Wednesday, March 23, 2011

The great outdoors

In case you don't know, my one fear is worms. I am terrified of them. I have no fear of spiders, roaches, rabid dogs, wombats, bears, squirrels, or anything else. Just those nasty worms. So, when we were playing in the back yard, and Heather found a worm, I was ready to jump the fence. Heather showed the worm to Sara Beth, but she wasn't too excited about being near the vile creature either.


I decided that Sara Beth is getting to be old enough that I can look into camping. Apparently, there are a lot of camping places within only a few hours of here. So, step one: bring the tent out of the attic and make sure I can put it together. Sara Beth helped by stepping on all the wrinkles.


Once it was up, Sara Beth loved playing in it. We put in sleeping bags and were planning on spending the night out in it. Sara Beth could not sleep, and complained that it was too noisy. It was an understandable complaint, with all the dogs barking and cars on the street. But I am going to consider the test a success. So now I just need to find a suitable camping spot.

Sara Beth has now declared Catta to be her cat. She will grab her and give her kisses and pets whenever she can get her arms around the fuzzy creature. Catta, for the most part, is a good sport about the whole thing.

Sara Beth randomly decided to sit in the laundry basket and asked to be pushed around in it. I told her she was too big, and I didn't want to break it. So then, Sara Beth decided that she was going to drive the basket around and proceeded to make tire screeching noises as she sharply turned her imaginary steering wheel.


When Sara Beth is not trying to pet Catta, she will pretend to be Catta. I brought the pet carrier down from the attic as a "time out box" for Gracie cat, as she has begun to wake me up in the middle of the night, again. I thought I had broken the habit, but Gracie had other ideas. So, if Gracie begins to make noise at night, I will throw her into the carrier. Sara Beth will pretend to meow like a cat and ask to be put in the carrier as well.


Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Potty Trained!

We reached another milestone. Sara Beth will now say "I need to go potty all by myself." She then will go to the bathroom, pull up her stepping stool, pull down her pants, put up the lid, go to the bathroom, wipe, wash her hands, and mostly pull her pants back up. She only needs some help with not pulling too much of the toilet paper off of the roll. We canceled our monthly subscription of diapers, and are sitting back living the easy life.

Sara Beth is a gum addict. She will regularly tell Heather "I need some gum." She will chew it, swallow it, and then 30 minutes later say "I need some more gum."

We didn't take many pictures this week, but here is one that we did take. Sara Beth definitely takes after Heather when it comes to spoiling the cats. She will ask to give the kitties treats like this strawberry.


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Tuesday, March 8, 2011

Diapers and Dandelions

The big news this week is Sara Beth appears to no longer need diapers. Heather and I have known for some months now that she has the bladder control, and it is more an power struggle between her and us. Well, today she did not need a diaper change at all. She wore her "big girl panties" all morning long without an issue. Heather put her in a diaper for nap time, and it remained dry till I put her in bed this evening. There was even a bowel movement that went in the toilet like it should. Hopefully, we have purchased our last set of diapers we will ever need for her.

Spring has definitely sprung around here; and one of the most common thing to spring out of the ground is dandelions. Sara Beth loves to collecting the flowers, something that we whole heartedly encourage. She might single handedly keep the dandelion problem in our yard under control. She comes with two fist fulls of the flowers saying, "I picked these for you!" We already have several vases in our house with the dandelions in them, but the rest, unfortunately, have to be tossed. I do feel bad about throwing out Sara Beth's collections, but they do make a big mess.


Sometimes she will store the dandelions in her stroller or in a purse. When she found Heather's grocery bag collection, she put it to good use as flower bags. In her mind, you can never have too many flower bags.

She will also "drive" her car around the back yard, and by "drive", I mean I push her car through the yard. Whenever she saw an unpicked dandelion, She will ask me to stop. She will then either reach her arm out the side of the car to pick the flower, or if it is too far for that she will alternatively ask me to drive closer, or actually get out of the car to pick it up. Either way, once the yellow flower has been collected, she puts it in her storage compartment in the back of the car and wants to continue driving around the yard looking for more targets.

Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Singing Sara Beth

Yesterday was Sara Beth's first school performance in the evening. That evening, Sara Beth needed a little persuasion to go. Initially, she had said that she wanted to go, but when the evening of the performance came around, she became apprehensive and declared that she did not like to sing and, in addition, she was not a good singer. I reassured her of her skills and she changed her mind. We went to her school, and I did have to peel her off of me to go to her classroom to prep for the show. Personally, and I may be a little biased, I think she did the best job of anyone in her class. In the below picture, take careful note of how many of the kids are singing and performing the actions. Just sayin.


Before the event, I was able to get a picture of Heather and Sara Beth in our front yard. Notice how Sara Beth does have a bit of an apprehensive look on her face.


Who can resist cupcakes from the discount rack at the grocery store? Definitely not me. Sara Beth likes them too.

This weekend, we went to the zoo with my parents and some neighbors. The Dallas Zoo offers the ability for visitors to feed the giraffe a leaf of lettuce for $5. Seeing as how that was way too expensive for a single leaf of lettuce, I found some pieces of lettuce leaves that had fallen on the ground near the giraffe cage. Both Sara Beth and Heather got to have a giraffe eat lettuce out of their hand. Unfortunately, I was busy making sure that Sara Beth didn't leap into the giraffe enclosure so I was unable to take a picture of it.

Sara Beth has grown to the point where she recognized the animals and I see us going to the zoo often now that the weather is getting better.

Sara Beth has become unusually tender hearted this week. We are used to her saying the occasional "I love you" or pausing to give us a hug as she bolts through the house chasing cats, but this week, she has been exceptionally sweet. Right after school got out, Sara Beth and her friend were out in a field next to the school running around. Her friend picked a dandelion for her mom and so Sara Beth decided that Heather deserved a flower too, but, apparently, her friend had picked the last one in the field. After unsuccessfully searching for one, Sara Beth came to Heather in tears, heart broken that she couldn't find a flower to give.