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.

R 39-40-41 months

Dear R,

It has been three months since my last newsletter for you, and there is much to share!

You love naming and identifying words that rhyme. You'll randomly shout out words and then make up a rhyming word and declare, "That rhymes!" Sometimes the words are actual words. Sometimes they actually do rhyme. We have fun with this, especially when reading poetry at night before bed. It is really exciting having you play with word sounds. You love to identify sounds that words begin with, and when I write things for you, I often ask you to tell me what the first letter should be.
We've instituted a reward chart which is working fairly well. Grammie made your first one (the red one on the fridge in the picture above) but we've had a few others since then (the current one is on the left of the red one). Usually you get a Dora sticker for setting the napkins around the dinner table, and we sometimes surprise you with a sticker for being good or doing something wonderful or showing kindness towards others. You love picking out your surprises (they are all little things, some from Grammie and others that we've found or gotten while out and about).
You still enjoy playing with Pocha. The last few weeks we haven't heard much about him, but he was around a lot the last few months. But as your interest in playing with Pocha has waned, you've gotten a lot more involved with your dolls lately-- specifically your princess dolls (Cinderella, Ariel, and Cinderella) that you got for your birthday this year.

In fact, lately our house feels like it is overflowing with talk about Princesses, Princesses, Princesses! To give an example, we have six different Cinderella books in the house, plus a seventh one that I checked out of the library last week. Having all these versions of the book are my fault, as I loved Cinderella as a girl and so whenever I see one on sale or super-cheap, I snag it. We've also received some for free from various family members. Three of the versions we have are Disney books but each one is somehow different.

In one of the Disney Cinderella books we have, the first page starts off with a brief description of Ella and her father, including the mention that Ella's eyes were as blue as forget-me-nots. You have asked someone to read this particular version of Cinderella to you at least 100 times in the last month, so I'm sure you about have it memorized by now. Today, as we were reading Fancy Nancy, Explorer Extraordinaire, when I got to the wildflowers page (which includes a picture of a forget-me-not), you exclaimed, "Ella's eyes were as blue as forget-me-nots!"

I'm embarrassed to admit I had no idea what you were talking about for a minute there, but it's just another sign of how sharp your memory is for all kinds of little details. Nothing gets past you these days.
You've also seen some changes at your day care. The school just hired a new teacher for your classroom, ending a search for a new teacher that actually started way back in May. This meant that the classroom assistant that you had for three months also moved on, and we were sad to see her go! She super-generously gave you a $5 gift card to a local toy store and we took you there to let you pick out anything you wanted. You picked out this blue princess doll, who you have variously called Cinderella or Mary (of Mary Had a Little Lamb fame), and you've carried this doll everywhere ever since you got it.
I asked you if I could take some pictures of you with the doll so that we could send them as a thank you to Ms. A, and you were SO happy to cooperate! Do you know how happy this made me? You were even brave enough to sit in our tree and let me take pictures. They came out so gorgeous. Daddy and I are going to frame one of them for our living room.

We love you so much, baby girl!!!

Love,
Mama

This website had me and J laughing so hard we were in tears

www.damnyouautocorrect.com

One of my favorites:

It's Holiday Card Time Again!

Can you believe it? It seems so crazy that it's really time for the holidays again--I'm SO excited!!!

We took pictures last weekend for this year's holiday cards--we got some great shots although I will be the first to warn everyone that last year's photo was a professional photo taken during a family photo shoot we had after RUS's birth and this year's pictures are from our crappy little point-and-shoot camera. But they are us so I hope you'll enjoy seeing us smiling at you when you get them in the mail.

We're going to do our photo cards through Shutterfly this year--I've long liked Shutterfly for a lot of reasons. First, it was the place I signed up for to share photos back in 2003 because it was the ONLY site that let you share the pictures without requiring that the people looking at the pictures register for the site. I found it (and still do, actually) it obnoxious to require that people try to remember a random password and username just to see pictures someone else has shared with them. Second, they have excellent products and a very easy-to-use interface for putting things together with your pictures and making them look nice. If you are a professional designer, you enjoy creating your own ideas and having the flexibility of being able to do whatever you want on a page. If you are more like me, however, you prefer having professional designers put together attractive ideas ready for you to just add a selected photo or two.

Here are three of my favorite holiday card designs this year. I am posting three just to keep everyone guessing as to which ones you'll be receiving in the mail this year!

