There are butterflies in my house!

This morning, Paige woke up about 6:30am which is almost an hour earlier than usual. When Justin went to get her out of her room, he said her room was really cold. I had adjusted the heat yesterday in my office because it was warm in there, but I guess with her door closed she has less vents and it made it colder in her room. So, that's probably why she woke up early. Since the house was still very dark, Justin brought her into our room to lay in bed with us. This NEVER works. I actually had a little hope this time because she seemed to lay there still for a few minutes. But then out of the blue she starts saying "There are butterflies in my house". I just grunted in response. She's quiet for a few more minutes and then says it again. She probably said it 4 or 5 times, but said nothing else. She must've had a weird dream about butterflies. We hadn't watched any tv the night before about butterflies. I don't know how she came up with that one.

What's gotten into her?

Paige set a record for time outs this weekend. I honestly lost count. I know it was at least three times this morning, at least twice this afternoon, once in Target, twice in the Mall yesterday morning, and at least 4 times at home yesterday. She also lost her Dora and her Goldfish (crackers) privelages today, and had her dolly taken away for the day twice (both Saturday and Sunday--she was throwing it). She's been throwing her toys, hitting, pulling hair, screaming, hitting more, and just having temper tantrums...about the only thing she didn't do was attack Ella, who wisely has been fairly absent this weekend. Toward the end of the day, timeouts were officially extended to a full minute from now on, up from 30 seconds. That seemed to help a little.

In between being a terror, Paige has been an angel. She can be incredibly sweet one minute and then be downright awful the next. She's gotten very good at saying that she's "sorry for ___" after her time outs. Almost too good--in the car ride home, she was doing high pitched screams followed by immediately "sorry for screaming." Apparently, saying "sorry" doesn't mean as much as it once did to her.

Three ideas on what's going on. 1) it's a stage where she's once again decided to challenge our authori-tay and see what she can get away with, 2) she hasn't been feeling good and is taking it out on us (we have no other reason to think this, except maybe for sleep habits), and 3) she's noticed that mom and dad have been a little stressed and distracted lately and is acting out in response. I imagine that all three could be true on some level.

The thing that's strange about this weekend's acting out is that it hasn't, usually, be in response to us not paying attention to her. That's usually when it happens. We actually had lots of quality time with her this weekend, be it playing with her, reading to her, or even going down to Lakemont Park to see the lights. If anything, I've had more time to spend with her since the semester ended a week ago. Hopefully she'll snap out of this soon--I'm not looking forward to long road trips with her acting like this.

At least she's going to sleep again. A few days ago, she started letting me pick her up and sing her a song before I put her into bed (as opposed to letting her climb into bed herself and then doing the singing while she's laying down). This is much closer to what we did when she was still in her crib, and it seems to really help. The last few nights she has actually asked to go to sleep after the second song or so. Not the same child we were dealing with a few weeks back.

Inspection Day!

Today was the inspection on the house. Justin went and the seller was there as well. There are potentially a few big issues, but they all need some further research. The seller seemed willing to have them researched/addressed so we're still hopeful. I think they are going to need to have a plumber, electrician and someone else (from the gas company maybe) to look into these things. Hopefully nothing will be major or a deal-breaker.

Tomorrow we meet with our lender. We were able to lock in a 4.5% interest rate (with no points), so we're super excited about that.

Merry Christmas!

Or "Merry MisMis" as Paige would say.

The other day it was just the two of us in the car and she was getting cranky so I put on some Christmas music. It wasn't helping, so I told her to listen to the music because they were singing about Santa Claus. Then she was quiet for a little while. Later after we ran some errands we were back in the car and I was singing along to the Christmas music. Then Paige yells at me and says "Momma, DON'T sing MisMis music to Santa Claus!" She's not exactly a huge fan of Santa right now. She likes that he's going to bring her lots of presents for Christmas, but when she sees him she is very terrified. We have a stuffed santa decoration at home that all of a sudden she started getting very afraid of and even made us move it across the room!

We bought a house!

