Bird nest - please advise

And I'm not talking about Parker's hair. Mrs. Cardinal is building a nest in the Japanese maple right outside the kitchen window....which is also right outside the patio door - our main thoroughfare to the back yard. I'm wondering if I should try to do something to discourage this (like remove what she's done so far) so I don't have to deal with baby birds and a PO'd mama bird every time I walk outside. If anyone has advice to offer, please share.

And here's a picture of Parker and her friends at the zoo. They always have fun climbing on stuff.

Just rain, no damage

We had big storms roll through last night, but we just had rain, no damage or trees down. Just thought I'd update in case anyone was wondering about us. It was a pretty crazy storm though....Bob went up and got Parker and brought her downstairs to sleep in our bed. We've never done that before, and she was thrilled of course. Hopefully she won't want to do that everytime there's storm. Usually she sleeps right through them anyway.
Here's a picture of her 'pillow fighting' me. I assumed certain readers would be annoyed if all I posted was a weather report and not a Parker pic.

Right handed writing

There was a comment from my mother about the previous writing picture, asking about Parker holding her pencil left-handed. I looked back at the outtakes, and of 6 pictures, 3 were right handed, and 3 were left handed. Yesterday at school she did a drawing and put arms on it, and the teacher said she drew the right arm with her right hand, and then switched hands to do the left. I've seen her do this before, especially when eating, but not recently. She is primarily right handed though.

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Spanish confusion:

"Is b'asagna (lasagna) Spanish for spaghetti?"

"Is coupon Spanish for credit card?"

Hopefully that last one isn't some sort of racial slur. I'd hate for her to ruin her chances for public office because she was misquoted on a blog at age 3.

Enjoying outdoors

Here's Parker sitting outside and working on her writing/drawing. We have beautiful weather this weekend, following the dime-sized hail we got Thursday night. In this picture, she's not shocked or surprised, she's talking.

She had a soccer game this weekend, and actually played for about 25 minutes. And for her efforts, she earned 25 M&M's....which she later chose to trade for a certain cup at the grocery store that she's been bugging me for . "Played" soccer is a bit of an exaggeration, since she really just ran up and down the field, and tried to stay away from the other players, especially the ones kicking the ball. It's a start though.

I is for "I know my letters"

Here's Parker making the letter "i" out of pencils. She's big into letters these days, especially making the letter shapes with objects or her limbs. She makes an X with her arms and stands like a stork and makes the letter P. She's also had a big letter writing breakthrough and can write H, E, F, P, V, W, M, and the number 9. And she can draw a sun. She went to a dress-up party on sunday and had her nails painted. She chose blue. Hopefully they discounted her manicure since she skips the nail polish on the fingers that she sucks on.



I had a parent/teacher conference last week....they do them with all the parents this time of year at this age. Her teacher reported that she's right where she should be academically and that she's really enjoying school. She's doing well socially, but we are supposed to work with her on making her own decisions, and how to express that (instead of just freezing or crying). That was a little surprising, since she has no trouble telling us just what she will and won't do.

Another fun thing this week has been carpooling to school with our neighbor a few times. Here they are on the way in one rainy morning.

Big Girl Furniture

This past weekend we finally got Parker some big girl furniture to fill her big girl room. We got this 4 poster bed, which looks a little less grand in real life...the camera angle is weird. It is pretty tall though, she needs a step stool to get into it. To get down, she jumps off the end like usual. She has a full bed instead of a twin so that it can serve as a guest bed if needed. She also got 2 night stands and a matching dresser and a bookcase. The bookcase doesn't match exactly, but it was on clearance and it will hold a lot of stuff, hopefully.

More artwork

Here's more artwork. This is a picture of Bob (notice there's no hair. She draws me and herself with curly hair). There's also a border of dots "to keep it safe". The dots are made from big stamp markers....she didn't color the precise circles. She draws a safety border around everything these days.

artwork from school

Here's some of Parker's artwork from school. This is an "ice painting"....where they dip ice cubes in paint and use them to paint the picture.

New Garden! New plants! New spring look!

I decided to change the blog masthead to look more spring-like. I wish I could say that I did it myself, but I had it done by a local digital scrapbook designer...with my detailed requests of course. I think she did a great job! Check out her digital artwork, and buy things! She has free stuff here: http://seebeesfreebies.blogspot.com/

And she sells things at Digitals too.

