Happy birthday, Layla! Twenty questions May 24, 2012

I found this really cute idea online, and I am going to implement it in our family at birthday time.  Layla is too young to answer for herself, so I’ll do my best to answer for her.

1) What is your favorite color?  Purple, although she will only say the color “blue” when she is trying to say which [cup, bowl, shirt, shoe, etc] she wants, even when there is no blue, and if there is a blue one she will say No to the blue one when it is given to her.

2) What is your favorite toy?  Minnie.  Hands down.

3) What is your favorite fruit?  Apple.  No question.

4) What is your favorite TV show?  Team Umizoomi.

5) What is your favorite thing to eat for lunch?  Hmmm…. that’s tricky.  She’s a pretty good eater in general, but doesn’t have a go-to food like Hayden and his peanut butter and jellies right now (all.he.will.eat).  I guess I’ll say… cocktail wienies.

6) What is your favorite outfit?  Purple Minnie tank top.

7) What is your favorite game? She likes puzzles.  Does that count as a game?  Let me ask the judges… ok, I say yes!

8) What is your favorite snack? Crackers

9) What is your favorite animal? Doggie or kitty

10) What is your favorite song? Baa, baa black sheep

11) What is your favorite book? Where is Baby’s Belly Button

12) Who is your best friend? Haddy (Hayden) or Tessa (from day care)

13) What is your favorite cereal?  Daddy’s cereal! Which she shares with him every morning.

14) What is your favorite thing to do outside? Swing/play on playset

15) What is your favorite drink?  “Minnie juice” (anything in her Minnie cup, usually apple or apple/grape juice).  Also, strawberry yogurt drink.  And anything with ice.

16) What is your favorite holiday?  Christmas

17) What do you like to take with you to bed at night? “Yiyo” (Pillow – a purple pillow that has the head of a hippo or pony), Minnie, plus zillions of dolls, her princess quilt, and some blankies.

18) What is your favorite thing to eat for breakfast? For the past week it has been toast.  Also, Mommy’s oatmeal.  Formerly, yogurt, but no longer.

19) What do you want for dinner for your birthday?  Hot dog.

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

Layla, I don’t know how you are two years old already.  I feel like time is going by faster with you than it even did with Hayden.  You are a sweet little girl with a big personality.  You are such a blast.  I love having you in my life.  I love watching you and Hayden play and laugh together.  I love watching you getting older, understanding more of the world around you and communicating better and better.  I love watching you get excited, and laughing along with us like you “get the joke.”  I love your singing and telling me and Daddy to stop singing.  I love how you snap to attention when I walk through the door at day care, run over to me saying “Momma, Momma, Momma,” and give me the tightest hug in the world.  I love when I pass by on my run while you are playing outside at day care, and I get a kiss through the fence.  I love the cuddles I get first thing in the morning as I get you out of your crib, when you whisper to me in your cute little voice. We are one lucky family to have such a wonderful little sweetie in our lives.

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Where Mummy Go?

Layla’s speech is really starting to develop. In particular she is starting to pick up phrases.  One of my personal favorites is when Kara leaves the room, a few minutes later Layla will turn to me “where mummy go?, where mummy go?”  I’ll tell her and then off she go “oh” and then run in whatever direction I send her.

It is one of those phrases that is not isolated to mummy though!  Today we were playing outside and a car stopped just outside our house with a dog hanging out of the window.  Layla was all very excited pointing and shouting “woof woof”.  The car drove and Layla turned to us… “where doggy go?”!

To add some effect she now puts her palms out and shrugs her shoulders.  Too funny.

No Mummy’s Car

There is something about the kids and my car.  Kara will tell you it’s because it is what she sees as a complete mess of stuff on the floor in the back, where the kids see it as a treasure chest of cool toys and stuff.   I think for Layla is actually happened because we changed her seat to face forwards in my car first and she loved it and from then on she seemed to voice a preference for it.  I can’t remember why Hayden liked it but whenever we are going anywhere they will want to go in “daddy’s car” (or “dada car” for Layla).   Recently Layla has been very certain about this, just the slightest hint that we are going somewhere and she will belt out “no mummy’s car, dada’s car, NO MUMMY’S CAR” and so on.   She is a girl who knows what she wants and she will certainly tell you about it too!

Minnie! May 17, 2012

Since we went to Disney, Layla has been all about Minnie!  She gets so excited any time she sees anything to do with Minnie, and she always has to have her plush Minnie at bedtime (along with scores of dolls and her beloved pillow-animal thing).  Last week I got her a Minnie sippy cup, and she will not drink from anything else now.  We have to wash it by hand every morning because it’s always in use so never makes it into the dishwasher.  In fact, as I’m writing this I’m thinking we could make loads of room in our cupboard taking out all the other sippy cups since they aren’t getting any use these days.  Anyway, she doesn’t just want juice, she wants “Minnie juice.”  She has two Minnie Mouse outfits: the one she is wearing in this picture, and a purple Minnie tank top Nanny bought her at Disney.  These are in heavy rotation.  In fact, she wore the pink outfit yesterday and refused to wear anything but the tank top this morning.  “No. Minnie! No. Minnie!”

