The Zoo & More

This weekend was just full of activity. Friday was Amelia's class field trip to the Greenville Zoo. I think it's funny that we live in NC but her two field trips this year were out-of-state - one in TN, the other in SC! It's just the geography of living in a corner of a state I guess!

We already had plans to visit my friend Heidi on Saturday so we decided to make a family trip to the zoo with the class. Daddy and I both took the day off from work and met the buses at the zoo. It was packed with kids and parents! Our class ate first, played on the really neat playground, and then went to the zoo. Amelia was so excited about going back to the playground that she decided it wasn't worth going back to the gift shop for the stuffed tiger she had seen (and wanted).

We took Amelia to this zoo several times when she was much younger and she was always more interested in the playground and just running around the paths. This time she was really interested in several of the animals, especially the flamingos. She was concerned that one of the flamingos had wandered off from the group and wouldn't find its way back. I told her that was a possibility since earlier this morning there were actually ten flamingos there. (mean streak, I know.)

Amelia was not doing a good job of listening to us or her teacher Friday but she was better over the weekend. After the zoo, we drove a couple of hours further into SC and checked into our hotel and then headed to Heidi's. The hotel's pool wasn't open yet despite the hot weather but luckily Heidi had one. Amelia said, "This is the best day ever!" So cute. After her swim, Amelia wanted to wear slippers but I hadn't brought any. Heidi offered her personal adult-sized husky slippers and Amelia wore them! This picture doesn't capture how ridiculous-but-cute they looked. We had a wonderful dinner and Amelia fell asleep on the way back to the hotel.

Saturday I met Heidi for the March of Dimes walk and after a stop of Hobby Lobby for more Hello Kitty sticker album stickers (we don't have a Hobby Lobby where we live), Amelia and David met us for some dancing (Amelia anyway) and free hot dogs as part of the post-walk activities. I also let Amelia get her face painted as a blue kitty.

We then went to Emerald Farms and looked around their shops and indoor train layout. Then Amelia took the little train ride (a tractor made to look like a CSX engine) and we looked at farm animals, too. Amelia played on the playground and fed fish at the pond. At one point in the store, Amelia saw a toy from one of her Baby Einstein videos. I was walking back into the room as I heard Amelia tell her daddy, "We could get this if we had a baby, but Mommy won't let us have one." [Shocking! She certainly has never asked for one, for which I am grateful.] Then she saw me and said, "Mommy, we could get this in case you accidentally get pregnant." WHERE did she learn that phrase?!?!?! That was definitely an OMG moment. We just went along with it, though, with an "Okay, sweetie. Or maybe Isidora would like it." *phew*

We stopped in downtown Greenwood for some yummy pizza and a look into their train museum where they had a replica one-room schoolhouse and Amelia got to write on a slate just like mommy did as a 1st grader! After that, we headed home. It was a fun and relaxing Saturday!

First Top Tooth Goes to the Tooth Fairy!

We (Amelia and I, that is), have been wiggling Amelia’s top front tooth for quite some time and last night it was finally ready to come out. She was SO excited. She’s been looking for blood the last few times we’ve wiggled and when we finally got some last night, she knew we were super close to a tooth fairy visit! She was so excited she was helping yank it, but it was holding steady on the inside corner with the rest hanging off. I was starting to wonder what we were going to do and then “pop” it came out super easy on the final tug!

 

I had taken a few days off of pulling (but she was still wiggling) since I was sick all weekend and didn’t want to put even my washed fingers in her mouth. Her tooth was pushed so far forward and out that it looked like a tooth was missing next to it and she had a buck tooth, to boot.

Amelia came out of her room this morning barely awake, clutching her Hello Kitty tooth pillow. She fished out her two quarters, but she also had an envelope from the Tooth Fairy. Amelia is saving up for another Hello Kitty from Build-a-Bear so the Tooth Fairy left her a note saying she was giving her a little extra this time to go towards her new Hello Kitty.

Amelia said that the Tooth Fairy had tickled her with her blankets when she was looking for the tooth pillow and that she had to tell the Tooth Fairy that it was under her other pillow and help her find it. She said she opened her eyes, but only a little bit. (so cute!) I asked her what the Tooth Fairy looked like and she said she forgot. I asked her how the Tooth Fairy got there and left and Amelia didn’t know. I said, maybe she went out your window? And Amelia said, maybe opened a little part of her window and went out. I said, maybe she has magic powers and she can fly through window glass! Amelia pondered that thought!

She has proudly shown off her gap to anyone who will look today and told several people about how she helped the tooth fairy. And tonight she even told me that brushing her teeth would be easier since she now only has 23 teeth!

