Realized I completely missed blogging about the holidays. Oops. Aren’t most people so frazzled that their holiday is blur. Guess I can’t cop out with that excuse for not blogging, I’m just getting worse about it since being on facebook so much :) Overall the holidays were great. I missed seeing my family but we had a good time with Jeff’s family. The TSA implemented new flight changes for most airports that include either a radiation xray zap or a full body/I know your cup size now procedure. So between that and having a kid in the terrible twos – we just didn’t want to fly. For Thanksgiving we went to Meridian and Christmas was spent at our house. Jeff’s parents came in Christmas eve day and brother Jim (now Dr. Machamer!) flew down from Baltimore and just in time since Christmas morning we woke up to full snow covering everything. It was beautiful! It’s so rare to have a white Christmas. The guys went out an made a 6’ tall snowman and threw snowballs at each other. We got Allison out in it for 10 minutes or so but she didn’t seem that interested in it. And she wouldn’t keep her gloves on and had a really bad snotty nose from a cold.
Allison of course got some great gifts for Christmas. Grandparents got her a radio flyer wagon (a plastic version with seat backs – oh the times have changed), a few little einsteins toys and much more that I’m not thinking of right now. She went through a phase where all she wanted to watch on tv was Little Einsteins, so we got up to 57 recorded episodes. Then she’d start flipping out when the fast/music part came on so we gradually played more mickey mouse and dora. Now Dora is the one that stuck and that’s all she wants to watch.
Since we didn’t see Greg and Claire at Christmas, we went to Bham for new years. Just 5 days after a snow we had warm 60 degree weather, so we all headed for the zoo. While it’s certainly not a great zoo, Allison had a wonderful time so that made it fun. I also got to hang out with some old highschool friends over the break and it was great to see them.
Allison’s vocabulary is exploding, as it’s supposed to about this age. She recognizes all the colors and can say most all of them, she knows all the animals but will call most of them by their sound (a cow is moo, cat is meow, etc).
She’s great on one syllable words; but most other words she’ll just get out the first syllable out and point and leave you to guess and sometimes get just as frustrated as her when you guess wrong. Boy does she get excited when you repeat back what she said though. The confusing part is that most all words will have an ‘s’ added to the end.
She’s still going peepee in the potty but has not gone #2. She’s come closed but those ended up on the carpet and bathtub. Yuck. Overall she’ll just go in the morning and nighttime, it’s hard to get her to stop playing to get on the potty. And those times that you do, a little tantrum will soon follow for some reason – more, more and more toilet paper or she wont let you put the diaper back on or something. I hate that so many times it leads to a toddler fit because I don’t want her to see going to the potty as a bad experience. I always give her stickers (one for each hand ) after she goes and sometimes when she just tries. I’ve googled for some potty training help and found a couple tips we might use, or at least they stand out to me for being funny. One – keep extra cheap underwear and scissors in the diaper bag and if they go #2, just cut the underwear off to reduce the chance of skid marks down the legs; and the second thing – give 2 M&Ms for going poop in the potty and if they go poop in their underwear then FLUSH 2 M&Ms down the toilet. Oh yes I’m envisioning a huge traumatic event, but can also see that working.
We signed up for the Little Gym, and have been the past 2 Saturday mornings. Allison LOVES it and its something to get us out of the house on a weekend in winter. We have our first birthday party there this weekend and that’ll be interesting to see how it plays out. I’m mostly looking forward to talking to some other moms. I feel like our working lifestyle doesn’t exactly leave room for meeting new people and hanging out. I already miss the friends I do have.
Week before last we had a huge snow event – one of those the weather guys say happens every 50 years or something crazy. We got 8-10” of snow and in then 2 days later a cold front came and created ice. Businesses shut down for 2 days, schools shut down for 5 days! It was crazy. Daycare shut down for 4 days and that led to a big drama event parents probably cussing out the director for keeping the money and not paying the teachers. It was interesting to see some of the emails and facebook messages. I still don’t know what resulted in that. But during that LONG week at home Allison switched from being a mommas girl to a daddys girl. So he’s getting a taste for what it feels like be the one that she cries for, that she wants to read to her, but her to bed, etc. It’s nice for the break but she’s also hurt my feelings a few times. Guess I have much worse things coming in the future though :)
Here are a couple other random photos. One Allison is playing on a peg board that was my dads when he was a kid (so it’s close to 70 years old). He said it came with real nails and a little hammer. Wow – can you imagine giving a 4 year old real nails now days? And a neighbor gave us a play kitchen. One side is a kitchen and one is a grill. Allison LOVES it. and it adds to our already toy filled living room currently :)
And our flagstone patio is complete and sort of naked. We have not done any flowerbed space around it. But Jeff can play with fire now.
