Her newest favorite game: "tent". Brian took one of Becca's blankets and draped it over the top of her crib while we were playing to make her a fort, or as she calls it "My tent!"
Now any time she sees this blanket she pulls it around asking for 'My tent?! My tent?!"

A few weeks ago Rebecca and I were hanging out at home. She'd just asked for her jammies off when she took me by the hand and said "I get dressed."
She took me to the dresser, pulled out her shorts from the summer. Then to the closet and asked for a shirt. I started looking threw them when she pointed to the shirt and sweatshirt she wanted. She pulled me through the house picking up items as we went, then asked me to help her get dressed. The result? I have a fassion diva on my hands. Purty, ain't she?

A few months ago we took Rebecca up to the cabin for the weekend. It was post-hunting season so we wandered through the woods for a while. She decided the dirt path was just much too dirty, so naturally she cleaned it up.

Halloween

This year Rebecca dressed as a ballerina. She was adorable, but unfortunately didn't want to stand still for photos. This is the only photo we got where she's smiling. She had a great time, despite what our photos show.

We're back!
I had the blog shut down for a while b/c of some formatting issues. At least for me, photos were showing up fuzzy and weird and the layout was getting all spazzy. It should, should being the operative word, be working now. I think.

Since it's been, oh, like a decade since I've updated I'm going to have a barrage of updates coming in the next few days.

Dancing Queen

Dancing with Daddy :)

Pardon Rebecca's toys everywhere. That's her new game. Empty everything then go onto something more fun.

Baby, you can drive my car

Beep beep! Beep beep! Yeah!

My baby is 21

Months, that is.

I can't believe that in 3 months time she'll be 2! That went WAY too fast!

In honor of her "birthday" I want to take a moment to reflect on the things she's doing these days.

- This morning she busted out her new phrase "Darn it!". I about died laughing. Thanking the heavens we're very careful about our own language!
She loves airplanes and helicopters. One flew over head as we were getting out of the car. I pointed at it, then said "oops, it went behind the trees so we can't see it anymore. Darn". She looked at me, cocked her head and said "Yeah. Darn it!" LOL

- She loves to sing. Most of the time it's her own little songs in her own little language. But the other day I was listening to a book on tape in the car in which one of the characters sings a lullaby. Later that evening, after only hearing the lullaby once, Rebecca was playing with her baby and singing. I finally realized she was singing the lullaby! I'm so proud :)

- She is very opinionated. She likes to pick out her own clothes and is NOT happy when you pick something for her she doesn't want to wear. I foresee many days of mismatched clothing in our future and I'm just fine with it!

- She's ridiculously, mind-bogglingly smart. She has an amazing memory and talks up a storm.

- She can count to 3. And likes to randomly throw in the number 6 when she's counting. So it usually goes like this. "One.... two.... three..... six.... two.... six..... one.... two.... three"

- She's starting to learn what "one" and "two" mean. She can tell me if there are one or two barrettes in her hand. One or two socks on her feet.

- She knows several colors. Right now she can correctly identify pink, blue, green, yellow, orange, red, and white.

- She loves music and loves to dance.

- She walks around on the very, very tips of her toes. Not on the balls of her feet, but on her actual tiptoes. Brian calls her our little ballerina. I'm starting to have visions of the NY City ballet...

- She's such a happy, smiley girl. Rarely is she tantrum-y or fussy (unless she's cutting teeth or sick. Then all bets are off)

- She tells us when she needs her diaper changed. Typically she'll take our hand and walk us to the changing table and say 'Diaper please. Diaper is yucky."

- She loves books. She has parts of a couple of her books memorized.
She'll sit down with Sandra Boynton's Moo Baa La La La and flip through the pages.
She'll see the picture of the cow and say "Cow says moo" then the sheep "Sheep.... BAAAAA" then the pigs "La la la. No no! Oink!"
Which means "A cow says moo. A sheep says baa. Three singing pigs say la la la. " No no!" you say, that isn't right. The pink says Oink all day and night". Turns out I have it memorized too.

