Stocking

Here is a video clip of Ellie pulling things out of her stocking. She was excited about all the treats, especially the orange (she ended up eating both mine and Meg's as well). Ellie really got into opening presents, but I don't think she realizes what Christmas is at this point. For sure next year! There will be more Christmas posts to come!

Who's Wes?

I know I've alluded to taking care of him, but I tried not to really talk about him or post pictures online without his parents permission, so I finally remembered to ask.

Wes is the little boy I have been watching 4 days a week since the end of August. He is happy, active and a great cuddler (which I love, since Brielle doesn't hold still long enough to cuddle unless she is asleep)! He just turned 1 a few weeks ago and walks really well already.

Wes and Ellie are about 7 months apart. They usually play really well together, although they were having a hard time sharing this cool new car today. Brielle is borrowing this power car while her friend who owns it is out of town. It provided hours of indoor entertainment, even though neither of them actually use the peddle to drive yet. Just getting in and out while playing with a set of keys is quite entertaining.

Brielle and Wes both love to stand on stools and look out the front window. We don't live in a busy neighborhood so there is not much to see, but Ellie is always hoping for a school bus to pass by.

something to talk about

I haven't done a very good job of keeping track of words Brielle knows. I started a few times, but never kept up on it. So, for her journal and my interest I decided to do a repeatable "study" of sorts.

I wrote down everything she said for two hours. Starting from when she woke up at 7am and as we got ready to leave the house to go shopping at 9am. I didn't include words she had to be prompted to say (unfortunately, please and thank you were among those words). I also didn't include words she was just copying, not coming up with on her own (like headband).

By-the-way, I don't know how many words she should be saying at her age. I don't want to know if she is a genius, average, or dumber than average. I feel like she communicates pretty well, but I am perfectly aware that a lot of what she says I only understand because I'm her mom, most strangers might not be able to figure out all these words.

So, here is what we have for a typical day with James running out the door to school. At 19 months and 1 week, this is what Ellie had to say. I only wrote each word once, even if she said it multiple times during the two hours:

blanket (said sounding like deedee)
baby
bottle
Daddy
fan (sounds like man)
Mommy/Mommy's (a frequent word)
nose (as she is pulling toilet paper off the roll to "blow" her nose)
bath
cereal
orange
wave
kiss (sounds more like diss)
bye
book
Wes
Scriptures
milk
yes
juice
bonk
no
drink
on
more
pancake (sounds more like beepbeep, but she signs this was well while she says it)
right there
egg
bread
Ellie/Ellie's
ummm this one (always said together, including the umm as if one word)
hot
cup
help
buckle
yay
bite
all gone
down
again (a frequent word)
wash hands
ball
hat
pen
snowman
shoes
feet
yucky
color
movie
owl (says the sound of an owl "oooo" to mean owl)
up
wake up
lotion (sounds more like cici)
face
tree
angel
teeth
woah
mouth
mouse
page
grandpa
cat
school
puppy
choo-choo (says to mean train)
shiny
bumpy
dinosaur
bus
turtle
snake
shower
potty
sleep
jump
uh-oh
stairs (still sounds more like shoes)
run
light
bed
belly
pillow
frisbee
circle (as she dances in circles)
hair
jacket
where'd it go (always said together as one word, as she lifts her hands up looking)
snack
house

Glitter and Glamour

I introduced Brielle to the fun world of glitter this week. She is a fan, apparently it tastes good as well, although I haven't tried.

Snow Man

So, I admit I helped Brielle finish coloring the hat and nose.

I used a bag for the glitter so that you can shake the snowman and see the glitter move around.

I should be a better mom and let her do the projects like she wants. If she did it her way the snow man would have had 50 eyes. She loves those!


Initial Ornament

This was a fast and easy project. I cut the letters out of cardboard while the kids were playing and then Ellie painted the glue and shook on the sprinkles.

I decided to do and E for Ellie rather than a B for Brielle, because I'm lazy and 'E's are so much easier to cut out.

She was extremely excited about getting to put it on the tree. I had to pull off a few extra ornaments for her to re-hang.

More Indoor Fun

Play-Doh Cookies
When I saw the ideas for these cookies I knew it was something I wanted to try. I had a cookie exchange yesterday with a group of moms, which gave me the perfect excuse. Ellie loves to help me pour ingredients in the bowl every time I cook. Because these cookies are time consuming I pulled some other cookie dough out of the freezer and baked those while we were working on the cookies. I know that is not teaching her patience, but I didn't mind the quick reward of a hot cookie either.

I used wilton food coloring to make the colors brighter as I saw suggested in the recipe.

The dough really did look just like play-doh. This would be a great activity for older kids. Brielle is just now starting to like play-doh, but still isn't great at actually working with it or rolling it into balls or snakes. She did, however love eating the dough.

I haven't been very good at taking pictures of our latest crafts, but click on the titles for the links of what we've been doing...

Noel

Reindeer Ornament

Snow Flakes

Slightly Crazy and Extremely Cold

We actually had a high of 30 degrees today, not too bad for Lansing. However, at the time we decided we wanted to go sledding it was only 20 with the windchill factor making it 10 degrees. Yep, that is cold. But, we've had quite a bit of snow this week and Ellie had a lot of energy, so we made the trek to the park anyway.






