Monday, February 28, 2011

Look, Ma, No Cavities!

Today was Peeper's regularly scheduled dental check-up and it went much better than we'd expected.

The first great thing that happened (for us) is that our favorite dentist, whom we'd been told had moved, is actually still there. It seems that she ran into red-tape issues with getting her license in the state that she was trying to move to, so I don't know if the move is cancelled or just postponed, but at least she was there today. Bummer for her, of coures, but yay for us.

The second thing is that Peeper was incredibly cooperative. This is the first time that they've done the whole shebang, with the metal hook and the rubber spinny thing and the flouride on a brush, and she was just great.

She put on her groovy sunglasses . . .



. . . opened wide . . .

. . . and let them do their thing.

She was even able to answer when given a choice of flouride flavors. (She went with banana.)

The third great thing is that it turned out that the tooth I was worried about (the one upper incisor that's not capped) is fine. I thought it was showing some signs of decay (chalky white along the gumline) but it turns out that what I was seeing is just the edge of the small surface filling that she got in it at the last visit.

The dentist says that her teeth are looking great, and we must be doing a good job of brushing them.

YAY!!!

Two of her two-year-molars are in all the way, but the other two still need to come out a bit, so can't seal them just yet. We'll be going back in three months to get that done.

After the appointment, we went out for Mexican food and did our best to undo all our good dental hygiene by ordering Peeper a dessert bigger than her head.

We got three spoons, but none of us actually had room for much of it. I think we should've just gotten a small scoop of ice cream!

Peeper made a valiant effort, but barely got past the whipped cream on top.

When she was finished, she looked at the ice cream and said "Doggy! Doggy! Looks like!"

And she was right!

Do you see it?

Do you see it now? It's a poodle, in profile.

Then she asked me to make a "snowman" out of her lemon.

I think I did a pretty good job, if I do say so myself.

Sunday, February 27, 2011

Hoody

Shrike's hoody, to be exact. She put it on, and I secured it.

Panda Pics - 28 Months


Letter of the Week: E

Tot School
~ Peeper is 27.75 months old ~

A Note To My Regular Readers: I know I'm repeating some photos and stories that you've already seen, but I want to put all our learning activities in the one post that's part of to the Tot School link-up.

Tot Schoolers: Welcome! If you enjoy this post, please feel free to stay for a while. I'll give you a fair warning that much of my blog is PG-13, but my Tot School link-up posts will always be G-Rated.



I started the week by introducing Peeper to her "Letter E discovery bin" which she immediately started investigating.

Ernie and Elmo, of course.


Eggs. When I showed them to her, she said "Mite back!" and ran off. Moments later, she returned with another egg. I have no idea where she found it.


Elephants


And an eye patch. I figure I can use this again for P.

And Rrrrrrr.


I got this idea from Frugal Family Fun.



Eyeballs, puffies and pipecleaners, oh my!

We had a pretty heavy snow Monday night, and on Tuesday, we brought some inside and made a snow-face.

And snow ice cream!

This was her idea. After she'd gathered a few balls, I did suggest she look for the big ones, but she totally took it upon herself to line them all up. Almost by size.

Cinnamon-cheese toast, cut into elephants (I think). She held up one of the long, skinny cast-off pieces, and said "trunk!"

She loves her some googly eyeballs. Again, she took it upon herself to line the up. She's a liner-upper.

This is an activity that I thought she'd love, but it turned out to be a bust. She really wasn't interested in putting straws in the little holes. Maybe we'll try it again in a few weeks.

Throwing the straws around, now that looked like fun.

Our two letter crafts for the week. These were actually my own ideas, more or less.

"E is for Eggs."

And "e is for elmo."

Of course, "e for eggs" and "E for Elmo" would have been more grammatically correct, but I couldn't figure out how to make E look like Elmo.


Again, all on her own, she gathered a bunch of doggy and kitty books, and lined them  up. Then she told the cat, "BoyCat (not his real name) yook! (pointing to each one) Ki'cat right dere. Ki'cat right dere."

I loved how she thought he'd be interested in reading about the kitty cats!



And, finally, on Saturday, we went to Target for their Read Across America event.