- She sits at the table without a booster seat most of the time now. She just sits on her knees and eats. If we're having something particularly messy or hard for her to reach then she'll sit in the high chair. But she prefers to sit in the "Chair! My chair" versus in the "Seat"

- She is a GREAT eater. This child packs away more food than I could have imagined. And yet she's still a SKINNY little girl. She's not picky. She loves fruits especially. She could (and has) eat her weight in blueberries. The result is not pretty.
The only 3 things we've ever come across that she really dislikes are peas (I don't blame her), plain yogurt (again, I don't blame her) and cottage cheese. Otherwise, she'll chow down.

- Her favorite food is probably tacos.
This morning on the way into work she had a stuffed puppy in her lap. I could hear her talking in the back seat so I asked her what she said. She replied "Puppy is eating tacos". Then she proceeded to make "Nom nom nom" eating noises. She cracks me up.

- She loves having her photo taken. When she sees the camera come out she gives a big grin and says "CHEEEEEEESE!"

Rebecca's first crush

Rebecca has a first love. We're shocked that she's fallen so hard for a boy at such a tender young age. But none the less, she has. And we're thrilled with her choice.

The man in question is.... Harry Potter.

I'm not joking. Brian was home with Rebecca for a couple of days recently and had been watching Harry Potter while she napped. When she woke up, it was still playing and she pointed and the TV and said "Boy! Glasses!" She sat transfixed for quite a while.

Now I must point out, we don't generally let Rebecca watch TV. For one, she's never been interested. Plus we don't have cable. What would she watch? My Sex and the City DVDs? Um, no.

Anyway, over the next several days she'd point to the TV, grab the remote, press buttons and say "Boy! Glasses! Where's boy?!" So Brian would succumb and put in a Harry Potter DVD. She'd happily sit, playing with her toys, all while pointing at "Boy! Glasses!"

This weekend I started teaching her the characters. Now she knows "Boy!" is also known as "Harry". His friend is "Ron!" I didn't think she'd be able to master "Hermione" just yet so for now she's just "Girl".

I hate to remind her that Harry Potter in fact grows up. I'm not even going to consider letting her know (just yet) that (SPOILER- If You haven't read the last book and you intend to, stop reading now) he later in life marries Ginny Weasley. I don't think her little 1 year old heart could take it.

So for now, we're in the midst of Puppy Love.

What do you think? I think they make a cute couple.

Bathtub crayons- A gift from the heavens above

Seriously, these things are MAGIC!



We bought them a few weeks ago for Rebecca since she loves to color and bath time had been a fight for a few days. They're a Godsend!

I finally have a way to wash her hair without her screaming. I make Brian draw elaborate portraits on the top of our bath wall while I pour water VERY quickly through her hair. Yesterday, I even got to condition it for the first time in about 4 months. Yay!

Considering we have a consistent ebb and flow of "I love the bath! I hate the bath" I'm hoping that these will make the I Love the Baths much more common. If not, I'm moving to bath markers!

Quick! What's the number for Mensa?!

Rebecca's such a little smarty pants. I have to brag on behalf of my child for a little while. Because, hey, it's my blog. I get to do that sort of thing here!

First, about 2 weeks ago she demonstrated her ability to label colors. She brought me one of her new bathtub crayons (more about those in another post) and said "Mama! Pink crayon!" and it was. I was beaming with pride. Until, of course, Brian pointed out that perhaps it was a coincidence.

The next morning I was pouring her some milk and selected a straw for her in her cup (as requested, she's so demanding sometimes! LOL). She reached in, picked it up and said "Mama, purple straw!" Or I suppose more like "Muh-muh, puh-buh stwaw". She's brilliant.

