Molars

Penny is getting her two top molars right now. Just one more to go and then hopefully a break before the canines.

K

I've noticed Penny has learned the hard "k" sound and is favoring words that have that sound. She likes "rock," "sock," etc., as well as "cow". I noticed tonight that she wanted to say "duck" a lot too. She's always pronounced it more like, "duct," but this evening she was making a point to say it with the hard K at the end like she was testing out the new sound. Language is really neat. Pete (my old linguistics professor, and fly-fisherman extraordinaire) would be so proud. That wasn't one of my favorite subjects, but now I find it fascinating.

Halloween Flashlights Recalled

Halloween flashlights sold at Target have been recalled. I saw these just the other day. Apparently, they can overheat and cause burns. Scary!

Are Those Shoes Too Big for Your Feet?

Lately Penny loves to wear our shoes around. These are Tray's slippers.

Wakulla Beach

On Sunday we drove down to Wakulla Beach. It isn't a beach like with dunes and nice waves; it's more a half-moon of sand in the marsh, but the closest thing to beach we have around here. It isn't very far from our house. Tray and I have gone paddling there many times. Sunday afternoon we took Penny and our two dogs down and walked around. It was too cold to get in the water, but we still had fun. There are a million crabs scurrying everywhere every time I've been there and Penny didn't quite know what to think about that. (They scared Lindy - but she's a fraidy-cat.)

This is a photo of Penny checking out the crabs. Most have already run out of the frame, so I'm not sure that you can see any. There are literally thousands running to and fro all over the place though.



Here I am showing her some of the crabs at the water's edge:



Ok, and let me explain this one. She is not on a leash. This is Lindy's leash. Lindy was allowed to run free because (unlike a certain yellow dog who shall remain nameless...Jake!) she can actually listen. Penny is really into chains at the moment. She loves playing with any chain she comes across. So, she begged to hold the chain. I held on to the leash part and we walked pretty much the entire length of the beach like that. I never pulled her along or anything. We just walked together holding onto opposite ends of the leash. I was telling Tray it reminded me of this study I read about from back when they still did studies like this that they couldn't get away with now. They observed school kids on the playground and how in a fenced in area they would use every available inch of the playground, but when researchers removed the fence, the kids clustered together in the center of the playground and wouldn't venture out to the periphery at all, even though those areas had been fine to play in only the day before. The study supposedly indicates how kids need boundaries to feel free. The leash thing really reminded me of that. Before she took ahold of the chain, she kind of wandered around aimlessly and seemed unsure of what to do. Once we started walking like that though it was like she had a purpose and she stayed right with me the whole way. Interesting from a sociological/anthropological perspective I think. So, yeah, ok here's the photo:

Monarch Butterfly Migration

The monarchs are on the move! On their way to Mexico, a bunch stop every year at the St Marks NWR. The monarch butterfly festival was yesterday and we took Penny, my mom, and my grandmother. You can see from the photos how the bushes down there were just loaded down with butterflies. Penny calls them "buttahs" and she seemed to enjoy looking at them.

Baby Einstein Refunds

Just putting this out there in case anyone wants to take advantage but you haven't heard about it. The Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood was successful in negotiating refunds for anyone who purchased Baby Einstein videos believing the false-marketing that they are educational. The Baby Einstein company had to remove those claims from the packaging last year, but until now they weren't giving refunds to anyone who felt defrauded. Here's a fact sheet with more information on the refund program, or a link to their website if you are interested.

**updated** to say that I don't know anybody who would want to return these videos out of outrage at Baby Einstein marketing practices, but do know a couple who are stuck with these videos because their kids hated them. So now they can return these videos - that are just sitting around unused - for a full refund.

Canadian Rocking Chair

Penny is really liking her rocking chair these days (especially standing up in it, but that's another story). She keeps putting her stuffed animals (usually some combination of her stuffed dog, Mr. Bear, her stuffed turtle, and/or her stuffed bird) in the chair and then rocking them. The whole time she's rocking them she'll say "rock....rock....rock" only when she says it, it sounds more like "wrop...wrop....wrop." Her speaking voice is sometimes very humorous. We joke that she's Canadian because several of her words sound that way. She pronounces boat like "boot" (or how a stereotypical Canadian would pronounce "about"). She says toes like "twos" and "house" and "mouse" with a similar "o" sound. And not that this has anything to do with Canada, but she also likes words that end with the plural "s" - even if there is only one of something, like one flower, she says "flowers" and it's rarely "baby", but almost always "babies". And that word (babies) is pronounced in the most hilarious southern accent. I will totally have to see if I can catch that on tape.