So Layla turns two on Monday.  How that happened I really don’t know.  But needless to say John and I made sure that her presents reflect her love of Minnie.  We took the kids to Toys R Us last weekend and did some sneaky shopping.  We got plenty of Minnie stuff which was fun until we got home and Layla could see Minnie’s face through the (what I thought was opaque) shopping bag, and started crying because I wouldn’t let her get to any of it.  I have also ordered her some Minnie Mouse cupcakes, so I think she will be a happy girl! 🙂

Trains

(Note I wrote this before the Trains vs Robots blog – but it’s all still valid based on his actions!)  My son is obsessed by trains. If you ask him if he loves something or somebody he will respond with “no, I love trains”. He loves trains more than anything and they rule his world.

A little while back we took him to a train fair at the local state fairgrounds. He was very excited and loved it, although of course he was stressed out by being over whelmed with all the motorized trains. We have spent years buying him wooden trains but I sense he wants to upgrade and move to the motorized stuff already. More on that later. We actually think it’s great he has something he is so interested in right now, but just hope he grows out of it by the time he is a teenager!

The train fair also provided the opportunity to pick up some train catalogs and magazines from the main vendors. I swear that he spent the whole day Sunday until abut 5 o’clock reading this catalog. I even wanted to go down our basement on the rowing machine and he just sat there for 30 minutes reading the catalogue while I rowed. When I finished he was excited to show me the pages I had missed. The whole time he had kept his finger on the page where we had started when I started rowing! He wanted to make sure I didn’t miss a single train engine! Two months later these books are still in heavy circulation.

When I told him I was going to England back in January the only thing that concerned him was that I might ride on trains without him! I had to send him pictures of all the trains I was on and promise not to have any fun on them!

So a couple of months back great grandpa Dave gave Hayden an old Lionel steam engine as well as some carriages (O-27 scale). These are pretty big and serious trains, not what I would call toys! I’ve been picking up the pieces like track and a transformer, etc and then recently we put it together in the basement and he absolutely loves it. He would just watch it for hours! He was talking about it for ages before we put it together and would want me to get the trains out just so he could see them before we even got them moving. When I was adding the carriages on he was giving me the appropriate feedback telling me which way all the coaches went, in particular he pointed out that I had out the caboose the wrong way around and implied I was a complete fool!

Abbey May 16, 2012

Boy, are these kids interested in our cat Abbey lately!  They love to pick her up, and bless her kitty heart she tolerates it.  It was funny enough seeing Hayden do it, and I about fell over laughing when I saw Layla waltz up to her and pick her up.  Of course, I rushed over to assist – Abbs is little for a kitty but still a lot for a 2 year old to hold.

There’s been a lot of attention on all of the animals by the kids lately, and with it a lot of coaching as well.  They usually mean well, but they are usually a little too rough or pokey.  I think the most overused terms in our house currently are “Gentle!” and “Not the eyes!” 😉  I love seeing them enjoy the pets.  I remember being little and loving picking up my cat, too (and I remember being told off for not holding her the right way, too) and wanting to ride my dog like a horse like they seem to want to do.  I also love watching how patient the dogs and cat are with them.  I’m sure it helps that they know John and I have their backs and are watching carefully that they aren’t getting hurt, but it’s very endearing to see them tolerate getting laid on, kissed, smooshed, and pulled.  Lucy even started giving Layla kisses this morning when she was messing with her and saying, “Good girl, Lucy.”

Trains vs Robots

Hayden is obsessed by trains.  Has been for a long time.  So imagine our surprise when he said to John a couple of weeks ago that he doesn’t love trains anymore.  He clarified that he still liked trains, but now he loves robots.  Yes, robots.  I have no idea where that came from.  A couple of days later I realized he was talking about Transformers, but I still don’t know how the pieces fit together because I haven’t seen him play with Transformers in a very long time, or take any interest in any robots apart from Bot in the cartoon Team Umizoomi (about which he is also obsessed), and he made it clear when I asked that Bot was not the kind of robot he loved.

Well, since this declaration I have seen very little real interest in robots or transformers, and the same amount of interest in trains.  He has a very thick catalog book on model trains which we got at a model train show, and he can sit for hours looking at each train in that book and talking about what it does.  This is a book that just has tons of pictures of model trains and gives the model number so you can order it, and he looks through it like it holds the answers to life’s most complex problems.  In fact, I have had some nice cuddle time with him the last few days reading the names of the trains to them as he points them out.  So, I think the train love is in full effect, whether he chooses to accept it or not. 🙂

Ipn!

It’s fun how kids can make you take notice of things that have faded into the background of everyday life for those of us who have been around for a while.  Layla gets really excited whenever she hears an airplane.  She’ll shout “Ipn!” and point to the sky.  It took a while for us to realize what she was saying, but now we get excited with her.  Hayden even beat her to the punch yesterday by shouting airplane when he heard one before she got a chance to call it out. 😉

Her speech is really exploding right now.  She’s stringing together three or more words, and she’s getting easier to understand.  She understands so much, and has for a long time.  I realize that the most when I will be talking to John or Hayden about the day and mention that we should do so-and-so after Layla’s nap, and she’ll start saying, “No night-night.”  I don’t even think about her listening to what I’m saying, but she’s clued in enough to hear “nap” and to protest!