I have the best husband; came home tonight to find out he had Tivo'ed Thomas the Tank Engine so our little one could watch one of her favorite shows. She's so cute running around the house saying "Choo choo!"

Grandpa will be so proud!

There are so many occasions when Minion #2 and I look at each other and say "Grandpa will be proud!"

When she hears a loud car and wants to see it. When she loves to go riding in her car. When she rides her four wheeler in the house.

She also seems to love trains. Sometimes we can hear train whistles at our house and she always wants to see them. She LOVES Thomas the Tank Engine. We got her some toys of Thomas and two of his friends, and right now she's carrying them around the house, making Choo-choo and Wooooo-woooooo noises.

Grandpa will be so proud!

Oh maaaaan!

If you've ever seen Dora the Explorer, you know about Swiper. If not, Swiper is a fox (?) who tries to steal things. Dora and her friends stop him by saying "Swiper no swiping! Swiper no swiping!" about a gazillion times, after which he always replies "Oh man!"



Well tonight the Tiny Overlord took Minion #2's watch and ran off with it, giggling. He looked at me and jokingly said "Swiper no swiping!" She stopped, allowed him to catch her and replied "Oh maaaaaan!"

Too funny for words.

Read It!

One of my favorite things is when she brings me a book and says "Read it!" Then she'll say "Lap" and sit in my lap. We read the book together and she turns the pages. When the book is finished she'll say "Done!". And then we start all over again.

Right now her favorites are Goodnight Moon, Brown Bear Brown Bear What Do You See, and a fantastic book called Daddy Hugs.

She can make noises for almost all of the animals in Brown Bear. For the bear she growls Rawr! For the red bird she says "Tweet!" For the yellow duck, she tries to say "Quack" but it comes out "Cack". She can't quite make the horse neigh. I love the green frog - she tries to say "Ribbit" but she can't say her R yet so it's "Ibbit." She's been able to meow and say woof (well, "Oof") for a while. She can't say the "Baa" for the sheep yet. For the goldfish, she opens and closes her mouth like a fish gulping water.

My bliss? Watching Steve hold her in his lap while they read Daddy Hugs together.

Words for May

Tiny (she says this when she sees a baby "Tiny baby!")
Old (if she sees her water cup from the day before, she'll solemnly say "Old drink")
Heavy
Teacher
Dirty (Summer, don't touch that, it's dirty!)
Arm
Elbow
Knee
Face
Back
Book
House
Read It
Lap (when she wants to sit in our lap)
Bee
Ant
Spider (she's still working on S, so this sounds like "pider")
Bug
Bad bug (this is accompanied by hand waving, as if to ward off mosquitoes, and giggling) (Also, I am so proud of our budding entomologist!)
Teeth
Purple
Orange (she still gets her colors mixed up, but she's pretty good with these two)
Crying (If she hears a baby crying she'll say "Baby crying. Paci.")
Happy (When she sees pictures of herself smiling she says "Baby happy)
Hold you (this means she wants me to pick her up "Do you want me to hold you?"
Me
Mine
My
Laptop
Cherry
Apple - she's starting to really say Apple, not Bop-bop, which is what she's called them until now
Juice
Pancake
French toast
Play
Room (she can't say R yet, so this is "oom")
Sick (one of our cats was sick recently)
Medicine (she's taking medicine for allergies)
Bag
Couch
Truck (this has the same unfortunate pronunciation as "sock". We're still working on it.)
Mickey Mouse (We bought a DVD of Fantasia. She loves the part about the Sorcerer's Apprentice, with Mickey Mouse. She says it "Me moush!)
Nemo (She loves Finding Nemo, which she calls Mee-mo)
DVD (when she wants to watch one of her DVDs)
Fart (this one makes me laugh. For a while, if anything happened in her diaper area, she said "Poop." Now when she says it, I'll sometimes ask "Was it a poop, or was it a fart? She'll look at me seriously and very solemnly say "Fart.")

Every night, as the first part of our bedtime routine, we say goodnight to the cats. Our longhair cat is almost always asleep on one of our dining room chairs, so we say good night to her first. Summer now uses this as her way of telling us that she's tired. If she says "Night night Coco" then we know it's time for bed.

Square/Circle (She's playing with puzzles and blocks - the type where she has to put a certain shape into the hole with the same shape.)


Help (any time she wants us to help her to do something, or if she wants to help me do something. She loves helping to empty the dishwasher with me, and she's great at helping with put groceries away.)

She's consistently putting two words together - Mommy car, play outside, old bottle.

She also likes to feed us, and help us to get dressed and put on our shoes and socks.

The little one has a new interesting habit; putting her food down my shirt. If she can't reach mine, she'll settle for putting food down her shirt. **shakes head** Toddlers are an alien species...

Memories

A few things have been sparking recollections of my pregnancy. For the most part, I really enjoyed being pregnant.

I used to sing "Good Morning Starshine" to her every morning and talk to her, wondering who she was going to be. I loved my doctor's visits, getting to hear her heartbeat. It's an incredibly fast paced whoosh whoosh sound.

She used to tickle me when she moved. It felt like little bubbles moving through my belly. I wasn't certain it was her for the longest time. When she started kicking, she got strong FAST and I knew it was her for certain. She used to kick me behind my belly button for hours every night when I finally relaxed for the night. That part wasn't fun - I would cry for hours because it hurt. She left a bruise that took weeks to go away after her birth.

She slept most of the day when I was teaching at school, although she would wake up if the students got too loud, and yes I did use that as a reason they should be quieter. We took her to a concert at Dragon Con and she definitely thought THAT was too loud; I ended up sitting at the very back of the hall, with a bunch of jackets around my belly to muffle the noise.

My tastes changed during pregnancy; I couldn't stand the taste of coffee, broccoli or pizza. I still don't like pizza. My sense of smell was incredibly sensitive.

For the last month or so of the pregnancy, I could only sleep on the couch. I would arrange myself so that my belly was in the crack between two cushions, and that cradled it softly enough that I could sleep.

Quote

"Every child should have mud pies, grasshoppers, waterbugs, tadpoles, frogs & turtles, elderberries, wild strawberries, acorns, hickory nuts, trees to climb, animals to pet, hayfields, pine cones, rocks to roll, sand, snakes, huckleberries and hornets – and any child who has been deprived of these has been deprived of the best part of his education." -Luther Burbank 1849 - 1926