In the Christmas Spirit

Last week Parker got to put up her own little Christmas tree. We got it for her last year, and she liked it, but this year she LOVES it. She has really enjoyed decorating it, and she's very proud of it - any time a friend comes over, she takes them and shows them her tree immediately. And every morning, or when we return home from somewhere, she requests that I turn the lights on.

Also notice the outfit she picked out herself:
A short sleeve Easter-themed shirt
A skirt w/ strawberries on it
sparkly shoes from her Halloween costume
headband w/ glittery beads
and the additions (my choice) to keep her from freezing: leggings, long sleeve shirt underneath, and socks. That's nearly a whole load of laundry on one kid!

Man a-loose

Dangerous neighborhood we live in.
About a month ago, our phone rang, and it was 9-11 calling us!

Turns out a prison trustee had run off from a work release detail that was clearing brush just across the lake from our neighborhood. They played a recorded message telling us to stay indoors and lock everything up, etc. If I had that info earlier, I might have spent less time standing outside watching the police helicopter circle overhead. They caught the guy a few days later in a neighboring town.

And, we've gotten warnings from the neighborhood association lately about not only coyotes, but bobcats prowling around! We are being warned to keep an eye on our shitzus so they aren't a tasty meal for the local wildlife.

Shoes glorious shoes

Tiny mouse

I had a request from Parker's Aunt Paula to show the tiny mouse that Parker uses. She can use the big one too, but it's my work mouse and it has a bunch of side buttons that are programmed and that causes her problems sometimes. She can work the tiny one just fine, drag and drop and even scroll. Her favorite sites right now are www.northpole.com and the Hasbro website.
Excuse the grubby mouse pad area, we've had some spills. She has requested a pink mouse and a pink keyboard for Christmas, and hopefully Bob will help Santa find that, along with a computer for her so we don't have to share any more.

Thanksgiving dinner

For Thanksgiving this year, we stayed in Dallas and tried to maximize our time at home to rest and relax. For the Thanksgiving meal, we were invited across the street and had a traditional southern meal (all the normal stuff, plus collard greens and hotwater cornbread) that my neighbor cooked. It was very nice, and Parker had a blast playing with her friends.
The day after, Bob smoked a turkey breast in his smoker, and it was really good! We made our own traditional meal of turkey, dressing and potatoes and apple pie. Parker had Ramen noodles eaten with chopsticks.

New Tree

We got a new tree! We needed something to replace the one that fell this summer to prevent our shade garden from baking in the afternoon sun. We chose an Autumn Blaze Maple, like we have in the front yard. It gets very pretty red and orange leaves in the fall.

BEFORE:
This is Bob out pre-digging the hole for the tree planters


(acutally, he wanted to make sure they didn't hit a sprinkler line, but it's funnier to act like he couldn't wait for the planters to get here)

AFTER:

It's kind of hard to see and to tell the scale, but it's a nice sized tree. The best part is that the nursery planted it for us, and it has a one year guarantee.

While we waited for the planters to get here, we debated whether or not it would rain. Parker braced for the weather with her new rain coat and kitty boots. She asks me everyday if it's going to rain, and she's had her coat and boots hanging on her chair since she got the rain coat.

Bob did more work on the bathroom. He's sealing the grout here. He also stained and restained the trim, and will probably install it in a day or two. We cannot wait to have this bathroom functional again!

Trip to Grandma and Grandpa's house

Since we are spending Thanksgiving in Dallas this year, Parker and I made a trip to visit her Grandma and Grandpa (my mom and dad) last week. It's a 3+ hour drive, and Parker did pretty well in the car. She was entertained by her DVD player and a constant stream of snacks and gum. Normally when we drive, she shouts out song requests and I have to frantically punch through the CD trying to find a certain song she wants to sing. Either that or we sing one of 3 spanish songs she's learned in school, over and over and over.
While in Nacogdoches, I went for a run down Raguet street and got my oil changed while Parker stayed home with G and G. I returned to find that Parker has suckered Grandma into a game of 'Take Cover, It's Raining!'.

Artsy Bob picture

Bob has a new phone, and apparently, it can take pictures in Sepia tone!

Fit to be tied

I started to post a picture of Parker throwing a huge fit in the car, but I've reconsidered. She looks too sad! We went out to eat pizza at a different restaurant than usual, one that is NOT near Baskin Robbins. Parker mentioned she wanted ice cream, so Bob and I were discussing popping in to a store to get a pint of vanilla and Parker proceeded to lose her mind. Crying and hollering and trying to get her point across that she did NOT want store ice cream, she wanted to go to an ice cream parlor.

"NOOOO!!!
I WANNA GO TO THE PLACE WHERE THEY GIVE IT TO YOU!
NOT THE STORE!!
THE PLACE THAT WE WENT A LONG TIME AGO WHERE THEY GIVE IT TO YOU.
IN A CONE!!! A CONE!!! THEY GIVE YOU A CONE!!
VANILLLLLLAAAAA!!!!".

The really sad part is how hard it was not to giggle at how upset she was over it all. We did go ahead and make a detour to Baskin Robbins, which we would have done anyway, but we were able to get her to agree to some additional terms.

Playing in leaves

Last weekend Bob raked up a pile of leave just for Parker and her friends to play in.

We have been having unseasonably warm weather, so Parker has been enjoying playing outdoors quite a bit.

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)