get to the door.
On Sunday we had a really good breakfast out and then spent time hanging around the house. My mom and I went shopping briefly.

R was sick most of the weekend, so she spent a lot of time cuddling up to all of us, especially Grandpa. Here she is with Grandpa and all of her dolls. Grandpa named them "G", "Trucker", and "Tyke" even though they're mostly wearing pink clothes.
(Speaking of doll names, I don't know what R will end up naming hers, but whenever I think of doll names, I think of Ramona Quimby and her doll Chevrolet. The blonde-haired cabbage-patch style doll I had when I was little I named Megan, and I had another preemie Cabbage Patch named Bruce Trevor. I don't remember any of my other doll names. What did you name your dolls when you were little?)

Red and Silver on Black

R started a new day care today (more on that in another post, but we LOVE this place and her two teachers!!) and when we picked her up, this is what she brought home.

Nordic Princess

Grandma and Grandpa brought this new outfit for R when they visited two weekends ago. I love it. I think it makes her look like a Nordic Princess.

And, to make it even better, Grandma found it at the Goodwill. I wish our Goodwill here was as awesome as the one right by my parents' house. Theirs is really big and always seems to have a good selection of stuff.

First Haircut

I finally got sick of R's mullet (no matter what anyone says, she did have a mullet, and it was not the cutest hairstyle once it got too long to curl up anymore) so we took her to Kids Kuts to get a real hair cut.

The stylist was great. Funniest thing-- after the hair cut, we're standing around putting coats on, and R grabs the stylist's hand and walks over to the little toy area and starts playing with her. J and I just looked at each other and back at R and the stylist a few times.

R loved the toy area and we let her play for about 15 minutes. The salon was empty so we chatted with the two stylists for a bit and then headed out.