Boo's Backyard

Spring appears to be upon us, so after a good hour picking up Sam bombs to get things ready, I uncovered the sandbox and unleashed Boo into the backyard.

What a difference a year makes. When we gave her her sandbox last year, remember how she sat in it, unsure what to do, and then played tentatively in it? Not anymore. Full throttle, guys. She's digging holes and filling buckets and generally moving some earth.

Plus, last year, she could only really walk across the flat parts of the yard (she didn't start walking until August, so this wasn't surprising). Yesterday? She CLIMBED THE HILL. BY HERSELF.

Here's a picture:
As you can see, she was pretty excited.

Short Stacks

After a few too many trips to Barnes and Noble to buy storybooks to read to Boo, and realizing that each jaunt was costing an arm and a leg, we have become loyal patrons of the public library.

The Southern Lehigh library is pretty nice. It has a monstrous kids' section (even though the adult selections are a bit slim), and it's located across the street from the park. We went for the first time last week after a nice walk, and we went yesterday to return our books and pick up a new armload. We checked out Get Well, Good Night, King Bidgood's In the Bathtub, and Clever Beatrice. It's nice to have a means of expanding our bedtime-story repetoire without having to refinance the house to underwrite it, and if we especially like something, we can then go buy our own copy knowing it's a surefire hit. (This is how we found Olivia Saves the Circus-- the Olivia books, about the adventures of a very creative British girl-pig, are so funny and the illustrations are terrific.)

The library trip itself was cute. Boo kept trying to clamber into the librarian's computer chair and wanted to get the stuffed animals down from the shelves. Then a slightly older little boy showed up and began trying to choose a book, so...Boo did too. She would grab any book off the shelf and toddle over to where he was, sit down near him, and start to "read." Other kids are rock stars in her world, so she will do whatever they're doing. Right now, that's reading, which is great.

Pucker Up

Boo is suddenly really into kissing. For a long time, she did the open mouthed mash-her-face-into-yours baby "kiss," then she mastered the art of puckering up, and now she does the whole shebang, complete with the society-maven "mmmmmmmmmmmMUH!" sound. Granted, she still hasn't figured out that the finishing lip-smack is done on the person's cheek as opposed to the air-- she'll purse her lips, smush them on your cheek, but pull away before she's properly done. So you get a lot of smooches that are combo air-kisses. Who cares. It's still cute.

Plus she does the each-cheek thing, except she'll do it 50 times if you let her, and you as recipient can end up with whiplash. Just warning you...

Microchip Off the Old Block

The family business!The baby keyboard is GENIUS. Alison loves to sit at the computer and mash the dickens out of the keyboard and smack around the mouse, so this little sucker means that she can get her technology on without trashing the family computer in the process. It straps on over the regular keyboard, you pop in a CDR with some games on it, and all she has to do is match the shapes on the keypad to those on the screen. (Plus, you can tell that it's originally French software, so it's dubbed over and has that Euro sensibility-- hilarious.)

She loves the little characters-- she waves at them when they come onscreen-- and she likes to clap along to the music, as well as play the games. It's not my new electronic babysitter, but it does give me a few minutes to unload the dishwasher in relative peace.

In other news, we successfully used our potty chair for the first time yesterday! I'll spare everyone the details.

Well, I'll be damned.

We went out to dinner last night and we were on the main level. I told Alison to go upstairs to her room and get her shoes, that they were in her basket by her changing table.

A few minutes pass, and I hear her moving around in her room, emitting the occasional squawk, but nothing weird.

I finally decide that she's just goofing off, and go upstairs to help her out. Well, she's standing at the top of the stairs, the correct pair of shoes in hand, and the holdup was that she was daunted by how to make it safely back donwstairs with a shoe in each hand. (Which was a good point, and one I hadn't considered. So good for her.)

So she seems to understand a lot. A LOT. My mind= blown.

Sunday Best

We went to church on Sunday. Enjoy the sweetness.

Miss Manners

"Would you like some juice?"

"JOOOOOOOOOOOOOCE!"

"Can you say 'please'?"

"PEEEEEEEEEEASE!"

Hee hee. : )

Chop Shop

I cut Alison's bangs. I used blunter scissors and, surprisingly, she let me do it with a minimum of fuss. I sat her on her potty lid, handed her a juice cup, and one minute later we were done.

Here's the result:
I think she looks pretty cute, plus she can see now, which is always a bonus. It does help that her hair is naturally messy and wavy, so a precision job isn't required. Plus, it means that, no matter how badly I blow it, her hair will never look like this:
...thank goodness.

The Nurturer

We bought Alison a toy dragon at the art show this weekend and she LOVES him. He's green and gold, so we call him Patrick. He's become her faithful companion. This morning, I saw her put her sippy cup in his mouth and pretend to feed him some milk. Adorable.

Lady of Ye Olde Manor

We took Boo to the Allentown Art Museum on Sunday, where we met up with Jeff's colleague and friend Hector, his wife and their 4 year old daughter. We took in the Knights in Shining Armor exhibit, which Jeff and Hector really liked-- it was a collection of medieval and Renaissance swords and armor and engravings. (No photos-- photography was not allowed. Sorry!)

What was cool was that the AAM has a sizeable kids' area where they do a big activity area that ties in with the main exhibit theme. This is a great idea for art museums-- there's not much for little ones to do save pick out the dogs and babies in the paintings, and that is fun for only so long, and it's hard to be in a place where you can't touch anything. So the kids' area idea is GENIUS. Alison and Helena made castles and crowns and played with the puppets and looked at the picture books and raided the costume box, and they had decorated the room to look like a castle courtyard complete with stable, ramparts, and garden. Well done, AAM. Well done.

Speaking of photos-- the packages were mailed on Saturday, so watch for them in midweek. (Betsy and Randy, if you'd like photos, let me know and we'll hook you up!)

Take Your Daughter to Work Day

"Can I keep him, Mom? Huh? Huh?"


We spent some time at the DSC yesterday-- Boo's starting to be able to get at least some of the exhibits, and if nothing else, she loves the stools and benches on the exhibit floor. (Other exhibits, such as the model ventilator that makes a loud whoooooshing noise, tended to frighten her-- hopefully I haven't scared her for life away from med school.) She had a good time overall checking everything out-- she'll like it a lot more when we open our preschool area this summer.

I did have to chase her down to keep her from tossing a small cast of a dinosaur footprint into the Touch Tank. Eeesh.

Box Top

Alison took an Amazon box that I received some DVD's in and ran around the living room last night, holding it over her face, babbling, and then bursting into giggles at the sound of her own voice in echo.

We're off to Mommy's Work this afternoon for some exploring, and then hopefully out for a little dinner.