Dressing up is fun to do

picture courtesy of the fabulous Mrs Jesi

Alex got introduced to dress up at Jesi's. And she loves it. Well I mean she IS a little girl. She can't quite put on shirts yet and she struggles with pants. But easy things go on and off in a flash as she switches costumes at a whim. Not that she lets difficulties in putting something on stop her. She just holds up whatever it is to her and runs around proclaiming she's x. 

It's really freaking adorable. Like really. And often the cat and dog get in on the act whether they want to or not.

Best laid crafts of toddlers and mommies

So I found this awesome craft at Joanne's or Michael's or wherever. It looked like fun and regardless of what the packaging said looked pretty darned toddler friendly. I figured it would be pretty hands on for mommy but I don't mind that. What I didn't know was that the awesome Christmasy/wintery craft wouldn't actually go together in the way in which I was led to believe it would.

Supposedly you can put together one of these things with normal white glue. Nope. Not going to happen. And trust me Alex and I tried. A lot. They truthfully require a glue gun. So I borrowed one. And the end result isn't pretty. Then the cat attacked it.

Anyway. Despite how it turned out Alex and I had great fun with the snowmen and ultimately made Jason mad with Alex's insistence that things become 'sparkly'. For the record she isn't naked in the pics. She just doesn't have on pants thereby making potty time easier.

Oh yeah. Did I mention my kid child is a potty superstar? Really she took to it like a lion to a zebra. Think about it it's wrong and funny.

Moving on.

We started the craft and didn't get too far then Alex discovered the glitter. Well it all went downhill from there. Glitter ended up everywhere. On the floor (in a pile) on her, on me, on daddy. I think even the animals got sparkly.

So at the end of it we've ended up with 1 1/2 snowmen that aren't really anything like the picture and have been viscously attacked by the cat. I would be upset but we had so much fun doing it that it just doesn't matter.

Besides we always have these snowmen to look at. And they even sing.

Forts are the most awesome thing ever

So the day before Thanksgiving was special (yeah I'm all out of order but whatever). Jason and I both had to work so Alex got to hang out with Grammy. That morning Alex got up a little early and we had breakfast and played and all the normal stuff but then the idea of a fort came up.

We make forts periodically. Granted none of my forts are ever very structurally sound but they do the job and we always have fun. Somehow it popped into my mind that with the rearranging that recently took place I could make the entire tv room a fort and Alex would have great fun.

So she and I gathered blankets. Strategically placed chairs and ottomans. And made a room of fort fun. Clearly a fort of this size needed a lantern because the overhead light just wouldn't do. We had tons of fun until I had to leave for work.

Apparently the fort stayed up most of the day and continued to be way too much fun. It's so fun to see the simple things be the greatest things.

Stupid Leaves

As I alluded to earlier, we have a lot of leaves in our yard. We still have quite  few that I've lost all interest in getting rid of, lawn be damned in the spring. I'm done with them.

OK I want a lawn and stuff but it's gotten too cold outside for me to care about leaves. Thoughts have turned to hot chocolate and snow shovels. But in the meantime Alex still thinks of leaves and leaf piles. She longs to go outside and play with the once green and luscious tree bits.

But alas it's just been too cold to be outside for longer then ten minutes at a time. So we've been doing insidey things and going out for only brief stints that sadly don't or almost doesn't involve leaves.

Just the other day she came to the basement with me to 'help' with laundry. She then proclaimed that the dirty laundry pile on the floor was a leaf pile and she wanted to be buried in it. Obviously I objected but it was really stinking cute. She would also have you believe that random blankets, once thrown on the floor, are leaf piles. So adorable and what a great imagination.

She really does love playing in, kicking and tossing the leaves. She'll even grab her little plastic rake to *cough* help *cough* reshape the pile. But after a long hard day of playing in and piling leaves it always comes back to playing on the slide with Violet.

