Through the eyes of a child

Today I was shown that my idea for a present for Allison's upcoming birthday is right on track. While over at Katie's today, Allison got a hold of my camera and began snapping pictures. She knows how to use it, but I had no idea she could do such a good job. Beth asked if I'd give her the pictures for insurance purposes- ha! I found a neat camera for kids by Fisher-Price, and it's obvious it will be a big hit with Allison.

Beth was sweet enough to sew matching dresses for our girls. They both wanted to try the dresses on, so they played all morning (a 35 degree morning, I might add) in their little sun dresses. They were SO cute! Thanks, Beth!!

The first couple of pictures are of her "rockin' out" to herself on the big screen. :)

Funny stories:

These aren't really stories, just funny things out of the mouths of babes. Last night we went out to dinner, and during a period of silence (these are rare in our family), Allison says, "How was your day at work, Daddy?"

This morning Allison woke up before I did and wanted me to hurry up and come play. I stumbled out of bed and said, "Let me find my glasses." She said, "What's the matter, Mommy, are your contacts bothering you again?"

Toddler Fun!

When I was a teacher I remember getting some of my best teaching ideas from other teachers who had done something that worked in their classroom. I find the same thing true as the mother of a preschooler. I am very willing to give away any ideas that have worked for me, and I also get very excited when I can steal an idea from someone else who did something fun with their child. Today I decided to steal the idea my friend Beth had and do a little science experiment with Allison. We did the exact same thing (sometimes I'm not very creative), and boy was it fun!

I also took some videos of Allison singing. She's been singing for a long time, but I forget to get her on tape, OR she's been unwilling to sing for the camera. Today she was being quite the performer, spinning around throughout most of her songs. These are really for my mom, who loves to see Allison in videos. The rest of you might just get dizzy watching her- ha! And no, she had not had ANY sugar when I taped her. She was just ON! :)

The pictures are of us making lunch today. I checked her kids cookbook and found an easy recipe for meatloaf, so we made that together. Allison LOVES to spend time in the kitchen, helping out. It makes it much more fun for me too. After nap we'll be making a special dessert, so stay tuned for that. :)

Mondays with Landen

Our weeks are starting to become pretty predicable these days. I know things will change soon, but I bet we'll only develop new routines, not drop routines altogether. I'm a pretty "routine" kind of person. I like to know what's coming up and to plan for it. Kind of boring, but I think I've always been that way. Anyway, Mondays are my day to watch Landen every other week. Allison goes to his house every other Monday. The kids had a lot of fun today. They wanted to paint together, which I thought was really cute. They did a great job sharing the paints, and only my child ended with paint all over her clothes (whew!). I had to laugh cause Allison is actually wearing her Valentine's Day outfit from last year. That skirt (mis-sized for sure!) is a 12 month. Ha! Anyway, they had fun playing, working with Playdough, watching Super Why, painting, playing cards, etc. It was a busy morning. Oh, and the picture of Allison making a face is what I got when I asked her for a scary face. I've never seen this face before! :)

Funny story:

A few weeks ago we noticed Allison was having trouble with naps. It would take her FOREVER to fall asleep. I hated that she was in her room for so long struggling, and then I hated how late she'd wake up from nap because then it made nighttime tough for her too. So, Scott came up with the brilliant idea of calling it "rest time" and just letting her hang out in her room with books. The option of falling asleep would be hers, but she HAD to stay in her room until a certain time. Well, this worked wonders immediately. She'd "read" for awhile and then things would get quiet. She was choosing to sleep. I was in heaven! This worked for about a week. Then I'd say, "It's rest time", and she'd say, "NO! I want to call it nap time! I want to go to SLEEP!" Gotta love it! We haven't had "rest time" since then. No books, no nothing. She gets in bed and falls asleep quickly. I'm wondering what else I can give her control over that will make my life easier. :)

I've been tagged!

This is a first for me- what fun! I have always enjoyed getting those emails that go around once in awhile where you answer lots of fun questions about yourself. It's fun to do, and it's really fun to read everyone else's answers too! I learned a lot about my friend Beth (Katie's blog) this way, and I hope to learn a lot about the people I'm tagging too!