Choice 1

Choice 2

Choice 3

UPDATE: I ended up not picking any of these designs!! When I was going through the choices and thinking about which ones I liked, I totally didn't even notice that some of them were 5x5 instead of 5x7, and I don't want to pay extra postage for mailing a square card.

****

Over time, I've stayed with Shutterfly even though I also briefly signed up for Snapfish and Kodak Gallery because I've found their products to be really great over the years. Things we've ordered for ourselves and as gifts have included:

Photo mugs. We've given these to my father-in-law twice with pictures of our kids on them and most recently to my sister-in-law, M, with a picture of her two boys on it.

Calendars. I made one of these for J for Father's Day this year and we love it so much that it's going to be our go-to gift for Father's Day each year. JW and C also make one of Little Frog for Grammie and Grampie each year and the quality is always excellent and they hold up fantastically over the entire year.

Magnets. When R was a little baby, I made little photo magnets for various family members as an easy way to stick her photo on their fridge. Grammie and Grampie still have theirs on their fridge and it looks as new as it did almost 3 years ago!

3x5 Folded Note Cards. One of my favorite things that I've ever made through Shutterfly is R's thank you card for her first birthday. I took the cutest picture of her sitting and playing with these alphabet blocks she got for her birthday from Grandma and Grandpa. I made the blocks spell T-H-A-N-K Y-O-U and had a set of 12 cards made with that picture on the front. Perfect!

And of course there is that old Shutterfly staple--photo cards for all occasions! We've received them as thank you cards (from too many people to count!), as Valentine's cards (from Little Frog and Little T), and as Christmas cards.

My mother has made photo dvds of major events, as well as of the year-in-review and I'm telling you, watching these at holiday time and family get-togethers is one of our favorite things to do as a family.

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And, as a special holiday FYI to everyone reading this (especially those friends of mine who also have their own blogs):

Bloggers get 50 free holiday cards from Shutterfly! Get details at http://bit.ly/sfly2010

School Thanksgiving Feast

The kids' day care had a Thanksgiving feast for all the parents today so J and I had a rare glimpse of mealtime at both schools. The infant and toddler classrooms went first, so we started by hanging out with RUS, who had actually already eaten. That didn't stop him from enjoying some of my mashed potatoes and green beans though! He also wore shoes for the first time. They seemed to work out okay although one of them kept falling off. I'm not sure how often we'll keep taking him in shoes. Maybe I'll just get slippers for him to have at school.
After about half an hour in RUS's room, we headed down to R's preschool room, which was just sitting down to eat as we walked in. The room was JAM-packed with kids and adults crowding around the kids' meal table. Here's R enjoying her feast: turkey, mashed potatoes, dressing, gravy, cranberry sauce (added later) and a pumpkin scone, with milk to drink. YUM.
It really is special to get to spend time at her school and see her friends and watch her interact with them as well as to meet some of the other parents, most of whom we only ever see in passing on the way in and out.

Daddy's Girl

Recently R has been very attached to J. She's been having the best time with him, requesting that he be part of just about every activity she does. For about a week it was all J all the time, to the point that one morning when J wanted me to get up with her so he could snag 15 more minutes of sleep, she ran away from me screaming, and eventually ended up back in front of our bedroom door, pounding on it and yelling, "Daddy! I want Daddy!" Needless to say, because I couldn't get her to calm down, J ended up having to get up as well.

Anyway, she brought this home from school one day and both J and I thought it was super-sweet.

Some recent crafts and artwork

This is our art wall in the kitchen--the one new addition is the apple tree picture which I think adds just the right element to the wall. I can't wait until RUS's stuff starts getting added up there!

We love making holiday cards! Here's our art table filled with fun things to put on our Halloween cards, which we sent to the grandparents, great-grandparents, and cousins. R had a ton of fun with her stamp set and she absolutely went to town putting stickers on the cards.

A butterfly made by painting her feet and then stepping on a piece of paper, a sunflower made from a paper plate and gluing down sunflower seeds, and making prints with half an apple dipped in paint.

Her class does some of the cutest things relating to their themes of the week!

Superheroes

Last night at the dinner table R and I were looking through Target's most recent toy catalog. It starts off with a lot of action figures and action figure scenario sets, and she and I were talking about the things on each page-- I was bribing her by telling her she had to take a bite of food before we could turn the page and see what was next. Looking at all the action figures, she recognized Spider Man, but not Iron Man or Tron, so she kept asking, "Who is that superhero?" and I was telling her who they were.