Then a couple of days ago we were reading one of her books (Sandra Boynton's Hippos Go Berserk- great book. V. cute) and I was reading "ONE hippo all alone. Calls TWO hippos on the phone" Rebecca kept repeating the numbers as I read them so I set the book aside and just counted the hippos with her. She'd repeat One, Two, Three... then loose interest.

The next morning I was putting her shoes on. These shoes are so cool, they're hot pink with little green turtles all over them (Tuuur-tles) and we were counting the turtles. We got to 6 and she'd ask me to start again. About a half an hour later in the car I hear her in the back seat singing to herself. It went like this.
"La la. One. La la. Six. Six one. Two. Three Six. One. Three. Threeee. La la."

Apparently the number 6 stood out to her?

Now she's up to being able to count One..... Two.....Three.... if prompted. But she thinks that at 3 you're required to jump in the air, jump off a chair, do some sort of silly move. I dig the way she thinks.

Our daycare provider Chris (another truly brilliant woman) has a saying which I paraphrase as thus "Children are brilliant. It's the adults that are too stupid to figure out how brilliant".

Case in point: This evening Rebecca was finishing up her dinner when we found a bunny sitting by our back deck. She LOVES bunnies. Absolutely adores them. So I got her out of the high chair to go see the bunny. As it hopped away we went inside saying "Goodbye bunny".
We reach the table and she says "All done! All done! All done!" so I assume this meant that she was.... all done?

I set her down and started to clean off her sticky fingers when she got very upset "No! No Mama!" After several tries to figure out what it was she wanted, I finally said "Becca, what do you need?"
She looked me square in the eye and said "More cheese, please!" with a huffy look like "Geeze, woman, what have I been saying all along?"

It turns out "All done" was actually "All gone". As in, the bunny is gone, now woman, where's my cheese? See? I'm just too stupid to figure it out :)

Going to the fair

We have an annoying commercial that plays in the last week of July and 1st week of August around here with a farmer-style man singing "Going to the fair! Going to the fair! Going to the Northwest Michigan fair!" in an annoying fake twang. Which is dumb, since we live in MICHIGAN. We have no twang.

But, I digress already- We took Rebecca to said fair!
We tried to go on Saturday evening, got all the way into the fairgrounds to park before we realized "Hey. The fair isn't here yet". It didn't open (partially) until Sunday. Whoops!

Take two- after a fun/tiring boat trip Sunday morning with on my brother-in-law's boat (MIKE! as Becca says) we took Rebecca to the fair. Again. This time they were even open!

The only things that were really open were the food stands and the animal portion (also known as the entire reason we went to the fair: animals for Becca. Carnie food for me. Don't judge)

She LOVED it! We took her through the cow stalls no less than 3 times. Each time we'd hit up a new animal she'd make the appropriate animal noise.

Strangely enough, her favorite of all the animals was the rabbits. She kept yelping "HOP! HOP!" at them as we walked past the cages.
She was so excited when we finally found a rabbit that actually would hop in 85 degree heat!

After we sweltered in the animal stink for a while we hit up the french fries stand (Mmm Gibby's fries. Best. Food. Ever.) then headed for home.

We're considering taking her back again sometime this week before the fair closes down for the year and hopefully this time we'll remember where our camera is so that we can take photos.

A milestone I wasn't excited to reach

Rebecca's first temper tantrum. Ah yes, toddlerhood is here.

Over the weekend (on my birthday no less) we were strolling around the mall killing time before we went to dinner. Rebecca is usually great at staying with us and holding our hands while she walks. This time, she had other ideas. She kept trying to walk on her own, run in front of us, lag behind, etc. Well, if the mall had been nearly empty I might have been more flexible on this, as long as we were right with her, but it was 5:00 on a Friday evening.

Brian and I reminded her "Rebecca, you need to hold our hand when you're walking". After several determined "NO!"s from her, she slowly crouched down, then even slower lay on the floor (ewwww mall floor!), then cocked her head as if thinking "How did this go, again?" and kicked her feet and pounded her hands a couple of times.