We came to an agreement with the sellers around 9pm last night. They are in a really tough financial situation right now, so they did come down some in their asking price, but we also had them throw in:

• Front Loading Washer and Dryer
• Huge playground set and swingset
• Pool table
• Home Warranty

We're happy with the outcome and now we have 7 days to get an inspection and all that other fun stuff done before we go on vacation! We're hoping to get an interest rate of under 5%. We wrote in our contract that if we can't get lower than 5.5% then we can still back out. We can also back out at any time for anything found during the inspection. So it won't technically be a done deal until closing on or around January 26th.

Keep your fingers crossed. This really is a dream house for us. I can't wait to move!

Another house...another offer

We went looking at houses again on Saturday and found one that both Justin and I are in love with. It's in a great neighborhood (and so was the other one), but this is a lot closer for Justin's commute. This house is huge! It's a 4 bedroom, 3 bathroom. It has a living room and a family room and both are on the main floor which is nice. Plus it has a partially finished basement that we could make into my office. The kitchen has recently been updated and is Beautiful!!! The price of course is higher than the other house, so we'll definitely be doing some negotiating. Here's a link to some inside pictures: http://picasaweb.google.com/paigeisone/NewryHouse#

I'll update later on how the offer went. We'll be putting it in this afternoon.

Martin's - My favorite grocery store

Martin's is the real reason I want to move to Hollidaysburg! I love this grocery store. It's huge and has wonderful selection. Plus, for Thanksgiving I got a free 15lb turkey!!!

We filled up on gas this past weekend at the Martin's gas station. We had accumulated about $.30 off per gallon (probably from all the recent shopping we've done there to earn our free turkey).
I can't remember the last time we paid $16 to completely FILL UP the tank!

Offer is in

We just got back from meeting with our realtor today. We put an offer in on the Donna Street house. She is going to try and present our offer to the seller in person either this afternoon or tomorrow morning. Then the seller has 24 hours to get back to us with a counter-offer. So now we just have to sit tight and wait.


Update: Our offer was $13k less than her asking price. She countered by lowering her price by $5k. So then we countered back, but she said no. $5k less than asking price is the lowest that she's willing to go. So at this point we're at a standstill. It's not looking good :(

Breakfast with Santa

On Saturday morning, Justin's school had a breakfast with Santa for kids. Paige was so excited to see Santa (as you can tell from her expression)
That picture was taken before Santa showed up. As soon as she saw Santa, she made us hold her and she buried her face in our shoulder. She was TERRIFIED! We didn't even attempt to have him hold her. I don't think we physically could've pried her out of our arms. So Justin and I sat next to Santa and Paige was on Justin's lap screaming. Our camera's battery was dead by this time, so we'll have to wait until the elf sends us their picture to post that.

First Haircut!

Can you believe Paige is 2.5 years old and is just now getting her first haircut?! She could've gone much longer without getting it cut, but in some places like the front, back and sides it's very uneven and was looking sloppy. I'm hoping to get our holiday pictures taken this weekend, so we all went in for haircuts. I wish I would've thought to take some better "before" pictures. The hair in front is sort of swept away to the side in the first picture. But, some pieces went well down past her eyes if pulled down front.

Here's the After picture where you can see the front part is combed straight.
She was such a good girl. We had been telling her that she was going to get a haircut and she was so excited to go. But when we walked in the door and she saw someone else getting a cut, she grabbed her head and got really scared. We had her sit on Justin's lap and gave her a book and her cookie monster. Once she felt (or rather didn't feel) the first clip, she was much more relaxed and thought it was kinda silly. One lesson we learned is not to pick out a Look and Find book the next time. It requires too much head movement for her to find things in the picture and makes it a tad more difficult for the stylist!

Happy Thanksgiving!

I know I'm a little late posting this. We drove out to Cincinnati to celebrate Thanksgiving this year while stopping over for a night in Pittsburgh on the way. We left here on Tuesday night. The snow was coming down hard and the roads were really bad. The first hour or so of our drive was pretty bad. Then there was a gas leak in Murrysville, so we had to take a small detour. It ended up taking us about 3 hours to get to my parents house. I'm so glad we didn't try to go straight to Cincinnati from here in that weather.

After our rest in Pittsburgh, we headed out to Cinci around 9:30am on Wednesday. Clear skies and dry roads the entire way. Paige was a trooper. She only napped for about half an hour, but we listened to her music and kept her entertained most of the way. We stopped for lunch in Zanesville and then a stop for gas a little while after that. You won't believe how much we paid for gas... $1.45/gallon!!! We made it to Cinci by about 3:30pm.

