Nautical Party

Today we went to Penny's friend Arran's 2nd birthday party. It was nautical themed and all the kids got little sailor hats to decorate. Penny did not want to decorate hers, but she was just as cute in plain white. It was super hot even though it was this morning (we are under heat advisory here), but their yard was very shady. I keep meaning to write a post about how quirky Penny can be, but I think it might be a really long post. Ha! Arran's mom had chocolate cupcakes instead of a cake. Penny liked the icing but wouldn't eat the cupcake even though I kept offering her small pieces that I broke off her. She finally said something that made me realize that she thought the cake was dirt (because it was brown and crumbly). We explained that it was cake just like her birthday cake (which had been a white cake). Once she took a bite she immediately went, "Mmm. That's good!" She's a nut.

Oh - in potty training news, she wore a diaper to the party, but we had just sat down in the grass to eat our brunch when Penny told me she had to go potty. So we went inside and I helped her use the potty. I thought that was pretty cool that she still wanted to go even though she was in an unfamiliar place.

Diapers

Know how many diapers Penny has used in the last two days (including nighttime)? One.

And it was totally my fault for leaving her in the bedroom today by herself because she wouldn't take a nap and I needed to get some work done. She was screaming the toddler equivalent of obscenities at me, but I was ignoring her. So. Anyway, pretty much potty trained, that one is. I am so proud of her. I think it will be along while yet before I take her out to the store or something sans diaper, but seriously I usually wash diapers every two days and tonight would be the night to wash them. And there is all of one diaper to wash. Awesome!

Also awesome: the lack of her nap today means she fell asleep at 8 pm instead of 10! Hurray! I am off to eat a bowl of ice cream.

Penny-beeps and Pie-Pies

I keep meaning to post about this, but haven't gotten around to it. I wish now that I had written down when this started, because now I can't remember. At least since May or June Penny has been making up her own silly words and concepts. One day I was changing her diaper and she looked at me and said, "I'm a Penny-beep." I said, "You're a Penny-beep?" She nodded and said, "and you're a Mommy-beep." Daddy is also sometimes a Daddy-beep and there was a box in the dining room that she was playing with for a while there that was sometimes a box-beep. Don't ask me. I have no idea.

She also has invented something called a pie-pie. It seems to be an imaginary food-stuff. She'll occassionally hold her hands cupped together and say, "I have a pie-pie," or, "I have two pie-pies."

The alligator in the corner of the living room is still there and gets almost daily offerings of food. It is funny to walk into the living room and find almost like a little shrine of offerings to the imaginary alligator - a bowl of cheerios, the lid to one of her toys (probably used as a "plate"), etc. He is apparently a very hungry alligator.

On the flip side of the imagination is that she is suddenly more fearful of random things. For two mornings last week she didn't want me to put her down when we woke up in the morning. She said something like, "There's no snakes out there." I think she had bad dreams to that effect. She has learned the word "scared" and will tell us almost daily about something or another that she has decided that she is "scared" of. Today it was the blinds. On Friday I took her to the grocery store and as I carried her into the store a car passed us in the parking lot. She latched on chimpanzee style until it went past and then she leaned up and said, "I'm a little scared of cars and trucks." Not a bad thing to be scared of I guess, but I actually had to stifle a chuckle at the way she said it. She is so cute sometimes.

Housing Updates

We had another showing this afternoon. The family from last weekend evidently didn't work out. The school zones we are in are not good (really bad actually) and according to their realtor that was a concern for them. We saw the guy who came to look at our house today and he did not seem the type to care about school zones, so maybe he'll be interested in buying it. You never know.

We are having the home inspection on the house in Troy on Tuesday, and providing that goes well, we'll move forward with the bank. Hopefully we can close on that place in a couple weeks.

Birthday Milestones

We had a really low-key, but fun, birthday celebration with Penny. We went for a boat ride on the Wakulla River and had a good time. We ate cake and opened presents. I believe there may have been balloons and streamers and possibly even party hats (which Penny called pig hats after her If You Give a Pig a Party book). Penny liked all her presents - a toy airplane, tractor, book, and assorted cooking implements (for her play stove). I also got her a tea set. She doesn't recognize it as a tea pot though. She thinks it is a watering can for watering flowers! Ha!

In taking stock of the day, it's just amazing how much she has changed since two years ago when she first came into the world. I don't know what it is exactly, but both Tray and I noticed starting about a week ago that she seems to have made another "great leap forward" verbally (Sorry - just finished the China section of my World class). I think it's partly that she can talk about past tense and future tense things now. She will talk about things that she did and will do. She's also really into figuring out her "opposites" - she likes big and little, in and out, under and over, etc. and likes playing games with herself and us that involve getting to demonstrate/practice this, like climbing over and under our legs when we are sitting down.

