Atleast We Still Have Halloween

(I apologize in advance [and warn you] for a second throw-up related entry.)

Last night was H's last tumbling class of the eight-week session, so a Halloween party was planned. I picked H. up and the babysitter already had her in her Raggedy Ann costume. She looked so cute! So off we drove to tumbling and we were about halfway there when H. started to get really fussy and telling we she wanted to get out of her carseat. I thought she was just excited about the party, but about a minute later, without warning, BLAAA! She got sick in the car, all over her Halloween costume. We pulled off the road into a bank parking lot so I could check on her. Luckily, I had her regular clothes in her diaper bag, so I changed her out of her messy costume. Then I had to explain to her that we had to go home, we couldn't go to tumbling class and the party. She wasn't too upset - I think she wanted to go home, too. I took her temperature when we got there and no fever and she was fine for the rest of the evening. I think it was a combination of teething and a wet cough she's had for the last week or so. The combination of drool and phlegm (sorry to be so graphic, but that's kids) just upset her stomach by the end of the day yesterday. So I have no cute pictures from the Halloween party to share. You'll have to wait until after Sunday!

Growing

Not to bore you with too many baby stories, but H. is at that age where she's doing lots of cute, smart things and just getting so big! She's starting to have more of a long-term memory about certain things.

Last night, we were playing with her Dora MagnaDoodle and I noticed the triangle piece was missing. I asked her if she knew where it was and she said, "I'll get it." She went all the way upstairs and found it on the floor in the living room and brought it back down to me. "Triangle," she said as she handed it to me.

This morning, as we were getting ready, I mentioned that today was a tumbling class day. "Tumbling class," she said. "Gibberish, jump in castle, gibberish!" Last week at class, they had a small blow-up jumping castle for the kids and she remembered it from last week without any prompting.

Please feel free to comment about how smart she is!

Weekend

Things I accomplished on Saturday:

1. Finished reading America (The Book) ("Laugh out loud funny!" - Andrea)
2. Took a two-hour nap
3. Watched Walking Tall (It was Mark's turn to pick a video. After it was over, I compared it to a really bad episode of Walker, Texas Ranger.)

Notice that none of the above involved scrubbing, dusting or cleaning of any kind.

I was a little more productive on Sunday, but only in my creative efforts, not in regard to any sort of housekeeping. (There's a line from the Halloween episode of Bear in the Big Blue House [I told you it was my favorite episode] that I think I'll adopt as my own. Lois the telephone operator is hard of hearing and misinterprets everything. When everyone shouts Trick or Treat, she thinks they say Dirty Feet and says, "Oh, you don't have to worry about that. As you can see, I'm a very casual housekeeper." That describes me to a T!) Nadine and my mom and I all went to a Scrapbooking Flea Market in the morning. It featured a variety of vendors from the area, most offering significant discounts, and we were able to find quite a few good deals. I bought a bunch of stickers, including some Sesame Street stickers, and a bunch of paper that was only ten cents a sheet. That night, I completed two quick pages in Hayley's album - 4th of July and Halloween from 2003. I'm going to a workshop this Friday, so I hope to keep the momentum going.

Girls' Guide to Football - NOT!

I don't know why I even clicked on this link. How foolish I was to think it would be useful, instead of condescending and nauseating!

Hayley's Animal Sounds

Dog - woof, woof
Cat - meee-ooow!
Cow - moo, moo
Snake - sssssssss
Monkey - ooo ooo, aaa aaa
Elephant - she makes a sort-of honking sound, but waves her arm around like a trunk, so you know it's an elephant
Duck - quack, quack
Chicken - bawk, bawk (She sounds just like the Cadbury bunny)
Frog - ribbit
Skunk - P.U. (and she holds her nose)
Lion - Rrrrrrr! (which also sounds the same as Tiger, Bear and Monster)

And my favorite...

Horse - Yee Haw! (I taught her to say this while riding her rocking horse, and now all horses are identified as Yee Haw! She also clucks her tongue so it sounds like the clopping of horse hooves.)

In addition to her repertoire of animal sounds, she can also identify many others - bat, squirrel, fish, turtle, bird, rabbit and more - thanks to this very cool Noah's Ark book from Aunt Na.

Big Update

Sorry for the delay in posting. I tried updating from home last week so I could post some pictures, but either my computer was acting up or Blogger wasn't cooperating, so I just gave up. So this entry will be sans photos, unless I can add some later tonight.

I feel like we haven't been doing very much, but looking back over the past two weeks, it has been fairly busy. We did the pumpkin patch thing this weekend, going early Saturday afternoon. H. had a ball, riding in the wheelbarrow and checking out all the pumpkins. She found a little tiny gourd pumpkin still out in the field and had to have it. "My pumpkin," she told us the rest of the day. She took a nap with her pumpkin and slept with it that night, too. The whole trip reminded me of last year, when she couldn't even walk yet and had to ride in the wheelbarrow. Halloween should be so much fun this year. We've been practicing "Trick or Treat" and of course, she can walk this year, so even better! The Disney Channel has already shown my favorite episode of "Bear in the Big Blue House," the Halloween episode, twice - once last week and again this morning.

We continued the fall festivities on Sunday, going to the Apple Harvest Festival, my favorite festival of the year. It was very crowded, but bearable, even though they ran out of pit beef just after we got there. My replacement grilled chicken sandwich was a disappointment. H. was an angel all day, mostly cooperating with staying in the stroller. My dad took her to play in the petting zoo and other children's activities for a little while, so my mom and I could shop. I didn't buy that much, just a few little Halloween items.

I slept terribly last night and I was exhausted after walking around all day. I fell asleep just before 10 (I didn't see very much of the Battle of the Beltways), but M. kept waking me up to tell me I was snoring. The nerve!! Then, H. was up at 3:30am, coughing. She was up for about 40 minutes or so, until she finally went back to sleep. I think she just had a dry throat from the festival, which was very dusty. She wasn't running a fever and still woke up at her normal time this morning. So I'm feeling that after-lunch tiredness.

***

The pictures I was trying to post last week were of my sister's new house. After just over a year of waiting and living in a rental unit, their new house was set on its foundation last Thursday, Sept. 30. My mom was there for the big delivery and said it came in 4 big pieces and that it was really cool to watch them put it together. It will take about another 4 weeks to hook up the electric, plumbing, etc., but what really matters is that the house is actually there! And it's huge! Their old house was just a small rancher, but this one is two stories, with three bedrooms, a sunken jacuzzi tub in the master bath and lots of windows and French doors looking out over the water. It's really a three-story house, because the new foundation is 12-feet high, then the house sits on top of that. They still have a lot to do - painting, installing the floors, etc., before they can move in, but after months of inactivity, things are finally progressing.

***

H. has reached that age where she's hooked on the same video for days or weeks at a time. About a month or so ago, it was all Nemo, all the time. By the time I had told my mom to buy her a stuffed Nemo for her birthday because she loved him, we had moved on to Lilo & Stitch (which is a very weird little movie. I had a hard time getting into it at first). Now it's The Little Mermaid, which we also have to listen to in the car all the time. (And I can't wait for Disney to release this one from "the vault" so I can get it on DVD. There are about 20 annoying minutes worth of previews and commercials at the beginning of this movie. I may get desperate and have to hit eBay.) I wish I could describe the way H. says Ariel. Let's just say I think I'm the only one who understands what she's talking about. It looks like this week will be Beauty and the Beast, which she wanted to take to the babysitter's this morning. I still have Sleeping Beauty, A Bug's Life and The Jungle Book on the shelf, waiting to be watched.