Our first Thanksgiving celebration was that evening at Grandpa and Grammy's house. There were 20+ people that attended and it was great to see everyone. Usually we only get to see that side of the family at Christmas time. Paige behaved very well. She was a bit shy at first and took a little while for her to warm up, but she eventually did.

The next big feast was on Saturday afternoon at Nama and Pop's house. Paige loved all the dogs and even got to ride in a cart pulled by one of the Berners. Again there were probably about 20+ people there too that we only usually see once a year.

The ride home on Sunday took a lot longer. This time we drove straight from Cinci back to our house to save some time by bypassing Pittsburgh. I'm not convinced it saved us all that much time. We left before 10am, but didn't get back to our house until about 7:30pm. It rained most of our drive and we made several rest stops to get out and stretch. Paige went through about 4 movies and was still getting pretty antsy. At one point, when we were in a standstill in traffic she started acting up and I gave her the santa claus warning. Told her that he knew when she was naughty and when she was nice. So she stopped crying and told me that she was all done being naughty. It was really cute. This is going to be a fun Christmas!

The Housing Search - House #8 and #13

We saw 6 more houses this weekend. It was a much better selection that we looked at and it made things extremely difficult! We have it narrowed down to 2 houses. They are both 3 bedroom, 2.5 baths and have a finished basement with room for an office. Here are the pictures of the 2 top contenders: http://picasaweb.google.com

Happy 2.5 Years!

Today is Paige's 2 1/2 year birthday! Paige had made so much progress since she turned 2. It really is unbelievable when I think back to 6 months ago. Mostly it's her language. She has conversations with her toys and the cat. It's really cute because she'll ask Ella a question like "Wanna sit on the couch by me?" Then she'll respond for Ella: "Yes" Then she'll confirm: "Okay". It cracks me up every time. And how can I resist when she comes up to me and asks "Momma, you want to play legos with me?" I think it was just this week that she's now using the word "with" when appropriate. She still gets his and hers confused at times though.

Last night Justin was asking her if she wanted peanut butter on toast. And I added that he could put some banana on it too (which I love). And Justin responded: "No, that's gross". Not only did she just repeat the words out of his mouth, but she rephrased it back to me. Paige said "No mama, you don't put manana (banana) on peanut butter, that's gross". And added a nice finger waving along with it too.

Her bedroom is right at the top of the stairs, so since we've had her in the toddler bed, we've been closing the door tightly and she has a childproof cover on the doorknob inside. I think with the weather being colder, her door might not be latching all the way shut. This morning I was still in bed (with morning sickness-I thought this was supposed to be over by now) and Justin was in the living room eating his breakfast. I heard a little noise on the baby monitor from one of her toys, but she never said a word when she woke up. Next thing I know she's walking down the stairs by herself and in the living room with Justin to tell him she's up! She must've been able to pull hard enough to get that door open by herself. I hope she doesn't try that in the middle of the night now that she knows she can get out.

Happy half birthday, Paige!

The Housing Search - House #7

On Saturday, our realtor took us to see 5 houses. Of those 5, there was one that Justin really seemed to like and I was on the fence about. It was priced well, but there would be a lot of work that we'd have to put into it before we could even move in. On Sunday, we went to an open house on our own. This is the 7th house we've since so far since the previous weekend we had also been to an open house. This house, we were both in agreement that we really like it. It is at the very top of our price range and doesn't have a basement or air conditioning. Two pretty big downsides for us. Here are some pictures I took with my phone.

The kitchen. All new cabinets and appliances. Very pretty:


The master bathroom. Very small :(The living room with original hardwood floors and wood burning fireplace!
The family room. This room is huge and right off the kitchen!
The view of the backyard and pool/poolhouse from the kitchen sink. A full acre of land.
There are still a huge list of houses from our realtor that we're looking forward to seeing. So who knows what we'll decide on. There's still some time.