Ellie was a little unsure of going alone, so I went along for the ride. As you can see I'm not that great at steering.

She also wasn't so crazy about the face plant into the snow. I wouldn't be either.
We only lasted a few times down, but that was all we planned on doing. We're hoping for a warmer day to go try again.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

Ellie loved helping to decorate the tree. I've been surprised that she and Wes haven't tried to mess with it. I strategically placed it in a corner where I could block it off a bit. Ellie does go over to the tree and says "tree...eyes" meaning I've told her she can look with her eyes, not with her hands. I keep waiting for her to test that limit. It is probably a bit confusing that while decorating I let her touch it all she wanted.

And here are a couple of our latest projects. If you click on the title of the project it will take you to the site with instructions.

Advent Calendar

Painting on the glue

We made the shape of a Christmas Tree.

Ellie loved putting a piece of candy into each of the sections. She colored the tree and then helped glue the ornaments on. She liked that so much I had to cut out more pieces of paper for her to glue onto something else.

And there it is. We get to poke a hole each day to get the candy out and count our way to Christmas!

Santa Claus

I don't think Brielle actually know her colors, but she likes to say and sign the names of the colors. Red is her favorite, so she was excited that I gave her a red marker to color Santa.

She did much better at gluing the cotton balls than the ghosts that we made for Halloween.

Yep, she is pretty proud of her work.

Don't mind the mess

There are times when I'm working in the kitchen doing something that Brielle can't help with. Sometimes when I just need to get something done I resort to entertaining her in whatever way I can. Her latest favorite is playing with dry beans. This is slightly less messy than playing with colored rice, but I still haven't figured out a good way to keep her fun contained.

To her credit, she does TRY to sweep up after herself.

Does anyone have ideas on how to keep it less messy, and/or other things to keep toddlers distracted for those hot oven, boiling water, dough all over hands moments?

First Haircut

The time came. I was nervous about losing the cute curls in the back, but she just kept looking like a little orphan and I couldn't take it anymore. So at 18 1/2 months, Brielle finally gets a haircut.
I don't let Brielle watch a lot of T.V. But, I admit when we do her hair in the morning that is when she is allowed to watch. Mostly she loves to watch herself; home videos are the best. She also loves the "My Baby Can Talk" sign language videos.
Anyway, so I plopped her in her seat in front of a video and had no problem with her holding still for the haircut. I did try to keep the scissors hidden from her so she didn't really know what I was doing. I don't want her getting any early ideas about cutting her own hair!

Before




After




And this is how it looked after we did it for church. The back still curls a bit, so I'm happy.

Turkey Craft Day

Today we learned about turkeys. I started by showing Ellie some YouTube videos of turkeys gobbling so she knew what we were talking about.

Spice Turkeys

Ellie wasn't too sure about putting her hand in the glue. I told her to give the plate five and that worked. She LOVED shaking the spices on the plate. You are supposed to use "Thanksgiving" spices like cinnamon and sage. Instead I let her use the random ones that came in the spice rack when we were married that I've never opened.


Cereal Box Turkeys

This was a lot of prep work, and not quite as toddler friendly. I did it more for me than for her though, just because I thought they were so cute. She did a good job helping to glue it together.

And she was very interested in the googly eyes, and kept pulling them back off.


Turkey Fan

I colored and cut everything out first, since Brielle still doesn't care about coloring all that much yet. She doesn't press hard enough so can't see what she has done.

She loved helping glue it together.

Her favorite thing though was the fan tail. She kept slipping it through the roll and pulling it out, over and over again.

Random

This post is going to cover a few different events, but I didn't want to take the time to post 3 separate events...so here is a glance at our week.

Dairy Barn

I've been wanting to take Ellie to the MSU Farms for a long time. I thought she'd like getting a closer look at the animals. With her Grandma Finlay being in town this past weekend we finally took the opportunity. We stopped at the Dairy Farm and I don't know if it is always like this, or if something was wrong but it was stinky. I'm not talking about cow manure stinky, that I can handle just fine...this was a sulfur smell so bad that we had to come home, shower and put our clothes in the wash before we could do anything else. Even the car smelled. It makes me gag just thinking about it.

Bleach Painting

I needed a quick activity to entertain an ornery toddler. This is one that must be supervised closely, but was really easy and fast to set up.

Just take a piece of construction paper. Get some bleach and paint with it.

I made the mistake of putting the bleach in a paper cup at first. I immediately changed my mind when I brought it to the table and Ellie said "drink". I put it in a small plastic container instead and sat right with her the whole time. After awhile I took away the bleach and let her keep painting with water while I cleaned up.

Bronner's Christmas Store

We drove out the Frankenmuth and went into Bronners (the worlds largest Christmas Store). We've been there before, but it was fun with Ellie being older this time she was mesmerised by all there is to see.

After almost two hours of looking around in the store though, she was happy to run around as we went over to the Silent Night Chapel. I wish I had the energy of a toddler.

I'm going to have a brother!

I don't really know what it means. Dad and Mommy keep telling me there is a baby in Mommy's belly, but I don't see it there.
We went to the doctor to look at the baby at make sure it was healthy. Daddy made sure I held still on his lap while Mommy got to lay on a cool bed. Then they gave me a turn to lay on it too.
Here are the pictures from the movie we watched. They show my new baby brother!