And one last experiement. I have no idea why she insisted on putting herself in the box, but she managed to do it, after a few tries.

Last night, I told her that we would be moving to a new letter, and asked "What do you think it will be? We've already done A, B, C, D, E - what could be next?"

She said "F!"

And, of course, she was right.

Check back next week to see what kinds of F-F-F-Fun we came up with for that!

Playtime

Some random play a few days ago.

Snow Ice Cream

Peeper eating her snow ice cream a few days ago. And having a chat.

Twenty-Eight Months

Dear Peeper:
You are twenty-eight months old today.

At least, I think you are. For a second there, I thought I'd gypped you of a month and had been calling you the wrong age. And then I remembered that there are twenty-four months in a year, not twenty-five, so I was right after all.

I think Mama might need to start getting more sleep.

Once again, the big news for you is your language development. You talk now. Totally. I mean, not in grammatically correct sentences, and not so most people who don't live in our house can understand much of what you're saying, but you are totally speaking in complete (for at two-year-old) sentences now.

I can't believe that just two months ago you were still only using single words!

I wish I had a little tape recorder or video camera on you at all times, so I could remember all the cute and amazing things you say and do. I try to tell Mommy about them when she gets home, but I know I'm forgetting so much!

We're still doing our letter of the week "curriculum" and we're starting on F today. You've caught on to the concept of a new letter each week, and how that works. Last night, I told you that we would have a new letter today, and asked what you thought it might be. I said, "We've already done A, B, C, D, E - what do you think might be next?" and you guessed that it would be F!

Probably because you know your alphabet. There are some letters that you still struggle with, but I would say that there aren't any that you just flat-out don't know. You can usually identify them - upper and lower-case, and you know the sounds that most of them make, and can tell us a word that starts with many of them.

And, just this week, you've started singing the whole alphabet song!

It still sometimes goes something like "Ay-seeeees, double-ex, why, ZEEE!" but more and more often, you're getting all those other letters in there, too, although you still leave out one or more "groups" of letters from time.

My favorite part (in addition to "double-ex") is "ommy-ommy-PEEE!" - sometimes there are even more "ommy" in there, if you get stuck.

Just a few minutes ago, you were playing in your car and talking, and Mommy and I suddenly realized that you were holding up your left hand and saying "Left hand!"

So, I quizzed you on your left and right parts, and you got probably about 80% of the questions right.

Mommy asked if I've been working with you on that, but I really haven't. I try to remember to refer to your parts as right and left, but I'm not as good about it as I think I should be. If I'm telling you where something is, I don't hesistate to say that it's "on your left" or "to the right of the . . . " but I had no idea that you were picking it up!

You love to sing these days, although you're still at that point where you actually only say about every third word. In addition to "A-Cs" you like "Itsy Pider" and "C-Cookie" and "One Fine Face" and often burst into any of them spontaneously.

When I play your music in the car, you sing along, whether it's a song that you've heard very much or not.

Actually, it doesn't have to be "your" music - just before the left/right incident today, I would swear you were trying to sing along to "I Can't Get No Satisfaction" on the radio!

Lately, you've been very into throwing your various balls. You hold them up and say "Readyyyyy, catch!" Some of your commentary, which I'm sure you've picked up from us, cracks me up. "Oh nooooo! So close! Good one!"

Right now, as I'm typing, you're lying on the floor, tossing your "Little People" doggy back and forth with Mommy, and I'm hearing "Ready, catch!" and "Sank you, Mommy!" when she hands it back to you.

Somehow, "ready catch" has evolved into another game, called "Ready, hug!" which involves Mama or Mommy sitting in the middle of the sunroom, and you "hiding" by the window, until we say "Ready, hug!" Then you ruuuuuun across the room into our arms for a big hug. Then we do it all over again. And over and over and over. It's my favorite game ever.

You're also very into "family hugs" and sometime request them yourself, which is just the sweetest thing ever.

Even if it happens when Mommy and I are hugging, and you decided to get in the middle. After a few times of me saying, "Oh, do you want in here?" you've started coming over and saying "In dere. Family hug!"

