A Castle!

RUS received the most awesome set of colorful, decorative HABA wooden blocks for his first birthday, and these blocks, paired with some wooden blocks J and I picked up at a tag sale for a couple of dollars, have been AWESOME for the kids. One Sunday morning in May, R had a great time putting together this sweet castle.
And here's an aerial view:

A House for a Penguin

Sticks, Panels, and Blocks

So, looking through the K-Mart circular last week or two weekends ago, I noticed this little bubble saying, "Trio FREE Make-and-Take Event at noon on Sunday." I pointed it out to J, and we figured we probably wouldn't be able to go, but I still stuck it up on the bulletin board.

Turned out that J was able to take the kids, and I was really pleasantly surprised by what it ended up being! It's a kit that lets you make four different dinosaurs using essentially the same Trio blocks. And it was totally and completely free. All J and R had to do was make some kind of animal or some thing with the blocks before leaving the store. Dang.
And, just for fun, here's a road runner/chicken that J made out of Duplos.

One of the greatest things about having a blog . . .

Is being able to compare "now" with the "back when" by taking trips down memory lane and re-reading old blog posts. I am especially looking forward to being able to look at what R was doing at the same age that RUS is now. I can't quite do that yet since I didn't start this blog until she was 12.5 months old, and RUS is only 11 months and 1 week old. (And I sometimes really wish I'd started it sooner, as I'd have a much richer chronicle of R's first year of life!)

BUT, even though I can't compare them as far as exact same ages, we have been breaking out lots of R's old toys, and I'm making lots of comparisons in looking at how they play with the same toys and what they like to do with them.

One toy that I pulled out in the last week is this Fisher Price Roll-A-Round Dinosaur that J bought at Once Upon A Child when R was only a couple of months old (the link takes you to a blog post I wrote about this toy when R was 13 months old):RUS absolutely loves this thing. The first time we pulled it out he couldn't stay away from it. I showed him once or twice how to put balls through the holes and he was hooked. He keeps doing it, and I've seen his skill at holding and moving the balls increase exponentially in just the last few days.

He will put anything and everything into the dinosaur. The most common non-ball targets are these blocks--they all fit into the big holes at the top of the dinosaur.He also loves to pull himself up to standing, lean over and bite the dinosaur's ruffles as well as the spinning dinosaurs at the top, and lots of other stuff too. He just LOVES this toy!

Today we were watching him play with it and he was having fun sticking his hands into both ends of one of the holes and trying to peer directly into the hole. It was so cute to watch him trying to maneuver his head in order to see into the hole.

P.S. the other thing that strikes me when I look at the differences in these posts is how much more hair RUS has now than R did at a month and a half older than he is now!!!

Drawing . . .

the sky!
There are a lot more pictures and blog posts coming in the next few days-- as I can get to them-- but here is one photo of R playing with this awesome Fisher-Price magnetic doodle thing that her cousin G brought when my family came to visit the first week of November. R had a blast with this thing and she really got a kick out of drawing and erasing things on it. We have a mini magnadoodle, but we might have to snag one of these larger ones for her, especially for long car rides!

Water (and Sand, later) Table

R got a belated birthday gift from Uncle A, Aunt M, and cousins G and Trucker the other week. I discovered it when I opened my front door to find a giant box blocking my way onto the porch. It turned out to be one of these sand and water tables.

What an awesome gift!

R literally squealed with delight when she saw me pulling it out of the box and putting it together for the first time.

(Aside: It is so much fun to see how excited she gets about things! When Grandma and Grandpa were visiting, we went to a Mexican restaurant for dinner and ordered her a quesadilla, which arrived on a plate heaping with french fries. You should have seen her eyes get as big as silver dollars when she saw all that food being put in front of her. She kept saying, "WOW! Wow! WOW!" while we all lived vicariously through her enthusiasm for the food.)

Anyway, we haven't bought sand for it yet because--and this is another bit of exciting news that I haven't publicized yet for fear of jinxing something--we are likely to be moving at the end of this month into a new, perfect-for-us, house. But we've set it up with just water, and oh my goodness, she has a ball.

It works out wonderfully with the water toys she got from Great-Aunt L and Great-Grammy (note the green fish on the left in the picture below) as well as Grandma and Grandpa (note the blue and yellow clams).

Favorite Holiday Photos: Delaware, Part 2

I just couldn't resist adding two more pictures.

