2010 in pictures

Merry Christmas everyone!

We had a good Christmas. Walker's parents came to town and we hosted both Christmas Eve dinner (with my Mom's family) and Christmas Day (with my Dad's family) at our place. Moira had a great time having so many people around to play with her and she spent most of the time asking people to come into her room. She also cheerfully helped me distribute presents on Christmas morning. The really good news is that she had extra long naps each day.

We were going to take her skiing on Boxing Day, but that was the day all the disruption and excitement caught up with her. When she had two melt downs before we were done with breakfast, we decided that it wasn't going to happen that day. So we went to the Zoo instead. I actually really like the zoo in the rain. Many of the animals sleeping spots are placed where you can see them easily, and most people stay home, so you don't have to fight the crowds. Moira also discovered the building and puzzle section in the Zoomazium and she helped Grumpy assemble all sorts of animals.
I plan to take it easy with her today, before our next round of visitors shows up. She definitely misses all the undivided attention, and I'm sure I'll have to spend a lot of time for then next few days reminding her how to engage in solo play.

Vintage Wordless Wednesday

I have so much to say about these photos of my sister and I, but since I complained about people not being wordless on Wordless Wednesday, I won't. I already ruined the wordlessness, didn't I?



More boobies over here at Natural Parents Network

Oh yeah and!

Moira went skiing for the second time.

I am a genius

Painting
Originally uploaded by Maydela

Moira and I made a star for our tree, and after we had completely covered it in glitter, she still wanted to do art. I grabbed one of our egg cartons and filled each compartment with paint.
She loved it. She spent 45 minutes painting three pictures and the egg carton itself. You can see from her first painting that she has also moved onto the next phase of toddler painting, which means that all the colors didn't end up swirled together into toddler brown.
I can't really claim that my fabulous idea was responsible for her concentration. She's been thoroughly entranced by process with a lot of things lately, including painting, beading and mopping the floor. As long as I remember to leave her alone and not tell her how to do it 'right' she is entranced. I did intervene a little while she was mopping, every time she held the button down for longer then a few seconds, but since our Swiffer bottle is now filled with vinegar and water, I wasn't too concerned about it.
She has also started pointing out the letter "S" to me whenever she notices it and telling me that it says "ssssssss." Walker says she recognizes "O" and probably a couple of other letters the same way, but I haven't noticed yet.

Tower of cookies

I may have too many cookies. Add to this stack the sugar and gingerbread cookies Moira and I made with my Mom. Plus the peaunt butter cups and peppermint bark not pictured here. It turns out that three adults and one mostly self entertaining toddler can churn out a lot of cookies in 12 hours. And we didn't have to run to the store for anything, but only because the last person to arrive stopped on her way.

Moira really doesn't like being messy, so we were unable to convince her to help us much. She was very happy to put the cupcake liners in the trays though. I should have found a recipe that called for painting the cookies, since she liked that part so much on our first cookie baking day.

This is our second attempt at making ornaments this year. They are much cuter then the first ones we made, although they turned out much bigger then I expected, and Moira didn't actually have much to do with them, other then picking out the paper and pictures. Oh well, maybe next year.

Lately she has been pretending to be a baby, to the point where she peed in her pants a couple of times, because, she says, babies don't go in the potty. I pointed out that babies also don't eat, jump or visit friends. Now she checks with me with everything she wants to do. Do babies play with balloons? Not really. Do babies eat chips? No. Do babies snuggle? Yes. Sometimes she tries to convince me that babies do do something she really likes doing, but usually she accepts it and moves on.
She's also at the stage where is standing on everything. The side of the laundry basket, the power supply for my laptop, books, balls, stuffed animals, etc. It makes life more interesting I guess.

This is what my day sounds like

She is singing the theme song from Disney's Winnie the Pooh. She will sing this about 17 million times today, but she won't sing with me. Only one singer is allowed at a time.
Today is also the beginning of the full on inquisitive stage. She's been asking "Who is singing?", "What song is this?" and "Why you doing that?" for a long time, but today has been a constant stream of "Why?" What fun. My advice to other people for this stage has always been to just keep answering the questions, even if the answer is "Because." It's difficult to keep thinking of reasons why, but there is a reason for everything, even if you don't know why the toy designer picked that exact shade of blue. I expect to deploy the answer "I don't know, lets find out." relatively soon.

Oh Christmas Tree

It's starting to look more like Christmas inside the house now. Stockings are hung by the fire, and Moira keeps filling them with marbles and pom poms. I've even been singing "Oh Christmas Tree" at naptime, which is so far Moira's favorite carol. Possibly because I forgot the real words and made up my own. I wasn't too far off though.

With Pearl's help, we got the tree up on Saturday. Moira was very careful with which ornaments went where. Pearl and I were very careful that all the breakable went up out of her reach.

Today my Mom came over and we made cookies. Moira was very interested in watching us use the cookie cutters, but she didn't want to get her hands messy by actually touching the dough. We made paint box cookies (shown here) which Moira really enjoyed. She didn't understand the point of icing and decorating the gingerbread cookies, preferring instead to just lick the sprinkles off her fingers. She is very proud of her cookies, regardless of how much she actually had to do with their creation.

After nap we finished our ornaments. I'd show you a picture, but I'm not happy with how they turned out. Since I went crazy buying large plastic beads, I asked Moira if she wanted to string beads for awhile. She was happily occupied for over an hour, and made three necklaces and one very large bracelet. This is the necklace she made for me.
While she worked, she informed me that she wanted a kitty and that Daddy was bringing one home. I gave him a heads up that he was going to be disappointing her, and that she was making a necklace to thank him, but she decided instead that the necklace was meant to go in his stocking so she could surprise him during dinner with it. He kept wearing it, even after she told us that we can't wear necklaces while we eat.

{This Moment}

Inspired by SouleMama, a Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. If you're inspired to do the same, leave a link to your 'moment' in the comments for all to find and see.

Christmas crafting

On Sunday, while Walker and Moira were skiing with my Dad, I finished Moira's stocking stuffers.

Ribbon streamer bracelets.
I saw these at a playdate last week and thought they were a great idea for a dress up box. Hers were beautiful, with rainbow streamers and all the ribbons the same length. I decided to use what I have, and I think they turned out interesting. The cuff is elastic, so that they can fit for a long time.

Moira loves her tea set, and drinking actual tea. One of her friends has a little wooden tea bag set, and Moira thought they were awesome, so I made her these. They are little muslin bags filled with different colored beads. On the other side of the tag it says "Moira's Tea Co." These were a little fiddly, and you can see that I forgot to insert one of the ribbons in before I sewed the top closed, but they turned out nice. I look forward to drinking lots of this tea in January.

Moira's first ski lesson

Down hill
Originally uploaded by Maydela

Walker and my Dad took Moira up to the mountain for her first ski lesson. Dad wasn't expecting her to get past the stage where you push around on one ski. Instead she got rode the magic carpet and you can see how well she skis in the video.