Paige of course came with us on Saturday when we looked at the 5 houses. She did wonderfully. It was even raining most of the day, but she tolerated it well. She loved looking through the houses and seeing what dolls and stuffed animals each house had. At one point we had sat down in the living room to chat with the realtor and she ran off and brought back a Clifford dog doll! She wasn't planning on stealing it though. In it's place she left her toy phone that she brought from home. She was just going to do a trade!

A look back at the first trimester

If you haven't heard already, Paige is going to be a big sister! We were being cautious and not making a public post about it until the first trimester was officially over. Tomorrow I'll be 13 weeks along! I met with my doctor today. It was a new doctor, because the one I had been seeing was not working out so well. I didn't feel comfortable with either of the 2 out of 3 doctors that I met in the practice. And I knew that if I was dreading going in for the routine appointments this early on, that it would only get worse down the road. So I made the switch to a practice out of the hospital that I plan to deliver at. Today I met with a midwife, but I'll get to meet each of the 4 doctors eventually as they rotate the patients so all the doctors are familiar with all the patients since any one of them could be the one on-call for the delivery.

At today's appointment, she did an internal exam, listened to the heartbeat, took tons of blood from me and we filled out a bunch of medical history paperwork. They also sent me home with a goody bag and all kinds of paperwork to read through that covers all the testing and everything else that will occur during my upcoming appointments. I had such a good feeling after leaving my appointment today and they covered so much more with me than we went through during any of my 3 appointments at the old practice!

The midwife was able to quickly find the heartbeat with the doppler and the baby was very active and making big thumping noises as we were trying to listen! The heartbeat was in the 160s.

I'm very happy that the first trimester is officially over. I haven't been throwing up, but have been feeling very nauseated since the beginning. Hopefully that will start subsiding as we enter the second trimester.

It's snowing again today. The forecast is calling for 5-7 inches by late tomorrow afternoon. It snowed a little this weekend, but we haven't had any accumulation since our first snow at the end of October.

Play

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post called "I bite Isabelle". Paige would say this to us when we asked her what she had done at school that day. Last week when we were at grandma's house, Paige said something that sounded like, "Mommy bite me?". After asking her to repeat herself several times, we realized that her word for "play" and "bite" sound very similar. And she always leaves out the word "with" from her sentences. So all this time she's been telling us that she played with Isabelle in daycare and we were going into lectures about biting!

Yesterday, however, she did get bit by her friend Rocco at school. And she was quick to name names when we asked her who did it. But the cute thing was when I dropped her off at school this morning, Rocco met us at the door and was very quick to apologize! But Paige just turned her head away. I hope she can forgive him.

In other news, this week we found a realtor. She was referred to us from another faculty member at Justin's school. So we're taking his awesome recommendation and going to look at 4 houses on Saturday! I'm really looking forward to it.

Tonight we are meeting with other faculty at a neighboring college for a dinner with all our families. Last night Paige refused to eat dinner until after she watched a full episode of Dora. I'm hoping she's more cooperative out in public tonight.

You're not listening to Daddy!

A month or two ago, Paige was getting into trouble a lot. She seemed to be on a mission to test the boundaries, and that often involved touching the stove, the dishwasher, or the cat (often in ways that made Ella yell), poking us in our eyes, etc. And so we'd tell her to stop several times, she'd resist, and she'd ultimately end up on time out. Depending on how often she'd been bad that night (and how much energy we had), she sometimes would have to say "sorry" before she could leave time out. That might take anywhere from 3 minutes to a half hour.

However, one thing that we always did is that when she left time out, we'd make her look us in the eyes while we said something like "the reason you were on time out is ____." And, more often than not, the reason was "...you weren't listening to Daddy." Or Mommy, as the case may be.

I think that as a result, "not listening" to mommy or daddy has become the Cardinal Sin in our household. Now, if she's misbehaving, we will usually ask her to stop once or twice. If she doesn't respond we will then, with a hardened voice (but still not shouting), say "Paige, you're not listening to Mommy." And usually...I'd say 4 out of 5 times...she will almost immediately change her behavior. It's not absolute, of course--she's two. But she's become much better about listening to us when we ask her to do something. And, as a result, she's only going on time out once or twice a week these days instead of the once or twice a night like she was just a few weeks back!

Parenting is fun when it works.

