Baseball

Tray and I took Penny to the playground this afternoon and I so wish I could have taken a video of her running the bases on the baseball field. I ran them with her once around and then Tray and I cheered her on as she ran them by herself. We directed her to first base and she stood there on the base until, through lots of hand and arm motions, we convinced her to run to second base, and then to third, and finally to home plate where we were. We both called out, "safe!" as she crossed home plate and then she gave us both high-fives. It was the cutest thing.

Props

Penny is trying my patience these days. She says no to everything - everything - that I ask her. Even if the answer is yes. If I ask her if she wants some water, she'll stomp her feet and say (really loudly), "No. No water." --- as she is taking the water from me to drink. The last two days have been an almost constant stream of no. But. She has also found the time to be really cute and funny too.

Tray tied a bandana on her head. She kept patting it to make sure it was still on. She liked it a lot, and she liked saying the word bandana too.



Playing with her sunglasses while "helping" me pack up some photo albums. Notice they are on upside down again.



She is such a rock star.



See what I mean? Cute. Hard to stay frustrated with that.

Samantha

All my life children have had trouble pronouncing my name. It usually comes out as Samaffa, Mantha, or, most commonly, Maffa. Penny's been calling us Tray and Sam for a month or so now. She still really calls us Mommy and Daddy, but she likes to experiment with our names too. Yesterday she started calling me Samantha, and besides being pretty funny when she does it, she pronounces it exactly right.

Anniversary

Happy Anniversary, Tray! Eight years today. Here's to many more!

Throwing Arm

I think we've got a future major leaguer on our hands. Penny was having such fun throwing the tennis ball around yesterday afternoon. I filmed a bit of it just because. I tried teaching her how to throw "granny style" between her legs, but she only got as far as "hold it with both hands" in the instructions. So, when you see her throw it over-hand with both hands, that's the result. A career in coaching is probably not in my future.



After she was done doing that, we planted some seeds in the garden. She had fun sowing seeds (throwing a handful down in the general direction that I indicated). I think there will need to be some thinning of the seedlings when they sprout. :)

A Brief History of Sleep

When Penny as first born, she slept all the time. That first week home from the hospital, all she did was sleep. We couldn't wake her to eat. She was born on Monday and did not even cry - not even once - until Friday. And then. She woke up. And hasn't been back to sleep since. I kid. (A little.)

There were days during weeks 3 - 4 when she didn't sleep for 14 or 15 hour stretches. Didn't sleep. At all. For 15 hours. Mind boggling.

But, then, about 8 weeks, she started sleeping at night. The first night she slept for 3 hours, and then it was 3.5, and then 4, and so forth. For awhile there she went to bed at midnight and slept until 7 (she woke when the sun came up). Gradually, bedtime crept backwards to 1130, then 11, then 1030, and so forth. At some point the time changed, and the average asleep-in-the-crib time became 830.

All well and good. But naps. Oh, naps. Therein lies the issue. For the months that she went to bed about 11 to midnight and slept until 7, she woke at 7 and I nursed her and she would go back to sleep until 10. She did that for probably two months. I always said that I felt like I was cheating saying that she slept "through the night" because if she'd have gone to bed at 9 and slept until 4, nursed and was back to sleep until 7 (the same schedule pushed back 3 hours) everyone would have said she was "waking during the night". But it was the same thing! Same. Thing. Only I got to claim that she was "sleeping through the night" (insert eye-rolling).

As she started going to bed earlier, that going back to sleep started taking longer in the mornings. Gradually, she'd be up for thirty minutes or an hour before falling back to sleep and sleeping until 10. But the thing is, she has always needed to fall back to sleep in the mornings like that. She still does.

She doesn't want to sleep in the afternoons. I know all the books say one nap a day - just after lunch. But it doesn't work that way for us. If she goes to sleep at noon, she will not fall asleep until 10 o'clock or later. And, well, yeah, okay fine - so what? Except I really value my "free time" in the evenings and those nights that she stays up until 10 are very frustrating. I have to work on my class, and house projects to get it ready to sell, and just general housework, and occasionally I like to check my email, and oh my gosh kid, just go to sleep already! (Did I mention we cancelled our cable because we went like two months without even turning our tv on?)

If she doesn't take a nap at all though, she's asleep at 7 like a light. And I have hours and hours of free time that I use skipping through the daisies. But she can be cranky doing that.

