Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Shoes

Sara Beth added a new word to her vocabulary this week: "Shoes."  She says it when we put the shoes on her feet.  She repeats it when she takes her shoes off, and she tries to take them off whenever we strap her into a chair or stroller.  She also says it while rearranging her Mom's shoe collection in the closet.


The weather has been wonderful this week, and SaraB has demanded to be let outside daily.  Once outside, she will go pull leaves off of our peach tree or digg/eat dirt out of the flower pots.  If we're lucky, she will also pull a weed or two out of the lawn.


Even though we have baby proofed Heather's makeup cabinet, Sara Beth still hovers around in the morning waiting for an opportunity to swoop in and grab something while Heather applies her makeup.  This Sunday, she was able to extract some lipstick, and in the two seconds had vigorously  applied it to the general region of her face around the lips.


Like most other kids, she wants the things she doesn't have, and she doesn't want the things she has.  While we don't think lipstick is an appropriate beauty product for her age, we try to put bows in her hair daily.  Now that her hair is long enough, we can even do some more fancy stylings, but Sara Beth will typically pull the bow out and either toss it or begin to chew on it within 30 minutes.

Often in the evenings, we will take Sara Beth out in the stroller.  We need to keep an eye out for any shoes or hair bows that Sara Beth will toss by the wayside; there have been several times that we have had to backtrack and do some reconnaissance missions to retrieve the missing item.

Monday, September 21, 2009

Leaf Collector


On a daily basis, Sara Beth will now go to the front or back door and ask to go outside.  In fact, most days, she will ask several times a day.  And every time she goes out, she collects leaves.  We will walk her along the sidewalk, and at every opportunity, she will crouch down and add additional leaves to her hoard.  After a certain point, her hands become full, but that doesn't stop her.  She continues to crouch down, but as she plucks one leaf off the ground, two or three fall out of her grasping hand.  Heather has tried offering a basket for Sara Beth to stash her leaves in, but our little girl refuses to use anything other than hands. 


Getting her in the house without without bringing half a tree worth of leaves takes a little child psychology.  We offer her a sippy cup of milk.  After running around in the Texas summer, Sara Beth has worked up a thirst, and she cannot hold the leaves AND her sippy cup as we carry her inside; the leaves stay outside.

Sara Beth spent her first full evening with a neighbor on Saturday.  Heather and I went to a wedding at around 5:30 and didn't come home until 11:00.  Sara Beth behaved herself the entire time.  It helped that the neighbor owns dogs, so they went over and played with the little puppies for most of the evening.  When we got home that evening, we heard Sara Beth talking in her sleep, saying "woof woof woof", so I think she had a good time.

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Making the wold a safer place

After all Sara Beth's shenanigans playing with Heather's lipstick, we decided that it was finally time to put safety latches on the cabinet doors in the bathroom.  Try as she might, Sara Beth was not strong enough to overcome the obstacles in the path to her lipstick prize.


After the brute force method failed, she decided to use her wits and concentrated on the problem, but to no avail; the lipstick is safely protected from Sara Beth's inquisitive  grip.

All doors are now her play things.  She will routinely open and close the dish washer door, at least until we lock it closed.  It will be a couple more weeks before she can figure out locks, hopefully.


This past week it has been raining almost every day.  After being able to play outside every day for the week up in Wisconsin, it was a rude transition to being cooped up in the house watching the water pour onto the soggy grass.  The upside is that it cooled off enough for us to open some windows.  Sara Beth looked outside, wistfully watching the rain fall. 

This week was the first time Heather brought out the crayons for Sara Beth to draw with.  Sara Beth didn't fully get the concept down.  Heather tried have Sara Beth sit in her lap while Heather demonstrated how the crayons worked, but Sara Beth was more interested in climbing down and walking around with the crayons in her hands. We put the crayons back up for another day once Sara Beth tried to eat one.

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

Summer in Wisconsin

Down here in Texas, it is still a hot summer.  Sara Beth enjoys going outside in the back yard to dig in the flower pots, but it is not something that we allow for very long, because she will likely get a heat stroke if left out for too long.  

To combat this pressing issue, and also to see my aunt and grandmother, we went up to Wisconsin for the week.  Aunt Sue has a great backyard for Sara Beth to run around in.  She would run back and fourth across the deck and lawn exploring.  We gave her some wheelbarrow rides too.


As soon as Sara Beth got out, she wanted to push us around in the wheelbarrow.  She was able to move the plastic container as long as it was empty, but she needed an extra hand from me when Heather got into the cart.



After days full of running around, we would give Sara Beth a bath, and get her ready for bed.  Her Great-Grandmother helped her read some nights, and Sara Beth always gave her a good-night kiss before going off to bed.

My aunt found a little cowgirl hat, and while Sara Beth looked very cute in it, she didn't want to wear it long enough for us to get a good picture of her in it, so the best we could come up with is a picture of her preparing to take the hat off.


We visited the beach several times while we were up there.  While the water was frigid by normal standards, Sara Beth went in several times up past her waist.  We had to pull her out once we began to worry about her catching hypothermia, but she cried to be put back in.

The second day, we brought some sand toys for her to play with while safely sitting out of the water. 

 Every time we went on the sand, Sara Beth found buried rocks that she wanted to collect.  She even found a large egg sized rock; we told her it was a fossilized granite-arous rex dinosaur egg.


The last evening that we were there, we went over to visit my cousin Gretchen and her husband Steve, and baby Landon.  Sara Beth took a while to figure out how to act around a kid smaller than her.

She did learn really quickly that a good way to get a little snack before dinner was to go by her Great-Grandmother.

She also discovered the neighbor's dogs before dinner.  After eating a brief meal, she went back to the fence and proceeded to begin trying to climb over it.  Heather had to get her before she got too high.