Baby Math

I'm not exactly sure how this face

plus this face

can equal this face. But then again, my math skills are at a 10th grade level.

I wonder what will happen a second time around. We'll all find out May 2011.

Adventing

I finished the advent calendar last night.  Here's 3 weeks of my life.  It took a lot of time but I had fun making it.

The idea came from HomemadeByJill who found it on this Inchmark blog.  But I didn't do all the same ornaments that they did. Mouse ornament? Sick. And I made my car ornament after a Hotwheel car, a Syme family stocking tradition.

I had the idea of buying mini ornaments at the store if I didn't finish in time but technically I just needed to stay ahead of the calendar. But once I started, I discovered some of the ornaments went really fast, like the lights, so I'm done with time to spare.

So now all the ornaments are tucked in their pouches and the calendar is in the closet for another week. I kind of need a break from looking at it.

Here's a post.

I haven't updated the blog in awhile since, as you can see, we've been really busy.  No, she's not sleeping; she's watching the Prince of Egypt.  I've finally gotten Sarah to branch out in her movie watching and it's been weeks since we've watched Mary Poppins.  Yay! This week's movie du jour is the 1972 cinematic gem "Charlotte's Web" or "Piggy movie" as Sarah calls it.

Sarah's birthday was 21 days ago.  These are two of her birthday balloons as of this morning.  I had no idea getting balloons from Macey's was going to be such a long-term commitment.

What do we do other than watching Sarah's balloons die a slow death? Justin has been furiously busy with school.  One more month and he will have his bachelor's all done.  The respite will be short-lived as he starts the graduate program in January but I am proud of him and excited just the same.

I've been working on this awesome and time consuming project of a Christmas advent calendar.  I'll post pictures when it's done but let's just say for now Sarah can't leave it alone--it's that cool.  I'm pretty sure my children will fight over it when I die.

Sarah cracks us up all day, every day.  She says "sorry" and "thank you"  more times a day than I can count.  She is way more polite than I taught her to be.  Sharing is a completely different story. I blame her bad attitude on nursery.

Her Halloween candy is finally gone and I am so relieved.  Candy was the first thing on her mind in the morning and the last thing at night.  She wanted me to sing a song about candy the other night. I was at a loss. 

Here's a little conversation we had:

Sarah: Mom help?
Me: What do you want?
Sarah: Canny.
Me: You want candy? (I was making sure I understood her)
Sarah:   (shrugs shoulders) Sure.

Now that my battery and camera have been reunited, I may be taking more pictures now.  The battery sat in the charger for 3 weeks so we should be good to go. I am soooo excited for Thanksgiving.  I love food.

Happy Birthday Sarah!

Wednesday my baby girl turned 2.  When is a child no longer a baby? I keep extending the date by adding new benchmarks she has to reach.  Walking? Nope. Talking? Nope. 1 year old? Nope. 2 years old? How about when she's potty-trained? Good, she's still a baby for a little while. Relief.

We started off her special day by having breakfast in the special Birthday Bowl.

Then we went to the mall with Kenzie and her kids, Malea and Isaac.  They played in the playplace and then we got pretzels.  That's what you get when your birthday is on a stormy day.

During her 40 minute nap (grrr) I managed to finish her cake.  Pretty cool huh?  The frosting was delicious.  I bought it from Macey's bakery.

Justin brought home balloons for her.  That would have been enough presents for her.  She had to hold them while she folded her arms for the prayer and has barely let go of them since. She cried that night when I wouldn't let her take them to bed. Notice the cool red Birthday Plate.

 Super excited to open presents.

She was pretty much a spaz all day.  It must have been all the treats.

 She caught onto opening presents pretty quick considering it had been since last Christmas that she opened one.  Maybe I'll post the video.  Basically she stopped looking at was in the bags and just moved onto the next.

I love this sequence of pictures.

She got kind of nervous when we started singing.

But she knew just what to do.

The next morning we played with her new toys for a couple of hours.  She is all about cooking and feeding her stuffed animals.  She says "more salt?" dumps more in, tastes it then says "more salt?"  She gets that from Justin. 

She even put on her apron. Victory!

I came into the room and saw this.  I told you she's obsessed with her balloons.