You're starting to do more and more sophisticated pretend play. You move your Little People and their animals all over the farm and house and narrate everything that they're doing. I love that, but favorite part is when you are actually talking to them, and telling them to "yook" at something, or moving one out of your way and you saying "Foof me, Santa."

Yes, your Santas are still around, and you still love them, but you do call them "Santa" now. I don't think we've heard "Humhummuh" in a while. That makes me a little bit sad.

You can bet that every Christmas, for the rest of our lives, we will tell you about how "You know, the Christmas that you'd just turned two, you called Santa Claus 'Humhummuh.' It was the cutest thing ever."

You also like to pretend to be animals. For quite a while, you've enjoyed crawling around and roaring like tigers (we have to play along, of course) and during D week, we started waddling and quacking like ducks. I just realized that I "missed my chance" to be elephants for E week, but I guess there's nothing stopping us from doing it now. I guess we can swim like fish, too?

On your own, you've also started "hopping" like a bunny. I say "hopping" in quotes, because you don't actually leave the ground, when you hop or jump. You'll get there eventually, though, I'm sure.

Your newest physical skill is taking off your clothes. Well, you really want to take them off, and sometimes you can actually do it. You usually need some help getting your shirt over your head and your pants over your diaper, but you're doing really well with it, considering that you just suddenly decided that it would be your job, and not ours, about a week ago.

You also like to zip up your footy pajamas, and you can unzip them, too. The other day, I walked in the living room to find that you were unzipped and almost completely out of them! That pair doesn't have the little snap-tab at the collar, so you had your arms out and you were struggling with the feet. You wanted me to help, but I just talked you through it and you got them off!

You're also able to pull your diaper down and off, like pants, without unsnapping it, but that usually takes a lot of work, so I'm not too worried about it.

Speaking of diapers, you are getting very consistent about letting us know when you have poopy pants, and you're very cooperative for a diaper change if it's one that you've requested. (Not so much when it was our idea.)

You loooooove to run nakey after your bath, but you're also getting pretty consistent about pee-peeing in the floor while doing it. We try to watch you really closely, and scoop you up to the potty when we see you grab yourself, but it doesn't always work.

You always do the crotch-grab, so I know you feel it coming, but I don't think you have a lot of warning yet, and you're not tranlating it into warning  us, and I suspect you're at the point of no return by then anyway. So, you pee on the floor.

After you peed all over your Eric Carle animal alphabet flashcards last night, I made a new rule, which will go into effect this evening. At bathtime, we will actually take a clean diaper into the bathroom with us. If you pee-pee in the potty after your bath, you can run nakey for a while, but if you don't, you have to put on a diaper.

I'm hoping that will a> cut down on the amount of pee-pee on the floor and b> serve as an incentive to get you on the potty for a try.

We'll see.

We have caught a couple of pees lately, when I dumped the first one into the toilet, I realized it had been so long since you'd peed in the potty, that the bowl was dusty!

I thought that might have renewed your interest in the potty, but not so much.



Oh well, it will come.

And right now, we're going to try to get some clothes on you, so we can go walk the doggies. It's beautiful outside and you've got no interest in going out. Of course, yesterday, you splashed in the mud and slush for an hour when it was 40 degrees out, but today, nope.

I'm sure you'll enjoy it once we get you out there though, so I'm going to go help Mommy before she gets any more frustrated, and leaves without us.

(Update - We got you dressed, and you had a great time on the walk, then asked to play in the backyard when we got home. Told ya.)

We love you, ya little knot-head.


Love,
Mama

Peep In a Box

Saturday, February 26, 2011

Read Across America at Target

This morning, Peeper and I went to Target (shocking, I know!) to hear some Dr. Seuss books, and see a whole bunch of our MOMS Club friends.


Friday, February 25, 2011

Happy Blogiversary To Me!

A couple of nights ago, I was clicking around, reading old posts, and decided to take a look at my very first post (of this actual blog - there are some old ones imported from a previous website) and as I was reading, I wondered exactly when it was written and, holy crap, I realized that it was almost my blogiversary!

And now it is.
Four years.