First, Grammie and Grampie got R a plasma car for Christmas. These things are awesome. They require no pedaling or any motorized source. Simply by twisting the steering wheel, the car moves. They can hold people up to 200 lbs, so all of us can join in on the fun with R. J and I first discovered them in a teacher supply/toy store right around the corner from our house in Texas and had to buy one for our nephew G for his first Christmas. Grammie and Grampie tried them out at the store when they visited us and loved them, too, so they got one for R. Here she is trying it out for the first time. Unfortunately, our house doesn't have a lot of wide open flat floor space so the car's hard to use in the house, but we'll definitely find more places for her to use it come warmer weather!
I mentioned in my 19 month letter how much R likes wheeling around her babies in the new strollers she got for Christmas. I neglected to mention how much she also likes riding in them herself. They're really not designed for children to ride in them, so DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME, and we don't let her do this when we are playing with her and the strollers. However, Grampie has a hard time saying no to R (after all, what are grandparents for, if not giving in to indulgences now and again?), and he gave her a few turns around the kitchen and dining room in the stroller. Despite the look on her face, she is loving this. When I tried to take her out of it she howled until we let her get back in for a few more minutes.
Maybe it would even be fair to say this was the Christmas of the stroller, because J and I got a jogging stroller that Grammie and Grampie found at a consignment store (thank you!!!) and R also loves that stroller. It's like her chariot-- she loves to be wheeled around in it.

Christmas Toy Ideas

I really like this website--SafeMama--because it posts regular updates on things such as BPA in baby items and other hazards I wouldn't necessarily keep up with as well on my own. They just posted their Christmas Toy Guide and I love a lot of the ideas they're suggesting!

I already had my eye on the Green tea set but we're waiting until we get R a kitchen set. This christmas it'll be about the bookshelf/dollhouse. Maybe for her 2nd birthday we'll do the kitchen set.

Anyway, it's a nice place to check for reasonably-priced gift ideas for those babies and very young children that you'll be shopping for this winter.

Speaking of Christmas shopping, J and I went over our gift lists and I think we've just about decided on everything we're getting, and are even done shopping for a few people. Thank goodness for internet shopping, right?

Maybe we should have gotten the stroller?

Before they left, GiGi and PopPop gave us some money to get a little something for R. J and I had been talking about possibly getting R a stroller for her doll, and GiGi and PopPop suggested that that we pick one up for her.

On Sunday, J and I made it to Target, but instead of getting the stroller, we got this little high chair for her. We thought she would have a lot of fun feeding her doll and putting it in and out of the high chair, since she already does this with her regular high chair.

When we showed it to her, though, all she wanted to do was push it around.

(Fortunately, that's not the only thing she's wanted to do with it--she has fed the baby a whole mess of times since yesterday.)

Feeding the Baby: A Photo Essay

Ok, Baby. Get all buckled in!
Wait a minute. You're a little too high. C'mere.
This spot is better.
There you go. Mmmm, food.

Why Buy Toys?

R's favorite toy today was an empty tissue box.

So What's Cooking?

R hangs out in the kitchen with J and I a lot. We're in there for what feels like several hours every day--cooking food, making R's breakfasts or lunches or snacks, washing dishes, doing laundry--and we've got quite a few drawers and bins she likes to get into and mess around with.

She has a bunch of soft food and a picnic basket as well as some metal pots and pans of her own and lately she's been having a blast cooking up a storm while she hangs out with us in the kitchen. If I get any good pictures or video of this I'll add them here.

The other thing she's been doing is lavishing a lot of attention on her little baby doll, and she loves to wipe the doll's nose (something we've been doing to her a lot as she seems to have a constant runny nose since starting day care) and giving the doll drinks of water from her sippy cup. In the video below, she changes the doll's diaper and then wipes her nose, unfortunately without washing her hands or changing the cloth first. (I assure you that this is not how J and I do things!)

How to Play With Toys

99% of the time when R encounters a toy, she does not do the thing that I think she is supposed to do with it, or the thing that I expect she will really like doing with it.

This lesson has become especially clear when watching her play with this dinosaur toy that J couldn't resist buying for R at our local Once Upon a Child-- I think he picked it up when she was only a couple of months old.
When she finally got old enough to sit up on her own and hold the balls that came with it, I fully expected her to want to put the balls through the colored rings at the top of the dinosaur. When the balls go in, they push a little trigger that then makes music start playing. She didn't so much put the balls through to make the music play, though. She just stuck her hand in there and pushed the thing with her fingers. Much more efficient.