New Photo Distribution System

I'm trying something new for this most recent batch of photos. We use flickr at work with the Florida Memory Project and it just seems to be very successful. So, I have uploaded this latest round to flickr here. Let me know if you love it or hate it and would rather me go back to using Snapfish. Here's a preview pic of Tray and Penny at the pumpkin patch.

Mullet in the Sleeper-hold

Penny has gotten very bad about grabbing ahold of Mullet. In fact, it seems to be her number one way of being defiant right now. She knows she's not supposed to do it, but she does anyway. And she'll often wait until we aren't paying attention to her to do it, like she's trying to get our attention by doing something bad. We have gotten on to her I don't know how many times and I put her in time out twice over the weekend, but she is still doing it. It's challenging.

On the other hand, she learned to say bye-bye last night. She will wave and announce "bye-bye" before walking off in to the other room to hide just around the corner. She waits a second or two and then comes back around with a big smile. It's like she just got the whole concept. Unfortunately, this made me saying bye-bye when I left for work this morning that much worse. :(

New Clothes

These are some of Penny's new winter clothes, and they came in handy this morning - 46 degrees!

Hello Fever

Penny woke up this morning with a 102+ fever from her shots. Yuck. So I stayed home from work again. She's feeling better I think though. I've been giving her tylenol. Anyway, today at lunch Tray and I were finishing up while Penny was already down from her highchair and running around. He and I were quietly eating when we heard, "Helloooo." We both looked at each other and then at Penny who was standing on the other side of the room with my cell phone open and held up to her ear. Now, she's been playing pretend phone for forever, but I'd never heard her say hello before - and the way she said it was hilarious.

15 Month Appointment

Penny had her 15 month doctor's appointment today. It was a week early, but apparently you have to show the insurance company that whatever particular vaccination sequence it is has been completed by 15 months rather than at 15 months. So, we had her appointment today, and she was yet again pronounced to be perfect. She got 4 shots including her flu shot. This coupled with the 4 teeth she is currently cutting made for a cranky afternoon. However, we actually had a really nice day. We went shopping for winter clothes at JCPenney and at Target and then we went out to eat at TGI Fridays for lunch (with our free burger coupons - thanks Woody!). Penny had a fruit plate which turned out to be just mandarin oranges, but she liked them so that's okay. She also sat in the high chair by herself rather than in one of our laps and she colored with the complementary crayons (she can just make marks and things). The burgers were great and we all three had a good time. At her doctor's visit Penny weighed 19 pounds even and is 29.5 inches tall. He asked us how many words she has and I replied that I didn't know - we stopped counting at around 50 or 60. He said, "well, she's doing good then." I said I didn't know, "how many words should she have at this age." He goes, "three or four." Tray and I were like, "Oh." So, yeah. She's doing great.

The Going to Bed Book

Last anecdote of the evening: The last pages of The Going to Bed Book read, "The moon is high. The sea is deep. They rock, and rock, and rock to sleep." Occasionally I will rock the book back and forth when I read the last page, but I haven't done it that often. Over the weekend I was reading the book to Penny - well, actually reciting it to her because she had the book and was flipping pages. I wasn't sure if she was even listening to me, but when I got to that part she took the book and made it rock back and forth.

Covers

Penny's been getting more and more able to tell us when she's hungry or tired rather than just crying and letting us figure it out. She's recently been saying night-night when she's ready to go to bed or take a nap. It doesn't mean she'll necessarily fall asleep any easier, but hey it's a start. She's also become very interested in the covers on the bed. She likes for me to help her "pretend" to go night-night under the covers; it makes her laugh. Tonight, I asked her if she wanted Mr. Bear to go night-night under the covers and she took him and laid him in the edge of the bedspread. It was very sweet.

Touchdown!

This is Penny's baby doll that Maw-Maw got her for her birthday. One day last week Penny was playing with her putting her in the rocking chair. She evidently finally got her like she wanted her because she stepped back and threw her arms up in the air in a perfect imitation. Oh, if only I'd had my camera. This is a picture of Gigi-baby this evening, much after the fact, so you can see what I'm talking about. She had us just about rolling on the floor laughing.