I took some pictures of her today in her new dress at my parents' house with their awesome new camera.  It's way too complicated for me to figure out all the settings but I think we did pretty good on the auto-setting.  And it helps to have a gorgeous little girl to photograph. I took 167 pictures (yikes).  Here are of my favorites.

Okay, here's a bunch more since she's so dang cute.

Farewell to a chair

I put Sarah's highchair away today. She would rather sit at the table now. But I'm kind of sad about it. She's sat in that thing every day since she was 4 months old. Here's a few of my favorite highchair moments.  And since she's turning 2 next week, this will be a nice review of how dang cute she's been all these years.

"Sarah loud? Daddy loud? Mom loud?"

This is Sarah's favorite game.  She picks a person from Column A and says that they are something or has something from Column B.  The possibilities are endless.  She can go on for hours and hours. And the game just keeps growing in length as she learns more people's names and new words.  In fact, when she learns a new word, she has to run it though everyone she knows.

Column A                                                        Column B
Sarah                                                                 Right back
Dad                                                                   Silly

Mom                                                                 Nice

Nana                                                                  Shirt

Papa                                                                  Loud

Maga (Grandma)                                                Messy
Baka   (Grandpa)                                               Stinky
Nate                                                                   Arm
Braden                                                               At work
Dallin                                                                  At school
Zack                                                                   B-bye
Tyler                                                                   Scary
Indy (Justin's aunt's dog that she met once)          Heavy
Dosie (Josie Blume)                                             Stuck

She's into fake sneezing because she likes it when I say bless you.  And she never misses saying "bessoo" when others sneeze.

I like this picture because she looks like a lion cub.  A lazy lion cub.

I don't remember which video she's saying what.  Since I do a lot for her, I don't feel guilty making her say things for my amusement.  My favorites right now are "noodle" and "little".  But I don't want to make her say it too much or she'll get better at it and then it will be boring.

And Meeoh is the wandering neighborhood cat.  She calls for it whenever we are in the backyard and will follow it anywhere.

And it's been almost a month since she's seen her Grandma Nadine (Nana) but she talks about her every day. So Nadine, one of these is for you.

And I love how she counts. We've taught her ready, set, go but I think I like 9, 6, 9 better.

Sarah's favorite toy for a few days was this old paint can.  She wanted to take it everywhere, even in the car.  I threw it away when she was asleep.

I cut Sarah's sandwich into "fingers" just like my mom used to.  I had to laugh at how Sarah nibbled at it.

Sarah really wanted to eat her breakfast while sitting in her rocking chair. This is the set-up she came up with. She ate all her oatmeal.

Watching the rain yesterday afternoon.

Well, I better get back to preparing my RS lesson. I've only taught primary so I'm not sure how to end a lesson without coloring and candy.....

More Fun with Bias Tape

Bias tape makes everything better. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

I just finished sewing this apron for Sarah's birthday next month.  I didn't have a pattern but I had a good idea of what I wanted it to look like. So I just drew the shape on a paper sack and cut it out.  With coupons and stealing thread and buttons from my mom, total cost $5.   The neck strap buttons on so it is adjustable as she grows taller. It will be really long on her now. 

Now if I can get her to wear it. She is very particular about what she wears and it's driving me crazy.  She's seen it as I've been working on it and wasn't interested.  Maybe in a month.

Sarah's Indian name should be Crazy Face

I think I've posted enough pictures on this blog to prove that Sarah is quite adorable.

So I don't feel to bad teasing her publicly with some unflattering pictures. She's grown out of her stop-everything-and-run-to-the-camera phase. She will actually pose for a picture if I tell her to "hold still and say cheese." Sometimes she comes up with her own poses. And faces.

Like this pose. I wanted a picture of her awesome bed-head. I guess she thought the feet in the air were a nice touch.

She was no where near her toy box when she saw the camera but this is where she stopped and posed.

I asked her to smile. I don't know what this is.

And this face she started pulling a few days ago and I can't get her to stop. I say "cheese," I get this. What is this?

I may have to come up with a different command than 'smile' or 'cheese' because this is what I keep getting.

And to prove that she is also beautiful and that I'm not a mean mom....

And it was my birthday last Friday. For the next 15 weeks, I'm 27, Justin is 26. Please don't remind him.

Parenting Awesomeness

You know when you're at Walmart and there's that kid that you can hear screaming at the far end of the store? At the top of their lungs? And there's no end in sight?

I found out today I have that child.