Who's that?

She now has to know who everyone in her vicinity is. Repeatedly. Over and over she'll ask "who's that?" To her credit, once she remembers the answer, she stops asking who they are and starts asking what they are doing. We went to some friend's house Thanksgiving Day. Dillon kept asking who everyone was and was told that's Will, that's Mary, etc. Mary's name was the one that stuck. All afternoon, anytime she'd lose sight of Mary she'd ask "Mary doin'?" and we'd have to find Mary to see what she was doing.

Actually, I think the whole experience of having a toddler at their house for the afternoon was an eye-opener for Will and Mary, who are expecting their first child in February. Dillon behaved beautifully, but was, of course, a typical toddler. One of her main points of fascination was the cat. When the cat was nowhere to be found, the litter box became the next point of fascination. The poop obsession is still there, afterall. I did manage to keep her out of the litter box, but we had to have more conversations about cat poop than I ever care to have again! I also had to get up no less than 10 times during the 45 minutes or so that we were eating dinner. The look on their faces was one of fear that that was what they were in for. I assured them that this stage doesn't hit until they get really mobile and that it's a lot easier to deal with when you are in your own environment rather than someone else's home. I'm not sure they were convinced.

We spent a good bit of our day today cooking our own Thanksgiving dinner, which we'll finish and actually eat tomorrow. Dillon asked lots of times "Momma doin'?" then "Daddy doin'?" once he woke up and joined in. For Christmas we are getting her this thing called a Learning Tower so that she can see what we are doing. As she gets old enough to be able to do so, I'll let her start helping mix things and such. As it is, she loves to play at the sink pretending she is washing the dishes. It's actually one of the few things that will keep her occupied for a good 15 or 20 minutes. I'm pretty excited about it and I think she will love it.

Actually, I think she'll think Christmas in general is pretty cool- especially pulling ornaments off of the tree!

E-I-E-I-O

Got and robe and my slippers. Where's my newspaper? 


E-I-E-I-O---- Or something like that! She was requesting the ever changing rendition of Old MacDonald. Usually she just requests it by animal, as in "Sing cow" or "Sing horsey." Last night it was this jumble of words that started with "sing," included "horsey" and culminated in a very rough version of the E-I-E-I-O. There were a few unrecognizable words in there as well. It was so cute!! I just had to laugh!

The robe she has on in the picture was a Christmas gift from Mimi & Addy last year. It's so funny to put it on her now and see how short it's gotten on her. It used to go down past her knees- now it doesn't even cover her diaper! We;ve used it a ton and I'll be sad when she outgrows it completely. The shoes are a recent gift from Daddy. We received them in the mail, I put them on her. 45 minutes later one of them was missing and stayed that way for 2 weeks. I looked EVERYWHERE for that silly thing. It turned out to be under her dresser. Didn't witness how it got there and can't even begin to venture a guess. There's a lot of things like that around here-- how did she get ahold of the digital camera that was sitting at the very back of the dresser beyond her reach ("camera-- toes" she says because she wants to see her toes on the screen on the back of the camera)? How did her sippy cup get down in the basement? How did the phone get dunked underwater? Ah, the little mysteries of having a toddler in the house.

Dave comes home today- thank goodness. While I have certainly enjoyed all the one on one time with Dillon, I've really missed him. Dillon will enjoy going to the airport and seeing the plane land and getting to see her Daddy. She does this great little happy dance when she sees him. It rivals any touchdown dance and is just a great deal cuter than an adult male doing it!

Dillon's mama

She's figuring out possesion, as in what belongs to whom. This morning she kept coming up to me saying "Dillon's mama!" and hugginhg my leg. Awwwwwww- now if that won't make your heart melt :-) I remember one of the first times I heard another child refer to me as Dillon's mom- it was just the best feeling. She now goes all around the house identifying what belongs to mama ("Mama's coffee") and what belongs to Daddy ("Daddy's shoes") and Dillon ("Dillon's boots!!")

She's also into figuring out what fits into a certain space. We've been doing some moving furniture around with the painting and things, so she's had a good time trying to see what spaces she fits into. What's funny is that she was trying to fit through a space too small for her one evening. What she finally decided it just wasn't going to work, she got the picture of she and Mam-maw that we have framed and tried it several different directions until she got it to go through the space. She then proudly declared "Mam-maw fit!" Pretty creative, we thought.