I got an art project completed for the living room. Funny how you change one thing and it throws off the whole feeling of the room. We got a new black recliner, so I thought a few large black frames would help tie the room together, then that meant I had to put something in the frames, so I just decided to do it myself. These are done in pastels. A good project for those extra 4 days at home :)
Overall our lives are pretty routine and I figure boring to read about, hence the slacking here. We just work all day and come home to an adorable toddler.
Allison of course got some great gifts for Christmas. Grandparents got her a radio flyer wagon (a plastic version with seat backs – oh the times have changed), a few little einsteins toys and much more that I’m not thinking of right now. She went through a phase where all she wanted to watch on tv was Little Einsteins, so we got up to 57 recorded episodes. Then she’d start flipping out when the fast/music part came on so we gradually played more mickey mouse and dora. Now Dora is the one that stuck and that’s all she wants to watch.
Since we didn’t see Greg and Claire at Christmas, we went to Bham for new years. Just 5 days after a snow we had warm 60 degree weather, so we all headed for the zoo. While it’s certainly not a great zoo, Allison had a wonderful time so that made it fun. I also got to hang out with some old highschool friends over the break and it was great to see them.
Allison’s vocabulary is exploding, as it’s supposed to about this age. She recognizes all the colors and can say most all of them, she knows all the animals but will call most of them by their sound (a cow is moo, cat is meow, etc).
She’s great on one syllable words; but most other words she’ll just get out the first syllable out and point and leave you to guess and sometimes get just as frustrated as her when you guess wrong. Boy does she get excited when you repeat back what she said though. The confusing part is that most all words will have an ‘s’ added to the end.
She’s still going peepee in the potty but has not gone #2. She’s come closed but those ended up on the carpet and bathtub. Yuck. Overall she’ll just go in the morning and nighttime, it’s hard to get her to stop playing to get on the potty. And those times that you do, a little tantrum will soon follow for some reason – more, more and more toilet paper or she wont let you put the diaper back on or something. I hate that so many times it leads to a toddler fit because I don’t want her to see going to the potty as a bad experience. I always give her stickers (one for each hand ) after she goes and sometimes when she just tries. I’ve googled for some potty training help and found a couple tips we might use, or at least they stand out to me for being funny. One – keep extra cheap underwear and scissors in the diaper bag and if they go #2, just cut the underwear off to reduce the chance of skid marks down the legs; and the second thing – give 2 M&Ms for going poop in the potty and if they go poop in their underwear then FLUSH 2 M&Ms down the toilet. Oh yes I’m envisioning a huge traumatic event, but can also see that working.
We signed up for the Little Gym, and have been the past 2 Saturday mornings. Allison LOVES it and its something to get us out of the house on a weekend in winter. We have our first birthday party there this weekend and that’ll be interesting to see how it plays out. I’m mostly looking forward to talking to some other moms. I feel like our working lifestyle doesn’t exactly leave room for meeting new people and hanging out. I already miss the friends I do have.
Week before last we had a huge snow event – one of those the weather guys say happens every 50 years or something crazy. We got 8-10” of snow and in then 2 days later a cold front came and created ice. Businesses shut down for 2 days, schools shut down for 5 days! It was crazy. Daycare shut down for 4 days and that led to a big drama event parents probably cussing out the director for keeping the money and not paying the teachers. It was interesting to see some of the emails and facebook messages. I still don’t know what resulted in that. But during that LONG week at home Allison switched from being a mommas girl to a daddys girl. So he’s getting a taste for what it feels like be the one that she cries for, that she wants to read to her, but her to bed, etc. It’s nice for the break but she’s also hurt my feelings a few times. Guess I have much worse things coming in the future though :)
Here are a couple other random photos. One Allison is playing on a peg board that was my dads when he was a kid (so it’s close to 70 years old). He said it came with real nails and a little hammer. Wow – can you imagine giving a 4 year old real nails now days? And a neighbor gave us a play kitchen. One side is a kitchen and one is a grill. Allison LOVES it. and it adds to our already toy filled living room currently :)
And our flagstone patio is complete and sort of naked. We have not done any flowerbed space around it. But Jeff can play with fire now.
I got an art project completed for the living room. Funny how you change one thing and it throws off the whole feeling of the room. We got a new black recliner, so I thought a few large black frames would help tie the room together, then that meant I had to put something in the frames, so I just decided to do it myself. These are done in pastels. A good project for those extra 4 days at home :)
Overall our lives are pretty routine and I figure boring to read about, hence the slacking here. We just work all day and come home to an adorable toddler.
5:31 PM
The flushing of m&m's down the toilet is too much for me! That seems cruel!