Toddler bed update

Paige is doing so well in her new toddler bed. Occasionally, she'll wake up in the middle of the night and we'll have to hold her for a minute or two and then she'll go back to sleep. The great thing is once she goes to bed she stays in there. Even when she's crying out for us, she doesn't walk to her door, she just stays laying in the bed and calls. This morning, when she woke up she was calling for me and when I went to her in her bed she was asking for a tissue because her nose was running! Although her word for tissue sounds a lot like choo choo. So after spending a minute telling her she must've been dreaming because there's no choo choo here I finally realized her nose was running.

New addition

I adopted a crayfish from the BIO 111 labs last week. He was purchased for experiments evaluating the relationship between temperature and activity levels in an ectotherm. They didn't have a clear plan for him after he was done (freezer bait?), so I went ahead and bought a cheap 1.5 gallon aquarium and brought him into my office. Here are pictures:

Chillin' in the office. Arthropods are way better than fishes! (they eat them, actually)

Gorgeous, isn't he?

In the final picture, he's balancing a piece of food I'd just placed in the tank on his back. So he can do tricks too!

Barack Obama

Last night, our country elected Barack Obama to our highest governmental office. You may agree with his views, or you may disagree with him. I tend to agree with him more often than not. But no matter what one's political persuasions may be, I think that one has to look at what just happened with a certain degree of awe.

Until last night, we were a country that, over our entire 200 year history, had exclusively been led by white males. This is a country that, for all its goodness and high ideals, was also built upon a foundation of slavery, discrimination, and bigotry. But now, overnight, we are also a country with a President Elect who is a black man.

There are only a few moments in your life when you know that a massively important, historic event has just occurred that forever changes the world around you. Last night was one of those events. Paige is going to grow up in a world in which the concept of a black U.S. President isn't a pipe dream, isn't unusual, and isn't even remarkable. It will be old news. Uninteresting. Normal.

That's amazing.
-dad

Happy Halloween!

I love going back and looking through pictures of the past few years of Paige. Here's her first Halloween at 5 months old:

Here she is at 1 1/2 years old (it's funny to see Justin in the background with shorts on and this year we'll be layering up):
And here she is this year at 2 1/2:

It's Snowing!!!!

We heard that stories that it snowed in October here, but I really thought we were going to make it until November since we hadn't seen any yet. Yesterday evening I looked outside and we saw the first flurries. We don't have too many positive things to say about our house right now, but one great thing is all the windows! Paige sat on a chest we have in front of the hall window and she loved watching the flurries.

This morning, I woke up and looked out the window and SHOCKED to see that it never stopped snowing...all night long! We had a few inches outside on our cars and porch. Since it was still dark when we were eating breakfast, I turned out the lights in the kitchen so Paige could see the snow outside while she ate.

It's now after 11am and it still isn't stopping. My guess is we're at about 6 inches already! I just can't believe that the first snow of the year (in October) would have this much accumulation!!!

Here are some pics I took earlier today.

Paige liked to watch it, but she definitely didn't want to walk in it. I had to carry her out into the car and also from the car into daycare. I showed her the snow covered pumpkins outside and she was just speechless (and so was I). She does love to wear her new mittens and hat. More accessories!

Carving pumpkins

Justin's coworker brought in 2 homegrown pumpkins for us a few weeks ago and we finally carved them on Sunday night. Paige helped separating the seeds from the goop.

Yes, I know her outfit doesn't match. Originally it did, but then she decided she didn't like the pants and wanted to wear these red ones instead. She was sick this weekend and we weren't going anywhere, so I didn't argue.I have no idea what's up with the drool. She's 2.5 years old. When does the drooling stop? I'm pretty sure she already has all her teeth. We'll blame it on her being sick as well.

Hives

On Thursday night, we noticed a bit of a rash starting just above her diaper on her belly and also on the upper part of her thighs. We didn't think too much of it as she has had some similar breakouts before. On Friday morning, Justin headed off to work shortly after Paige woke up and was still in her one-piece fleece pj's. I unzipped her pj's to change her into her outfit and she was covered in hives. Almost her entire body was red except for her face and hands. It was pretty scary to look at. I waited until 8am and then called her pediatrician. Luckily, they could get us in at 10am. Sure enough, the doctor confirmed it was hives and it's viral so there really isn't any treatment. They recommended Claritin as it might help with the swelling. She was acting fine and had no temperature. On Saturday she started with a temp, but nothing ever higher than 100. She wasn't even itching at it.