A lot has changed in that time, the biggest thing, of course, being that four years ago, we were waiting for the opportunity to try to get pregnant (hmmm, maybe not so much has changed, after all) and now, here we are with an almost two-and-a-third year old.

It's been a pretty wild ride so far, thanks for coming along with us!

"Snowy Day" Fun

My friend T, who comments here occassionally, and who turned me on to the Happy Home Fairy, is president of the MOMS Club. A few weeks ago she emailed me and asked if I'd seen HHF's hot chocolate bar, and suggested that we do something like that.

Now, I was thinking MOMS Night Out, because I'm selfish like that, but she had a kid activity in mind, and a little bit later, when HHF talked about the banana snowmen, the whole plan began to come together, for a "Snowy Day Fun Book and Cook."

We had about seven little ones there, from under a year to four. T read The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats, and the kids all had cottonballs to toss in the air every time they heard the word "snow." The needed a good bit of prompting, but got a kick out of it.





Then we made (and ate) our snowmen and drank hot chocolate.



I'm glad I was in charge of buying the snowman stuff, because if I'd been doing the hot chocolate, I just would've grabbed some marshmallows and been done with it, but T had everything!



Thursday, February 24, 2011

Cats and Dogs

dailThis evening, Peeper gathered and lined up all a few of her cat and dog books. I'm not sure she even read them, but they were all present and accounted for.

When BoyCat walked by, she told him, "BoyCat, yook." (Actually, I'm not sure whether she told him to look or not, but she quite often "shows" things to the animals. Or to inanimate objects. So, let's say she did.)

Then she pointed to each book, and told him "Ki-cat right dere. Ki-cat right dere. Ki-cat right dere." as if to say, "You know, BoyCat, I was just reading a fascinating book about your people . . . ."


Also, notice how BigGaloot is checking out the dog books, at the same time that BoyCat is looking at the cat books.

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Yummy Day

Hmm, I didn't realize it at the time, but evidently, I've been slaving over a hot stove all day today.

This morning, I made some corn dog muffins for brunch. I can't really say that DoulaK "gave me the recipe" but she mentioned that her kids love them, and I kind of wung it from there.

Basically, I made cornbread mix according to the directions on the package, and threw in some cut-up hotdogs and some cheese, and baked them in a mini-muffin pan.

Here, they are shown on a small plate with a salad fork. (Hey look, I could be a food photographer for diet food. They always do that, to trick you into thinking you're going to get more than you do.)

I dipped mine in barbecue sauce, and Shrike had hers plain. (We also went back for more, because four mini-muffins does not a meal make. I made two dozen. I think there were about six left.


Peeper blew off the muffins altogether, and ate her barbecue sauce with a spoon. Then, poured a "mi-bit salt" and "mi-bit pepper" in her cup of water. Mmmummy.


For our afternoon snack, Peeper and I had cinnamon toast and cinnamon-cheese toast. Shut up. It's delicious. Think "apple pie with a slice of cheddar cheese."

For funsies, I cut them into . . . elephants?


I honestly don't know. This came with a "six-piece set" of cookie cutters from the Dollar Store, which included this, a heart, a flower, a gingerbread man, a butterfly, and the mesh bag that they were all in. Which had to be destroyed to get them out. At least, I'm assuming that's what piece #6 was. Or maybe that's how they ended up at the Dollar Store.

But, at any rate, it being Letter E Week and all, I told Peeper it was an elephant.

(It might be a lion a couple of months from now.)

If you've got any better guesses, by all means, share them in the comments.

But she bought that it was an elephant, and even picked up one of the long, skinny "extra" pieces from "outside the elephant" and told me that it was the trunk!

Then, this evening, we whipped up some sort-of-healthier-than-normalish peanut butter cookies, using the World's Easiest Peanut Butter Cookie recipe, with reduced-fat peanut butter, Egg beaters and Splenda.

I figured out that they come to about 80 calories each, no sugar (except what we're pretending isn't in peanut butter), just protein and, of course, fat. Because "reduced-fat" only goes so far with peanut butter.


And they were, as Anonydaddy would say, "Not bad, for fake food."

Peeper agrees.