Pumpkin Carving

By Halloween day, we still hadn't carved our pumpkin yet, and we had a small window of time to get it done after Parker got home from school but before Trick or Treating started. Parker designed her own face, using a stencil maker on Better Homes and Gardens Website.

I taped it on, and the next step is to punch holes through the template to transfer your design onto your pumpkin. I figured I'd just do that part real quick and we'd be on to carving. Not exactly. Parker wanted to do the punching too, so I let her try, assuming she'd do a few and lose interest. Not exactly. An HOUR LATER she was still going, determined to finish, despite my efforts to draw her offsides. And of course her attention span is only about 3 minutes, so she'd punch for 3 minutes and then stop to ask random questions, and then she'd start again after I suggested maybe we were ready to carve now. Clearly, she got Bob's gene for working on a project until it's complete.

Once the carving part started, and she realized she was expected to get her hands icky, she remembered she needed to jump in the trampoline and sing Halloween songs, so I did the rest of the carving.

I have a few more pictures of her costume, but the need editing. I'll try to have those up soon.

Happy Halloween!

Parker is back from Trick or Treating and had a wonderful time. I'll post a full report later, but here's a picture to hold you over.

Fun with Friends

The main focus of our lives right now is playing with friends. Hardly an afternoon goes by when we're not calling somone over to play, or going to someone else's house. It is so great for her and for me (and the other mom and kid) because it burns a couple hours of daylight for Parker and it gives me (and the other mom) a break from a bored preschooler tearing up the house or whining for someone to play with them or peppering us with questions. Bob commented yesterday that she looks so pretty when her friends are here, because her face is lit up with a delightful expression.

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A funny:
Taking the sitter home the other evening, I commented that the moon was full. Prompting Parker to ask:

"What is in it? People?"

I guess she thought I meant that it was overflowing when I said it was 'full'.

New paperdolls and chart progress

Paper dolls have come a long way since I had them. I always had the kind with the tabs on the clothes and they would always fall off. Since Parker LOVES dressing dolls....usually magnet dolls or computer dolls, I got her some paperdolls, but these kind have adhesive dots (blue paper) that you put on the dolls, and then the clothes stick to the doll. When it's not sticky any more, you get a new dot. So far so good. She was able to dress these dolls pretty much on her own. And the book comes with several background scenes to place them in. She's hiding under the table in this picture.

The No Blankie chart has been somewhat successful. This is the one from last week, and as you can see, she had a pretty good week of riding in the car. I've learned that usually gum will help her not get bored and freak out, so every purse and bag is now stocked with gum. She's doing much better on not having potty accidents too. We still really struggle with bringing Blankie downstairs first thing in the morning....even though she just leaves it on the couch. Today was a really good day, she got all her stamps, so she got a prize. This coming week I'm upping the stakes a bit and adding "Share with friends". She has so much fun playing with her friends, but sometimes has a big meltdown when they take a toy she wants to play with. Either I get 2 identical sets of everything, or she learns to share.

School continues to go well, the teacher reports that she is 'popular' among her classmates because she's willing to play what they want to play. At school, they have a spanish teacher they work with each time, and she can count to 10, knows red, green, dog, and cat in Spanish. At home, we are talking a lot about letter sounds, and she knows about 90% of her alphabet sounds. If you ask "what does 'dog' start with?", she'll say "duh, duh.....D!" . She can also identify end sounds of words and likes to find rhyming words too. I cannot WAIT until she is able to read on her own, I think she'll really enjoy it.