Halloween 2010

Halloween went much better than anticipated! As if to further my point, earlier today Penny let me put ponytails in her hair. They lasted all of 20 minutes, and she wouldn't let me do it for trick or treating, but baby steps.
Here she is checking them out:



And here's the best shot I managed to get of the actual hairdo with my camera phone:


Actual trick-or-treating turned out to be such a blast. The wand got in the way of picking out candy and it also made her nervous to be holding it when confronted by strangers, so I ended up carrying it. But otherwise, she did much better than I thought she would. I don't think she remembered to say trick-or-treat, or talked at all for that matter except when it was just the three of us walking between houses, but she didn't get shy and latch onto us. Instead, she dutifully stood there and picked out candy. She was very funny though - she'd take one piece and that was it. If the person offered her another, she'd say no (so, come to think of it, I guess she did talk to say that!). In between houses when it was just us, she talked and talked. She kept asking "does that house have candy too?" Like, she just couldn't believe that people were giving out candy. She wanted to open every piece that she got, but she was easily deflected by saying, "Well, let's wait and see what this house has." She'd go, "Yeah!" and that was that. She was so excited to trick-or-treat. I'm sure she'll have more fun as she gets older, but this year was so sweet because there was no greed involved. She was so genuine in her excitement, and it was infectious.

Here she is before trick-or-treating at Nana and MawMaw's house:



And eating some candy corn:



We got back to our house about 715 or so and passed out candy ourselves. She kept peeking out the front window (on tiptoes) and asking if there were any more people coming to the door. Between being up later than normal and the sugar high, she was cranky going to bed, but it was worth it overall. I hope I always remember this evening and that genuine innocence and excitement. Now I'm really looking forward to Christmas morning!

Fairy?

Tomorrow is Halloween and I am a little worried about how it is going to go. Penny likes candy, so she's excited about that part, but she doesn't like people - ha! Well, she likes them fine, but not when they actually talk to her. And probably not when they are dressed up in strange costumes. I am also worried about getting her to wear hers. I tried to find the most non-costume costume that I could because I knew she would not tolerate dressing up in anything too much out of the ordinary. (This is a girl who gets embarrassed to look in the mirror with a ponytail in her hair.) Old Navy had their fairy costumes marked way down so I got her one of those. It is pretty much just a dress with tiny wings attached on the back and it has a wand. I figured I could get her to wear a dress. She likes dresses sometimes. I think she'll carry the wand up until we get to the first house. At that point, she'll probably latch onto one of us and abandon the whole enterprise. Well, I guess we can always stay home and pass out candy to other kids. Here's hoping it all goes better than I think it will. And if not, I just need to keep in mind that she is two, not seven.

Johnny Knoxville

Had to use his given name since this is a family establishment. Penny's latest daredevil antics:

Medley

I found some videos to post! This is from August, just after we'd moved to Troy. Penny is playing guitar with Tray and singing a medley of "Old MacDonald" and "Keep on the Sunnyside." Um - I would advise against turning up the volume very loud.

Making Faces

Penny has this new face that she makes that Tray and I cannot stand. It's a cross between a glare and a glower and is used by her to express her dissatisfaction with something. She knows that we don't like it, so the face itself is like her little way of being disobedient on top of whatever else it is she is doing that precipitated the face.

She also likes to tell on herself if she does something "bad." For example, she isn't supposed to get onto her bed with her shoes on, but she will and then come running to tell me, "I just put my shoes on the bed!" Or I'll get her down and tell her no and Tray will walk in from outside and she'll have to run over to him to announce, "I just put my shoes on the bed!" Not in an excited way, but seriously an admission of something she knew she wasn't supposed to do.

This evening she and I were in her bedroom going night-night, with some gentle coercion from me. It was dark so I couldn't see her clearly, but she announced to me, "Mommy, I'm making that face at you." It is so hard not to laugh at times like that.

Riding My Tricycle, Easy To Do

That's Penny's favorite Elmo skit on Sesame Street youtube. (On a separate, but related note - what is UP with Elmo's World on Sesame Street? Are they trying to damage kid's brains with insane amounts of overstimulation?)

Anyway. Penny can ride her tricycle now! I failed to report this in my earlier skillz entry. It certainly qualifies. She often starts off pedaling backwards, but soon gets going in the right direction. She's still not great about steering, but she's got the pedaling down.

Skillz

We re-upped Penny's gymnastics class for the new term, and the first class was on Thursday. There was a week off between the last week of the last term and this week. At the last class we attended two weeks ago, Penny could not jump on the trampolines. I am very happy to report that this week she was able to jump! She jumped on the trampoline and had a big time. There was zero evidence that just two weeks ago, this was a skill she did not possess.

