Violet she drops her coat to her feet the second we walk inside a store and asks to take off her clothes as soon as we walk in the door to our house. She says "Can I have out arms and out legs now!" I love how she says it like that! She asks me every morning recently if it is spring yet and she pretends to be swimming or going to the beach when we play around the house. She got out her umbrella the other day and propped it up on the couch laying down. She said "Look mama, we are at the beach now. Come under the umbrella with me and have some lemonade and a sandwich! Then we'll go swimming with Aidan!" That comes from a song I made up last summer for her. It goes like this:
In the summer when it's hot hot hot
we go to the beach.
In the summer when it's hot hot hot
we go to the beach.
In the summer when it's hot hot hot
we go to the beach.
We play in the sand and we play in the waves
We play together and we play all day
In the summer when it's hot hot hot
we go to the beach.
In the summer when it's hot hot hot
we go to the beach.
In the summer when it's hot hot hot
we go to the beach.
In the summer when it's hot hot hot
we go to the beach.
We take our umbrella and we rest in the shade
We eat a sandwich then we drink lemonade.
In the summer when it's hot hot hot
we go to the beach.
It's one of her favorites. :) We sing it when we play beach and sometimes when we are walking in the cold to help us warm up with toasty memories from our beach trip last summer. :)
Violet had a rough fall/winter with illness. She had mycoplasma (walking pneumonia) in October, the mumps in November, a cold in Dec. and then she had mycoplasma again this Feb. Luckily my office is very kind about me taking days off. Of course they are unpaid now. I only get 5 days of paid childcare leave and then I can use my own holidays (all of which I use for summer vacation.) This month I had to take 2 weeks and 2 days off. Although I love having days at home with her I really wish they didn't have to be because she is sick.
She accomplished a lot of learning in the last month though. She read her first book all by herself at the end of January. Which was amazing!! We have been using the Bob Books and she loves them. They have a great app for ipad too that has been very useful for learning how to read left to right and spell the words. She loves another app called Endless alphabet which lets the user spell out words and it has cute graphics. Violet loves it. Her vocabulary has definitely increased since we started using it. One morning while we were getting up I asked her if she wanted pancakes for breakfast. She said "Mommy can we cooperate and make the pancakes together?" I giggled and said "yes, of course!"
She is such a funny and fun little person to be around. She is so loving and so affectionate. I just adore her squeezes and the long stares we share during our nursing sessions. She still does it quite a lot and I am thankful for it especially when she is sick. She still loves to dance ballet and has become interested in gymnastics too. She loves to play pretend and we go through all sorts of scenarios in our house playing a wide variety of characters. Some are made up characters and others are from shows that she watches or books that we read. Yesterday she wanted to watch Angelina Ballerina but we only let her watch one show a day and it is before bed so we told her not right now. She thought for a minute and she said "I know! I I have an idea! We can make up our own Angelina together!" Then she assigned parts to Daddy and Mommy and we played out a scene that she created. It was so fun! I love her creativity and I love to watch her mind work. Daddy asked if he could be Drosselmeir (from the Nutcracker) and she said "Daddy, I'm so sorry but there isn't a Drosselmeir in Angelina. But you can be Mr. Mousling!" She said it so sincerely.
During our 2 weeks home this month we had so much fun playing together and resting together. She had a hard time sleeping because of the cough but she was such a trouper. Mommy had a hard time surviving on about 2 hours a night for 2 weeks but her smile kept me going. I held her in an upright cradle position on the couch every night and I know that I will cherish the memory of holding her while she slept. I don't get to do that very often anymore.
We made muffins and we made up stories. We drew pictures and did arts and crafts. We played in her felt house and with her doll house. We practiced reading, math and writing. On Feb. 6 she wrote her first word! She wrote POP! Then she wrote pot. We used a lined dry erase board and then I helped her sound out some other words to write. She amazes me! I had no idea how many words she could really read. It was so fun. Then we pulled out some felt letters and played a word game. Using the same beginning or end and making as many words as we could. It was so fun!
We listened to a lot of music and she danced around for us. She realized that she could dance infront of the TV when it was turned off and it would look like she was on TV. So that was a fun diversion for a while. She especially loved dancing in front of it while she was naked. :) She said "Look Mama I'm shaking my booty on TV!" I had to really hold back my laughter! Then she started laughing uncontrollably so I joined it! Then she wanted me to do it too (fully clothed of course!)
She is always asking me to wear a skirt and to wear "out arms" but I am so cold! One day I gave in and put on a sleeveless dress or a while around the house. You would have thought I was wearing a ball gown by the look on her face. Her jaw dropped to the floor and she gasped as she said "Oh mama! You look so beautiful! I love your out arms! I love to see your beautiful skin!" It was so sweet! I shivered in the dress as long as I could stand it and then changed back to my sweater and pants. She is so complementary and loving to both Daddy and me. She often tells us that she likes our hair or our clothes. She tells Daddy that he is so kind or that he is so gentle. She tells me that she loves my cooking. One morning I woke her up after I had already gotten dressed for school and when she opened her eyes she looked up and smiled so big. She sat right up and shouted out "Mama!! You look so beautiful!" I had fixed my hair differently. Another morning when she woke up the first thing she said to me was "Mama, I just want to give you the mountains!" Oh how she melts my heart! Then when we were playing with her felt food toys another day 2 weeks ago she said "Mama, Laurie Berkner says it's just not a party without your friends and your my friend. So can you come and make a party with me."
She keeps us going during these dark cold months! We are so blessed!
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| Some fun from our sick days |
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| some resting and playing from our sick days |
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| Two weeks ago before Violet got sick, we were walking from her school and she said "my favorite friend is Takuto." I asked her why and she said "because he always plays with me and he is so gentle and nice." Then that night we ran into him at the grocery store. Violet had so much fun running around the store with him. They held hands and giggled. Sampled some food together (I usually don't let her do that). It was too cute to watch them together and I could see that he really is a gentle boy. So glad she has a friend like him. |
