Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Happy to you

Sara Beth went to a birthday party on Saturday.  She had a good time, and the next morning at breakfast, she started singing her own version of the "Happy Birthday" song.  "Happy to you you.  Happy to you."  and so on.

On Friday, Heather heard grunting from Sara Beth's room during nap time.  She looks in the baby monitor to see Sara Beth trying to climb out of her crib.  We had unsuccessfully tried moving Sara Beth to a big girl bed a couple months ago, but we decided it was time to try it again.  So far she has been doing better this time around, except keeping her down for a nap takes a couple attempts, and a couple spankings in some cases.  Here you can see her "helping" to disassemble her crib.  

Heather decided to paint her toe nails and then, since Sara Beth appeared interested, she got her nails painted too.  She sat still for the whole ordeal, and seemed to be pleased with the results.  Heather commented that since her toe nails were so small, and Sara Beth's nails were so big, they were nearly the same size.

 

Sara Beth really enjoys eating, especially when she is eating food of of my plate.  We were eating tacos and she did not want to eat the paltry taco meat and cheese that we had placed on her place.  Instead, she wanted one of my full size tacos.  It was a little more than she could handle, but she seemed to have a good time demolishing it.

During the search for Sara Beth's "big girl" bed, we went to many garage sales.  Some times, Sara Beth and I would stay in the car while Heather scouted out the location.  In this case, we were on our way to church, and stopped to look at some 25 cent clothes.  Sara Beth and I stayed in the car and explored all the nooks and crannies of the van.

After church was the annual easter egg hunt.  Last year, Sara Beth grabbed one egg, and decided she didn't need any more.  This year, when I put her in the area to go searching for eggs, she was scared.  Once I came in, she became a little more brave, and collected two eggs in her basket.  Next year, our goal is 3 eggs.

While out looking at all the garage sales, we found an art easel for $15.  With that and a set of markers, Sara Beth has unleashed her inner artist, or at least, her inner scribbler.  

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Pink Eye

This past week, Sara Beth got pink eye.  A combination of runny nose and flailing arms during a tantrum resulted in an infected eye.  At first, when we gave her the eye drop medication, she thought we were trying to kill her, and we had to sit on her arms and wedge her head between our knees in order to get the medicine into her eyes.  After a while, she caught on that we gave her a candy corn treat every time we were done dispensing the medication, until, by the end of her doses, she would actually go and get the medicine and bring it to us.

She loves to run in and out of the patio, slamming the screen door behind her.  Here you can see her leaning into it as she gets ready to close the door.  If you look closely, you can see the one eye that is beginning to get all squinty with the onset of pink-eye.


Sara Beth catches on to things very quickly, and will often, unexpectedly, show us that she is aware of a lot more than we think.  For breakfast one morning, Heather gave Sara Beth some blackberries and french toast.  Sara Beth sucked down the berries and began saying "more, more, more!"  Heather replied, "I still see french toast on your plate.  You can't have any more blackberries until that is all gone."  Sara Beth then casually places her sippey cup between her and Heather, and then slowly starts to slide the french toast off of her plate and into posisition behind her milk, out of sight of Heather.  She then pointed out to Heather that her plate was now empty by repeating "more, more, more!"  


The second major snow fall of the year came down on Sunday.  Sara Beth kept pointing to the snow during breakfast.  Once we got back from church, we went out to play in the snow.  Sara Beth loved jumping in the ice cold slush puddles.  She liked it even more if I helped her jump, so that, instead of just a little 1 inch hop, she could get a good 6 foot vertical height before I helped her splash down into the next pristine puddle of slush.  Unfortunately, with the wind, it was a little too chilly to stay out very long, and by the time she got up from her nap, the white snow had all melted into the ground, and I didn't really want her playing in nearly frozen mud.

Sara Beth definitely has a sweet tooth, not that it is really a surprise.  In case the fact that the promise of "treats" convinced her to accept her medicated eye drops, there is the fact that any time she sees Heather with a hand full of M&Ms or me with some chewey sour candies, then she will run up and ask for some too.  And as soon as you hand one to her, her hand will instantly pop it into her mouth and the hand will shoot back open ready for the next one.  I was making some whip cream and Sara Beth licked the beater so clean, it barely needed to go into the dish washer.