I feel bad posting this picture because it looks so much worse than it really was, but part of the purpose of this blog is to use as a reference as she gets older and we forget stuff. I already regret waiting until she was a year old to start a blog. It's amazing how quickly we forget some of her milestones.
On Friday night, it started moving up and onto her face. But as of today (Monday) you can barely tell at all that she had it. Her legs are still a little pink, so I warned daycare not to freak out when they changed her diaper!

Big Girl Bed!

This weekend we finally put Paige's new toddler bed together and started the transition from the crib. We bought the bed several weeks ago, but were holding off as long as we could because she was doing so well with the bedtime routine lately. Then on Friday she had to stay home from daycare because she was covered in hives (I'll update more on that later) and she was refusing to take a nap for me in her crib. I heard a lot of banging around and went up to peak in on her and she was sitting on top of the side rail straddling it. She made it up and was a little scared on the descent. At least she wasn't falling out head first. I think she was just strategically figuring it out when I got in there.

So that night we set up the bed and she did wonderfully! It takes us a little longer than usual to get her to lay down, but once she's in the bed, she's been good for the night. Sunday night she woke up crying at about 11:30pm, so Justin went up there and laid with her for awhile until she was ok with going back in. It's been going a lot better than I had thought.

Here's a picture of her bed and new Dora bedding. The crib is still in the room as well. We will probably take it down in the next few days. Just kept it in there in case of emergency :)

HS Trick or Treat night

Yesterday when I took Paige to daycare, one of the ladies told me that the local high school was having a trick-or-treat night that night from 5-7pm. Justin and I talked it over and since Paige already has her costume we figured it would be a fun thing to do in the evening. The high school is only about 4 blocks from our house.

Here is Paige in her butterfly costume before we left the house. She just called it a butterfly coat.

The high school was very dark and Paige was pretty frightened of the other kids in costumes. Here she is gripping on to daddy:

And here she is at the end with her loot! A bit happier here :)

"I bite Isabelle"

Everyday when we get home from picking up Paige from daycare we usually ask her how her day was. Usually she'll respond with an "Oh-tay" or some other quick non-descriptive answer of what she did. The other day was different. I asked her what she did at school that day and she responded "I bite Isabelle". Isabelle is a few months younger than she is and she always talks favorably about her. She calls Isabelle her friend. So we were a bit shocked when she told us she bit her. Just shocked in general because she's been over the biting phase for a long time now. So we started asking her more questions and she was either getting confused or just decided to start playing with us. We asked her why she would bite Isabelle. She then said that Isabelle bit her. The more questions we asked the more her story would change. So the next morning, I debated about saying something to her teacher but then finally did. I would want to know if she's biting and also how they are handling it. Her teacher just laughed at me. She said she couldn't even picture Paige attempting to bite someone! That made me feel pretty good. Fast forward to this morning, I was dropping Paige off and putting her slippers on (they cleaned the carpet and so the kids all wear slippers during the day. Paige calls them her "pippers"). I looked over at Isabelle playing with another little girl and I heard the other little girl yell at Isabelle. Then the teacher turned quickly and said "Isabelle, no biting". It must be Isabelle going through the biting stage. I really hope she doesn't get Paige doing it again. I'm very happy to be past that stage.

Complex sentences

Paige is such a chatterbox. Everyday she'll say something that will amaze me. She is incorporating the words "his" and "her", but sometimes uses the wrong one. This morning, she told me "Daddy is taking her shower". At least it's a step up from saying "Daddy take shower". She also is using words like "either" and "too", as in "Mommy doesn't want any either". Sometimes you can tell she's going to be using a lot of words in a sentence because she'll start talking but then you can almost see her thinking through how it's going to come out. It's very cute.