Painting festively

Looks it's the cheesy mommy said to smile smile...it cracks me up

We have a tradition. The day after Thanksgiving we go over to Jesi's and the girls paint ornaments. Granted, this isn't a long standing tradition or anything but it's a lot of fun and the girls really enjoy it. I think we're not so secretly hoping that this will go on for years and years to come and we'll be able to show their progression in life via their painting skills. Or something.

Jesi was even cool enough, in the days leading up to the big day, have the girls help her make salt dough ornaments that they would then paint.

No it's not your imagination, her eyes don't look well.

Well this year we hit a snag. Alex wasn't well. In fact she'd been battling some kind of eye thing for just over 2 weeks by this point and had woken up on black Friday with a swollen, red and icky eye. She went to the doctor later that day but we figured it was best to err on the side of caution for this one and not expose other kids to whatever may be going on. **side note: turns out it is and was and will continue to be a clogged tear duct. But she'll have surgery to fix both of them on January 21, 2011. More on that to come as the day approaches** 


Not to be one to break a promise to my kid, even if she isn't fully aware of said promise, we ventured out to get paint and maybe a few other things. Wooden ornaments in hand and paint at the ready it begun. This is just the sort of project Jason hates. It's messy and un structured and plain ole madness. But Alex had fun.

So did I.

She doesn't quite understand about washing off the brush between colors...or at all. She doesn't get staying in the lines or making things look that way they're supposed to. And she doesn't get that maybe we should wait until the paint is dry before adding glitter or gem things.

But she does gets that arts and crafts are fun. And that the shapes were a 'ginger-man', 'twee', 'snowman' and 'poing-poings' and that she loved coloring them in. We'd thought of giving these little disasters to the grandparents with this years installment of 'The book of Alex' but I'm not so sure. She loves playing with them and adding things to them and taking things away. We at some point put goggly eyes on the ornaments..yeah they didn't last long.

So our ornaments this year are wooden and 2 dimensional and not salt dough that Alex made herself. But we still had fun and they and she are still adorable. Here's to next years painting fiasco. Hopefully we'll have lots of practice between now and then.

Comments

 So I really want to maintain this site for all of you that don't see the lanky mini one regularly, or at all. But I'm not sure how worth it it is. I wonder because Y'ALL NEVER LEAVE FREAKING COMMENTS. I mean I can see that people look at the site but I can't tell who and since God hasn't gifted me with telepathy I have no way of knowing unless you leave comments of some kind.

Seriously even if it's to say my writing is horrible or the activity we did looks stupid or whatever. Just please let me know you're paying attention so I have a reason to keep doing this. It's been since July and so far there are only 2 people that have commented. I mean I love these two people and I love Alex and I love writing about Alex but I just assume stop the madness if all you grand-parents and aunts and uncles and great grand parents don't give some kind of feedback.


hmmm maybe that came off a bit harsh. How about I just go back to how things were and see if anything changes and if all else fails I'll just give up and only maintain the photo-sharing site.

The Festival of Trees

So once a year, around Thanksgiving, there's a thing at Timonium Fairgrounds called 'the Festival of Trees'. It's a fun family thing  and a thing to help the Kennedy Kreiger Institute. Well I'd never been and we'd had a pretty rough couple of weeks so Alex and I needed something fun. We played hooky from church and went to the fairgrounds.

Man I had no idea how many people would be there. Despite my lack of love for crowds it was fantastic fun. We got to look at all sorts of trees and Alex got to try fudge for the first time.

But the real treat was when we finally made it back to the kids fun area. We didn't do face paint because I thought that may yet be too much for Alex and we didn't venture to any carnival type games.

No instead we found a turtle to pet. Which Alex loved.

And a horse to ride. Now a very nice gentleman took these for us and while he was taking pictures the camera battery died. Stupid technology. So what you may not be able to see very well is that Alex LOVED the pony ride. I mean LOVED it. Best thing ever.

yeah she loved it and probably could have gone herself but I'm a paranoid mama and had to walk along with her assuring her lack of death from falling off of a pony. 

