OK, clearly I suck at blogging

I think it's because I got a Kindle Fire a year ago at Christmas and it makes it so easy to "consume" the internet without being easy to "produce" things like blog entries... and Facebook being an easy interface for photos doesn't hurt either.

Anyway, it's a new year so I might as well pretend I will do better.  Or at least start the year trying. 

Today was the last day of my little hiatus from work.  The whole company closes from Christmas Eve through New Year's Day every year, so that was a nice week and a half basically off.  Charlotte spent most of the time home with us, but she did go to gymnastics camp the 3 weekdays after Christmas and will go the next 3 days because her school is actually closed until next Tuesday.  Why they are off on Monday is a complete mystery. 

We have tried to keep her active.  We discovered at Christmas weekend that she does MUCH better behavior-wise with lots of good exercise, especially sensory rich exercise.  We actually built her a sensory gym in our bonus room, with a geodesic dome, rope ladder, gymnastics bar, mini trampoline, balance board, tent and tunnel, bouncy ball, etc.  That has made it MUCH easier this week, since it has been about 35 degrees and rainy or at least dreary just about every day.  Sigh.

This morning we played some with vinegar and food coloring and baking soda.  Here's a couple of pictures:

Here she is posing with her "art".

 

But here is the picture of the week.  The one that best describes the week:

 

The Christmas tree still up in back, the web shooting with a tattoo still showing, the defiant second hat, and the tie. Yup, that about sums it up.

Photo Dump 4: Chicago Pictures

In late May, we went up to Chicago for a few days, just for a diversion and to meet up with a friend. 

Some not good pictures at the Lego store in the Water Tower Place.  Cute story about the Water Tower Place:  We went to a sit-down restaurant there called the Mity Nice Grill because they had some great mac and cheese when we were there a while back.  Char somehow got it stuck in her craw that they had Goldfish crackers (something she likes way more than the "organic" versions from Publix or Annie's, for some reason, and rarely gets).  I told her she could ask the waiter because she didn't want to believe they don't have them.  She asks the waiter and he got them for her.  I guess he went and bought them from a store in the mall and put them on her plate.  Needless to say, he got a nice tip.  He was a great waiter, though!

Just thought this one was pretty cool with the long shutter length.  Focus is still not perfect, but it turned out pretty cool!

Museum of Science and Industry with Daddy

Checking out the MSI laughing exhibit where the more you move, the more the people in the video screens laugh.  She LOVED this one!  (Which is good because she was getting overtired by this point and was NOT on her best behavior that day!  Can you say overtired + overstimulated = Disaster???)

Guess where this was?

Circus/Zirkus exhibit was pretty fun!



Photo Dump 3: Birthday Pictures

The cake.  OK the cake is kind of a funny story.  We did a "Giving Tree" theme because we had it at "Inside Out Play Park", which is an indoor playground with an indoor fake tree and tree house.  I made the invites look like the book cover and they were really cute.  DH was going to take care of the cake, and took the cover to Publix to ask if they could do something Giving Tree inspired.  We didn't expect them to copy the cover, but apparently it's still too much of a copyright violation so they refused.  Fine.  I suggested that he kind of free hand a picture for them to use as inspiration.  I said, "Just put a tree on it.  Just a tree.  It doesn't have to look like the cover."  And he did, and took it to a local bakery.  What you see above is the result, and it's pretty much EXACTLY what he drew.  So it's pretty hilarious in its lack of artistry.

Char and Mimi

That's my Charlotte.  BTW, that's about 8 feet off the ground.  Yikes!  On the left you see her brother, who is NOT the adventurer even if he is the senior by 16 months.

Char insisted on cutting the cake herself.

Climbing the slide.

The venue offers a "birthday surprise" where they pull out this battery-powered ATV thing and let the birthday child ride around the track while their friends chant their name.  Char did great, staying in the track the whole time (which weaves and winds a little bit).  In fact the staff didn't even stay right with her like they usually do, and the owner said she's never seen such a young kid do so well.  And just LOOK at the child's face!  Have you ever seen a more proud child?

Feeling a little tired after the party :)

Photo Dump 2: Easter (these are not in order!)

Photo Dump 1: Char's First Riding Lesson

The second day after Char turned three, we took her down to the stable and got her her first riding lesson.  She won't be taking "real" lessons for quite a while, but I thought she would enjoy being able to get a pony ride on our horse but also get a sense of the gravity of it all.

Showing off her "riding clothes".  Really it's just tan corduroys, a pair of Stride Rite boots she can wear this fall, and a white polo shirt. But she was THRILLED.

Brushing Sunny off with her instructor before riding him.

More brushing

Yay!  Riding!!

A warm-up game called "Airplane, Duck, Soldier"

My favorite cropped/edited pic

Another I love

And this is almost EXACTLY what a rider's stance should look like.  Arms at 90 degrees, back straight, sitting on the pubic bone, ankles back in line with back and bum, heels down (unfortunately I cut off the heels).  Her left hand isn't quite right but really she did awesome.  Of course the lesson didn't really teach this; she just seemed to KNOW somehow.