If she goes back to sleep mid-morning, she'll be asleep around 830. Which I can live with.

So. To recap. Morning naps, or no naps. I'm cool with either. Afternoon naps? Not so much.

And, then,

We have been so busy trying to get our house ready to put on the market, but at least once a day I think about something that I want to post to the blog. But then if I do get a minute online I can't seem to remember what it was. That makes me sad because I'm forgetting things I wanted to remember - which is why I have the blog in the first place. I have two things that I can think of right now. Developmentally, Penny's starting to give orders more rather than just respond to questions, or ask questions even. Now she'll tell me to do something, like "move that there" or "sit here" or "come here." That's kind of neat. She's not too bossy. Yet. The other thing is she's experimenting a lot with is temporal words - before, after, next, then, etc. Today she was playing in the boat outside and "sliding" down the sloped bulkhead (not sure if that's what it is, but I'm calling it a bulkhead - it's on the inside of the boat). I asked her to get down. She said, "slide, then get down" (emphasis hers). Also this afternoon she brought me a small stack of books one by one and when they were all gone she moved to bring me a pillow. As she handed me each book she stated the book's title, and then when she picked up the pillow she said, "and next a pillow too." I think she understands the concept of "yesterday," but she calls anything that happened yesterday, "last night." She's just now starting to use all those words in conversation, but she understands them more than she says because I can explain things to her saying we are going to do such and such and then something else and so forth and she seems to understand. I just love watching her start figuring out concepts like this because it just seems to be totally out of the blue, like I'm not quizzing her on these concepts but she's clearly been working on them herself the last couple days. So, next, I'm going to go get ready for bed. House should be listed this weekend. We are excited! Updates to follow.

Gazillion Bubbles

Penny loves bubbles. More accurately, she loves trying to blow bubbles herself with the bubble wand and spilling bubble juice everywhere. So. We bought her this way-cool bubble machine that blows a gazillion bubbles (seriously, that's its name). Penny was oddly disinterested and perhaps even a bit scared because it requires a motor to operate - and motors make noise. She looked at the bubbles like, "huh. bubbles. what else you got?" Tray and I, on the other hand, think this thing is the coolest thing since sliced bread. If a breeze is blowing, it can fill up our whole backyard with bubbles and it is so pretty. Tray set it up at the top of our back steps so we can turn it on and walk down the stairs surrounded by bubbles. :)

P for Penny

I keep wanting to write a long post about everything that is going on right now, but I just don't have the time. The house should be on the market this week though, so I am hopeful to have more time in the near future.

A brief tidbit: Penny no longer calls herself Penty. She has definitively dropped the T. It's kind of sad, because we thought it was cute. But anyway. Here is a drawing she did last week. She took the clipboard and paper and pen and went away around the staircase and drew. She laid down on her stomach propped up on her arms just like a teenager might lay to draw. When she was finished, this is what she had drawn. Lots of P's for Penny. There's a long way yet before symbols become symbols and stand for something, but what is cool to me is the intentionality behind drawing something other than scribbling (which is what she does 99.9% of the time - as it should be).

Swinging with Mr. Bear

Pushing Mr. Bear in the swing.


So far, so good.


Thwack.



Shake it off.


Pause to wipe the dirt off my hands.


Ok, Mr. Bear. Let's get you out.


That was fun, right? Let's keep the good times going; I'll walk us over here on my tiptoes!


Come on, Mr. Bear. Let's get some cool water.

Can we go fishing yet?

I'm ready to go.

The Little Engine That Could

Penny calls this book "Train That Could" and loves to read it. Tray and I watched from the doorway as she sat herself in the recliner and read it to herself. I grabbed the camera to film it to share with her Uncle Chris (who gave her the book for Christmas), but unfortunately the sound didn't pick up that well. Basically, all she was doing was pointing out various things about the pictures on each page. She wasn't really recounting the story, although she does do that sometimes (in a limited manner).

This Little Piggy

The other night when Penny was *supposed* to be going to sleep, she did something really funny. She played "this little piggy" with her own toes. But she apparently doesn't know all the words because it went like this:

holding her first toe, "This little piggy..." [pause]
moves to second toe, "This little piggy..." [pause]
moves to third toe...and so forth until she came to the end. She ran through all five toes twice and then, the grande finale. She took her hands and wiggled her fingers up her legs and went, "Wheee, wheeee, wheee. All the way home."

I just about died laughing.