Mullet

This afternoon I was sitting in the floor and Mullet was rubbing her nose on my hand. Penny walked over but kind of hung back a little. Then, she looked at me, patted her own arm, and asked, "Pat?" I told her, "yes, you can pat Mullet." She patted Mullet twice and then grabbed Mullet's tail with the most wicked grin on her face. Oh, this kid is going to be trouble. :)

Random words

Other random words I've heard Penny say in the last few days: flower, chips, Pa, owl, hoo-hoo (to go along with owl), book, boat. I'm sure there are more. I have a hard time keeping up - which is good, I guess. :) Oh! And when she plays with her blocks or her alphabet shape sorting thingy she says "A B D s" It's pretty cute.

Happy Birthday

Happy Birthday to Tray! I plan to post again after the fact with a full wrap up of the birthday activities over the last few days, but I wanted to post something today to commemorate the occasion. Happy, happy birthday! We love you!

On the water

I can't speak for everybody, but I do know several people who have had the following experience: You plan on taking your child out on the water and purchase them an appropriately sized lifejacket. You get out on the water and the child screams bloody murder about having to wear said lifejacket. So, in a desperate attempt to salvage your planned first boating you allow them to go without. In none of my friends' kid's first boating photos are they wearing lifejackets (unless they were a lot older at the time of their first outing), and I always sort of chuckle knowing what happened. Anyway, we've been working with Penny on getting used to hers. One day Tray wore his around the house so she'd think it was the cool thing to do, and then she let him put hers on. Last week she asked me to put hers on for her several times. So, this morning we took a boat ride for about an hour. We all three wore our lifejackets and had a really nice time. Here she is gazing at the water:

Ghost cows

And one more thing before I log off to go to bed: she now thinks cows say "boo". Sheep say "baa" and cows say "boo". It's almost too cute to correct!

Oops! Teeth.

Penny is now cutting three teeth at once. She's getting her first molar on the left side, her lower right lateral incisor, and her upper left lateral incisor. I think the lower left one and the lower right molar are not far behind. Poor kid. She's really struggling at night time going to sleep. She's soooo sleepy, but just can't because it hurts. So she's getting lots of snuggles. :)

Also, for the last three days she's been saying "oops" all the time and using it appropriately. Some of the things she says oops for are just downright hilarious (and really good embarrass her when she's a teenager stories). Let me see if I can list a few other words she has picked up (sorry if I've already listed some): boo-boo, pants, Penny (but, sadly, not yet Penny-pants), kiss, gate, and please. We swear she said "read please" when she brought Tray a book on Saturday, but we have not gotten her to replicate it, so it was probably just us hearing things. However, she says please all the time now when she wants something - usually for us to read a book. Oh, and on that, she's also pointing to words in her books and on bottles and things. She knows where the word "baby" is on her lotion bottle, but I know that is just from memory not actual "reading". Anyway, I think it is neat that she is noticing print and not just pictures.

Toys

A week or so ago our next door neighbors who make and sell toys (seriously, that's what they do for a living) gave Penny this:



It's a push toy duck and she looooves it. It is hands down her favorite toy right now. And we like it too - because our neighbors made it for one thing and for another it does not light up, talk, vibrate, or otherwise require batteries and is not made in any way of plastic. Grandparents take note. Wood and fabric.

For a good several weeks now Penny has been getting more and more into playing by herself for periods of time with her stuffed animals and things. She can spend what seems like forever arranging and rearranging her animals and baby doll on her rocking chair jabbering away at them the whole time. The other day I took some pictures of her putting Mr. Bear into her rocking chair. She kept sitting him down and picking him back up and re-placing him again.



I took several pictures of this because I remembered this photo of me:



Same rocking chair, different kid. I'm several months older than she is in this photo, but I thought it was nice continuity. Also, here's another photo of me from the same day. This should give some indication of what Penny's hair will look like in another few months:



Finally, for maybe two months or so (I can't remember exactly) she's been able to stack blocks, but usually only two at a time - maybe three. Two or three days ago I was doing something else and looked up to discover she'd stacked four! And then a little later I went to feed Mullet and came back and found:



I had to take a photo because she'd picked out all the yellow blocks out of the bin and only the yellow blocks (she'd had red and green ones earlier). Plus, I liked the architecture of it. :)

Nice Fall Weekend

We had a really great weekend the last two days. On Saturday we took Penny to the annual “Blessing of the Animals” at the Mission at San Luis. Unfortunately, we arrived after the blessing part was over, but we still got to walk around and check out the living history stuff and all the booths with pet related paraphernalia.
Penny wandered around all over the place carrying with her a hickory nut and a stick. At one point we met a sweet dog who very much wanted Penny to pet him, but she could not decide which of her trinkets to put down in order to do so. It was very funny to watch her think about it. She’d go to sit one item down and then decide against it and try to put the other one down and decide against that and so it went for a good minute or two. She finally decided to hang on to them both and just walked off away from the dog! So, off we wandered stopping every so often for her to exchange whichever hickory nut she was carrying with a new one she spied on the ground. Then, over by the chicken coop we saw this guy:



