happy birthday horsie

Whoa. The little baby in the "Waiting for baby" box surprised me when I logged on tonight. I didn't realize baby would be updated so realistically, with veins and everything.

Anyway, I had fun watching Sylvia play with all of the little beanie baby animals last Friday. It is a world where the Koala bear is the kitten's mommy and the polar bear is the puppy dog's mommy. And...the frog and the rooster just love to kiss. When she pulled out the unicorn, I spent a lot of time explaining what a unicorn is. A pretend animal that looks like a horse with a horn on it's head, blah, blah, blah. She stared at him very seriously for a good minute. I thought she was processing what I told her, but she had her own ideas evolving.

Suddenly, she broke into a huge smile, and started singing "happy to you horsie, happy to you horsie...."

There are no such thing as unicorns. Only horses with shiny birthday hats on their heads.

cutest kid ever

Every now and then I feel a little guilty that I have never taken Sylvia for professional photos. (ok, once with GG, but that was a long time ago and the photographer scared her - it just doesn't count). However, every time I pose her for pictures and get awesome shots of her giggling little face, I no longer feel any desire to cart her off to the mall for photos.

Friday when I dressed her up for Christmas card photos in her little Santa dress she got so excited. "Halloween! Halloween!!". So funny.

We had fun singing silly songs "Happy Birthday little......Peacock?" (That is funny to a one year old) and got lots of great photos. I found a Christmas card design that I could squeeze lots of photos in because they're all so cute. Here are a few:

Here are the rest: http://picasaweb.google.com/TexFamily/2008ChristmasCard#

puzzle pride

Sylvia has now mastered her three easiest puzzles and is working on the more challenging alphabet puzzle, which frustrates her at times. She gets so happy with herself when she gets a piece in by herself. This is the face she makes after each successful attempt.Oh, the simple joys in life.

an artist at work

Last weekend I climbed a ladder to change a light bulb. Sylvia stood at the bottom saying "no Mommy, no! down Mommy!!". After she realized what I was doing, and that I wasn't going to fall, she watched until I was finished and then gave me a round of applause. "Yeah, Mommy!!!". She must have thought it looked like fun, because afterwards she said "baby's turn!".

Maybe if she keeps practicing her painting skills, I can let her try out the ladder to paint the house....or maybe not.

Anyone can finger paint, but can YOU toe paint??? Sylvia can!

our growing family tree

We invited everyone over to see our Sylvie-bumble bee, and posted the following message next to the tree with photos shown below:

Almost everyone was too excited to see our baby Bumble bee and a cute little Dragon to notice little sayings on the wall (who can blame them!!), but by the end of the night, we officially shared our happy news.

my messy, messy floor

This sweet face is the reason I can't keep my floors clean. She is getting very good with that spoon, but for each cheerio on the tray, there are three on the floor. Luckily she thinks cleaning the floor is a fun game. I wonder how long that will last....

duck, duck, monkey movie

A few weeks ago, John spent the day with my dad and Sarah helping out with a road rally. I took Sylvia to my mom's to play with Brock and Grammy. These photos were taken just after the kids raided Autie Mo's stash of ducks. They were watching Tarzan (after I fast-forwarded the traumatic beginning...)....hmm...should I attempt to grab that sticker off his nose??

tattoos for everyone :)

Several months ago Sylvia (or maybe it was her cousin Brock), discovered that there were tattoos in the Thomas the Train coloring book. Ever since then, Sylvia believes all coloring books have tattoos, and each time I use the wash cloth that I used for those first tattoos, she asks for more. Luckily we've been rationing those choo-choo train tattoos and still have some left. A few weeks ago I gave her and John matching trains and nines, one on each hand. I think I'll have to find some more number tattoos - She can now consistently recognize the number nine!

Go Eagles...

....are you telling me the Eagles couldn't even win a game against the Bengals? ughh. I'm glad I slept through the game. (Mommy is glad she slept through the game too.)

tumbling party

This was from Aden, Jackie, & Rory's party a few weeks back. Rory and Sylvie were a bit young for the gym games, although Sylvia did love the parachute. Aden bounces along right in the beginning of the first video and Jackie rolls along at the end.

and a brief clip of Sylvia, who was not too interested in the climbing mats:

sing baby sing

She is just too cute. Lately, she sings all the time. Sometimes real songs, sometimes not. In these videos, the Barney song was the tune of the moment. I just love it.

seven bridges road

Sylvia is still pretty obsessed with "Happy Birthday". This video was taken at the end of September. I realize watching this now, that she was probably singing to Carys (it was her 2nd birthday that triggered the "Happy Birthday" obsession. ) At the time, I thought she said Miss Carrie, her daycare teacher, which led to a whole discussion about daycare.

Sylvia now loves daycare, thank goodness. She usually complains more when I pick her up than when we drop her off. She agrees to come with me only after I tell her we can look for the horses on the way home (she LOVES the horsies.) Everyday she checks whether they are inside or outside, and whether they have blankets on their back, which leads to many, many "why?" questions. Why does the horse where a blanket, why is it cold, why is summer over??

Luckily for me when I run out of answers, I can sometimes distract her with music. The other day "Seven Bridges Road" came on the radio and she literally cheered and clapped the whole song and asked "Again?" when it was over. She loves live songs and clapping along with the audience. Although, I'm sure in this case, she also loved the song itself. It's in her blood.

rotten tomatoes

I was looking outside today and realized that it is time to clean up our mess of what were the tomato plants. The photo below was from early summer when Sylvia and I went out to pick tomatoes for the first time. Every time I turned my back she grabbed a few more tomatoes - can you tell which ones she picked?

By mid summer, I could send her off on her own and she knew exactly which ones to pick.

By the end of the summer we had to keep a close eye on her again. She knew to pick the reds ones, but just as fast as she used to grab the green ones, she now tried to shove the red tomatoes in her mouth before we could stop her - or at least get a good sized bite.

I'm sad to see the tomatoes go, but the leaves and pumpkins have been just as much fun. We're looking forward to starting over with new tomato plants next spring, and maybe we'll be more adventurous and add some other veggies and flowers. It's fun to have a little gardening partner!

swim baby swim

Here is the brief little video I got at one of Sylvie's swim classes. My battery died almost instantly, and since then I have stayed away, because Sylvia did a little better when she wasn't distracted by Mommy. Her last class was supposed to be last Saturday, but she jumped in for the first time that day, so John was inspired to sign her up for the next session. Yeah Sylvia!!