Raspberries

The last time Amelia needed cereal, she picked Honey Nut O's. She liked it but decided she wanted to try it with raspberries, just like the picture on the box. I was hesitant to buy some since they are expensive, but thought, eh, why not? It turns out she LOVES them. We are on our third container of raspberries! We never would have discovered it if it wasn't for the cereal box. It still amazes me how many foods she loves that I don't care for: cottage cheese, peas, and now raspberries. (I just find them rather sour and I'm not wild about their texture, either.)
And for the record, she still adores raspberries on her tummy and will sometimes ask for those. So now I have to ask, "The kind you eat or the kind on your tummy?" And sometimes she'll answer "Both!" with a big grin and a giggle. I love my sweet girl!

Happy Valentine's Day!

We had a 2-hour snow delay this morning. (It melted, but the huge flakes were pretty!)

Here's Amelia with her new Hello Kitty from Build-a-Bear. She did chores for four weeks to save up enough money to buy her. She was so proud of herself. However, we apparently need a new incentive to continue doing any chores at all ...

Hello Kitty wears pajamas at night and then gets dressed every morning. It's really quite cute.

When we got to school Amelia couldn't wait to distribute her Valentine cards. She was so excited!

I remember those days - it was so much fun playing mailbox and then getting your own full one to sort through.

Valentine's Day is a fun winter day full of hearts and candy and lots of love for our little girl!

[photos dated 2/14/12]

"I got sidetracked."

We've been working a little more purposefully towards helping Amelia stayed focused. You don't realize how much you encourage distraction when you let your daughter constantly interrupt you, or let her constantly follow her meandering imagination. So we've been getting her to focus on things and trying to stay vigilant about recognizing when she is going off-topic.

Amelia was a late talker so when she finally was giving us a window to what goes on inside her head, it was easy to just go with the flow and more or less observe whatever she said and did. As a result, I've become very, very accustomed to how fluid the changes of topic and interests can be. It's been an excercise for me to be aware of how she can veer. For example, she'll be reading a story and something will spark a memory and she wants to talk about that which then prompts her to find a toy that is related to the memory, and then she has to go to the bathroom where she will read a different story. Upon  leaves the bathroom, she will start another activity and the original story just sits there unfinished.

I've been redirecting her distractions by telling her to focus or stating a simple phrase like, "Read your story first." Someone, I think, has told her (probably only once) that she was getting sidetracked and she has picked up that phrase. She is now self-regulating her distractions much of the time, which is great, but it totally makes me laugh to hear her suddenly say, "I got sidetracked!"

I also think it's funny that she likes the phrase so much since it has a train connotation. We have a 2-hour delay today due to icy roads and she is busy planning our next family trip to Tweetsie, a railroad themed amusement park, which dosen't open until the very end of April!

6-year Molars

I had forgotten about them to be honest.

This morning Amelia woke up at 6:22 am and said her tooth hurt. My eyes were still closed and I asked her which one. "On the bottom in the back." I asked her if she'd been brushing it. "I try to, but when I go too far back I start to gag." I told her I'd look at it when I got up.

When I got up a little bit later and went to the light with her I looked in her mouth and there, just below the surface, but very barely, was a beautiful new molar. Ahhh, the six year molars. That might explain all the 4:30 am, 5 am, etc. wake-ups in the past week or so.

It amazes me that even though a child is old enough to be able to communicate better than a teething infant, they still don't recognize it was their incoming teeth that causes them to wake. Amelia is such a morning person anyway, I think she has just thought all along, "Cool! More time to play!" Cuz that is what she does. And we are very tired.

But it's always nice to discover there is a reason for something that's been going on because it gives hope that things might change for the better ... we can hope. :-)  And I am very grateful for healthy teeth that show up when they're supposed to.

Amelia-isms

Amelia is a reader and she is good at it. A funny side benefit is hearing her mispronounce things.

Last weekend she asked Daddy what was above Colorado. He said Wyoming. She then said, "That's not all. There's also Nebra-ska." Instead of Ne-brass-ka. It took us a minute to figure out what she had said and then we laughed pretty hard.

Last night she was watching a youtube video of a guy playing Pachelbel's Canon by rubbing the edges of water-filled wine glasses. He had done all four parts (moving line, harmony, etc.) and so it was a split screen in four parts. She said, "Move your computer, Daddy, so I can see all four i-MAJ-es." I immediately knew she meants imagines, but she floors me by how much her vocabulary is already growing through what she is reading rather than just hearing it.