Thursday, January 31, 2008

Teresa
37.125 inches
26lb
COMPLETELY DIAPER FREE! Gave up the largely useless nighttime diapers - were always dry so what's the point? Now to consider when to move to a big girl (twin) bed!

Thursday, January 24, 2008

Teresa has made the transition from an digital world to an analog one quite well..
At naptime today, Teresa came out at 3:45 and announced to mama that naptime was over....

Teresa: The short hand is on the 4...
Mama: and where is the big hand? Is it on the 12?

(Teresa pads down the hall...)

(15 minutes later Teresa pads up the hall...)

Teresa: The long hand is on the 12!
Mama and where is the little hand?
Teresa: It's on the 4!!!!


Monday, January 14, 2008

Mama got a box of clothes via UPS today. When I put on a skirt to see how it fit, Teresa says, " you look like a lady." keeper. Skirt and daughter.

Monday, January 07, 2008

Speaking of alarm clocks - Teresa reports to me some afternoons that, "there's a 4 on my clock, quiet time is over." She says Daddy told her she could get up when there was a 4.

Now there are a few problems with this -
First, she does not concern herself with which position on the clock the 4 is in - thus it could read 2:14 and she professes it has a 4 and quiet time is over.
Second, she knows how to change the numbers displayed on the clock so at any given moment she can change the clock to have a 4 in the readout and thus make it "end of quiet time."
Third, as an artifact of the second problem listed above, the displayed time on the clock has no basis in reality!

Fortunately GramMary got her an analog clock for Christmas which we need to install and learn to read.
Sound sleeper

Teresa's little digital alarm clock just went off. In the LR it was insanely loud. Daddy darted off to turn it off and comes back to report Teresa will never awaken for a smoke alarm... she never stirred with the alarm clock bleeping a yard away.

Sunday, January 06, 2008

snuggies!

Grammary made snuggies for mommy and daddy for christmas!

Thursday, November 15, 2007

"Teresa, what is on your wish list for Santa to bring to you?"
"I wish that Santa will bring you and Daddy snuggies"

Friday, October 26, 2007

jigsaw puzzles - doing 50 pieces puzzles in her sleep, we're moving up to 60 and 100 pieces.
headstands - can now do in middle of room - no wall needed for support.

Thursday, October 18, 2007

Scooter!

While Daddy and Teresa were away on the weekend celebrating Great Nana's 90th birthday, Owen and I were able to wander some garage sales. One of our finds was a little pink scooter for free!

Teresa noticed it and asked if it was for her - and when she could ride it. So today after preschool she found her helmet and gave her scooter a try. The first couple pushes netted her a forward movement of half an inch... but within a minute she was zipping across the driveway with good pushes and balance and gleeful glitters in her eyes.

Sunday, October 07, 2007

Mama, do youhave a bug in your throat?

Yes, honey, mama is not feling so good.

Is it a ladybug?

Thursday, October 04, 2007

Ireland

At this point, we've been home nearly a week from our big trip to Ireland... It was a fun trip, but it was alot of work for Mom and Dad: not nearly as much of a vacation as we would have liked, I think. We went for a little over two weeks: arrived in Dublin on Friday morning and spent most of the weekend doing some local exploring in the parks, (especially St. Stephen's Green near our hotel) and getting the kids adjusted to the time change. The first week Dad worked, while mom tried to hold the family together: It was pretty stressful on everyone for Dad to get up early (before Teresa!) and take the light rail train to meet his carpool, and then arrive back at the hotel just in time to rush off for a not ludicrously expensive dinner before a bit of playtime and then bedtime. To make matters worse, Mom caught a bit of cough ("A bug caught Momma!") and wasn't sleeping well anyway. Fortunately, for the most part Teresa adjusted well to living in the hotel (and later B&Bs) although by the end of her trip, she was beginning to tire of the whole process (as were we all).

Dublin highlights:
Chasing pigeons in the park.
Feeding the ducks in the park.
Short swings: easy to pump!
Figuring out how to walk on the wiggly beams.
"A TAXI!"
Listening to buskers on Grafton Street
St. Andrew's/Andrea's church, converted into the tourist info center.
Churches in general: "Spires go way up into the sky and reach up to the heavens!"
"Another taxi!"
Taking the train to Dun Laoghrie and watching the boats.
Doing puzzles at all hours in the hotel lobby.
Flirting with the guys going off to play golf.
Climbing in and out of the port-a-crib.
Lots of yogurt.

On Friday, Tina and Peter flew in from Denmark and we joined them at a B&B in Navan county Meath just north of Dublin. The owner was also a sheep farmer, so there were lots of sheep to watch and a slide in the backyard, which was as much fun to jump from as to slide down. On Saturday, we did a little exploring and discovered Bestwick Abbey, a somewhat standing old church in the area, which was a great climbing structure. On Sunday, we began our cross-country drive, attempted a hike in the driving rain, gave up, and ended up near Nenagh in the central portion of the country in search of a playground. Asking around, we discovered that the nearest playground was in a small town called Dromineer off of Loch Derg, a few km outside of town. We ended up finding the playground and staying at the B&B next door: a great little place that was the former Gargai (police) barracks. It turns out that Dromineer was once a main port on the canal route from Limerick to Dublin, but is now a small town mostly used by boaters in the summer. We did have a great night of roaring rain, but were able to enjoy it (and the spiders in the window!) from inside.

