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.

Thursday

Good news from Bob's cousin - they get to return home today, the evacuation is lifted. No word about his grandmother, I'm assuming she get to go back as well.

Here's a Parker pic.

Big boy play therapy

For some reason, Parker has developed a fear of playing around bigger boys. I'm sure at one point on a playground, she was mowed over by one, and since then she's overly cautious. She will not play (or swim) if there are bigger boys around playing rough. So it was very nice this week when I met some friends at McDonalds for lunch and she had a great time playing with the boys. She was still very aware of where the big guys were, but she had fun playing along side them and playing with the smaller boy (in the orange shirt....he's a year younger than her, but they are the same size. Height, same height I mean. He outweights her by about 10 lbs)

Wednesday fire update

Bob's grandmother was evacuated from her nursing home in Rancho San Diego, and is staying at Bob's aunt's house, along with all the other evacuated relatives.

Update on California evacuations

9:35 central time -
Bob said his cousin Brenna (the blog I posted yesterday) was just given the order to evacuate by policemen going door to door. The Indian Reservation Fire is headed their way. Keep them in your thoughts today!

Pretty princesses

Here's the scene in my house at least twice a week. Parker and her little friend put on their dressup clothes and run around and play. Here, they're eating Goldfish crackers....except they don't usually eat much, they pick them up and pretend they are having little conversations. After Halloween, it should be very interesting, since I'll have a couple new costumes. It has taken us along time to work our a fair and equitable costume for each of them, and I bet there will be some bumps in the road when they want to wear the new stuff.

For Aunt Kimmie

Here's a picture for Parker's aunt Kimmie....Bob's sister. It's of Parker eating an avocado with a spoon right out of the skin (shell?). Kim loooooves avocados, and it looks like Parker, who hates everything that isn't juice or crackers, got the avocado gene. Notice she's bypassing the fishsticks on her plate, and is on her second half of avocado.

Speaking of Kim, and Bob's family in California, they are all very worried about the fire situation there. They are packed and poised and ready to evacuate if they get notice to. Their schools were shut down this morning, and freeways were closed, but are now reopened. Brenna posted some pictures of the smoke and winds on her blog: http://www.donnellydaze.blogspot.com/ (You have to scroll down past the kids )
So hold a good thought Bob's family! Hopefully things will calm down soon.

pancakes for a sickie

Last week when Parker had fever and stayed home from school, I made pancakes for her (her request). Bob makes them with sprinkles on them, so I did too, but I added my own twist using a heart shaped mold. She wasn't terribly impressed, but I'm sure that was the illness talking.

Bean picking attire

I hope I get as much mileage out of her next halloween costume as I have from this one. This is what Parker thought would be nice to wear to harvest our bountiful crop of jack beans. I think we got about 10 of them picked before she decided she was hungry for edamame and we never finished picking beans.

Fun with beverages

As if dealing with a 3 year old isn't challenging enough, I have a 3 year old prankster. For the past week or so, this (pictured) is what Parker does whenever she gets a drink, especially in the car. She pretends to drink, filling her cheeks with air, and then urgently
says "Mmmmm! Mmmmm! " to get my attention. I respond with alarm, thinking she's overfilled her mouth and she's about to make a mess. Then she blows out the air "pppffffftttt" to show me that she was faking. I fell for it the first 600 times, but I'm starting to catch on. This isn't a great picture, but it's the best I could do with a line of cars behind me waiting to turn left.

Blankie success

One step forward.......
We had some success this week with Blankie Detox. Bob told Parker if she left Blankie upstairs all day, and she had no potty accidents, and she was sweet and nice in the car (all on her chart this week), that he'd take her for ice cream. On Wednesday, she managed to have a great day with no Blankie, so we met Bob out for mexican food, and then got ice cream afterward. Parker had vanilla with sprinkles. She was sooooo excited and so proud of herself.




Two steps back.....
Some of her hard work was undone on Friday when I kept her home from school because of fever and cough....so she spent most of the day on the couch with Blankie and TV. She's feeling better for the most part, but the cough remains. She made it until naptime with Blankie upstairs today, and then she crashed on the couch while Bob watched the Longhorn game

Blankie Detox

For 2 weeks now, we have been in deep Blankie Detox. When she has Blankie, she sucks her fingers, and the finger sucking is making her teeth crooked, so the goal is to only have Blankie for sleep. Over the summer, the Blankie habit has gotten very bad, and we are having to work very hard to undo it. Parker isn't a 'cold turkey' kind of kid (we tried, repeatedly), so we're doing a chart. The categories are, No blankie with TV, no blankie in the car, and leave blankie upstairs. We have succeeded with not having blankie with TV, but the rest aren't going so well. Blankie in the car isn't an option any longer, and she isn't coping with it well. Car trips longer than 10 minutes begin with complaints and requests, and end with hysterical screaming and crying. By the end of all this, Parker will be detoxed from Blankie, but mommy will be in Betty Ford.

Fun with Parker

A fun Parker trick is to tell her something at bedtime, and she will remember it in the morning....she takes up right where she left off. The night before my birthday, Bob instructed her to tell me "Happy Birthday" in the morning. About 5am on my birthday, Parker woke up and called me up there, as is her normal routine (then we sleep until 7), and the first thing she said was "Happy Birthday Mommy" and went back to sleep. (!)