So Stubborn

The other day Paige was in a mood and she kept hitting. Our discipline method is to give her a warning and then put her in timeout if she continues to hit. She went into timeout twice on Saturday morning for hitting. And she was getting so upset. I would ask her to apologize, but all she would do was just cry. Later, she had finally calmed down and was eating lunch and I asked her to say she's sorry for hitting me earlier and she looked me in the eye and said "no". She knows how to apologize, she's just stubborn! So I told her that she wouldn't get any more tv until she apologized. Immediately, she turned to me and said "I sorry momma". Then we had a great conversation with her about hitting. We all discussed how we don't hit her or each other and she shouldn't hit anyone either. Well, after that point the hitting stopped and she resumed to being an angel.

I had no idea that revoking tv privileges would work so well! It was so hard not to laugh at how easy that was. Especially after struggling for what seemed like hours just to get an apology out of her.

Dress Up

Paige is very into accessorizing and everyone knows it. She wears bracelets, necklaces, purses, hats to school everyday. Sometimes all of them at once. Her teacher at daycare gave us this dress-up costume for her to wear. We put it on her the other night and she loved it! Thanks Marilyn!

Pumpkin Patch

Last weekend we went to the pumpkin patch with Grandpa and Grammy Merry. The pumpkin patch was at the ValeWood Farms cow farm.


They had this big box full of raw corn kernals for the kids to play in:
We went on a 30 minute hayride tour that took us all around the farm to see the cows and that's where I got some of the fall tree pictures from my previous post.

Fall in PA

Summer wasn't bad here, nice and mild. A few hotter days that made us thankful for buying the window air conditioners, but we really didn't use them that often. Phoenix is still having weather in the 90's and we've already put on our heat here. These past 2 weeks it's been in the 50s and 60s.

Fall is the most beautiful thing I've seen out here. The views of the trees changing colors is just breath-taking. I wish it wasn't over so fast. I need a longer fall! I wish I could capture the beauty in a picture, but it's just so difficult. Here are some that I did get last weekend. Click on the picture so you can see a larger image and the trees in the distance.

TV Watching

There aren't too many tv shows that Paige will watch. It used to only be Elmo, but she has recently become very fond of Dora the Explorer. First thing in the morning and as soon as she gets home from school she says "Watch Dora". We like Dora because it's an interactive show and Paige will follow along and participate. She calls out for Map and Backpack. She points to the screen when Dora asks where something is. She'll even attempt to say some of the spanish words that Dora teaches! She also likes Dora's friend, Boots, the monkey. Lately she's even been asking to "Watch Dora and Boots". Sometimes I'll say no and she'll then ask "Watch Boots and Dora"? As if switching the order would make me change my mind. If we say no to watching Dora she'll go down the line and then ask to watch Elmo. If we say no to Elmo then she'll ask to watch babies. She likes the show Jon and Kate plus 8. If we say no to that then it's back to asking for Dora...and Boots.

Yesterday, we were getting ready to watch Dora and there was a commercial for SpongeBob Squarepants. It was quite disturbing that she recognized him without even hearing the name and said "PongeBob Twarepants". I don't know what they watch at daycare!

In other news, yesterday I was going through her menu for daycare picking out which days she would be buying lunch from them this month. When I was done I wrote her name at the top of the page. She looked at me and said "you color my name". We were very impressed that she recognized what I wrote to be her name. That's not something we have worked with her on.

You're So Funny

Yesterday, we were in the car and it was actually pretty warm outside. We had the windows open, but then decided to have the A/C in the car on. We closed the windows and Paige asked if she could have hers open. We told her it was too hot. So she asked "Can I blow on it?"

A little while later we were driving home from dinner and I was singing to Paige to keep her entertained. She started laughing and told me "You're so funny".

I often times refer to Justin as daddy in front of Paige. But this time I was calling for him as "honey" and he wasn't responding. So Paige went into the other room and called "Justin". Then she wouldn't stop saying "Justin". He told her to call me "Jen" and she did once but then went back on to saying "Justin".

Funny things

Paige has a pretty bad diaper rash right now. This morning I was changing her diaper and applying cream and she told me "no more diaper cream". But I continued on. Then she said "I SAID, No more diaper cream" while wagging her finger at me! She sounded a little like me.

We were getting ready to head out the door and she was randomly counting to ten. Then I started singing the 10 little monkeys jumping on the bed song. I got to the part of "Mommy called the Dr and the Dr said...", but then I got distracted and stopped singing. So Paige jumped in and sang "No more monkeys jumping on the bed". I don't know when the last time was I sang that song to her. It's probably been months. Maybe she heard it at daycare? I was surprised she could finish it (with the correct words) without me saying the line first!