Now that it's spring, we are spending lots of time in the yard. Our first big project was to build me a garden. Yay!!! No more container gardening! Bob whipped up this raised planter, out of cedar I think, and I filled it with a carload (literally) of dirt and I've planted 2 tomatoes and a jalapeño so far. I'm going to add a cucumber or zucchini soon. Sort of a lot of effort just for 4 plants, but if it's successful, next year I'll do another one.

Parker found a worm to torment when I was planting herbs in another bed. I convinced her he'd like living in my garden, so she shortly set him free in there.

The finished product. We have it located in the back of the house by the trampoline. It's probably going to be too much sun, but hopefully we'll add another tree back there soon to give it a break part of the day.

Our winter plants are looking great, like they always do in the spring. Maybe their know their days are numbered. I'm so glad we planted the kale/cabbage stuff this year. It looks so pretty as it grows....plus it takes up a lot more room than pansies.

We got 3 new hydrangeas...the one in the picture is an Oak Leaf hydrangea, I've wanted one forever. Even if it doesn't bloom, it has such pretty leaves, and grows a little bit taller than the normal kind I think. The hosta is old. We also got 2 'pink lady' hydrangeas, (not pictured) that have reddish stems and back of the leaves. We put it out by the dogwood in the little circular bed.

Happy Easter

Happy Easter everyone! We've had a nice family weekend. Bob took Friday off, so we've all done lots of family stuff and home projects.
Yesterday, Parker dyed her eggs. She's so confused by the term "dying" when talking about coloring eggs though. She'll say "die the eggs?!". Instead of dip dying them like usual, we dripped food coloring onto them and then rinsed it off for a tie-dye effect. I think they look great.

The Easter bunny was pretty generous when filling up her basket this year. Here she is unpacking her loot. She got a stuffed kitty cat, just what she's been wishing for aloud for weeks, and various other stuff and lots of candy of course. She has a candy bag in the cabinet, and knows she can have one piece a day, and she's pretty compliant.

When it warmed up a little bit, we went outside and hunted our eggs. Parker is really good at hiding them!

Tomorrow, school starts again after being off for a week for Spring Break. She's going to be so excited to see all her friends!

Spanish song

Photo Sharing - Video Sharing - Photo Printing - Photo Books

Parker's absolute favorite thing at school is Spanish. The teacher is a genius at teaching preschoolers....she brings puppets and teaches them songs. In case you can't see the video or understand her, here's the transcript:

"Gato, cat,
Perro, dog,
Pajaro is a bii-irrr-rrd.
Oso is a bear,
Vaca is a cow,
(whispering) lots of animals
(screaming) OH WOW! "

Most of the time, this song is looped over and over in my head. It works though, Parker and her friends incorporate their Spanish vocabulary into what they're talking about....although it's not often they talk about shirts, pants, shoes, socks, eyes, mouth, teeth or animals.

This is Parker's Spring Break from school, and all her friends are out of town. We were planning on having visitors, but there was insane rainfall today, causing all flights to be canceled, so we've got a looooong week ahead of us with nothing to do and no one to play with.

Playing with toys

Now that Parker is feeling better, she's been having fun rediscovering her toys. She's big into grouping things and lining them up. For some reason, she and her friends like to fill her Rose Petal Cottage with shoes:

And an animal parade around the bathtub. If you look closely you'll see that she's grouped all the animals into families....all the pics together, all the sheep together, etc. The 'leader' is a penguin, followed by 2 frogs and a lion.

As I'm typing this, she's eating her dinner. I think she just put 2 and 2 together and realized that her fish sticks were once actual fish.

"Is there fish in my fishsticks?"
me: "yes"
"Real fish, like strips?"
me: "yes"
"But no eyes, right?"
me: "right"
(under her breath) "good"

It's fine if she wants to go vegetarian on me, she just better learn to like vegetables or she's going to have a very limited diet. Her side dish with her fishsticks was strawberries, that she dipped in ketchup.

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Some Public service announcements:

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This is a really neat website for editing photos, cropping, color correcting, adding text, borders, etc. Unlike most photo software, you don't have to download anything, you upload your pictures instead. And it's free.
http://www.picnik.com

And in office supply news......here's a link to a Sharpie coupon at Office Max, and a link to their newest product, a retractable fine point pen!!!

