An honest question

"Does everyone know I'm cute in this?!"

:)

The demise of naptime?

Please, no, say it isn't so.......

Oh but I think it may be happening. In fact, it seems like it's the demise of sleep in general. Not only did she not take a nap today, she wouldn't go to sleep early. So here it is, 9:00pm, I'm craving total quiet and some personal space and getting neither. Her bony little behind is parked on my leg shifting around, I'm sure putting a tailbone-shaped bruise there. I'm being asked questions like "Why is Dillon not sleeping? Is it because I'm three?" "What would happen if I were 2?" What would happen if I were purple? What would happen if I were a blue dog? What would happen if I were a pink cat?" while she scribbles on a little piece of paper.

Ugh.

Out of the mouths of babes...

I asked Dillon to let Dave put her pajama shirt on last night so I could finish getting ready for bed.
Dillon: "No, I don't like Daddy." (Nevermind that he'd been the favorite all day long)
Me: "Why do you not like Daddy?"
Dillon: "Cause he says words I'm not supposed to say."

Yes he does. And was present for this conversation. Hehehe.

On a different note, it turns out that the pileated woodpecker is female and is probably building a nest. Our neighbor says that they start nesting in March, so we may get to watch baby pileated woodpeckers!

Our backyard visitor

Remember the tree the fell in the woods behind our house? The culprit that caused the inital damage to the tree is back- a pileated woodpecker. He (or she) has been camped out there for hours at a time hammering away at this tree for the last 2 days. It's really interesting to watch since it's such a large bird. It must be 18 inches tall. Our neighbors are bird watchers & in conversation with them last summer, they had mentioned how they'd like to see a pileated woodpecker. So, I called them yesterday to come see it. They were so excited. Dillon's had a good time watching it too, especially the bright red head. She keeps asking what it's doing. Thankfully, it's not a particularly noisy woodpecker like the ones that'll be out in full force this spring and summer.

Happy 3rd Birthday!

I had hoped to post this last night after all of the birthday festivities were said and done, but it didn't really work out that way. On Wednesday she got to open some presents and spent lots of time opening the flaps and reading the book from Randy & Tawni, and fed various items to alligator, bat and dragon from the tea set Mimi sent. Since Dave worked all day Wednesday and got home only about 1/2 an hour before I left to go teach class Wednesday night, we decided to do Dillon's birthday celebration on Thursday. I also decided to go the route of a very small birthday party in lieu of a larger one that would've been completely overwhelming to Dillon. So, on Thursday morning, Lydia and Emma and their mothers came over to play. We had pizza for lunch and small individual cakes so that Dillon could blow out candles. She got a green rubber squishy frog and a frog sticker book from Lydia and a Little People dinosaur set from Emma. Lydia found the tea set and had a ball with it. Dillon was pretty happy to go along provided she got to share her tea with her frog (and that he didn't have to leave her clutches). They all fought over who got to play with the dinosuar egg from Emma. Overall, a fun time was had by all, though my head was ringing with the squeals and screams of 3 little girls by the end of it all.

Naptime, of course, was not going to happen, so, thinking she'd go to bed early, we gave her her presents late afternoon and had our little celebration. She got squishy dinosaurs from Nana and a dragon costume from Mom & Dad. She wore the costume for a while, then wanted to Dave to take it off, explaining "I like it, I just want it off right now." Fair enough. I think Dave & I could've taken a walk and she'd been fine, she was so enthralled with all her new toys. This made winding down for bed quite the challenge. But, she eventually did and didn't stir again for several hours. At 3 am, she wanted stegosauraus so she could play with him ("but I'll let dimetradon sleep"). I let her have stegasaurus, but she had to be quiet. She was and was actually asleep again before I was. This morning she had already turned on the lights, found dimetradon and was looking for stegasuarus when she called out to me.

So all said and done, it seems like it was a good birthday for her. I thought I'd do what I did last year and do a run down of likes & dislikes.

Likes: Things that fly, though birds are the least interesting to her- mostly planes, flying horses, flying dragons, bats, and helicopters; dinosaurs- she knows several by name; helping me cook- she can safely stir something heating on the stove; nursing- though sometimes she forgets to ask & I forget to offer; going to breakfast and the Montshire with Dad; reading books- especially if the book involves any of her other favorite things; going to the grocery store with me- and getting to walk instead of ride in the cart; being tickled; cutting paper with scissors; cuddling with Mom and Dad; bathtime

Dislikes: Crowds; noisy places; staying in the nursery at church without me (seems like I wrote that last year...); snowshoes (not that it matters this year given how little snow we've had); having her hair brushed (though the discovery of "tangle monsters" has helped)

Could take it or leave it: painting; coloring with crayons; being a ballerina is pretty much limited to when we're at Lydia's house and there is a lot of ballet stuff around- and even then the interest is brief

I'm finding it to be such a fun age because she can really articulate what she's learning and what she's interested in. I enjoy taking her interests and expanding on them- for example, one day we took a big piece of paper and taped it to the fridge. On it we drew a big tree with a place for bats to sleep and some birds' nest for the 2 birds she wanted me to draw. She also wanted a place for dragon to land, so we made a grassy spot. We also made a paper mache birds nest. The librarian knows that when we come in, I'll have a topic for looks that we're looking for. This time is was dinosaurs and we came home with 5 dinosaur books. Although she can definitely be more vocal when she disagrees with something, I also find that it's so much easier to reason with her now. I love hearing what comes out of her mouth, though I'll also admit that the constant microanalysis ("Why did the dinosaur exhale just then?") a little exhausting some days. She's a really happy kid that smiles and giggles a lot. I think we'll keep her :)

Oh, OK

Conversation last night:

Dillon: "what's that red thing on your plate?"
W: "A beet- you want to try it?"
D: "Yes"
A few minutes later
W: "Did you try your beet?"
D: "No, I don't like it."
W: "How do you know?"
D: "'Cause I'm a kid and kids don't like beets."

An important skill

Yesterday afternoon we found ourselves in need of some time out of the house. All of us. So, we went to a local Mexican restaurant for an early dinner. Dillon, being excited at the not so often occasion of eating in a restaurant was very excited. Even more so when she discovered the opportunity to practice a new skill she has- blowing out candles. She went from booth to booth, crawling up into the bench to oh-so-carefully blow out each candle. There weren't really many other people in the restaurant and she didn't go to any tables that were occupied, so we let her do her thing. She was quite proud of herself. We got a chuckle out of it. I'm sure the staff at the restaurant were thrilled to have to re-light all the candles, but hey, she could've been smearing food on the walls.

Snowman

We finally had wet enough snow to make a snowman, so that's what we did yesterday morning. Our neighbor gave us a snowman kit with all the buttons, hat, pipe, etc. in it- but no, not the snow as someone asked me. Dillon kept wanting to climb on the snowman, so there was a lot of explaining that the snowman couldn't hold her up. But all told, we had a good time and are now the proud owners of a pretty cool looking snowman. We did add arms after the picture was taken. Afterall, there are lots of little branches laying around from the large tree falling and snowmen must have arms!