Big Bad Easter Bunny

Huffing and Puffing

Beautiful Day

Today started and ended a bit chilly, but overall it was absolutely gorgeous outside, and I had a wonderful time playing (and working) in the yard with my girls.

We got our onions, pepper and tomatoes planted, moved and spread the rest of the unloaded mulch, pawned off the almost-half-a-truckload of unused mulch on some friends (will deliver it to them tomorrow), grilled some 'burgers and 'dogs, got thoroughly filthy, and had an all-around wonderful time.

Mommy and Mama even managed to manage a post-bedtime glass of wine and some grown-up time.

Sleepy Girl

Another distracted day for me, I guess, because this is all I got.

Forty-Two Months

Dear Peeper,
You are forty-two months old today. Three and a half!

(Although I've been calling you that for a good month or two now.)

Today is also Mommy's birthday, and mine is in a couple of weeks, and then there's that whole Mothers' Day thing, so we try to make a big deal out of your half-birthday, so that you get some attention, too.

(Because you know how usually you just don't get any attention at all, of course.)

It's been a pretty good month here, knock wood. We've been mostly healthy, even through a trip to Texas, which is pretty exciting.

You're still working on getting over the whole Mother's Day Out fiasco, though.

After just those two days (4 hours, then 2 hours) of missing us, your separation anxiety level went through the roof, and really hasn't settled back down yet. As soon as we mention going somewhere without you, you immediately start with, "I'm gonna miss you," and "You will come back?"

Even when you've gone (or stayed home) with Mommy, and when you've gone over to Eena and Papa's house, which is totally new. You've even started coming to me multiple times a day and telling me that you miss Mommy while she's at work - and that happens almost every day, you should really be used to it.

I just feel so bad for you, and I hope that we're handling it the right way. Mostly I just say "I know you'll miss me, while you're having fun," and acknowledge that I'll miss you too, but I will also be having fun.

Miss S has come over and watched you a couple of times, and once she brought her sister, Miss M. You really  seem to like them (they're great) but hoo-boy, the angst before they actually show up. Next time (at your request) I will wait and spring it on you at the last minute!

When we're not having separation anxiety drama, you're all about the good kind of drama.

You spend huge amounts of time role-playing, pretending to be an animal or character from a story, acting out stories or making them up, and bringing to life various toys and household objects, complete with voices.

When you do dialogue (for your character or another) you even tend to include the "He says . . ." and ". . . shouted the ____," and such, just like in the books that we read and the videos that you watch.

Sometimes you are reciting the stories you've heard, other times you're making up stories as you go, and sometimes you're taking the ones you've read and changing them up just a bit.

I've noticed that with stories or songs, you are very good at switching out words to make them about a different character, including changing from first to third person, or vice versa.

For example, your favorite song these days is "Today I ate a rainbow, and it tasted great. Today I ate a rainbow and it was on my plate," but you are just as comfortable singing, ". . . Today the Easter Bunny ate a rainbow and it was on his plate."

You also love to retell real-life stories that you've heard (or overheard), recasting yourself as the protagonist. Anytime Mommy or I tells a story, moments later, you will say, "You know what happened?" and proceed to retell the entire story (more or less), in the first person. (Even if we've told it about someone else, and you're not just copying our words from a story about ourselves.)

I have to say that I'm kind of impressed with this, both because you can so easily change the point of view, and because you are so good at retelling a story that you've only heard once.

And then, you'll retell it over and over for a while.

We really must be more careful about what kinds of stories we share with each other in front of you!

And songs. Wow, you know like a million songs, including several that you've picked up from us quite unintentionally.

A few weeks ago, you randomly started singing, "Knock three times . . ." When I asked, you confirmed that you'd learned it from Mommy.

Mommy is also the one who taught you to sing, "I don't wanna work. I just wanna bang on de drum all day!" every time you play your drum.

At dance class this week, Mommy went in the dance room with you, and you actually made her dance! On the way home, I told you not to get used to it, because "Mama don't dance."

Of course, that led into "Your Mama don't dance, your Mommy don't rock and roll!" which you picked up immediately.