Office Max retractable Sharpie coupon

FINE POINT retractable pen

(There are about 4 blog readers that are jumping up and down with excitement right now. )

Absence of snow pictures

No snow for us, really. We got a lot, but it was mixed with rain and didn't really stick. Just in case it did stick, we were ready this time with a new hat. The red thing on her arm is a stamp from school.

Last ones

2 more pictures, and I'll stop with the snow. Here's another sled one from our second trip outside after Parker's hands warmed up. I put fleece socks on them this time, and it did the trick. I'll get her some decent glove/mittens next year.

And for comparison, here she is at 8 months during her first snow. I was looking back at pictures, and was shocked that this is only her 3rd winter. It seems like it's been way longer than that!

I think she is feeling better after her ear infection, finally. We are still having some rough afternoons, since she is detoxing from being pampered and waited on hand and foot, but this morning she was her old cheerful talkative self. We had a long discussion in the car this morning about how trees stay up, and why birds poop on your car and dogs don't. What what would happen if they did. And what would we say to them if they did. And what the dog would do after we said that to them....and on and on and on.

Happy Goforth Day!

I nearly forgot! I hope everyone enjoyed their March 4th.

more snow pictures

It continued to snow all last night, so there's several inches....I don't know what the official report is, but it's 3" maybe? You can look at my footprints and see the depth.
In a brilliant move earlier this year, I ordered a sled from LLBean when they had free shipping. It's been sitting in a box in the garage during all of the 40 degree winter. We finally had a chance to open it!

Parker is not what you call a morning person, so it was iffy whether or not we were going to get outside before it all melted. We did several runs up and down the front slope in the yard...I could get her going and then fling her a bit and she'd slide on her own. But then her hands got cold, and she's DONE.

Snow!

It's snowing! Is it nutty that we went and got Parker out of bed to show her? She was very appreciative...she said "I can't wait to tell everyone at school that I saw SNOW!".

3 pictures for Monday

I'm way behind on posting pictures. We had a rough week last week. Parker followed up her weekend sickness (fever sat/sun) with weekday sickness (more fever Tues/Wed, ear and throat infection). She missed 2 days of school, but she's on antibiotics now, and seems to be feeling better...but still not 100%. When we went to the pediatrician, I printed out a calendar of February and marked all the days she's been sick. The theory is that she's been fighting different viral things, and now one of those has turned into a secondary infection (ear/throat). Cross your fingers that the antibiotics work. She's a grumpy patient.
We've been doing lots of arts and crafts and activities you can do at the table, since she hasn't felt like playing. Crayola makes a great watercolor package for little ones, with raised lines so the watercolor stays in the lines. Unless you paint right over the lines like Parker does. Either way, she's really enjoying painting.

She had TWO soccer games this weekend....usually there is just one per weekend. She 'played' (stayed on the field) quite a bit during her saturday game, but only managed one play on sunday before refusing to go back on the field. Luckily I had my camera out for the first play! She's the last one in line in the pic below.

I can't remember exactly what she's doing here, but she requested I take a picture of it. Singing or dancing or both. Usually before she does a singing/dancing act, she pretends to have a microphone and 'announces' herself in her best Michael Buffer voice... "Ladies annnnnnd Gentleman! The amaaaaazing Olivia!!!" (her stage name is Olivia).

Ballet, soccer and skiing

Today was Parker's first soccer game. She's had 2 practices so far and today was the first game. At her first practice, she threw a fit and refused to get out of the car. At her second practice, she got out of the car, but cried at one point, and stayed by Bob on the sideline. Today, she cried while getting dressed, but didn't cry at the game (she may have been bribed with candy). She didn't play, but watched again, and participated in the team picture. So we're getting there. This will ultimately be good for her, I hope, once she gets over her anxieties and actually plays. Here she is in her uniform. I made her hold up 3 fingers because she's 3 years old. It's my way of date-stamping the picture, and it looks nicer than holding up today's newspaper.

In contrast, here she is on the way to ballet lessons (leotard is under the fleece, and ballet shoes are in her bag). She continues to LOVE ballet, and pays close attention to the teacher and does very well considering her size. A big part of why she loves it is that all the other girls are older....4's and 5's. They are learning their dance for their recital in May, and at their class this week, they performed it for the older jazz class girls, which was a big thrill for her.

And more ski pictures are trickling in. Bob found a ski rental place that would bring the skis to you, instead of having to go get them and lug them back to the condo. This is really the way to go. Here I am being fitted with ski boots. The condo we stayed at was the Highland's Lodge, by the way. Super super nice.