Also, she has become more engaged in pretend play. She will talk to her animals and Gigi-baby and ask them questions and have them do things. She laid on the bed the other day and said she was going to sleep, but then she sat up and let me know, "I not go sleep. I 'tend go sleep." Then I was joking around with her to see if I could get her to pretend to be various animals and she flapped her arms when I asked her to pretend to be a bird. It was pretty cool.

Two!

Penelope is two years old! Hurray! Happy Birthday!

One Year Old

I would just like to point out (to myself) that according to the ticker at the top of this page, Penny is today 1 year, 11 months, 3 weeks, and 6 days old. I have precious few days left to refer to her as a one year old. In a couple days she really will be two. Amazing!

Moving Update

We put in an offer on a house in Troy! I am very excited and hope it works out. We also had a family come and look at our house here in Tallahassee yesterday, so we are also very hopeful that they will want to buy this place from us. We actually stayed here while they looked around and they seemed to like it very much, so fingers crossed. Even though we were approved to carry a second (small) mortgage, it will be nice not to have two at one time.

In Penny news, she definitely regressed on the potty training while Tray was out of town last week looking for houses in Troy, but she's getting back on track now that he's been home a couple days. We've also transitioned her to an afternoon, just after lunch, nap, but that means she doesn't go to sleep now until between 930 and 10 p.m., which means a lot less time for me at night. I can't seem to get to bed before midnight these days. I am looking forward to getting back into the central time zone (I like central time better anyway), because if we act as though she's still in the eastern time zone in terms of timing her lunch and nap, etc, that means she'll fall asleep at 9 in central time. I know this is just a transition time to get through and that it will change in a few months - I really can't see that she'll be taking afternoon naps much past the age of 2 1/2, or soon she'll be up until midnight!

Funny anecdote: last night, I was laying in bed next to her and my hand had fallen down between the two pillows. I felt her sit up and look at me, lay down, sit up again as if doing a double-take, and then she took my hand in both of hers and gently pulled whispering, "Mommy, your arm is stuck." It was so sweet. :)

Porch running

When it's raining out, Penny likes to go on the front porch so she can be outside without being in the rain. She'll run back and forth from one end to the other. We have a swing on one end of the porch and I was swinging in it while she ran. She'd run down to the other end of the porch and then run back and give me a hug - over and over again. At some point she took my hand in hers and said, "I'm holding your hand." And then she started running back and forth again, and every time she got to the other end she'd turn around and say, "I'm coming back and I"m going to hold your hand." And she'd do just that. So, I know this isn't much of a story, but it was very sweet.

Wherein I totally jinx myself

We have only had to change one poopy diaper all week! Penny has been going to the potty like a champ. She was so funny about wanting to hide behind a towel or something when she goes, but now she seems ok as long as I (or Tray) hide around the corner while she does her thing. She's been using the baby bjorn chair, but just yesterday she started asking to use the seat cover for the "big potty." I hung up a load of diapers to dry this morning and I had the thought that in a couple months I won't be washing diapers anymore. It's bittersweet.

She's also increasingly using a "regular" cup to drink out of instead of her straw sippy cup. She will at times refuse to use anything other than an open cup -- and she's getting really good at it too.

She's just moving so fast. I can't believe her 2nd birthday is next Wednesday. I have a hard time remembering that she is only 1; I've thought of her as two for so long now that it seems weird that she won't be until next week.

I'm sure her world is about to be turned upside down with moving in the next couple weeks and me starting my new job, but for now we are enjoying this nice lull -- the calm before the storm. Everything with her seems so peaceful, so I am sure that when we move it will all be chaos with lots of regressions. That's alright though, we'll be there to help her through it.

Sodor of South-Southwood

Last month I bought Penny a Thomas the Train set. It's the very basic beginner set that just makes an oval. It came with Thomas, Percy, and a caboose. Any of you who know anything about Thomas know how expensive this stuff is. I couldn't afford any accessories! So, I set her up with some household accessories:



This is all my doing, but she sure had fun playing with it. Ironically (and stereotypically), her favorite thing was the cardboard tunnel I made for the train to go under. :)

Old McDonald

Here's a recent anecdote to counteract the old stuff I posted earlier. Penny loves the song Old McDonald and loves it when Tray plays it for her on his guitar. She will sing the song to herself when she is falling asleep at night, but doesn't try to sing along when Tray plays or when we sing it for her. On a related note, we also have a dulcimer that Tray plays sometimes, but mostly we let Penny strum on it as though it were a Penny-size guitar. It actually lays on the floor for her and being an almost-two year old she just sort of plucks at it and maybe strums sometimes. This morning I was in the kitchen and I heard her in the living room strumming on the dulcimer and singing Old McDonald. She's not going to be winning any Grammy awards any time soon (ha!), but it was so cool that she was "playing" and singing at the same time. I so wished I could have captured it on camera.