So how do you follow up a real horse ride? Well we played in the bounce house thingies (not pictured because the pictures didn't turn out so well). She actually got to go into the bouncy thing twice. The second time I literally had to pull her out to convince her we needed to go eat. She also got to go on her first carousel ride, which she liked enough to want to ride again.

And a silly little train ride.

And by the end of it we were tired and hungry and cranky from being tired and hungry. I think as soon as lunch was finished we both passed out. I'm pretty sure.


Sorry pictures after the horse were taken with my phone so they aren't the greatest. But we had a fantastic time. this might have to be  Holiday tradition.

Toddler smiles are the best thing ever

OK so I'm doing this long awaited blog post to enter a contest. More specifically “I am participating in the Invisalign Teen Bright Smiles Holiday Photo Contest with Dumb Mom.” 

BUT that's not all I also have fun stories to tell of silly toddler.

Yes that's a bunny balaclava

Obviously we adults abhor the leaves in our yard. I mean, really, who wants to deal with that nonsense? My daughter, however would like you to believe that a pile of leaves is the best thing in the whole wide world. In fact as I've been bagging them she gets mad at me and tells me 'no put in bag!' and 'why take leaf pile away?' Too cute.


And fast forward another week after the leaf madness begun. OK maybe a few weeks. Fine. Fine. I'll admit it I've only gotten around to filling like 7 bags and I'm not close to done still. My excuse of waiting until all the leaves were down went away with the tornadoes but I still find ways to put it off. Really? How many of me do YOU see?

For the purposes of the blog the leaves are done and we're fast forwarding to December 8th-ish.

But I digress.

So it's a convoluted story of how we got there but one Wednesday morning we finally took Alex to see Santa. She doesn't know much about the rotund and jolly elf but off we went. There was much preparation as last year didn't go so well and Alex is generally incredibly shy.

OK shy may not be the right word. What's stronger then shy? Whatever it is she takes awhile to warm up to people.

Anyway, she not only walked up to Santa. She sat on his lap and talked to him. To tell him that she wants dragons for Christmas. Me thinks she's been read 'Puff' one too many times. The smile you see in the pictures is her 'mommy is telling me to smile' smile. Silly child.

Now how the heck is she going to get dragons for Christmas?


Merry 3 in one post to everyone. Hopefully more to come soon.

Clearly I haven't come close t catching up

Since I haven't come close to catching up on posts. I figure I'll try to move forward and keep up. It's a good theory.

Here's what you missed....

We had a gerat time at the State Fair back in September.

Alex's birthday was awesome. ... I hope to do a post about this...

She was an adorable monkey for Halloween.

She can pretty much talk in sentences now.

In fact she has started to sing songs. Most notably 'My only Sunshine'.

She asked for a little sister....well here's how the conversation went
    Alex: mommy has a baby sister?
    Me: no I don't have a baby sister I am the baby sister
    Alex: daddy have a baby sister?
    Me: no he's also the youngest
    Alex: My have a baby sister pleeasse?
It was very cute and the answer was no but she's really pretty awesome.

She has learned how to use the potty and even wakes up dry most mornings.

There are new wonders every day and she's learning so much so fast it's amazing.

Posts to come include painting ornaments and fun at the Festival of Trees.

A trip back in time (and to the zoo)



Cutest turtle ever



 

looking at prarie dogs



Back in August we took a trip to the zoo. We dragged brought Jason's mom and step-dad along for the ride. It was a beautiful day, not too hot for a change and not chilly. In fact it was just about perfect.

The plan was simple. Get there when it opened and stay until we saw everything...or naptime...whichever came first. Our packed lunch was heavy to carry around but we made it work.

at the petting zoo



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daddy and Alex



For the first time in Alex's life the prarie dog exhibit was open and therefore our first stop. It was a great way to start the day.