First you were singing "Mama don't dance. Mommy don't roll!" then you changed it to, "My Mommy dances! My Mama rolls!" which I was damned impressed with.

I also got a kick out of your apparent assumption that every parent must do one of those things. Let me assure you that, according to my extensive research, over forty-four years with the same two parents, that is not true.

You are still doing the ending-sound-repetition thing, even more often than you were a month ago. It's kind of weird, but I will go with Mrs. T's analysis that it just means you're playing around with sounds and developing your phonemic awareness. And occasionally google "verbal tic toddler."

And at the moment you're snoozing peacefully, as you have been for a while, so I think it's about time for  a trip to the potty.

Happy half-birthday, big girl.

I love you!


Love,
Mama

Happy Birthday, Mommy!

Panda Pics - 42 Months

Our Garden 2011

All this gardening has inspired me to finally do something with all the photos I took last year.

Make a video - it's fun, easy and free!
www.onetruemedia.com

Mowing

This is Peeper's "lawn mower."

It was quite a challenge convincing her that she could not store it in the shed with the sharp, heavy, poisonous and D - All of the Above things.

More Gardening

This afternoon, Peeper and I did some more garden prep work. I put together another 2x2  bed, moved the spinach out into the sun, and built and planted a tater tower.

I think I should go ahead and get the onions in the ground (I'm leaning toward the middle four squares of the big bed, so they will have plenty of shade later in the season, when you're supposed to knock down and cover up the leaves, so that the put all their umph into the bulb. Just learned that. Will actually do it this year.) and then we'll wait a few weeks before planting everything else.

We've more than doubled our garden space since last year. We're going to have to keep up with this whole "fruit and veggie eat a rainbow" thing, because we're going to be overrun!

The main bed. This is all we had last year. I'm thinking onions, tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, pumpkin and maybe eggplant and zucchini.

Spinach. Looking kind of sad. I don't know if the problem is lack of sun (it was closer to the house, in the shade) or cold (we got pretty nippy for a couple of nights) or too much water (Shrike punched some drainage holes in this yesterday, before that they were swimming from the rain) or what. I hope they get over it though.

The same spinach, plus a smaller container with more spinach.

The tater tower. It's about 1/2 to 2/3 full of compost with three layers of potatoes around the sides (fifteen taters total). We are told that the plants will sprout out the holes. We will see.

The deeper bed is carrots, and the shallower one will probably be watermelon and cantaloupe, because there's lots of room around the bed for them to spread out.

The whole set up. Well, almost. There are also two containers on the patio - strawberries and mint.

Get Gardening

We did some work on the garden this evening, putting together Peeper's 2x2 raised bed, and planting her carrot seeds in it (that's why it's double-deep), and adding some peat moss to the big bed, then wetting everything down. Of course, Peeper helped.

Oh! The carrot seeds! Check this out:

I really, really, really hope they produce.

Look Moms, No Cavities!

Peeper got a great report from the dentist today. Her teeth are "healthy and strong" (as we say around here) with no cavities and she was a model patient. As she has done before, as soon as we were in the chair, she opened wide and sat there, mouth agape, before the hygienist (and later, the dentist) was even ready to begin!

Although we were at a different location (Same dentist, new practice; I stalked her on Facebook and found where she'd moved!) we still found a restaurant for our traditional post-dental-exam Mexican food lunch. As soon as we sat down, Peeper unrolled her silverware (as usual) and gave Mommy her knife (as usual). Then she plopped the napkin on her head and said, "I'm Little Red Riding Hood!"

Not Happy

This is for everyone who comments (on the blog or Facebook) about how Peeper is "always so happy."

She is a pretty easy going kid, but I wouldn't say it's so much that she's "always happy" as it is that I don't usually take photos of when she's not happy.

I believe this was about turning off the videos and going to bed. At 11 pm.

Sampler

Peeper-Sized Ice Mocha

Bunny Work

At one point, while the camera was not running, unfortunately, BigGaloot came in the room, and Peeper said, "Do you want to meet my work friend? This (gestures toward him) is my work friend, Galoot."

