tawbubby

Amelia is taking a dance class at her school. Here she is practicing her stretch.

She also showed me “butterfly” and “tippy-toe, (hop over) alligator, spin”.  We got an email from the teacher and we are very excited that there is a recital in the spring.
Daphne likes to take the step stool places to peek at things that were at a previously undiscovered altitude.

Lots of counter surfing going on, and lots of climbing.  Unrelated to the step stool, but related to climbing, she fell on her head twice today, really, from couch and chair height.

The big news is that Daph went potty a few times this week!  Ethan went to a conference in Vegas all week, and Daphne pulled a new trick out of her pocket.  (She learned to walk the last time he traveled for work.)  She likes to try and once in a while it works out.

In between all of her “no”s, she’s singing a lot of songs, her ABCs, Happy Birthday, and her famous “Where is Daddy?” that we all joined in on this week.  She made it up all by herself.  “Where is Daddy?  Where is Daddy?  He’s at work! He’s at work!”  We made a variety of lines to the second half of the song.  She can spell d-a-p-h-n-e, s-t-o-p, and now d-a-d-d-y.  And she counted to 14 going down the steps today.

Speaking of all by herself, Amelia played a great joke on me today.  I was in the kitchen with Daphne, and Amelia came in and said “mama, your water spilled!  Your water spilled.”  And when I went into the living room to clean it up, it was just fine, and she HOWLED laughing.  Good one!  And the inspiration was all her own.

Click here to see Amelia’s magic trick with magnets.  (I taught her that one.)

I am a winter person, but I also don’t like to see the end of summer. Our neighbor shared popsicles with everyone on Sunday when it was an unseasonal 95 degrees.

And another very, very kind 14 year old neighbor pushed the little kids around in his homemade laundry-basket roller coaster car.

They had a blast, and he pushed them around until he was red-faced and worn out.  Yes, he attached the basket to his skateboard with a drill and screws.  Kids flying down the hill in that thing just makes me laugh, when I guess I should make them put a helmet on.  It’s great to live on a street where kids still play outside every day.

We had a great visit with our friend, and princess, Catriona.  Pirate-doctor Amelia is tending to Princess-patient Catriona’s illness.  I laughed when they said to each other “Give me a deep breath. And again?  And another?”

Daph is on day 3 of eating-very-little.  She stole her neighbor’s (cow) milk at lunch, after she downed her own (soy) milk.  Her teacher called and said Daphne drank it so fast, she didn’t even have time to get the cup away!  She’s all fluids, very little solids.  Took her to the doctor yesterday, sure she had an ear infection (like Amelia and Ethan had last week), and she was fine.  The doctor said, “I guess it’s teeth, or ‘2′.”  Tonight Ethan came in to show me the bar of soap that Daphne bit twice during her bath; and I just listened to a string of “no”s as he got her dressed after the bath.  I’m guessing not eating is a combination of the teeth and the two.

We had a great time at the beach with Bebe and Grandpa this week.  We had great weather and left just before Tropical Storm Josephine’s arrival.

Here are Daphne’s pigtails blowing in the breeze.

She took two days to figure out the beach and be comfortable on the sand.  We found a hole in the sand while walking one day, and she loved it.  It filled in with water and was her pool.  So each day, Ethan dug her a hole to climb in and out of, and fill with water as the tide came in.

I think she doubled her sentence length and vocabulary this week. She and Amelia played so well together too, and Daphne parroted Amelia’s words the whole week.

Amelia also tried to resist the beach, here she is reading a book in her pajamas. 

 But it proved irresistable.

The truth seems to be she’s been fighting something.  She’s had a chest cough for almost 3 weeks, but never a fever so we didn’t have her checked out.  Wednesday she started saying “huh?” too much, she couldn’t hear us. We figured she had at least fluid in her ears, and went to the doctor today. 

This morning she got antibiotic (ear infection) and NEBULIZER!! medicine (to clear out her lungs).  She was so excited that she would get to try the nebulizer that is her sister’s companion.  And she figured out it’s not much fun.  Daphne said, “I do nebulizer too!”.

Crazy Amelia story.  Yesterday afternoon we went to visit their new preschool classrooms so Monday am will be easier.  Amelia went potty and sat looking at a counting poster. She said “Mama, 3+2+3+2 is 10!”.  I looked from her to the poster, to her, to the poster and asked “How did you figure that out?”. She said “I just looked at the poster.”.  Wow!