On monday, we finished our trek across the country to the Dingle peninsula. Most of the day was rainy, which made our 'perfect stop' going to see the Crag Cave. Most of the rest of our trip was spent on the Dingle Peninsula at a B&B between Lispole and Dingle. We were originally hoping to do a great B&B to B&B trek, but in the end we settled for one big hiking day where our host dropped us off in nearby Anascaul and we hiked about 6 miles back to Lispole, where she picked us up again. The stretch of the Dingle Way we did was mostly on back roads, letting us take the stroller and not have to worry about carrying both kids plus all our gear. Teresa wasn't terribly sure that she wanted to do a hike in the beginning (being more interested in puzzles and the B&B dog Fairn) and Daddy carried her most of the first mile. fortunately, after that she warmed up our adventure (after being assured that we were going BACK to the B&B) and ended up walking quite a bit. We had lunch at Minard Castle beach, dominated by a once formidable fortress, and got to wander around the rocks for a bit before continuing.

On another outing, we went to Dingle and took a boat into the harbor to see Fungie, the Dingle resident dolphin (pleasing crowds since 1984!) Teresa got a great kick out of that and combined with getting to climb on the bronze Fungie statue, it was one of the highlights of her trip.

Mom and Dad's 5th anniversary was on the trip: Dad surprised mom with a GPS receiver, so we could try geocaching (or "searching for buried treasure"). We looked for one overlooking Inch Strand (which was no longer there, apparently) and later in the week tried to find another no O'Conner pass (which we didn't have the right coordinates for).

Teresa and Owen both did pretty well in the Pubs/restaurants for dinner, although one time near the end of our trip, Teresa adamantly asserted that she did NOT want to go to a restaurant for dinner: Mom and Dad ended up with takeout Chinese food back at the B&B. They were both often a hit with the other patrons, and Teresa would sometimes carry on conversations with other people all by herself. Of course she was also interested in just having them read her a book!

On Friday, we left our wonderful B&B and headed north, taking a detour across the Tarbert-Killimer car ferry (also a hit, of course) before spending one last night in Bunratty near the Shannon airport.

More highlights:
Teresa's purple rock from the Cave.
Climbing on Fungie.
Potty adventures (squatting in the park, realizing she had to go potty after going down 4 stories into the Cave, waking up with dry diapers, her realizing this and the next night deciding to take her diaper off before going to bed and then climbing out of the crib to go potty (all by herself!))
Picking out a hat (and a hat for Kristi!) at the farmer's market.
Digging in the sand on the beaches.
Getting stuck behind a herd of sheep on dingle.
Airplanes!
Reading books with Peter.
Taking a shower by herself using the hand shower.

Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Chopsticks!

The dear girl is mastering chopsticks. We went out tonight to celebrate Daddy's usefulness at work and she devoured two bowls of miso soup - complete with a long session of chopstick use lessons from Dad to get the tofu to her mouth. Oh, and she ate the seaweed "just like a fish!"
It's naptime/quiet time. I'm organizing in O's room.
I hear the pitterpatter of small feet in the hallway (not authorized for quiet time but I allowed passage since I was elbow deep).
T enters our room then returns. I peek out of O's room to see her trying to replace the dryer lint screen into the dryer.
Turns out she has emptied the dryer of all her clothes, put them away, now removed the lint from the screen and placed lint in trash can and of course needs to put the screen back in. I popped out and asked what was she doing and she says, quite indignantly, "mama, you need to put away Owen's clothes!" Sigh, so much for naptime :)

Who knew she was so industrious!

Monday, July 23, 2007

Dry dipes! overnight! Soon She may be declared 100% pottytrained - currently she only dipes at night :)

Friday, June 29, 2007

it's naptime. Teresa is in her room. there are LOUD kathuNKS. I walk down the hall and ask what she is doing.

"climbing on the table and JUMPING!" says she.

but of course.

Wednesday, June 20, 2007

we went to TRU this morning to get Teresa more challenging puzzles. I'm beginning to think going from 3 piece puzzles to 12 piece puzzles is not challenging enough!! she's breezed through the firetruck and airplane and boat (each with 12 pieces). now onto the motorcycle. I did get one 24 piece puzzle... wonder if that will be of interest?! or are we going straight to 100 pieces? or more?

anyway, I may return the other 12 piece sets I bought given the speed she seems to have mastered these!

Thursday, June 07, 2007

"Mama, will you do the peepee dance?"

"Yes, after you put peepee in the potty."

imagine the sound of liquid hitting a plastic container
imagine mama singing and dancing


Mama does a lot of dancing these days - diapers are only for naps and bedtime!! yippee!

Thursday, May 31, 2007

I want to go Rock Climbing!

Last weekend was our annual Memorial Day climbing trip to Joshua Tree, and Teresa had a great time! We were working up to it for a few days beforehand, although we may have played it up a bit much, since she didn't nap for 3 or 4 days straight. The trip down was a bit challenging, as Owen cried quite a bit and Teresa wanted to read lots of books. Teresa managed to do a little bit of actual climbing, although it was dfficult to find much that was approachable for her, so she ended up spending alot of time "exploring the desert" (i.e. digging in the sand) often with her new found friend Valerie. Overall she did very well camping, and managed the hot weather well. I think we're all looking forward to playing in the tent again... :)

The highlights:
"Can you put your climbing harness on?"
"Momma is climbing high! Good Job Momma!"
"Momma I caught a bug!" (A half-squished quarter-sized beetle, which she proceeded to show to us as it twitched in her hand)
Playing in the Vanagon with Deb
Showing Valerie how high she can jump.
Jumping on the air mattress in the tent while taking her 'nap'.

After coming home, I asked her who she remembered from the weekend an she responded "Valerie brought back my shovel" (which had been left at the climbing area).

And, last but not least, this morning she had conjured up a song, the words of which were something like "Rock Climbing, Rock Climbing, Rock Climbing, Rock Climbing...." (etc... you get the idea...)

Monday, May 21, 2007

Mama, "Teresa, we're going to the meatball store today."

Teresa, "no Mama, it is called Costco."