Wordless Wednesday - Accessorized

(Pay no attention to her pants falling down!)

Lakemont Park

This weekend was the Altoona First Festival at Lakemont park. Admission was only $5 per person and that included a ride all day pass. Normal park admission is $10 per person. Age 2 and under was free.

Paige had a great time. We were there for almost 3 hours. I don't know if it's really worth the $10 price for normal admission. Although, they do have a waterpark that is also included in regular admission but was closed because it's the end of the season.

Here are some pictures of Paige enjoying some of the rides.

Not sure who this little girl that Paige is riding with. We tried to put Paige in her own boat, but she was a little afraid of the water, so we through her in with this girl instead and she did fine.

Notice the bracelets (baby toy rings) that she is wearing on each arm? She rarely ever takes them off and always has to have her "two bracelets". She even sleeps with them on most nights.

This ride went crazy fast for a kiddie ride and it went up and down into the air. Yes, that's a gun on the back of the airplane, but we just told Paige it was a handle for her to hold. Only in PA.

Where on Earth is Daddy?

Back in October, Justin posted about Google Maps. He was so proud that Google Mapped Daddy. I was just reading an interesting article about Google fuzzing out people's faces and license plates, so I looked up our old address to see if Justin's face would be fuzzed out. Well, it's worse than I thought. Looks like they updated their maps, without Justin! I guess his 15 minutes of fame are over :(
In the old map, he was walking right behind the bus stop on the way to our house.

Tomato Fairy

On Wednesday, Justin called and told me that he was bringing home some tomatoes and potatoes from a coworker's garden. Here's what he brought:

That same afternoon, when I left the house to go pick up Paige from daycare, these were mysteriously sitting on our deck steps:
The next day (Thursday) I again left in the afternoon to go pick up Paige from daycare and AGAIN, we had more tomatoes sitting on our deck!
When I got back to the house with Paige, we played outside on the deck for a bit and the neighbor across the street called out to us and revealed her identity! She was the mysterious tomato fairy. Thank goodness she told me they were from her garden. I was wondering if I should leave a thank you note on our porch since we didn't know which neighbor it was!

Anyone have any good recipes for a tomato sauce? I'm not sure what I'm going to do with all of these! But I'm very grateful, we LOVE tomatoes. Even Paige loves the cherry ones, which we still have a carton from last weeks farmer's market.

What's That?

Paige’s favorite question is asking “What’s That?” But coming from her it sounds more like “Es Zat?” I’m afraid this is the pre-curser to the dreaded “Why?” question. We are completely to blame for this one. I noticed the other day Justin was reading her Elmo Seek and Find book and as he pointed to all the objects on the page he would ask her “What’s That”? She’s really good at finding every object in the book and she can name most everything she sees. By getting her to tell us what things are we’ve been able to grow her vocabulary. But now she wants to know what EVERYTHING is. The hard part is when we’re in the car driving 65 mph and she looks out the window and asks “What’s That?” when we’ve already passed what she had been looking at.

Tantrums

I think the tantrum phase is finally starting to settle down (knock on wood). We both just realized last night that she hasn't had one in a while. At least not the full blown ones where there's absolutely nothing you can do but walk away and wait it out. She still gets into trouble and whines, but we can usually talk her through it and redirect her attention. It's usually when she is getting bored that she'll start something. I know I'm probably cursing it since I'm writing about it. Not a good thing to do when I have her alone tonight since Justin has a school function!

The last few days she's really been getting into playing with legos. It's really the only thing that she'll sit still for by herself and play for awhile. I'll have to take some pictures because she's building some interesting creations!

Bike Riding

Over the weekend we finally got the last few things we needed in order to go on a bike ride. Justin got new tires, I got a helmet (safety first) and we got a bike rack for the car. Yesterday, we drove over to the trail in Ebensburg and started biking around 4:30pm. We rode for about an hour and did about 7 miles. The first half was wonderful. On the way back, we realized why it had been so enjoyable. It was all downhill. The way back was a little tough. The entire way was uphill! We still had a good time and plan to go a few more times if possible before it gets too cold.