Penguins getting a meal



Our wanderings eventually brought us to the penguins. In Alex-speak that's ping-poing. As was the case last year, this was her favorite animal to see. Not only did she love them (again) but we got there at just the right time-they were being fed. We must have watched them eat and be silly for 15 minutes. Which in toddler time is an eternity.



What odd penguins



Don't get me wrong, she loved all of the animals and could even basically call out what they were. In some cases she would even try to 'talk' to them in their language. Despite her overall love for the animals feeding the giraffe freaked her out a little bit. Maybe next time.



Feeding the giraffe



Lunch was a picnic under the trees and it went pretty well. Alex isn't a big fan of eating in public whether that public is at our house or involves our not being at home. But she did pretty well until she got distracted by a squirrel which had to soon be chased.

By the time we left she was exhausted. To be fair we all kind of were. She fell asleep in teh car on the way home and though she doesn't transfer well from car to bed while sleeping she did go pretty much right to sleep when we got home. Another successful day with the mini Cowger. By next year the zoo will likely be one of her favorite things.







Voila!

OK the camera cable was found whilest we rearranged the house last week. Many long overdue pictures and posts to come.

In the meantime Alex had her 2 year appointment last Friday and is a whopping 28 pounds and 33 1/2 inches. She was an angel (naturally) for the doctor and was given a clean bill of health.

Well I'm running a bit behind

In case you hadn't noticed, that last string of posts was about July. Sadly I haven't even uploaded the August pictures to the Shutterfly account and this lack of uploading is stalling this blog, that site and this year's book of Alex. I'm sorry we've been busy. Sometimes too busy to take pictures (I only have so many hands). And now I can't find the stupid camera cable to get the pictures off of the camera.

Sigh.

So I'll not spoil the fun of what I have pictures of and just let you know about this weekend.

1-Alex loved being in the class I taught at church Saturday.

2-She actually ASKED to finger paint yesterday. I love it. So finger paint we did. A lot. Jason wasn't so happy that she wore one of his undershirts as a smock but the paint is washable and it's an UNDER shirt no one will see it anyway.

3-During times in between rain yesterday Alex and I walked around the block. She walked/ran the entire way herself not ever wanting to be carried. She's getting so big. *wipes tear away*

4-After dinner and bath while daddy was still resting after his long day of tailgating and football it again started to rain. So I got Alex all ready in her rain boots and coat and grabbed her umbrella. The boots and umbrella are both frogs, it's pretty adorable. And the coat is too big but that works well for playing in the rain. And out we went, with the dog, to play in the rain and find puddles for jumping into. Alex isn't so good yet at holding the umbrella and I really should get a picture of her in the get up when my camera wouldn't be ruined by rain by I digress. We both had a great time. Sadly the only puddles were in the gutter but that didn't stop the jumping fun. Our shoes and coats and bottoms of pants were SOAKED by the time we went in. Not that Alex wanted to go in but it was nearly bedtime. Maybe with this rain planning on hanging around for awhile we'll get to do more puddle jumping.

Life with a toddler that can sort of talk in sentences and is always full of energy is so much fun! I just can't believe how big she's getting so fast.

Anyway hopefully soon I'll find the cable and upload pictures and -I don't know- catch everyone up on stuff from August and September. ;)

My poor broken baby

Periodically I get a wild hair up my ass to ride a bicycle. I would really really love to get into shape and this seems an ideal way to go about it. But that's a post for a different time-that will involve talk of Alex's bike trailer and my new bike and stuff.

Well I bought a bike at a yard sale (mistake 1 as it turns out) and one day I was inflating the tires while Alex was playing on the front porch. She decided to play on her little trike, something she's done countless times both on the porch and off. I'd warned her numerous times about playing too close to the steps.

As that damned Murphy and his stupid laws would have it I was standing up to grab her and try her new helmet on her just as she rode off of the porch. Her face was the first part of her to hit the ground. And not just any ground but the sidewalk. To say there was blood would be an understatement.