Dave is in Arkansas deer hunting right now. I've been telling her all week that Daddy is in Arkansas and will be coming back at the end of the week. Tonight during dinner she said "arkansas, daddy?" out of the blue. Wow. That's a pretty big word. I was impressed! A little later, we were sitting in the floor reading "The Foot Book" and she pointed to her right foot at one of the pages that talks about right feet and said "Dillon right foot." I asked her which one was her right foot and she pointed to the correct one. So I asked which one was the left foot and she pointed to the left foot. Hmmmm..... I asked her which was my right foot and she got it right again, then did the same with the left foot. I think it's safe to say she knows right and left feet! I was even more impressed with that than I was her saying Arkansas!

Now, as for just the plain old cute stuff she says and does, there's a list--- "Gotcha!" "Silly Dillon" "Sing bus" (translation: sing "wheels on the bus")"ABC's" (sing ABC's) "Yummy!" said when she's pretending to taste something she's pretended to cook. "Baby sad" said anytime she hears a baby crying. She's also now starting to act out these whole scenarios with baby where she will make the baby sit (said in the same tone of voice used to get Satchmo to sit when he's all riled up), then lay down for a diaper change, complete with diaper wipe. Then she'll pretend to rock and nurse the baby, then walk around in the mini-stroller with baby. She's holding a whole conversation with the baby this whole time. The imitation is amazing, because she is imitating so much of what I do with her. Thank goodness she hasn't imitated anything that's made me cringe just yet! I'm sure that's coming!

Momma doin'? Daddy doin'?

Just in case there's a foot of snow in the living room.....

I finally got to start painting the dining room after months of stripping wallpaper, then spackling, then sanding and on and on. Dillon was quite fascinated with the painting. She kept asking "momma doin'?" This was often followed by "Dillon doin'" without the inflection of a question. That was followed by "I'm sorry, honey, you can't help momma with this paint." Can you imagine the mess?? I mean, the pink carpet is bad enough all by itself, but add in pumpkin butter colored paint and Dillon and that's the making of a certifiable catastrophe!

Anytime Dave goes down to the basement to work on the computer, Dillon stands at the top of the stairs yelling "Daddy!" the "Daddy doin'?" Then she starts launching toys through the gate rails down the stairs. There's a whole array of items on the stairs to pick up at any given time. She gets extra points if she can land something in Satchmo's water. It sits on the stairs so that we don't have a constant bowl of dogfood soup, which is undoubtedly one of her favorite things about having a dog.

Right now, I'm looking out the window at snow flurries. It was 20 degrees this morning when I got up. Winter is coming. Ugh. I'm so not ready. Dillon is with her snow boots, though!

Two moons

She's learning her numbers! Wednesday night she was gathering teddy bears to carry around. She picked up two and said "two bears!" I figured it was just lucky guess and didn't think a lot about it. Thursday morning as I was getting ready for work, she brought both of her copies of Goodnight Moon to me and said "Two moons!" That evening she was carrying around 2 containers of diaper cream and kept saying "two! two!" She knows two!

Dave got her some purple snow boots to wear this winter. They have been the hugest hit! She wants to wear them all the time-- with or without clothes. After a diaper change this evening she ran, got them and put them on before I could get a diaper and clothing back on her. I guess it's good they are waterproof, just in case she does pee on them!

She is still talking like crazy- unless, of course, someone in public speaks to her, then she's quiet as a church mouse. In the grocery store on Tuesday, this very nice old man tried so hard to get her to talk to him and she would have no part of it. Once he was out of her sight, she starting chattering up a storm again. Tonight she was saying "call me darlin," in imitation of me singing that line out of that old country song,"you don't have to call me darlin', darlin'..."

Today, we painted (which she only liked a little) and played with playdoh(which she like a lot). We made houses and letters and numbers and hats and balls to name a few. She, fortunately, is smart enough to not eat it once she tastes how salty it is. Satchmo, on the other, hand, not so smart. Twice I had to shoo him away from a chunk of playdoh that had made it to the floor, once while I was on the phone with the dentist's office trying to re-schedule an appointment. Each time he'd already gotten a pretty good bite eaten. The saltiness didn't seem to faze him too much, but he has certainly put away some water tonight! Hopefully we don't wake up tomorrow to find him all swollen up from water retention.

Never a dull moment around here, I tell ya!

Leaves

Just wanted to show how many leaves we had in the back. These are raked into a pile, but it's a huge pile- even with the seat of the chair. She had a good time playing in them, though.

Halloween ladybug

Here's our little ladybug. She wanted no part of the hat that's part of the costume. She wouldn't even leave it on long enough for me to get a picture. We went out to our town square where there were all kinds of Halloween activities- face painting, ghost stories, free pizza and cookies and horse drawn wagon rides around the town square. She enjoyed that a lot and kept wanting to pet the horses. The biggest hit of the whole evening was getting to play in the water puddles on the way back to the car. It's good that we don't live far from the town square since she was pretty much soaking wet from the knees down!