One final story: Heather had to run grab some last minute ingredients for dinner from the grocery story and I told Sara Beth, "Mommy will be right back."  Sara Beth knew enough of the words I said to guess what I meant, so she ran over to Heather and gave her a pat on the back, all proud of herself for guessing what I said.

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Sesame Street Addiction

Up until recently, the only TV that Sara Beth has gotten to watch was football games with me.  Well, this past week, we have let her watch some PBS before going down for her nap; she picks up quickly.  Nap time is right after Sesame Street, and after only parts of three episodes, she is now obsessed with Abby, Zoe, Elmo, Big Bird, and the other muppets.  At 3am, the baby monitor will emit sounds of her reciting a Sesame Street role call to herself.  She will also point out all muppet characters in her books by name now.   Heather and I were talking about this and Heather suggested they infuse Elmo with crack.  Whatever the cause for her obsession, I am just glad that the caracters don't try to sell her something.

  Another new thing that she has picked up is an affinity for stickers.  She has a good idea where Heather keeps the stickers around the house, and she puts her climbing skills to use to obtain stickers to place on her hands, or her toys, or her parents.

Sara Beth loves oranges.  If it was up to her, she would eat them until she got sick.  And then probably continue to eat them anyways.  After eating 3 clementines in a row for lunch, she  repeated that she wanted more.  I explained that she had enough and would upset her stomach but gave her the orange peel to play with.  She decided to try eating that.  The church nursery workers mentioned to us the next day that when they changed her diaper, they saw bright orange bits in it.

Spring time means time for planting stuff in the back yard.  I have a new plum tree along with a raspberry and blueberry bush in the ground.  Sara Beth helped me determine if the hole was the right depth.  While helping, she refused to give up her snack, no matter how muddy it got.  That probably added to the weirdness of her diapers for the nursery workers the next day too.

She also liked all the mud and got to have a bath before dinner to get herself cleaned off.

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

Two Weeks

Well, it has been about two weeks since my previous posting, however I do have an excuse.  I only just recovered from the worst cold I have had in over 10 years.  It came with a 102 degree fever and I stayed home from work for 3 days straight.  Despite having my personal 5 day weekend, I didn't enjoy it.  Fortunately, Heather did not contract the disease to the same magnitude and was better after a couple days, and Sara Beth appears to somehow have missed the plague all together.

A lot has happened in the past couple weeks. My parents were in town this past weekend.  They cooked, cleaned, and helped take care of Sara Beth while Heather and I were recovering.  It was great and I'll be glad for them to move down here especially if I ever get sick again.  In an unrelated picture, here is Sara Beth making faces while eating apple sauce.


Sara Beth has become quite the helper putting up the dishes from the dish washer.  She will pick them up one at a time and bring them over to me as I either put them up in the cabinet, or picked Sara Beth up and let her put the dishes in the cabinet.  

As spring comes, the puddles start to form.  And Sara Beth is magnetically attracted to puddles.  We went to the park and she wanted to jump in each one.  After splashing all the watter out of the puddles, we raced across the field to a tree and back.  I won the race with room to spare, but Sara Beth had a big grin on her face as I lapped her and picked her up.  Today, she got covered head to toe in mud as she splashed in puddles in our own backyard.  She also smeared mud from the freshly potted Aloe plant all over her shirt, arms, face, hands, and shoes.


Sara Beth has expressed an interest in using the Bathroom, and we certainly do not want to discourage it.  We will ask her if she wants to go potty, she will totter over and sit on the pot, and then, depending on if she can squeeze a drop out or not, we will give her a treat.  She loves the experience, though it has led to some poopey emergencies as we begin to help her out of her diaper to sit on the potty only to discover that the diaper already is full of smelly fecal matter.  I have flashbacks to her first months where there was poop and no standard procedure to remove it.


Now that it is getting warmer out, Heather found a cozy coupe for sale at Toys R Us and wanted to get it for Sara Beth to play in.  Sara Beth loves it, of course, and she declared it hers, even before I had put on all the wheels.  By the way, note to other cozy coupe assemplers, watch where the washers go carefully.  I had to redo the thing several times as the directions were unclear at times, and other times, the directions were flat-out wrong.