Here are the rules:

List 7 random things people might not know about you. The rules are to link the person who sent this to you and leave a comment on their blog so their readers can visit yours. Post the rules on your blog. Share 7 facts about yourself. Tag 7 random people a the end of your post, linking their blog. Let each person know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

Okay, here are my random facts:

1. I am SEVERELY directionally challenged. Knowing my right and left is about as far as I can go. I've been lost several times, circling around the same area over and over again, clueless about how to get myself home. I will NEVER be the lead car, and I have to drive somewhere by myself several times before I'll remember how to get there. North and south mean nothing to me unless the sun is directly in my eyes. Even then, I have to visualize a map in my head to figure out which way is N/S. My GPS is my very best friend! :)

2. I have been to Europe three times. The first time we went as a family to visit the home of a foreign exchange student we had hosted from Germany. The second time I went and toured for a month with a group from school, and the 3rd time I went along with my dad, who was going with a group from the Kansas City Symphony Choir. All three times were memorable in their own special way. I really enjoy traveling.

3. I hate small talk. I would rather meet someone and get right to the good stuff. I studied psychology for 2 years in college before moving to education, and I really enjoy getting to know people. I hate the parties where everyone just stands around, really saying nothing. I have always been an open book, and I like to make friends with people who are equally as open.

4. I met my husband on the Internet. This was 11 years ago, when people were just getting used to chat rooms and communicating with people near and far using this medium. Scott and I met in a chat room that was discussing our favorite John Grisham novels. We met soon afterwards, were engaged within 7 weeks, and have been married almost 10 years.

5. I'm afraid of birds. If they are up high in the sky I think they are lovely. If they are in cages, I can tolerate them. If there is ANY chance they might fly close to me or flap their wings within ear shot, I will FREAK out!

6. I taught 7th and 8th graders for 12 years. English was my subject, and even though I make MANY grammatical errors in my own writing without noticing, I never miss catching someone else's errors. When you edit papers for a living, there is no way to read someone else's writing without doing it. It's a curse!

7. I LOVE to sing! I have always loved to sing and used to make up my own songs when I was little and belt them out from the hearth of the fireplace! In high school my friends nick-named me "Jukebox Laurie" because I knew the words to every song and loved to sing.

I am tagging the following people and can't wait to learn more about them. :) Thanks, Beth, for including me. This was fun!

Fireworks and Fireflies
Follow the Leaders
kaylei china
Ellie's blog
Faith's blog
Leigh Anna's blog
and so we wait

Have fun, everyone!

PS- Allison is over her fever and we are somewhat "back to normal" at our house. YEAH! :) Have a great weekend, everyone!

Too Much Curious George?

I forgot to document a funny story that happened when we were in Chicago, and since I didn't take any pictures of Allison today (you know, gotta give the camera a rest once in awhile), I thought I'd relay it here today. We were driving around Chicago when all of a sudden Allison says, "Do you know what?" to which we replied, "What?" She then says, "Somebody travels over 93 million miles to wash and dry the fruits and vegetables we need to grow strong and healthy bodies. I thought you might be curious about that. (insert name of company we couldn't make out) supports PBS kids."

HUH?? I mean really, folks, this kid is the queen of memorization. I promise we don't watch more than one Curious George show a week, but she's memorized this whole deal? Neither of us had ever heard her say any part of it before, and all of a sudden the whole things comes out. We had her say it over and over again, and I'll add the video, but if I didn't write it out I'm sure you wouldn't understand her. It took us several tries. She's SO funny! I guess I should be happy that she's memorized that as opposed to the theme song from Friends. :)

On a not so funny note, her fever is back. I heard her coughing, then crying, so I went up to check on her, and she was hot. She's at a little over 101. Poor thing. :(

My Angel

Not such a fun night at our house last night. After seeing the doctor and hearing, "She's fine- just a cold", things got progressively worse. Allison started coughing more and then I noticed she was hot. Yep- a fever, darn it! Her cough woke her up several times in the night, so I got my workout. Finally at about 5:00 I took her out to the couch and laid her on my chest so she'd be propped up a bit. That helped a lot. She is still sleeping, and it's after 8:30. That is unheard of, so I know she's not feeling well.

The tough part is that because of her fever, I can't take her with me to MOPS tomorrow- you know, that 24 hour rule and all. This poses a problem because as the coordinator I run the meetings. Hmmmm. I have one hope out there, and that's that the school district will cancel school tomorrow due to weather (they already canceled for today), because then our meeting would be canceled and I could just stay home and take care of my baby. Not that I'd want anyone to pray for bad weather, but could you? :)

That's it from our camp today. Of course I had to have a picture for my post (it's just no fun to post without pictures), so here is my angel on the couch this morning. Ah, a sleeping child. Nothing so sweet.