Now, she ignores the top holes altogether and spends most of her time stuffing the balls into the openings they run out of: the two holes you see at the bottom, the big hole in the middle (which isn't a hole the balls come out of but she puts the balls in there, too) and, of course, up the dinosaur's mouth.
I'm sure I have a lot more to learn about how to play with this thing. I'll keep you updated.

Going Bowling

Yesterday, another birthday package arrived for R.

The first thing she wanted to do was climb on the box.
Then we helped her open the wrapping paper.And the tissue paper.
It was a bowling set!
She was bowled over with joy. She clutched the ball, laid on the floor with the super-ultra-soft bowling pins, and participated in general merriment. It was awesome.

These bowling pins are so soft. The type of so soft that generally belongs to little baby blankets. The kind you touch in the store and then have to call over whoever else you're shopping with to feel them: "isn't this so soft?" And the whole group then stands around going, "wow, I can't believe how soft this is" "it's so soft!" etc. That's how soft these bowling pins are.

She doesn't really bowl with the ball yet. She's more of a human bulldozer. The minute we stand the pins up, she knocks them all over by crawling into them, walking into them, or falling on top of them to give them all kinds of love. She's been having fun picking one up, and then squatting down to try and pick up another, while dropping the first one, and then getting interested in a different pin. It's hilarious, and so much fun.Thank you, D&S!!!! We love it!

She took her first steps!

My brother A and sister-in-law M gave R this Leap Frog table for her birthday, and told us that it helped our nephew G learn to walk because he would move between the table and another toy, and they gradually kept moving the toys further apart (or G just wanted to get between them faster) until he actually took steps to get from one to the other.

The first day R got the table, she spent 15 minutes straight just cruising circles around the thing. Initially, she singlemindedly went only in one direction (counter-clockwise) but she's since learned to move in a clockwise direction too. Lately, she's been reaching for the table from other pieces of furniture, usually the couch or the chair. While she has previously moved one foot while standing to try and maintain her balance, two days ago we saw her for the first time move both feet in a forwards direction. J says he's seen her do something like that before, but I hadn't, so I say it counts as her first steps!


And, because you're thinking this, yes, we were incredibly lucky to get it on video! We were actually trying to get some pictures of her with one of her favorite toys these days, this little telephone she's had since she was born but has only recently gotten really interested in.

We joke about how this toy is going to be so archaic by the time she's bigger because phones just don't look like this anymore, with cordless phones and cell phones being what they are. But anyway, she loves this thing. It rattles and she sits and shakes it. She's also really gotten into putting it on her shoulder and hugging it between her cheek and shoulder, kind of like the move you do when trying to talk on the phone without holding the receiver in your hands. You actually see R doing this in the video. It is so cute.

When she walks around with it, she also likes to hand the phone to us, as if she's answered it and it's for one of us. She hands us the receiver and we talk into it, usually to Grammie and Grampie or Grandma and Grandpa, who are always very excited to hear from her and want to talk to her again, and then we give it back to her. She sometimes says “Hiiii” or babbles a bit, but usually she just cradles the phone for a bit and then gives it back to us to talk again. Too fun.

More Mouthfuls

I was looking through some pictures--trying to remember which videos I'd uploaded to my Picasa web album--and found a couple more photos of R walking around with stuff in her mouth.

This first one is from my parents' house, when we visited them in Ohio back at the end of May. She really liked this bead ring and carried it all over the house.

























This next one is from R's birthday party-- she and two other friends, G and H, all turned 1 within 3 weeks of each other, so the six parents all had a joint party for them on June 14. This is right after we got to the party and set R down in front of H's toy basket. R picked this thing up and cruised around the ottoman with it in her mouth.

A Mouthful of Stuff

One of R's favorite things to do is put things in her mouth and crawl around.

Favorite mouth toy 1: Blue Oval from her Melissa & Doug wooden shape sorter. Whenever we have this toy out, she will specifically look for and dig out the blue oval before stuffing it in her mouth and just hanging out with it jammed in there.

















Favorite mouth toy 2: Noah, from the Little People Noah's Ark. I swear, this isn't what we had in mind when we thought she would like this toy. She plays with the other animals too, but as soon as she sees Noah, he goes right in her mouth.

















Other favorite mouth toys include:

--pieces of fuzz the cats loosen from the cat tree when sharpening their claws (these she will chew on until one of us notices she's chewing on something and digs it out--we really have to be vigilant if she's crawling around the cat tree!)

--various items of clothing or fabric that she picks up while I'm trying to fold laundry.

















--her handmade birthday card from Great-Aunt T and Great-Uncle D.