Wednesday, December 22, 2010

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.

Tuesday, December 21, 2010

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.

Monday, December 20, 2010

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.

Sunday, December 19, 2010

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.

Saturday, December 18, 2010

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.

Friday, December 17, 2010

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.

Monday, December 13, 2010

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.

Thursday, December 2, 2010

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.