She looked up at me to gauge my reaction. I said "Are you done with your fit now Becca?" to which she replied a perky "yep!". She then got up, held both of our hands and walked politely the rest of the way.

I could tell if I was trying to hold back laughter harder or if Brian was.

Little booger.

Rebecca's newest toy- Fun for the whole family

We got Rebecca a tunnel last weekend and thus far she loves it.

She plays in it all the time.

George loves spending his time in there, too.

Sometimes, even Daddy gets in on the act.

Life's a beach!

Just over a week ago we took Rebecca swimming at the beach for the first time. We weren't very sure what to expect since most of the time this girl HATES the bath. She hates the water on her face, hates the whole darn process (accept, mind you, the part where she plays with a boat.... ahh the simple life).

We geared up, slathered with about 45 cans of spray sunscreen (we're white as white can be, so in the sun we turn to solid red) and traipsed down to the sand. Right away Rebecca started pointing out the things she saw. "Ball!" (a buoy) "Rocks! (the sand) "Boat!" (a boat, obvs). We held her close and slowly walked into the water. Since it wasn't very deep I kept kneeling down so that her feet would get a little splashed to get her used to the water. She clutched onto my shoulders with a look of abject fear. Then gradually, as we splashed her feet, she started to grin.

At least I think she was grinning. It was hard to tell under the hat and sunglasses.

After a little playing in the water we took her up to the sand with her bucket and shovel and taught her how to build, and thus knock down, sand castles.

Happy 4th of July!

Yesterday was a low-key 4th for us. Brian's brother Mike came over to hang out and have dinner. Rebecca, as per usual, followed him around and every time he'd move out of her view she'd yelp "MIKE!"

Mom and dad are chopped liver when he's around :)

We decided to be brave (or stupid, depending on how it turns out) to try to take Rebecca to the 4th of July fireworks downtown.

The show started off with a new addition this year with the Blue Angels doing a few flyovers. They did a dusk "after-burner display". I'm not entirely sure what that means in real life but in my mind it means "Extremely loud planes flying low with flames showing against the night sky".

I should probably mention now that I HATE loud noises so the planes are not my favorite thing, cool though it may be.

Rebecca thought they were so cool! (and so Mike and Brian, but I didn't say that) After she got past the very loud noises she was digging it. She would point at them in the sky, grin, and say "Plane! Airplane!"

We found a great seat right on the beach to watch the fireworks. We were amazed that there were so many open spots right there to sit considering it's crazy busy during Cherry Festival. As soon as the first firework went off we realized why. Yeah..... we were sitting right near a huge tree and the fireworks were shot off directly behind said tree. Dang. We did a mad dash to find a different open spot to sit where we could actually SEE the fireworks. Novel concept.

Thankfully it wasn't too difficult. It only took a moment to find a seat right behind where they were shot off.

Rebecca loved the fireworks but not nearly as much as she loved staring at the bunch of balloons inexplicably tied to a tree behind us.

Considering we were up and in town until 11:30 we expected her to crash out when we got in the car. On the contrary, she was wide awake the whole evening/night and sang to us as we were driving home. She did great and she had so much fun!

Paci-free: Day 5

It's going pretty well. MUCH better than we expected, really.
That being said, Rebecca is cranky! We're not certain if it's because she's going w/o the pacifier or if it's something else all together. She does great all day, she rarely asks for it and we can easily distract her when she does. The only hiccups we've run into is nap times.
This morning she went right now for a nap without too much protest. But her naps are still all funky, not scheduled at all, which is very unusual for her.
So for the time being we're just making everything up as we go along.

We did have a good time today wandering around Lowes. Brian needed tools for work and Rebecca needed to get out of the house!
She made it very clear that she wanted to walk around ('Mama! Down! Walk!!' pretty much says all I need to know, right?)... that is until she found an abandoned shopping cart. She took a turn pushing it around backwards through the ceiling fan aisle then asked to go for a ride in the cart. I strapped her in and wandered around that area.

