I held her long stick and shook it (we were pretending she was the fisherman and I was the fish) and managed to shoot this picture too.
Our backyard is a big ole mudpatch. But we still get out and play.
Studying her reflection. This jacket keeps her very warm. But it's so scream-at-me bright in photos. It'll probably drive me crazy before Spring.
Most of the time, if she watches tv, this is the position she gets in. She loves to rock herself on that footstool. And it's not that cold in our house. The kiddo just likes hats.
It's not all fun and games.
Thank heavens for the creative bliss of scrapbooking.
We put up our Christmas tree on Saturday while a couple of inches of snow fell outside. Kylie said, "Thank you for putting together my tree. It's beautiful!"
Saturday night our mail was delivered and we had a Christmas package from Kylie's Aunt Amy. She said she wanted Kylie to go ahead and open her presents so she could enjoy it all month long.
I LOVE early presents and Amy picked some perfect ones. She gifted Kylie with her first Sock Monkey, an adorable stuffed white dog that fits into a red, dog-sized purse, and some awesome Sock Monkey dishes with tea pot.
Kylie sat right down and had a tea party for her new friends. Thank you Aunt Amy!
Amidst the decorating and snow and such, I was still able to create these two scrapbook pages. I hope you had as much fun as I did this weekend.
When we returned home from Thanksgiving in TN, I went to the library to pick up the 30+ library books I had on hold. We've had a fun time reading this week!
Kylie's favorite book was "Llama, llama, red pajama" by Anna Dewdney which we bought while we were in TN. We also have "llama, llama, misses mama" but Kylie likes red pajama much more. One day this week, Kylie did something exasperating and I let out a deep sigh. Kylie said with a contrite face, "Stop my llama dramas" which is a line from the book. Of course, I completely cracked up.
Another favorite is a book my Mom gave us at Thanksgiving--"If You Give a Moose a Muffin" by Laura Numeroff. Kylie likes to hold the moose Granna gave to her while we read it. I think I like this one even more than "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie".
I blogged about the art activity we did with the book "Owl Babies by Martin Waddell. We've read this one several times before naptime.
"Higher Higher!" by Leslie Patricelli. This book is mostly graphic with only a few words. It shows a girl getting pushed so high on her swing that she can see a giraffe at the zoo, to the top of tall buildings, to mountain tops, to space. And there she sees an alien also on a swing. They say hi to each other and then give one another high fives before she returns to the swing set. This book really holds Kylie's attention. Probably because she is such a swing fanatic.
"The Pocket Dogs" by Margaret Wild. I thought Kylie would want this one read more often because she loves putting her stuffed dogs into her various small purses. I thought it was a delightful story. Perhaps we'll try it again later.
We read "Chicka Chicka Boom Boom" and "Chicka Chicka 123" by Bill Martin Jr in our art class and several times at home this week. I thought about buying it but I have a feeling that Kylie is going to see it plenty at preschool and school in the years to come.
"The Pet Dragon" by Christoph Niemann. I thought Kylie might like this one because she likes dragons and the Chinese Characters from the tv show Ni Hao Kai Lan. It was a fun book to read a few times and is about a spunky girl looking for her runaway dragon.
The last book I have to share shocked and delighted me. It's called "Hush Little Dragon" by Boni Ashburn. You can read it/sing it to the tune of "Hush Little Baby, Don't Say a Word". But this book has a wicked sense of humor. Here are a few lines: "When you want more goodies to munch, Mama's gonna bring you a king for lunch" and "Here she comes with a fresh magician. Don't mind the taste- he's good nutrition." It complete with wonderful graphics. After a day where I thought I would lose my mind if Kylie brought me one more Dora book to read, this book made me laugh out loud. But you know, I'm twisted like that.
1. I love Kylie's eyelashes. They are so long and dark. And they are a wonderful contrast to her blonde mane of hair. I enjoy taking pictures of them.
2. Kylie is crazy for shadow puppets right now. She loves playing in the dark with flashlights. One night, Karen started making shadow puppets against the wall. She looked on YouTube and found this video and this one and now Kylie wants to watch these videos at least once a day. She laughs at me when I try to make a shadow puppet. She'll giggle and say, "That's not a bunny (or dog or whatever)!"