Make a video - it's fun, easy and free!
www.onetruemedia.com

Celery Stamping

Yes, celery stamping.

I was cutting up a celery this afternoon, to take part in a veggie tray that I will be serving to some of the MOMS tomorrow, when I remembered something nifty that I'd seen on Pinterest.

It seems that if you cut off the bottom of a stalk of celery - as you do -

 the cut edge is very flower-like. Roseate, in fact.

I showed it to Peeper, and even she recognized the flower. She'd already been painting and I'd promised that we would do that right before bath time (for obvious reasons), so I suggested that we use the celery to paint flowers. She loved the idea.

Here's the picture that I made. Does that look at all like a big, red bird flying by, in the upper left corner? Peeper slapped a big 'ol handprint on it when I was almost done, so I tried to salvage it with a couple of fingerprints of my own (the head and beak). Did it work?

Peeper wasn't really feeling the landscape thing, so she decided to go a little more abstract with hers.

Dot a Rainbow

This afternoon, Peeper stumbled across one of the bingo dauber that Santa brought her last Christmas, thinking that they would be a great, cheap substitute for dot markers. Santa was sadly mistaken, because it turns out that bingo daubers are neither non-toxic nor washable, so, Mama went to Staples and bought some real dot markers.

Peeper was insistent that "It is okay to use that one, because Mommy gave it to me!"

That may or may not be the case, but Mama wasn't letting her have that one.

Instead, I spent about ten minutes trying to figure out where I'd stashed the good ones, but I did finally find them, and she had a good old time with them.

Since there was a rainbow-colored set of six, I thought I'd print out some coloring pages from Today I Ate a Rainbow, and she loved those.

Of course she loved them, she loves anything that has to do with that site, eating a rainbow, or Hannah, the Rainbow Girl.

(I believe there was a discussion this morning about "Does Hannah brush her teeth?" "Yes, Peeper, I'm sure that she does.")

She also wanted to use her scissors to "cut out" the fruits and veggies. So far, she's very good at making fringe, but that's about it.

Sloths Sleep Snugly

Peeper calls her toothbrushes "sloths." That makes sense, right?

Okay, there is a bit of backstory to that.

One evening, right before toothbrushing time, Shrike showed her this video of an adorable baby sloth:

So, when it was time to brush, she started talking to the toothbrush, and calling it "Sloth." And it stuck.

Well, actually, that night, and for a while, she called it "Moss" and I had to figure out what she was talking about and correct her. But now, it's "Sloth."

Peeper is Baby Bear, the toothbrush is "Sloth" and it looks around in her mouth, finding leftover things to eat.

Of course.

Well, this morning, I was doing my business and only about half paying attention to her at the sink, when I realized that she was singing some sort of song about the toothpaste being sleepy, and joining the sloths (There are actually two of them, they take turns looking for food in her mouth.) in their bed.

And then she told me to take a picture of them. So, of course, I did.

Don't they look comfy and

Bluebonnetting

Now that I've actually had time to send the photos from my phone (my camera is kaput, I'm debating about another) and process them, here are some more photos from our visit with BabyBro and HisLovelyFamily and our pilgrimage to the bluebonnets.

The flowers themselves were pretty sparse in the field that we visited, but we did get some good photos of the kids. Anonydaddy should be sending me a CD of the ones he took soon, and I'll have more to share then.

In the meantime, here are some of the better ones that I took.

DaNiece enjoy an apple with her lunch

DaNephew - "How you doin?"

Grandma and Peeper (with silly hair)

Bluebonnets!

This one is my favorite of Peeper

 This is my favorite of the twins.

So much for a "cousin hug" photo of the three of them.

I took a lot of photos like this - Peeper's backside, from a distance, getting farther away.

I think my dad got some good photos of them on the tree roots. Mostly, they wanted to climb the tree.

Telling Grandpa "big bye-bye" before they headed home

Telling Grandma "big bye-bye"

Morning hugs for Uncle BabyBro