A New Place to Play!

It's always exciting when a new place comes to town where we can take our toddler children. Beth found out about this place, and we took Katie and Allison Tuesday morning. What a BLAST!! I had just as much fun as the girls did, seriously! They had a toddler play area and also a BIG area in the center. Then around the perimeter were lots of those "fun" little games to play with tokens. Beth and I climbed around with the kids and even went down the big, winding slides. I hadn't done that in a LONG time, and I made the mistake of kind of laying down before starting down. Allison and I went FLYING and actually came a couple inches off the ground at the bottom before landing on the soft cushion. Needless to say, my back and bottom were a little achy today. :) But the laughter was worth the pain. We then took the girls to Applebees and had a delicious lunch! They gave each other a precious hug on the way out of the restaurant, and I'm so glad Beth was there to capture the moment. Our girls are just so sweet!

Last night Allison started coughing in addition to her runny nose of late. I took her to the doctor this morning, just to be on the safe side, and thankfully she just has a cold. Nana and PaPaw are coming to visit for the weekend, so I wanted to make sure she was okay. As I'm writing this, Allison is yelling, "Hola, Mom!" from upstairs. What a hoot! The other day, after watching the NiHao show, she ran around saying, "NiHao, Mom!" all day. She brings me SUCH joy, I cannot even explain. Someday I'll write a post about all the things she does that annoy me or make me crazy, but for now, I'll concentrate on the joy. :)

Chinatown, out to eat, playing cards

Our final full day in Chicago was a lot of fun. We ventured out to Chinatown first thing in the morning, and you know what? It makes you feel like you're in China again, really. Same smells, sounds, food, stores, etc. We started out at the Chinese/American museum, which wasn't much to write home, or blog, about, but we're glad we went anyway. They had a nice display on adoption, so that was a neat thing for us. From there we headed out to explore Chinatown. It really did make me feel like I was back in China. Most of those feelings were nice, but I again felt like people were staring at us in a not so friendly way. I do wish I had a better understanding of what the Chinese people felt about us. Some of it is just my own insecurities, wondering if they are upset with us and reading their expressions as disapproving rather than just expressions they were wearing before they ever saw us. All in all, people were very friendly, as they were in China, and we had a good time exploring.

My favorite part was playing in the little park that had all the zodiac signs. Even though I don't really believe in those signs, my husband is spot on for the rooster, that's for sure. He and his rooster daughter had fun playing by their sign while I had to hang out by the snake, which is NOTHING like my personality, I might add. Allison enjoyed making snow angels in front of her sign- what a hoot!

From there we moved on to lunch, at CPK (not like we can't go there every day at home, but we weren't in the mood for Chinese food. Now that Allison is an avid card player, we can bring those to restaurants and other places to pass the time. What fun we had. Daddy did a huge photo shoot in CPK- I'm sure people thought we were weird, but he got some precious pictures! We also pass time by calling people to visit with them. You can see Allison is an expert talking on the cell phone. "Hello, Grandma Judie, this is Allison. What are YOU doing?"

For dinner we tried a local restaurant and enjoyed a yummy "breakfast for dinner", which is my favorite thing to do! Allison played with her Mickey Mouse pancakes but was much more interested in her jelly toast. :)

Once we arrived home I had to take a picture of her modeling her first tu tu. We spent a lot of time at a store called Land of Nod- you MUST check it out if you haven't already, and while Daddy was maxing out the credit card in line, I sent Allison up in this tu tu and told her to say, "Daddy, can I have it?" I knew with lots of people around and his daughter looking precious in her tu tu, he could not refuse. :) It is a darling get up with little petals inside the mesh- ADORABLE!! Now I must get her a leotard so she doesn't look so "fashion challenged" next time she wears it.

Tomorrow's post will be "back home" stuff from this week so far. I hope you enjoyed traveling with us to Chicago. If you've never been, it's worth the trip!

Children's Museum, Gino's Pizza, and hotel swimming!

Day two in Chicago was jam packed with fun! We decided to explore the Children's Museum,and it did NOT disappoint. It is located on the Navy Pier, which is a really cool place to check out on a spring day (we did that years ago and loved it!), but not so much on a 25 degree day. An indoor museum was the perfect plan. We could have stayed all day and still not "done it all". There were so many neat areas to play in, learn from, and just look at. Allison had a ball no matter what room we were in, and we had a ball watching her and interacting with her.