I just *happened* (errr... yeah... happened) to come across the bathroom lighting section. I've loathed the lighting in our upstairs bathroom since we bought this house 4 years ago. 1) It's ugly and 2) The lights get SO HOT that even during the coldest times of the year I swelter when getting ready in the morning. When I found the lighting fixture I've wanted for years on clearance for $33 I decided to take it as a sign from above.

So after 4 long years of waiting I finally have my pretty new light fixture. It's in a box in my hallway but it's still mine!
Just in time for us to sell our house!

Greatest Mommy Moment so far

A few weeks ago, while I was home on a vacation day with Rebecca, I said "I love you" and she responded with "Luffoo"

Heart.... melting.... *sob!*

this morning topped even that

As I was changing her diaper I was singing a made up "Good morning, I love you" song and she said, as she patted my shoulder "Mama, luff ooo"

I have the sweetest daughter in the WORLD

Paci No More

Take 1

After Rebecca's doctor's appointment yesterday Brian and I were discussing Rebecca's newest sleep habits. We've never had any trouble getting her to sleep. She's always been one to lay down in her crib quietly until she fell asleep.

Until 2 weeks ago. We're not sure what changed- if it was new teeth cutting, new cognative developments, or just plain old toddler stubborn-ness but suddenly our healthy sleeping girl has decided that sleeping is for babies, and darn it! She's a big girl!

She started refusing to go to sleep, taking the Cry and Throw the Paci to See if Mom and Dad Will Come In approach.

After talking to the doctor about this, and deciding that it sounds like this is actually just a normal 18 month development/phase, we figured out a plan of attack.
While I hate the term Cry It Out (otherwise known as letting the child cry themselves to sleep) we decided that, much as we loathe to admitt it, this is probably the best plan for us. She's old enough, and smart enough, to know cause and effect. And lately the cause and effect was: She cries, we go pick her up and let her play for a while before trying to get her to bed again. In hindsight that's clearly stupid. LOL. Of course she'd rather play with us rather than go to bed. We're fun people, after all :D

Over dinner we talked about how we were going to do this and realized that now would probably be the best time to break her of the pacifier habit too. We'd rather not help her learn to sleep on her own again, only to break the paci habit and start over AGAIN in another few months. Our original plan was to have her off the paci by 18 months at the latest anyway. Soooo.... last night was night #1.

It actually went pretty well! We did our normal bedtime routine of quiet playtime, then dinner time, the the bath, then right down into the crib for bed.

We laid her down, sans paci, and said "Time to sleep. Good night" and left. She let out a whimper, then silence. Brian and I just stared at each other in shock. Holy crap. It worked!
She did great! Not a peep out of her all evening!

She woke up around 3:30 crying and asking for the paci. After about 5 minutes I turned to Brian and said "So, should we go in there and lay her back down or something, or just let her cry until she falls back asleep?" Hmm... I decided to try and lay her back down. I didn't want her thinking we'd abandoned her, or left her alone with only George for company or something. ..

Turns out, going in was NOT the right choice! LOL
She looked excited to see me for about 3 seconds, until she realized "Hey, wait a second. Pick me up woman!"
I laid her back down, said "It's sleep time. Good night. I love you" and left. The crying then turned to mad, angry, pissed off screams! Whoops.

Thankfully it only took another 5 minutes or so before I heard her lay right back down and go to sleep. During that 5 minutes I was thinking of every possible scenario that could happen if I were to drive to the hospital and beat the snot out of the L&D nurse that gave my daughter a pacifier without my permission! None of them ended without me locked up so I decided door #2: just going back to sleep, was the best option.

This morning was great too. With all the weird sleep for the last 2 weeks she's been getting up when she hears the shower turn on for me. The earlier I got up, the earlier she wanted to get up too. I have to tell you, it's hard working out at 4:30 am. I nearly fell asleep on my Pilates mat. How many calories does THAT burn?

