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.