After finding out who they were, her first question was always, "Is he nice?" (I always said yes) and then she would tell me stories about them in which Iron Man would come down and give her a hug and a kiss or where Tron would find her on top of a particular playset pictured in the catalog and give her a hug and a kiss. They were really really nice superheroes.

Re: R's Monthly Letters

Believe it or not I am actually working on one for R. It's going to be her 39-40-41-month letter. I really am behind on hers, but it is coming!!!

RUS 13 months

Dear RUS,

You have reached the age where every day--literally--every.single.day there is something new that we discover that you can do.

You've really picked up on the concept of signing as a way of communicating what you want. I mentioned in an earlier post all the signs you're doing on a regular basis, but even bigger than just the individual list of signs is the fact that you're actively trying to imitate and approximate the signs we do for you. At breakfast we sign "hot" when telling you that the oatmeal is too hot and we have to blow on it. You make the cutest--oh my goodness, it is SO CUTE--scrunched up little face with a blowing noise to imitate us blowing on your spoon, and you sign "hot"! I so want to get this on camera but it is all in the moment. It works when I'm holding the spoon and blowing and you're blowing, but if I tried to put the spoon down, grab the camera and say, "RUS, blow the spoon!" you'd be like, "What are you doing? What's going on?"

At school drop-off time your room is empty because all the babies get dropped off in one of the classrooms while the teachers wait for enough of their baby friends to trickle in before they break up into their individual classrooms. Sometimes this means you and I get a few minutes of bonding time as we play with the toys in the classroom just the two of us. Today you climbed onto the climber and started opening a bunch of books and pointing to the things in them. You love to look at books, you absolutely love it. You really enjoy turning the pages and pointing to whatever you see on the page. So we were sitting there and I was telling you what everything was that you were pointing to. Then I got up to sign your sign-in sheet and when I came back you were looking at shoes--and you were signing shoes-- I could not even believe it! I said, "YES! Shoes!!!" and you signed "shoes" again. Then you pointed at a picture of an apple and said "aah, ah, ah!" (which is what you say whenever you point at something) and then you pointed at the shoes again and signed "shoes." It was OBVIOUS you knew the sign for shoes and you were purposefully signing shoes because you were looking at the shoes.

You are also getting so much more interactive with your toys. You love to play with blocks--watching Daddy make creations with the Duplo blocks or knocking down every tower we try to make with our wooden blocks. You are able to put the Duplo blocks on top of one another in the appropriate direction although you're not always strong enough to make them click together. But it's impressive to me that you recognize which direction you need to turn the block in order to try to get them to nestle together!

On the eating front you are very good with a cup--you can even hold it and tip it yourself although after a few seconds of holding it you will invariably tip it a little too far onto yourself. You can hold your spoon yourself, scoop food onto it (or pick up food with the hand not holding the spoon and put it on the spoon) and bring the spoon to your mouth. Sometimes the food falls out, and you're still getting the hang of how you should hold the spoon, but--can I just say, WOW! We are very very impressed with all that you are doing!

You are a pretty good eater. But food that is very colorful you tend to avoid for some reason. We're sometimes sneaky and wrap things, like broccoli or shredded carrots, in a piece of penne pasta or a tortilla to get you to eat them. Sometimes you just throw the food off the tray. Fairly soon we're going to have to start the "as soon as you throw food you are done" rule.

We haven't settled on the perfect arrangement of chairs etc. around the table (our FisherPrice high chair is just so huge and bulky!) but right now you and R are sitting across from one another which I think is just perfect because the two of you laugh and copy one another throughout the whole meal. It's so great to see you light up at your sister's antics!!

Love,
Mama

She Definitely Takes After Her Mother: A Conversation During Dinner

R: I can't eat all of that!!! (gesturing towards her plate)
S: R, are you full?
R: No! I'm still hungry! I'm gonna be hungry, hungry, hungry, hungry, hungry, HUNGRY until I get DESSERT!!

RUS signs!

RUS's sign language dictionary has been growing and growing!

He does mama, daddy, banana, food/eat, milk, more, and cereal--just to name a bunch of signs off the top of my head--and he waves hello and goodbye, blows kisses and says "mwah", loves to make you blow kisses too (by putting his hand over your mouth and moving it like he is blowing a kiss from your mouth), makes tons of noises, asks "what's that" by pointing to something and going "ah!" or "aaaaa!"

Here's a video in which I capture a few of his signs, including banana. I'll try to have J transcribe it in the next few days and have the transcript up soon!

My Two Cuties

An impromptu before day care photo shoot just because my kids are ultra-cute!

