Sandbox

Piper and I went to a party on Saturday. There were tons of kids there and she basically deserted me the moment we arrived. One of my former students was kind enough to shadow her for a while when she was climbing up the play area ladder, and she had fun chasing the kids around. She didn't know what to think of the water guns. She loved the sandbox, and probably played in it for about an hour. I wasn't sure how she would react since she's going through a stage right now where she doesn't like to get dirt on her. I was happy to observe her practicing brushing her hands off instead of freaking out about the yucky stuff on her hands.

So I've decided we need to get a sandbox somehow on our patio for her to play in. At first I thought Erick could just build her one, but I think it would be easier to just fill a plastic pool up with sand and let her go at it.

Short Videos

This is a collection of sort video clips that don't really stand alone. She is just being her silly self.

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Getting So Big

Sometimes I look at her and can't believe how big she is. I had someone the other day think that she was 3 years old! She's huge I know. I mananged to get her hair put up into real pig tails today, and not just small ones on top of her head. At least her hair is beginning to catch up to the rest of her. I think she just might be starting to look a little more like me. Yay!

Swimming

Today was the first day the Sahm Park swimming facility was open for the season. We took Miss Piper to the water park. She wasn't too sure of the whole thing, but did finally enjoy playing in the zero depth end of the pool. She wouldn't go down the kiddie slide (it was kinda big) and the water was chilly even though it was pretty warm outside today. She did not like the other slide either, but she did go down it once.

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Weaning

I "think" we may have weaned finally after over 20 months of nursing. She has not nursed for 5 days, and unless she asks for it, I am not going to offer it. I miss it a little, the closeness and time that it gave us together. However I am ready to have my body back, and I know Erick is too. I am glad we made it this long, and all the positive aspects it provided for her. I will definitely try to breastfeed again if I have any more children. Maybe now my boobs will shrink a little. :)

Holland Park

We went to a new park for Piper this weekend. I used to take the kids I nannied for there years ago. They have a little kids section just for toddlers and a big kid area, but we went to both of them. I think she was intimidated by all the kids. It was very busy with several large groups of people having picnics there at the same time.

Kids Day on the Circle

The Indy 500 is next weekend, and today was Kids Day on the Circle. We took Piper downtown to enjoy the festivities. We were going to enter her in the Rookie Run, but we found out she was supposed to be 3 to enter. They said we could anyway, but we decided to wait until next year.

She had her face painted and got a balloon animal hat made for her. She played on the Bounce area and went through the petting zoo. We collected a ton of balloons, but only went home with one. I have to say that the weirdest mascot we saw today was the shampoo guy from Great Clips. She liked them all and was tired by the end of the day.

The Lego exhibit was really neat. They had a replica of the track and one of Lucas Oil Stadium.

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Ride to Live, Live to Ride

Saturday was garage sale day. I found lots of good deals, including a ton of Gymboree clothes for $1 each. I also bought Piper a Little Tykes slide, a sit and spin, and a pair of roller skates for $2 each. I think her favorite thing I bought however was the Powerwheels toy. I only paid $4 for it.

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Bathtime

I just noticed that I had this post that was never published. So I am going to post it now even thought it is like a month later. Enjoy!

Nature Collage

The other day we went for a walk and collected many different items from nature. Piper is really into examining everything outside whether it's a rock or a bug. We picked different wildflowers and collected small rocks. We even found a couple of different pinecones that had not been ruined from last fall. I got some leaves off of trees for her, and she picked up sticks and bark from the ground. She had a big bag of things to carry when we were finished.

Afterwards I let her glue the collection on to a piece of cardboard. In reality, she was more excited about squeezing the glue out of the bottle than putting the things on the board. I helped a lot by pressing things down so they wouldn't fall off later. She did like sprinkling the birdseed on at the very end and would have done that forever had I let her continue.

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Mother's Day Pics

Mother's Day 2009

Mother's Day 2008

Wow, she has hair this year! We went to Erick's mom's house yesterday for Mother's Day, and then went out to eat. Piper and I hung out together all afternoon and went for a walk around the neighborhood. She is really into examining every little thing now on the ground. We left no stone unturned.

Happy Mother's Day

Piper and I planted flowers to give to Erick's mom for Mother's Day. We painted the pots earlier this week, one for me and one for her. My monkey girl enjoyed playing in the dirt and scooping it into the pots. I had a hard time keeping her from carrying around the flowers however.

Look How Strong I Am

Just because I saw the big kids do it, I have to do it too.

Goats

We made another trip to the zoo, and this time they actually had the Encounters exhibit open where Piper could interact with the goats. She loved following them around and petting them. She even tried to climb on one of their backs, but I caught her just in time.

Bedtime

I'm almost scared to write this for fear of jinxing myself. Actually I'm not even sure how we got to this point. The child who used to fight me to go to sleep, is now a dream and model toddler to put to bed at night. We are still nursing, but I think she is close to weaning. I have been able to put her in her bed still awake the last three nights. Tonight she didn't cry at all when I laid her down. The first time I tried it earlier this week, I was just so tired and I couldn't get her to go to sleep the usual ways. She cried, but wasn't hysterical like she had been in the past. The second time I tried it, I sat on the floor next to the crib for about 10 minutes and she laid down and cried but ultimately stopped and went to sleep. We had a couple of regular nights, and then I tried putting her down awake again two nights ago. I sing "You Are My Sunshine" and lay her down. She cried for just a second both nights until tonight. I still am in disbelief that she goes to bed so easily now. My next goal is to get her to bed earlier. I am going to try it a little earlier every night.

General Upday: May

Child's name: Piper
Age (in months, or years and months): 19 months
Physical abilities: independently rides her tricycle now, jumping with both feet off the ground. I noticed she was doing this on the bed and couch, and it took forever to get her to jump for me on just the ground, but she can do it Yay! Can climb the curved ladders at the park.
Speech/language: vocabulary, sentence length, etc So much progress here. I can understand her more often than not, better pronunciation as well as another big increase in vocabulary. Usually 1 word, but occasionally we get 2-3 word sentences. Increased love of opposites right now.
Reading/pre-reading: becoming more focused on letters, tries to name them but still only knows a few. She does very well at reading her books and naming things in the pictures
Number stuff: not much change, still tries to count but not using right numbers. Understands one more or just two when I am giving her something.
Other cognitive stuff: puzzles, reasoning, etc: Very much into matching and sorting things still
Creativity: Starting to tell me what her pictures are- mostly circles still
Imagination: nothing new, just pretend play with her dolls, stuffed animals, and kitchen. She loves her Mrs. Potato Head she got for Easter, and is also really into the small plastic animals like you get at Michael’s or Target.
Social: she had a couple of social interactions this month at her cousins’ birthday party and at Gymboree. Can be very quiet in public around people she doesn’t know until she gets warmed up.
Character/personality: loving, silly, determined and persistent
Anything else/other: we’ve started to play hide and seek and she thinks it’s very funny. I will say that it is a little tedious to “find” her in the same place over and over. She needs a new hiding spot. :)