Also, LOOK at that tiny little saddle!  My mother-in-law got it for her birthday, and it is SO CUTE!  It weighs about 2 ounces as it's made of synthetic materials, but it's a quality synth and will last her a good while.  The helmet was one of our gifts to her.

So a longtime friend of mine emailed be yesterday asking for the blog link because he’d lost it, and I decided to try to start up again. I quit for a while because we had a bit of a family tragedy; we had to put 2 of our beloved dogs to sleep, and I didn’t really want to face it. And honestly, I still don’t, so I’m not going to write about it right now, but I am going to write. Or try.

It looks like I haven’t written since March. At that point, Charlotte was just starting to get interested in letters. I got her the Leapfrog Talking Letter Factory on DVD, and then downloaded it and soon the Talking Words Factory for her Leappad, which she plays with/watches in the car home on our commutes. And between that and starting Montessori again in late Feb, her interest in letters and numbers was sparked and has not abated since. She went from not only not knowing ANY letters or numbers but also having zero interest, to knowing all upper and lowercase letters and all of their sounds within a month or two. And now her favorite game is “_____ starts with _”, and she’s even started sounding out a few easy words like “at” and “up” and “red”.

She’s also gone from being a straight up die hard scribbler to starting to draw actual things. Or at least to copy them. I can definitely say that fine motor skills and art are not her forte’, but she can kind of sort of mimic a smiley face when she feels like it, and copy a few letters J. Yesterday she had her 3 year doctor’s appointment. (Oh, yeah, and she turned THREE!!!!! Unbelievable!) Anyway, she is 37” tall, 29 pounds (barely), and I forget the head, but it worked out to 45% height, 29% weight, and 90% head LOL. She’s always had a substantial noggin. The doctor was very impressed with her conversation and said that she knows that “redshirting” is a trend right now but she really would advise against holding her back from Kindergarten even if she is small and has a summer birthday. She said she would be very bored (and probably will be anyway).

More importantly, I was really proud of her behavior in the waiting area. They had a rug with roads on it and a little wooden play toy in the middle and she wanted to play with them with the other kids. She said, “Mommy, may I play with those?” “As long as you can play nicely and share with the other children, you may.” Not only did she play very nicely, she went into her backpack and found a few little toys I didn’t know were in there (a little car, a farmer, and a cell phone), and SHARED them willingly with the other children. And at one point she had given all three toys away and she said, “Oh, no, there’s no toy for me.” I said, “There are three toys and four children. That is a problem.” She said, “I’m sure someone will share with me soon.” OMG she’s growing up to be such a sweet kiddo!

She does have some issues. Her attitude lately has been atrocious at times. She has developed a really harsh, hateful tone of voice, especially when yelling “NO!” I have been working with her on it, though, asking her to really stop and think about whether she’s using a nice, gentle tone of voice or a harsh, mean tone of voice, and the past few days have been much better. Hopefully it’s relatively short-lived and not part of the treacherous threes I keep hearing about (Terrible Twos, Treacherous Threes, WTF Fours lol). But boy, overall she really is turning out to be a very thoughtful and considerate girl, and I thank my lucky stars (and God) that she’s in my life.

OK, hopefully we’ve gotten caught up. I’ll probably do a photo dump post or two or three also just to document those. We did go on a short trip to Chicago recently and are in the process of building a tree house, which is an adventure all to itself.

Another stolen activity

It started with this, a silicone ice cube tray from Amazon that makes "perfectly square" ice cubes.

I colored water with plain food coloring and got these. Interestingly, the color separated somewhat and some of the cubes have concentrated color in the very middle.

Charlotte checks it out by placing the first ice cube.

And quickly wastes NO TIME!

"Mommy, it's cold! Is it ice?"

It quickly became obvious that the nice shirt needed to come off and pop in the washer, just in case the dyes are more colorfast than I thought.

"Mommy, may I please have a cup of water?" Um... sure. Well, she had to taste it for herself.

"It tastes green!"

"Mommy, I need to clean up my work." (Remind me to write a nice thank-you card to the teachers at the Montessori school!)

Messy girl!

She had to taste one of each color.

I have to say, this activity bought me a good 20 minutes before it started to get too wet and I put it away. (I don't think any water can get into the sealed box but I try to be cautious just in case, and after 2-3 cups of water getting poured out, I was not able to mop up as quickly as she was able to pour, so it went away). She protested, and ended up getting in the sink pouring water into the sink after the ice to watch it melt.

She was also fascinated at how a plain "white" (clear) cup of water became green after the blue and yellow ice cubes melted into it. I'd call it a very good activity, and I wish I'd had more leisure time to spend with it, but I was cooking and needed my sink back :). We will definitely play with this one again.