But this morning, not a PEEP out of her until 7:30. That's my girl :)
I even got a nice little surprise. But that's a post for all it's own!

18 months old!

As of 6/16/08! What a big girl!

We had Rebecca's 18 month doctor's appointment yesterday.
She weighed in at 19.8 lbs and 31 inches tall. She's finally back on the charts, weight wise! 10th percentile, my little growing girl!

The doctor said that everything looks great. He was impressed with how well, and how much, and how clearly, she's talking!

I'm so proud :)

New diapers are here!

I ordered 2 of the new BumGenius Organic diapers. They're an all-in-one style which is great, but they're also a one-size diaper. After trying the first two I ordered enough to outfit Becca until she's potty trained, I liked them so much! The inner layer is organic cotton and oh so soft.

They look almost identical to the BG 3.o pocket diaper from the outside. The inside, though, is different than any other diaper I've seen. The "stuffing" or absorbant layer is on the top like a doubler rather than stuffed inside the diaper. It's sewn in so scattery people (*cough cough* me *cough*) can't loose it. When it's in the small position and medium position the doubler layer can be folded to lay flat. I really like this since it can be folded over in the front for extra protection for boys, in the middle for girls, or in the back for a back sleeper. Or anywhere in between. Love it.

One difference I have noticed from the BG 3.0s is that this diaper seems to fit bigger (although I believe they have about the same size range according to cottonbabies.com). Rebecca fits comfortably in the middle and large sizes of the 3.0 but the large size of this diaper is still much too big for her. I'm actually really happy about this. It means it should fit her for longer! How this would work with a tiny new baby is another story.

Here's Becca (and our coffee table) modeling the new diapers

The diaper snapped in the small position

The inner layer folded in the small position

Showing the inner layer sewn in on the ends but movable in the middle

Snapped to the middle size (which Rebecca is using right now)

Folded in the middle position

Snapped in the large position

And folded (or rather laying flat) in the large position

Rebecca showing off her new diaper

And this is what happens when I say to Rebecca "Becca, sweetie, show off your new diaper".

Rebecca's way of saving the environment?

No napkins, just use your Earth Day shirt! Also known as 'what happens when Becca eats spaghetti'!

Big girl bath tub

Rebecca has graduated... to the big girl bath tub. We decided that because she's getting so tall the ducky tub from a few months ago isn't going to cut it for much longer. So into the bath she went. It went pretty well. I was expecting she'd be slipping around but she didn't at all. She liked that she had more room to splash around. Naturally this meant that mommy got soaked!

Happy Earth Day!

Disclaimer: This is posted about a week late. Earth Day was last week and I apparently forgot to post this. But I figure the message is the same whether today or next week or next month. So here goes.

To quote a John Denver song (please don't judge me, I like John Denver!) "Celebrate Earth Day every day!"

I like to think that we're a fairly "green" family, what with the cloth diapers, the organic foods, etc etc but today of all days is a good day to stress the importance of the health of our planet. There are so many things we can do that are simple that cut waste and better our environment. It was pointed out to me early in the day that it's not really helpful if everyone takes a "green" approach one day a year. So try, in honor of Earth Day, to find small steps you can make in your own life to reduce your environment impact.

To mis-quote another musical legend, it IS easy to be green! Sorry, Kermit, you had it wrong :)

Park it, baby

A few weeks ago we took Rebecca to the park for a few hours. We went once last summer but she was still too little to really "get" it. She had a BLAST this time around. We went on the slide, the climbing.... things (what are those called???) and the swings.

It was crazy busy there, people everywhere, but it didn't seem to phase her one bit. Thank heaven we've finally got warm weather around here! Michigan winters can get too darn cold for too darn long.

The next day we went to Moomers, a local ice cream shop, for some ice cream. They have a platform overlooking the cow pastures so you can see and thank the nice cows that gave the milk to make the ice cream. Rebecca loves animals so this was almost better for her than the ice cream was. Although, I swear, this girl ate half my cone!