Twenty Questions for the New Three Year Old June 5, 2013

In keeping with tradition, here are “Layla’s” answers to the twenty questions this year.  While she is old enough to answer them herself this year, most of these answers are based off my experience with her.  I tried to ask her the questions herself and she wasn’t being thoughtful in her answers (imagine that in a three year old!), just saying the first thing she saw (i.e. what is your favorite color? and she held up what she was holding at the time and said “this color”).

1) What is your favorite color?  Yellow

2) What is your favorite toy?  Dolls

3) What is your favorite fruit?  Strawberries (she says, although she has been known to turn them down from time to time recently)

4) What is your favorite TV show?  Team Umizoomi

5) What is your favorite thing to eat for lunch?  Quesadilla, she says.  Not true.  She likes to ask for a “quesadilla” which for her is a tortilla with some shredded cheese (not melted) in it.  She’ll have a couple of bites and be done with it.  I’d say soup is her fave.

6) What is your favorite outfit?  Pink Colts jersey or Hello Kitty Shirt, jean skirt, “red riding” sweater or Hello Kitty zip up sweatshirt.

7) What is your favorite game? Ker Plunk (what a pain that is to set up!)

8) What is your favorite snack? Cheese Its

9) What is your favorite animal? She says birdies, but I think she just said the first one she could think of.  She loves our dogs and cat.

10) What is your favorite song? Alphabet song (she is saying she likes this more than She’ll Be Comin’ Round the Mountain, but history would say otherwise)

11) What is your favorite book?  Magnet Color Safari book

12) Who is your best friend? Lila (from day care) and Sophie

13) What is your favorite cereal?  Cocoa Krispies

14) What is your favorite thing to do outside? Line up her strollers

15) What is your favorite drink?  Yogurt drink

16) What is your favorite holiday?  Christmas

17) What do you like to take with you to bed at night? “Colts pillow”, which is really a hippo pillow, lots of quilts, big Minnie, plus a whole bunch of dolls and stuffed animals that rotate between the bottom of the bed and up with her.

18) What is your favorite thing to eat for breakfast? Right now it’s cereal, but it changes all the time.

19) What do you want for dinner for your birthday?  Red Robin (mac & cheese – and not much of it)

20) What do you want to be when you grow up? A dinosaur.

I can’t believe she is three already!  She is such a wonderful little girl, we are really lucky to have her in our lives.  She’s so loving, cute, funny, smart, sweet… the list goes on.  Love you, little Lay! xxx

Early Riser April 30, 2013

We are really pretty lucky when it comes to our kids and sleep, but lately Layla has been getting up a bit too early and refusing to go back to bed.

She has been in a big girl bed for 4 months or so, so we are really at her mercy to stay in bed.  We never had any trouble whatsoever with Hayden when he went in his big boy bed all those years ago.  We told him he couldn’t get out of it, and he listened.  Layla on the other hand has no trouble making her own rules and coming into our room an hour or more before wake up time.  Last night, in fact, in the middle of the night I woke to her climbing into bed in between me and John.  I had to physically pick her up and carry her back to her bed.

So my friend Anita has lent me this clock that is supposed to show her when it is ok to get up.  You set it to a specific time, and once that time comes it lights up and has a picture of the sun on it.  All through the night it stays dark and has a picture of a star on it, to show it’s time for sleep.  Last night was the first night we tried it.  She was really excited about it at first (as was Hayden, who wanted one in his room), then as it got closer to bedtime she started to act a little scared of it.  She asked me to take it out of the room, but I was able to talk her out of that.  We tried to set it to an early enough time that she wouldn’t have to wait too long before she saw the sun light up.  We figured we’d get her used to it and as she got the hang of it we’d start setting the time a little later each day.  She woke up before it lit up though.  John took her back into her room and stayed with her until it lit up.  So, hopefully she will know for tomorrow what will happen.  It would be good to be able to get an extra 30 minutes or so in the morning – particularly on the weekend!

Singin’ and Addin’

Hayden loves to “put on a song” or “put on a CD”, which means he is going to start singing.  He’ll take a book and “sing” the story that he is seeing, with a lot of musical sounds in accompaniment (almost like “doo-doo-doo” but more of an unspellable sound).  Yesterday he had been looking at a train book, and he started singing a song that said “train” over and over with various humming/instrumental sounds in between.  It’s fun to see such a creative side coming out in him.

He also spends a lot of his energy on adding.  Specifically, he likes to think of things that add up to 12.  He could easily pass and hour or two asking, “Does 6 plus 6 equal 12?” “Does 9 plus 3 equal 12?” or “what does 7 plus 5 equal?” If I give the right answer, he’ll tell me Yes, good job!  But if I tease him and give him a different number he’ll laugh and tell me no.  I try to get him to branch out a bit since he clearly has 12 down really well and I’ll try with another number like 15, but he is not too receptive about other numbers. 