She bled a lot and understandably started wailing. Her lip swelled almost immediately and I couldn't tell if the blood was coming from her nose, mouth or both. I learned that while I'm good with dealing with other peoples (or my own) injuries I can't deal well with Alex being injured. While I told myself she'd get her clues from me and I should be calm, I started crying. Her doctor was called and a popsicle was given to Alex to help the swelling.

She wouldn't take Tylenol and had little interest in the popsicle. The doctor called back and said to go to Patient First. By the time Jason got home Alex was calmed and to Patient First we went. Turns out we did everything right and she was fine. We were told to take her to the ER if she started vomiting or passed out. She never did either.

But her little lip was very swollen for a few days. She looked a mess and let us know she felt pretty bad. Baby resilience is amazing and she was 95% better by the end of the week. Understandably she wasn't keen on having her picture taken but I did get a shot or two. My poor little honey.

The bike has permanently been removed from the porch.

Here comes Peter Cottontail

Once upon a time there was a guy who worked 6 days a week, let's call him Jason, and a girl who couldn't figure out how to do yard work, housework and cook while watching a toddler on her weekends, let's call her Sharon. Well these people resorted to paying a nice guy by the name of John to tame their wild yard.

One day when John was taming what was by then an out of control yard he uncovered a bunny nest. In this nest were three itty bitty bunnies all nestled together and snug in their dirt bed. We won't speak of the mowed over bunny baby that was a few feet away but the live bunnies were smaller then a dollar bill and quite timid, as one would expect baby bunnies to be.

These bunnies were a fascination for all who encountered them and Jason and Sharon felt an obligation to make sure they would survive. This meant keeping the dog away as well as making sure their baby, let's call her Alex, kept her distance. We They kept their distance as well and thought the thing to do would be to scatter bunny food along the ground for them so they would be sure not to starve. But what do bunnies eat? Carrots obviously (have you never read a story about a rabbit? These stories would lead you to believe that this is all bunnies eat) and perhaps strawberries and grapes.

So clearly such things were sprinkled on the ground as the concern over the location of the mommy bunny grew. What if the mommy never returned because the safety of the tall weeds had been demolished? Wildlife sanctuaries were called and it was learned that the bunnies would likely be fine. Turns out that well meaning humans often accidentally kill wild bunnies with overfeeding. The thing to do is to cover the babies up with some dry grass to protect them from the sun and all food bits must be removed lest they attract predators. And this neighborhood has predators like fox, raccoon and opossum. Also, it turns out, mommy bunnies only return to the nest twice a day, at dawn and dusk, to nurse their young. This is sufficient for their well being and helps protect the little ones.

Every day the family would check on the baby bunnies. Sometimes they would be in their hovel and sometimes they would have moved down to the corner where the porch meets the house. After about 4 days the rabbits left the families life as quickly and mysteriously as they'd entered it. And they were all left to marvel how fascinating the smallest of God's creatures can be as well as how well He takes care of even these little ones.

Maybe there will be another rabbit family to meet next year.

Window marker love

Jason discovered window markers at work early in the summer. We then found them at Walmart far cheaper then what they sell for at the grocery store. I hate Walmart but I like cheap so I gave in and gave Walmart my money.

There was a bit of a learning curve for Alex. She got grounded from the markers a few times for drawing on walls and stuff before she got the idea that they're only for glass. Lucky for all of us, they wipe off super easy.

Anyway, Alex loves arts and crafts and drawing in general. These markers are a HUGE hit. Granted she often asks for us to draw silly things like smiles and birds and dogs but far more often she makes her own window creations.

Whether its too hot or rainy to go outside or if we're just having a bad day these markers are a bright spot. On the occasion that we just need something different to do Alex just gets the markers and we open the main door and she has at the window. It always makes her happy which in turn brightens my day. The only downside is that when I sit down to play with her she thinks she needs to sit down which means she can't reach the window. It's all very silly.

I like to think of these as another step towards her being a little creative genius. Well obviously she's a genius anyway but this is another form of genius. ;)