Cages

In case you can't tell, I've been posting a bunch of old photos and things recently. I drowned my camera and let it sit in a bag of rice for a few days to dry it out. It worked great except that a small section of rice got down in the memory card slot and up in the mechanism. I finally worked it out with a toothpick and now my camera works again (hurrah!). But there are so many things on there that I would have liked to share that now seem hopelessly outdated. Case in point: my old job. I officially quit, what, two, three weeks ago now? It was mid-June, just before they tore out the decades-old cages and put in regular boring cubicles. So here, for your enjoyment, are some photos of my old cages. Rest in peace.

Unfortunately, I didn't get these pictures taken until most of the stuff that used to be there was either already moved or packed and ready to go. Here's a shot looking down the hallway.



This was my cage:



This is looking across the hall from my cage - I actually occupied that cage most of the time that I was pregnant with Penny. I moved into the one above with the window after I got back from maternity leave.



This is a view out of my window. You can see the top of the Leon-Jefferson Civic Center there. That's where I graduated with my PhD. I also used to go for walks everyday out and around that building when I was pregnant right up until a couple weeks before she was born (when I left for maternity leave). And just over the top of it you can see some of the buildings of FSU.



Ahh, memories.

Trucks

Penny's latest obsession is construction equipment. She loves dump trucks, front-end loaders, etc. They are working on a pipeline that crosses Woodville Highway and also doing construction at the intersection of Woodville Highway and Capital Circle, so she sees two construction zones on the way into town. She points to every one and asks me what it is. Basically, I know front-end loader, bulldozer, dump truck, gravel truck, and that's about it. I also can point out for her eighteen-wheelers, flatbed trucks, pickup trucks, and tow trucks. However, in naming things for her, I have discovered that there are tons of types of trucks and construction equipment that I don't know the name for. So, I just say, "that's a truck," or, "that's a tractor." I took her to Toys R Us a couple weeks ago and bought her a John Deere dump truck (small) and she was so excited about it. She couldn't wait to get home to show her Daddy and after she did she proclaimed, "I like my dump truck." :)

Wakulla Beach

A couple weeks ago we took Penny down to Wakulla Beach to go swimming. We were worried that the oil would be here, but so far it hasn't gotten this far east yet. She had fun getting in the water and watching the crabs run on the beach.

Psychedelia

No time for a longer post, but found this photo in my files. It's from two weeks ago or so. Penny and Mullet.

Spring Creek

iPhoto tells me these were taken May 30 - so Memorial Day weekend I guess. This is Penny "swimming" in Spring Creek.



She was really great and let Tray and I fish our way back down the creek after swimming, and this is from the next night when we cooked the fish. This is Penny eating grits and Spring Creek bream.

Kermit

Ok, so we are one of those crunchy-hippy type families without a t.v. Actually, we have a t.v., but it's the one I got when I went off to college in 1996 and there was that whole digital revolution thing and we never got a converter box and cancelled our cable and now our rabbit ears won't work so, yeah, no t.v.
Anyway, Penny sometimes watches sesame street segments on you tube. She doesn't like anything featuring: 1. words, 2. a character falling down, and/or 3. a character getting dirty. She mostly likes songs. She really likes Fiest singing 1,2,3,4 and Elmo's Song as well as Elmo riding his tricycle. The sole exception to the spoken word prohibition is Jack Black defining octagon, which she could watch a hundred thousand times in a row. She always smirks when she sees him (first crush?).
Today she let us watch Kermit singing "Being Green" and it was so cute! She kept trying to get his attention: "Hi! Hi Kermit! Hi!" [to me] "What's Kermit doing?" [me:] "He's singing." [Penny to Kermit] "Hi Kermit!" Then she took her stuffed duck she was holding at the time and made it give Kermit kisses and then she leaned in and gave Kermit several kisses. It was so cute the way she kept trying to talk to him. And after we watched it the third time or so she started mouthing some of the words along. I saw her say, "being green," along with him. So cute.