Another day, she was having trouble sleeping and kept calling us upstairs. Bob told her "if you us up here again, Daddy is going to be very upset." Luckily for both of them, after that she went to sleep. The next morning, she called me up there when she woke up. I crawled in her bed and she looked up and said "Good thing you're not daddy!".

PS, for my birthday, Bob surprised me with a nice fancy shiny laptop computer! I've been trying to get the hang of what I do on which computer, but I'm loving it so far!

Bathroom remodel progress

Last weekend was tile install weekend. Bob's brother Jeremy (and family) came over to assist and loan us tools. Jeremy was a great teacher, and laid part of the tile while Bob watch the Horns. Bob finished up on sunday evening after a LOOOOOONG day. It turned out very nicely although we still have to do the grout. Bob's taking a break this weekend from backbreaking labor to watch the TX/OU game.

So independent

Nearly any time I start to prepare anything in the kitchen, Parker yells "I wanna help!" . Here she is making her own peanut butter sandwich. She's not doing a bad job either. It's hard to tell, but underneath the apron, she's wearing last year's Halloween costume. We also did little quiches this week to, with Parker assisting in the dough cutting. She's really good with dough.

I think I've mentioned it before, but EVERY NIGHT before bed, she asks what we have planned for the next day, and then picks out an outfit and undies (looped on the hanger), socks, shoes and accesories, and then hangs it on her dresser. And then every morning, she has me bring it downstairs when we go down for breakfast. It really does make the morning go smoother. Maybe I can train her to do the same for Bob.
She also dressed herself completely yesterday. Top, skirt and undies. The top she picked out of the diaper bag and wanted to wear, she went upstairs by herself (that's a BIG DEAL, she never goes upstairs alone) and selected a coordinating skirt, unclipped it from the hanger and put it on. She's been capable of all that, but has never taken the initiative before. That picture is still in the camera. I'll post it next round.

Visit from Gigi and Papa

I'm catching up on posting pictures. Last weekend we had a visit from Bob's parents, Parker's Gigi and Papa. They stopped in and spent the afternoon on their way back from a trip.
Parker was thrilled to have an audience and captive participants in playing baby dolls.

Muffin making

Tuesday we made some banana muffins. It's a recipe from my friend Holly, I'll post it at the end. Parker tried them and loved them, and wanted to make some, so that was our task after a run w/ the jogger. At about mile 2 Parker decided muffing making sounded fun, so we chatted about it the rest of the way, and went right to it after we got in, which is why I'm in running gear. I bought a tripod the other day so I can get more pictures of her and I doing stuff. To look at her photo album you'd think she had a single parent household because I'm always the photographer and it's her and Bob in the pictures.

Dumping in brown sugar...

Slicing bananas w/ butter knife

tasting fresh squeezed orange juice. Mmmmmmm.

I let her smell all the spices when I put them in, vanilla, cinammon, and nutmeg. She had a little brown smudge on her nose at the end that I left there because it was cute.

Finished product. Heart shaped, of course.

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Banana Bread Recipe

1 cup brown sugar

1.5 C smashed bananas (about 3 large ones, very ripe)

juice and zest of 1/2 of a med. orange

3/4 cup apple sauce (mine was at room temp - don't know if that matters. Technically, it was two or three of the ind. serv. containers. Whatever comes close but doesn't overflow 1 cup)

2 eggs

2 C Whole Wheat Flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1.5 Tablespoon vanilla

.5 teaspoon baking powder

.5 teaspoon of salt

1 tsp cinnamon

1/8 tsp nutmeg

1/2 cup of nuts if you like nuts

Mix it all together, pour into muffin tins and bake.

about 20 mins at 400.

First portrait

Here's a picture Parker drew of Bob eating a salad on sunday. He and I were both shocked and how well she did. Looking at it now, maybe it's not that amazing. On the left is Bob, a circle head with circle eyes, colored in. And she specifically said "and no hair". A colored in triangle shirt, legs and feet. On the right is his salad bowl, and the colored in salad inside it.

Princess beadstringer

Here's another picture from Parker's very happy day last week. She was making a necklace and singing in her falsetto princess voice while wearing her dressup stuff. Her idea for this came about while I was cleaning the kitchen. She came running in the kitchen and said
"I'm having a good idea of something I can play by myself! Do princesses do beads? That's what I can do, I can make a necklace! Will you get me the beads please?"

Some Parker quick hits

Here's Parker, examining a dremel tool set, standing on a chair so she can see the top of the counter. She knows this area is a clutter 'hot spot' so she knows to check there often for new and interesting things. I have no idea what the deal is with the sunglasses.
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A funny:
(stop me if I've posted this already)
Parker thinks it's soooo funny to sing:
"A, B, C, D, E, F, banana.
H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, foot..."
etc etc
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At school, they are singing "This is the Day" during music, and practicing it to sing during chapel, whenever that is. I downloaded the song and put it on her kiddie MP3 player and she was THRILLED. I showed her how to replay it, so she did, singing out lout, over and over again, for 3.5 miles this morning in the stroller. It got a little monotonous, but I prefer it to "mooooooooom, can we go hoooooooome?"

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The aforementioned MP3 player was left laying around while playing, so I confiscated it and put it "up". When she found out, she of course had a large 3 year old fit. About 15 minutes later, she comes in to the kitchen and hands me my cell phone, and says "Here's your phone. You left it out".