Inverted headstand

I'm quickly posting this before I'm tempted to turn it into a Christmas card. Yes, I rotated it 180 degrees, and it looks equally funny at 90 and 270 too!

Parker and the Pumpkin

I forgot that I didn't post a decent picture of her pumpkin. She has a great smile on her face, doesn't she? They both do, really.
She's wearing her last year's school backpack, which has last year's lunchbox in it, filled with plastic food.

More Halloween pics

I did a little impromptu photo shoot with Parker one day and got some fun shots.

And some funny outtakes. She was dancing in this one I think.

This is after Trick or Treating, sorting through the loot. It is before Bob and I took our percentage. Bob said that at every house, she'd take a piece of candy and then ask him "can I have this one?" . Her favorites so far are suckers and Smarties and Nerds. So far she is complying fairly well with the 'one piece per day' rule and not bugging me too much about it.

Funnies

I've been talking to Parker about good sportsmanship lately. Specifically that we don't say "ha ha" when we beat some in a race. I was going over it again, after I totally kicked her butt in Hi Ho Cherry-O, 3 games to zip, that after a game we say "good game, good game" (like in sports).
And she added "And if you lose, you say 'Bad game, bad game.' "

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Driving home from dinner and ice cream, an old favorite song of Bob's came on, and he was singing aloud. Parker handed him the remains of her ice cream cone and said "here Dada, you can hold it up to your mouth and it can be your microphone!" .

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!