He’s a Hickory Horned Devil caterpillar and even though my car keys are in this photo, it is hard to get an idea of how massively huge he was. Biggest caterpillar I have ever seen. Luckily, Penny got interested in Lindy and Jake’s leashes around that time (see above) and did not attempt to pick up the caterpillar. After that, a nice lady in a golf cart offered to give P and me a ride, so we went for a golf cart ride back to our car. I love going places like this with Penelope, but I would love it if we lived closer to the places that we went so that she wasn’t stuck in the car seat for 45 minutes plus each way. I’ve often wondered if we lived more like 10 or 15 minutes from places like, oh say, the grocery store, that perhaps she would not mind being in the car seat. Who wants to be confined in a car seat for an hour and a half to go buy milk?

To that end, yesterday we took a ride in the opposite direction from our house and went down to the coast. In this part of Florida we do not have beaches, per se, but instead miles and miles of wetlands. It’s very beautiful in its own right though. We rode down to the lighthouse at the St. Marks NWR (which took approximately 20 minutes). The water there just sort of gently laps up to the coast and is perfect for wading. Before I get into that though, I have to tell this small anecdote. On the way down, I was doing my best to keep her entertained and she wanted to read “But Not the Hippopotamus” over and over again. Well, I would shake my head from side to side as I read the phrase “but not the hippopotamus” and she would imitate me with a very serious look on her face, like, “No Mommy. Not the Hippopotamus.”

Anyway, we stopped at the visitor center so Tray could buy a duck stamp, and they have a small exhibit area and gift shop. The exhibit contains several dioramas of animals and Penny enjoyed looking at those. Then, in the gift shop they had several shelves of kid’s books that she briefly perused and then, then!, she found a bin full of those stuffed birds that chirp the real bird call if you squeeze their talk boxes. You should have seen the huge excited grins she would give us every time we squeezed a different bird.

Once we got to the coast (and all requisite bug spray and sunscreen had been applied) she had a ball walking around in the water with her pants rolled up. I wish so much that we’d had a swimsuit for her (or, technically, myself since she could have gone nekkid) because she kept trying to go out deeper into the water. She loved it! The thing that just melted my heart though was every so often as we walked around she would look up at me with this look of just total adoration. It was like there was so much love in her face when she looked at me that I thought my heart would just stop beating right there. Everyone deserves to be looked at like that at least once in their lives, and she kept looking at me like that over and over again!

After we’d been there a little while, we decided to leave the Refuge and head over to St. Marks to eat a late lunch at Riverside. Riverside is an open air restaurant right on the St. Marks River. You can even boat to it (which we have in fact done before). This is going to sound bad, but Penny had never been to a restaurant before. Well, technically she went on my birthday when she was 6 weeks old, but not since. In our defense though, we don’t eat out and didn’t before we had her so it’s not like our habits changed. Anyway, I was a little anxious as to how it would go. I wasn’t sure if she’d sit through a meal, but it was great! They had those restaurant high chairs and we got one for her, but she freaked out and got all clingy when I tried to put her in it, so she sat in my lap instead. And she didn’t squirm even once. She just sat there and ate and pointed out the seagulls and people watched. I was greatly impressed. It was a big day and she took a nice nap after we got home. We all had a really fun weekend. I love doing stuff as a family!

Behold! Pictures:

Waving Hi

I keep meaning to mention that I re-taught Penny how to wave hi pretty much the next day after I posted that about how she wasn't doing it anymore. It only took a couple minutes because she copied me right away. However, I made the error of waving in a somewhat exaggerated manner trying to get the point across, so now her wave is pretty exaggerated too. It's really cute though. She often will say "hi" or "hey" when she waves too. And, now when Tray asks her, "What does Mommy say?" she replies, "Hi". (insert eye-rolling here)
Oh, and we've just about got her saying her own name, although it isn't very clear yet. Something that is clear though is "baa". If I ask her, "What does a sheep say?" she says, "baa" clear as a bell. Sometimes I wonder though what she thinks of us going on about all these farm animals that have no meaning to her everyday life. I mean, she's got to be wondering why we seem to think it is so important that she knows what a sheep or a cow says. Crazy grownups.