3. Kylie is into naming emotions and making mad faces and sad faces and scared faces. She has her stuffed animals feel mad, sad and scared too.
4. It's been more rainy in Virginia than it ever was in Portland. And that's saying something. In Portland, it will rain 30 minutes to an hour and be done. It's rained all day and all night in VA day after day after day. I normally love the rain but this downpour is getting to be a bit much. And we have snow predicted for the weekend. Yikes!
5. Karen and I got a jump start on our Christmas shopping for each other AND our new year healthy resolutions. We got a Wii with a Wii balance board, Wii Fitness, Biggest Loser and EA Sports More workouts. I've been getting up at 5:45am to workout every day now for a week. I'm a bit sore but am glad to be more active. If you have a Wii, feel free to share any tips or favorites.
6. I feel really behind on all my correspondence and blog reading. Sorry if you haven't seen a comment or an email from me in a while. I'm trying to catch up.
I'll leave you with this two-page scrapbook spread documenting Kylie's art class. I think it turned out nice but it's not showing well on here because the background is white. So click on the picture if you want a clearer view. Have a great weekend everyone!
(Sorry if the spacing is off. I had a hard time getting the formatting correct with uploading the pictures with blogger instead of using flickr like I usually do).
We had our last art class today and boy, I will miss it! Let me share what we've done in our last two classes. You might recall that the class is centered around the abc's.
The teacher taught the letters O and C. Kylie made water color and paperbag owls and button corn.
Kylie cut the black strips on her owl's belly using a pair of safety scissors (and a little help from me). I had no idea that she would be ready for cutting so soon but she did great! I'll going to buy a pair of safety scissors for our home crafts.
She made this corn out of cut foam and buttons. Kylie loves glueing buttons. I suppose I'll add buttons to my craft store list too.
One of the stories the teacher read to the class was Owl Babies by Martin/Benson and it gets my thumbs up.
We got it from the library and Kylie really likes it. It's about three little owls who miss their mom while she is out hunting.
Today our class focused on the letters G and S. The teacher read the story of the Gingerbread Man and then the kiddos made their own.
And our last exercise was to make layered sand. What fun!
I searched online and found this site which had some fun paper bag crafts. Kylie enjoyed making this frog at home.
And while driving around, we stumbled on this Lakeshore Learning store which is the same as the Learning Palace stores I loved to visit in Portland. I think I actually jumped up and down when I entered the store because, like the ones in Oregon, it has fantastic art supplies and wonderful educational toys for the kiddos. While there, I got some pre-cut tissue paper squares and we made this pizza and this fish at home with them.
I guess that's it for our latest art projects. Oh, except here are my two recent latest scrapbook pages of some May & June pictures of Kylie:
Let me introduce you to two wonderful girls-- Myah and Allie. They are Kylie's cousins (by Karen's brother) and I adore them.
Karen, Kylie and I went home to TN for Thanksgiving. We stayed at Karen's parents' house. Myah and Allie were staying there too. And they were simply awesome with Kylie. It was wonderful to watch them play together. And even more wonderful to be able to do a few things like shower and get ready without my two year old clambering for my attention. They picked Kylie up and moved her around like a little doll but Kylie didn't mind it. In fact, she loved every minute she was with them.
We spent Thanksgiving Day with Karen's Mom's family. Here is Karen's mom and grandmother: And at Thanksgiving, Kylie got play with even more cousins. These great girls ran after Kylie, handed her countless sticks and rocks because she liked them. They played hide-and-seek with her and then buried her leaves because it made Kylie laugh. Kylie was the center of attention and she ate it up.
The day after Thanksgiving was spent with my Mom and Grandmother. We enjoyed a wonderful brunch and then let Kyie entertain us with all her antics including trying on all of my Nanny's hats.
And Saturday was spent with my Dad and his partner Margarita at Karen's parents' house. We spent a lot of time outdoors getting treasures like leaves and sticks for Kylie to put into the treehouse.
Sunday was an incredible 10 hour drive home. Even though Kylie was on her best behavior and we had new DVD's and new Tag books for her, we were all edgy and exhausted from the trip.
We are very happy to be home and back to our usual routines, like playing in the park. I just wish I could have smuggled Myah and Allie home with us.