In Honor of RUS Being a Year Old

Here's a video of his latest. It includes many exciting developments, including the tail end of him blowing kisses (this is right at the beginning of the video), him showing how dexterous he is at stacking blocks on this toy, and even babbling!

the password is "pajamas and blocks" (don't type the quotation marks)

File This Under "Just for Fun"

Ok, I know, I know, it's ridiculous that stores transition wholly to Christmas the minute Halloween is over, but, you know, the last few years, so do I. I start really thinking about Christmas gifts (not just the all-year-long-looking-for-bargains shopping, but actively, consciously thinking about what gifts to get for people and making lists of all the people we exchange with) and I start planning out holiday festivities and looking forward to holiday baking and anticipating what will happen when, etc.

So we find ourselves in the situation where, two days after Halloween, we have already played "Frosty the Snowman" and "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer" songs on YouTube for R, and R put together her first Christmas list. This one is really more along the "Just for Fun" category because we only did this because I was fishing for something to keep her from throwing a huge tantrum, and "being good for Santa" did the trick.

Here's the list she dictated to me:

Helmet
Bicycle
Gum*
Christmas Apples**
Grapes
Shirt
Fork
Ring
Books

*This one was motivated, I think, by a friend of hers who gave her a bunch of gum in a Halloween goody bag at school. We let her chew 2 pieces, and this was the first time she has ever had gum.

**I have no idea where this came from.

Apple Picking (an oldie from September!!!)

Back in September Grammie and Grampie took R apple picking at the orchard near us. They had a BLAST, especially because they went before all the Halloween festival stuff was put out so it wasn't crowded and this orchard is awesome--there is so much to do all around the grounds!
R's favorite activity, it seems, was running from one picture cut out board to another!
J and I kept meaning to go to the orchard ourselves but it wasn't in the cards this year. We can, of course, still go to the orchard but there are no more U-Pick Apples and the Fall Festival ends on Halloween (today!)

Happy Halloween!!!

I hope everyone had a wonderful Halloween. R had a great time trick-or-treating. The kids both got decked out right after dinner for a photo shoot--it's harder than you might think to get two kids to look at the camera and smile!I was all set to delete this picture from the camera--R is getting upset with RUS because he was grabbing at her wings--except for the fact that I fell in love with RUS's smile in it. I have a hard time getting pictures of him with this smile, and he smiles so much you wouldn't think it'd be that hard!All along she's been adamant that she wanted to be a butterfly for Halloween, and because J and I like to get the kids involved in "making" their own costumes, we had her make her wings. J cut out the shape from foam board and R decorated them herself with markers and glittery glue. Here's a video of her decorating them! For awhile she also wanted her BLUE butterfly to have an orange mask, so J made one for her out of orange felt and pipe cleaners, but all 3 times we got decked out in the costume, when it came down to it she didn't want to wear the mask. I wrapped pipe cleaners around one of her headbands to make antennae, and the tutu I ordered online, I just love it! It's going to be a great addition to the dress-up box post-Halloween.

We got Boo'ed!!

We were finishing up dinner when J heard a knock at our door. We weren't expecting anyone so I had no idea who it could be, other than perhaps some solicitor. R overheard some of the conversation and got excited and ran out to see who it was, and that got me curious, so I unstrapped RUS from the high chair, shook about 4 cups of rice out of his pants, and walked over to see what was going on.

Turns out it was our neighbor and his daughter. We had just gotten "boo'ed"--they were passing around a basket filled with candy. The idea was for you to take one piece and then take the basket to another neighbor's house and leave it for them-- i.e., "boo"ing them. J and R walked over to what they thought was the address of another brand-new neighbor who had just moved in. They've got 4 kids--3 teenagers (16, 16, and 13, I think) and a 6-year-old. I hope they found it!

Here's J and R all ready to head out to go boo'ing!

A Couple of Jokes

J: Knock, knock
S: Who's there?
J: Duck
S: Duck who?
R: Duck Pocha!

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J: Why did the chicken cross the road?
R: Because it jumped on the car!!

I'll Come Find You

R has taken to coming out of her bedroom after we've said good night for the night, often with totally random requests.

"I want Daddy to put my blanket on my back."

"My cow fell on the floor."

"My leg hurts."

We (really, usually J, because I can't see her in the dark to understand what she's saying) always walk her back to her room and give her one last kiss and hug and tell her to go to bed.

Last night she came out three times in a row. After the third time J told her, "I'm going to go to bed now so you'll have to stay in bed because if you come out you're not going to be able to find me."

R says, "Then I will knock on your door."