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!