One of the highlights was a station where you can build something together. Scott and Allison decided to build a castle (at Allison's request, of course), and it was so much fun to watch them. She was a great little helper, and Scott is a great teacher too! I posted a video of them working on their castle- enjoy!

A funny thing is that no matter how fun you try and make a trip for your toddler, they will find the most fun in the things that aren't part of the trip. You'll see a picture of Allison playing in the fountain in the hotel lobby. She would have rated the trip a 10 if we'd just let her play in there all day. Pushing elevator buttons also ranked high on her list of favorite things to do.

Anyway, after the museum we headed to Gino's pizza, famous for their Chicago deep dish pizza. Again, we were not disappointed. The pizza was YUMMY, and we had a ball just hanging out in there- lots to see! We had full tummies when we left and headed back to the hotel for some rest time. Allison decided to get her rest on the way back (I'd choose sleep over traffic too!)so when we arrived back at the hotel we all went swimming. I bought Allison a new suit for the trip, and you can see she was quite pleased with how it looked. While I was doing everything I could to conceal my body in MY suit, she enjoyed showing off in hers. Ha! I'd love to say that the swim was enjoyed by all, but it was not. Why? The pool was FREEZING! I mean, really cold! My child had blue lips when we got out because it never really warmed up. I was bummed cause I was looking forward to going again, but no way!

That wrapped up our evening. Tomorrow I'll be posting about our visit to Chinatown. Until then, happy Monday everyone.

Back Home!

We arrived back home late this afternoon from our little vacation to Chicago. This was our first family vacation where we were able to plan all our activities and go on our own schedule, and we really had a good time. We took over 500 pictures, but of course I won't be posting all of them. :) I'm going to try and post the top 5 from each day we were there.

We arrived in Chicago in time for dinner Wednesday evening. Fortunately, Scott found a J. Alexanders restaurant close to our hotel, and I was excited because I really like that place. We enjoyed dinner and then headed to the hotel. We stayed in a suburb of Chicago (Oak Park or Oak Brook or something like that), and we had a room with 2 rooms, which is always nice- Allison had a tough time adjusting the first night, but after that she did just fine- just needed some additional cuddles to get to sleep.

The next morning we donned our red outfits to celebrate Valentine's Day and we headed out to Shedd Aquarium. What a COOL place! On the way there I kept having this feeling I'd forgotten something. I mentally went through my check list (camera, sippy cup, extra undees, snacks, etc.) and figured I had it all. Once in the aquarium I went to take off my coat and realized what I'd forgotten. I'd forgotten to finish getting dressed!! I was wearing a white t-shirt but NOT the red sweatshirt I had laid out to wear. NEVER before have I done that, but I was so concerned making sure Allison had everything ready to go that I didn't even look in the mirror to check myself before I left. GEEZ!! It was just a good excuse to pick up a sweatshirt in the gift shop. :)

Allison LOVED the dolphin show, looking at fish, sharks, sting rays, etc. She also enjoyed the penguins, sea lions and everything else the aquarium had to offer. That afternoon we headed to Macy's downtown, where they had an FAO Shwartz. It was nothing like the one in NY, but it was still fun for Allison.

When we got ready to leave we realized we didn't have Shay Shay (Allison's beloved doll). We looked everywhere but could not find her, so we had to leave. She was SO sad in the car- like a grieving kind of sad. We drove for about 40 minutes before I thought, maybe we should at least call lost and found at Macy's and let them know. We ended up talking to the folks at FAO, and THEY HAD Shay Shay! We drove all the way back downtown to get her, which is something any parent would do because you know the pain of making the return trip will be nothing compared to the pain of your child losing her beloved doll!!

But driving in Chicago, don't get me started! We lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for 5 years, so believe me, I understand traffic, and nothing compares to S.F. HOWEVER, I've been out of S.F. for quite some time now and had forgotten what bumper to bumper traffic felt like. I do NOT like it!! And it's not even rush hour or anything- UGH! I felt like we spent half our trip in the car- that was the only frustrating part.

That evening we ate at Houlihans and then headed to a really nice outdoor mall and I found a store I fell in love with. I know I've seen the catalog, but the store in person was much more fun! It's called hanna andersson, and MAN do they have cute stuff. I chose something for Allison's 3rd b-day party and another outfit for good measure and we called it a day! What a FUN first day in Chicago! :)