At the end of class the instructors always give the kids something. For a couple weeks there, they gave out dum-dums and Penny has asked every time before we go if she is going to get a lolli-pop. Unfortunately for her, they often give out stamps on the hand or stickers instead. She loathes the stamps. I have to take her to the bathroom immediately to wash it off every time. This week she got a green star sticker though that Miss Hannah gave her. She really likes Miss Hannah. Penny started to put it on her shirt like she does with all stickers, but she heard Miss Hannah suggest to another girl that she put it on her hand, and so she immediately put it on her hand. The way she was holding her hand so carefully was so cute. She asked me to roll her sleeve up too so she could see it. You could tell the sticker was extra special because Miss Hannah had given it to her.

In other new skill news, Penny has started being able to eat corn on the cob. This may seem minor, but she's always been somewhat averse to biting things off. She eats well if it is cut up for her, but biting into a sandwich or hamburger, or an apple, or corn on the cob, has not been her thing. She would eat bananas without them being sliced, but that was about it. Until this week, when she figured out how to eat corn on the cob. She also put a hurtin' on a hamburger from Burger King on the way back from Tallahassee. I didn't have to tear up pieces for her or anything. She ate it like a hamburger. Pretty cool.

Actually..

I so wish I had been posting more regularly here because I want to keep track of the stuff Penny does so I won't forget. She's really been feeling the strain of moving that we all have felt. She's been kind of hard to deal with the last few days. She's definitely high maintenance, but I know she'll settle down again if we can get back into a routine.
In terms of talking, she's just a little jabberwocky going on and on and on just to hear her own voice I think sometimes. She'll string sentences together with all kinds of connector words, but, and and, and so, and then, creating one long run-on sentence, the parts of which do not necessarily bear any relationship to one another. Tray joked that she sounds like some of the papers he used to write for grad school. Ha!
One of my favorite words that she uses nowadays is "actually." If you say something that's wrong, she'll correct you with, "actually,...". Like, "Penny, do you want to wear this green shirt?" "Actually, it's blue." Or, if you give her something to eat and she wants something else, she'll say, for example, "actually, I want a banana." It just trips me out.
Yesterday, I was putting something together and she was holding the bag of screws for me (to "help"). I asked her to hand me a screw and she took a longish time, so I reached for the bag. She yanked it back and said (with deep seriousness), "Wait a minute! I will get one for you."
On the negative side of things, she will also say stuff like "leave me alone," "don't bother me," "stop it," etc. when she isn't getting her way. That stuff annoys me. A lot of times I don't think she means to sound as, well, "mean" as she sounds, but she is working out how to express herself. I hope she works it out soon! (But, I'm not holding my breath.)

Moving

I see that my last post was on October 3, so I'm falling down on the job around here. Ha! We got an offer on our Tallahassee house, so in addition to the 5 classes I am teaching and the two year old, we've been traveling back and forth to get that place cleared out. Which, you know, no big deal except for the aforementioned two year old. Who Will. Not. sleep in the car even if we are in the vehicle for 3.5 hours through her nap time and she is yawning profusely. At one point she asked if we could go back "to the Alabama house" so she could go night-night and then we could keep going to Florida.

Anyway. We met the new (potential) owners and they seem really nice. They are going to lease the house from us until December when we will close. Hopefully. It will be SO nice not to have two mortgages.

BUT and ALSO, we got new phones! Palm Pre phones to be exact. And they are awesome. They have cameras! And video features! So, I will be posting more of that type stuff hopefully. If I get a spare moment to do so. I am actually typing this in my classroom as my students are taking a test.

Mommy Tell Mr. Bear...

On the way back from Tallahassee this afternoon, Penny and I had this thirty minute conversation (at least) in which she prefaced every single thing that she said with, "Mommy, tell Mr. Bear..." As in, "Mommy, tell Mr. Bear 'where'd Penny go?'" Ok, I said, "Mr. Bear, Where'd Penny go?" and then she'd say, "Mommy, tell Mr. Bear 'there she is!'" and so on and so forth. "Mommy, tell Mr. Bear Penny wants a snack." Me: "Mr. Bear, Penny wants a snack. Penny, what would you like to eat?" Penny: "Mommy, tell Mr. Bear she wants a nutrigrain bar." Even later on after she got upset because we'd seen a train and I wouldn't turn around and go back for us to look at it some more, she said through sobs, "Mommy tell Mr. Bear that she [meaning Penny] wants to see the train!" It was the most wonderfully bizarre thing.

And then after she'd been crying about the train, we stopped at the rest area outside of Dothan for her to go potty and I needed to wash her face (combination of tears and nutrigrain bar remnants). She asked me something about why I had to wash her face and I said because it got dirty when you were crying. She said, "I was crying cuz you wouldn't give me a hug!" It broke my heart and made me laugh at the same time. Also, I think that might be the first time she correctly used the concept of 'because' in a sentence.