tawbubby

I love this photo. The result of some Saturday morning painting.

You do keep an eye on The Annex, don’t you? Lots of photos there that never make it on the blog.

Well, everyone is home now, and Daphne’s long birthday celebration is done.

Daphne got an easel and a bunch of art supplies for her birthday.  This is the chalkboard side.

She loves to have a purse on her arm these days, and I guess an artist hat (that’s magic hat- UW & AM).  The other side of the easel has paper.  There is already marker on the chalkboard, of course.  She loves to do art.  She goes to the girls’ art supply cabinet a couple times a day and asks to color or paint.  She should get good use from her easel.
Daphne also got an inflatable trampoline.  Both girls love it, and I love this picture. Daphne likes to go out of it head first.

No injuries so far…A few times yesterday and today I cleaned out all the fake food, real food, books, etc., that mostly Daphne drops in there. 

Speaking of injuries, I thought I uploaded a picture of Daphne’s First Bandaid, but apparently not. She skinned her knee last night, running down our street…hence her first BooBoo (that deserved a bandaid).  She took it off her  knee pretty quickly.  She is running a lot now.  Ethan carried her home after her second fall tonight.

She also got fingerpaints.  Here are Amelia’s feet all gooey with the paints.

Daphne probably had more fun smearing the paint on herself, and in playing with the hose afterwards.  We’ll have to try the fingerpaints on the easel.
One of my favorite  moments that I walked into this week- Amelia painting Grannie Annie’s toenails (and feet) pink.

Aunt Melissa tried to leave yesterday but got foiled by Greyhound Bus and spent a bonus night with us.  So she got to put Daphne to bed last night.

I will never tire of hearing Daphne talk to the dolls, dogs, and stuffed animals in our house.  She has the neatest intonation when she says “Hi Baby” or “Hi “Gizzy”.  She talked to Amelia’s babydoll for a while tonight and it is so pretty sounding.

I also love her Itsy Bitsy Spider “up comes the sun” pose with her arms encircling her face.  She asks “Pider?  Pider?” and puts her arms around her face to ask me to sing the song to her.  The second best part is her generous “Yeah mama!” and clapping when I am done. 

I think she turned 2 and decided to grow. She is sleeping a lot. Today she slept until 8:30am, ate a huge breakfast, took a >3h nap, and went to bed without a peep by 8pm.  

Our beautiful girl is two, today. Hooray!

Some help blowing out the candle…

She had a great day.

Jackson and his mom Preston came over last weekend for a visit. Here are Jackson and Daphne after a little fun in the sprinkler.

Triple trouble- the three cousins.

A mom of another kid at the pool taught Amelia to slowly blow air out as she goes under water, so she will sink to the bottom. She was working hard on retrieving toys from the bottom of the pool last week.

I like this pic. We visited Gigi and Gifer this weekend and brought bathing suits to play in the sprinkler. Amelia got comfortable sitting in that pink bin for a while.

She really impressed us with this elaborate bristle blocks set up. It is a preschool and has much more structure with matching pieces, etc., than we have seen before. She told us about each component.

Daphne really liked Gigi and Gifer’s door knobs. They’re flat, rather than round knobs, and she could open and close all of them.

At one point, her snake head got stuck outside the bathroom door, with her shut inside. It was funny to watch the snake head move as she pulled on the string from the inside.
We visited an elementary school park- here’s D in an orange tunnel.

Amelia and I had fun working on headstands this evening.

She played tic-tac-toe with herself last night. She won!

I really like this picture.

We’ll have to get her ready to snorkel with Grannie and Grampy!  (With the right sized equipment)

We went up to Rockville this weekend so I could run in a neat race (Rockville Twilight Run). We all got to see some old friends. 

We stayed in the palace-basement of Auntie Lynn and Uncle Ryan’s house…the land where kids sleep late.  Amelia slept until about 7:30 every day, on an air mattress in the same room as us.  We were woken each morning with a sweet, “Daddy, I have to go potty.”  Daphne slept until 8:30 and 8.  (We won’t talk about the times she cried in the night.)  Thanks for having us and we hope you enjoyed your peaceful Sunday afternoon! 

We especially enjoyed watching the girls slide down the stairs to the basement on their tummies.

Click here to see Daphne sliding down the stairs.
Here’s a great shot of Daphne in a pink cowgirl hat!

Auntie Melinda came to see us and Daphne really enjoyed reading Bad Dog Marley with her.

She picked that book up three or four times today, by herself- it had a lasting effect on her!

We had a bit of crazy sillyness this morning at Auntie Lynn and Uncle Ryan’s house. Amelia is being strict about her days-of-the-week underwear. The luxury runs out after tomorrow because Tuesday is dirty.  There is some history of Lynn and Ryan’s daughter naming a bear “Undie”, and it always wore her underpants. So, Lynn and Amelia went upstairs to find Undie, and dressed up Undie, and friends, this morning.

Wishbone is on Amelia’s lap. She named the polar bear “Polar Undie”.
We went by our old house and played in the park for a few minutes while we waited for Amelia’s rockville babysitter to return from the store.

Great memories in this park.  Lots of Amelia “firsts”.  It was fun to see Daphne romp where Amelia played so many times before, swing in Amelia’s old swings, all that stuff.

We love Rockville, but were reminded of one of the main reasons we moved as we sat still on 95S, on the way home.  Amelia asked Daphne to hold her hand several times.  Sometimes I’m not sure how we got two girls who are so sweet to each other.  They really enjoy each other most of the time.

 Daphne figured out “Yes” on Friday.  We were packed and ready to head out.  I took her  upstairs to change her into pj’s, and said “Daphne, do you want to go for a ride?”.  She said, “Yesh!”, like she’d been saying the word for years.  I like it.  Ethan likes her “no”s.  When she decides to answer “No”, she stops and just looks at you to see your reaction (before she walks away).

She came up with a ”Pardon me” this weekend.  And asked me “Mama, more piggies please”, in the car on the way home, while holding out her foot in my direction.

 Amelia went to bed looking at her “Where are the Dragons?” book.  She asked me to come back in 5 minutes to let her know to put the book down and go to bed.   I did, and she was already asleep with the book open over her face.  Unfortunately, I woke her up when I took the book off.  She came to me a few minutes ago and asked me to let her sleep late tomorrow because she was going to be tired.

While we were driving to Rockville, Amelia was talking and singing to herself. And we hear her break out with:

“Brown chicken, brown cow.”

You have to say it aloud to get the effect.

It’s a verbal version of a stereotypical instrumental soundtrack associated with, well, 70’s-era pr0n films. It made its circles in the 90’s standup circuit. The gist of the joke is that you knew things were “about to happen” when that music kicked in.

Amelia of course had no idea. We (laughing) tried to figure out who taught her that “funny song”. At first she said the weekly ice cream man at the day care but she folded under cross-examination and was ready to give up anyone from her teach