It’s also worth noting that he has mentioned several times lately that his favorite number is 7.  He had several favorite numbers before, but 7 seems to be holding the top spot currently.

Easter April 15, 2013

Again, not really sure where to start since we haven’t written in so long.  So Easter it is!  We went to the neighborhood Easter egg hunt, as we like to do each year.  Thought we would miss it this year as we were scheduled to be out of town, but had to cancel that trip at the last minute due to predicted snow.  So had to quickly go get Layla an Easter dress for the occasion to peak out from under her coat (since it has taken FOREVER for spring to get here!).  Layla was scared of the Easter bunny and wouldn’t sit on his lap, so bit of a bummer that we couldn’t get a photo of the kids together with him.

Easter weekend we went to Grandma and Grandpa’s on Saturday.  Normally we have a big Easter brunch with the whole family, but everyone was out of town except us and Grandma and Grandpa, so we had a little get together with Chinese food.  We were able to

throw together a post-Easter brunch with the rest of the gang the following weekend though (by now it might be apparent that the kids had PLENTY of Easter time this year).  They also had an Easter egg hunt at their day care center.  Then Sunday we went to Grandpaman’s and Grandma G’s.  Our friends the Carter’s joined us – they are here from the UK for 3 years, much to our delight.  My dad and Gretchen were kind enough to invite them over, and we had some wonderful food and play time there.

Teeth!

I’m really sad that it has been so long since either of us posted.  I got a new position and went up to full time in March.  It’s been good and luckily it’s mostly manageable, but so far it hasn’t left enough free time to keep up with blogging (and then the longer you go without blogging, the more there is to write about, and the more daunting it seems to start posting!).  So I don’t really know where to begin, so I’ll start with the face that our (5 year old) baby boy has started to lose his teeth!  He lost the first, heart breakingly, when John and I were in Cozumel on vacation and the kids were with Grandma and Grandpa for a few days.  It wasn’t really even that loose, but it decided to pop out while we were gone.  I remember when I lost my first tooth, and the second one fell out the day after the first, so I thought Hayden’s second would come out quickly, but it took until 2 days ago which was 5 or 6 weeks later.  It was pretty loose for a while, but he doesn’t really seem to bother with his teeth when they are loose (I remember I was a big time tooth wiggler when mine were loose) so it took a long time to come out.  I picked him up from a birthday party on Saturday, and it was gone!  He didn’t seem to realize, nor did anyone else who had been at the party.  So with both of the teeth it seems like they must have come out when he was eating and he swallowed them or something because we’ve never seen them once they’ve come out!

Times are A Changin’ February 14, 2013

Well there are a lot of changes happening around here.  Layla moved into a big girl bed a couple of weeks ago.  It’s been fun picking out her sheets.  I thought she would want princess or something, so she surprised me when we shopped for them and there were lots of princess or fairy options and she went for “birdies and owls.”  Very cute choice, but I was surprised!  Then we looked for another set (for when those are dirty), and she chose ladybugs over butterflies.  She’s a mystery!  Glad I took her along or I would have made all the wrong choices.

Both of them are liking their new school.  Hayden got to go on a field trip!  His first one ever.  He got to take the bus, even.  They went to the library.  He was so excited, and the timing couldn’t have been better as he was a little down that day because he doesn’t normally go to school on a Tuesday, but he had to that day because I’d switched my working day from Monday to Tuesday so we could go to Great Wolf Lodge.  He’d had so much fun at GWL that he was sad when we came home, and then even sadder to have a school day on a day he normally doesn’t.  So when we found out he was going to get to go on a field trip it was just the perk up he could use.

We are also about to adjust to me going from part time to full time.  I have gotten a new position which I am really excited about.  I’ve been in IT for 13 years, doing support and implementations, and I am moving over to a sales role.  I will be with the same company, but doing something completely different.  I can’t wait to start!  The downside of course is I am going from a 3-day per week schedule to full time.  However, I have been reassured (continuously, along my many interviews) that the schedule is flexible so currently I am only planning to bump them up to one extra day in day care, and keep Fridays free.  Hopefully I will be able to sustain that.  John and I had talked before about putting Hayden in day care 4 days/week this year anyway, to try to get him prepared for 5 days weeks when he starts elementary school.  We decided not to do that in the end, but this will facilitate that anyway even though it wasn’t the intention.  That job I HOPE is going to start Mar 1, although no one can seem to agree on a date between my current and future management.

Thank You So Much! January 21, 2013

Layla has been saying, “Thank you so much!” lately, most often when we give her fruit after dinner.  We’ll bring the fruit to her and she’ll give a little gasp and say, “Thank you so much!” and seem genuinely grateful.  It doesn’t make for a very long blog, but it is very sweet and funny in person!