Reading

The kids wanted some "free time" and then this is what I happened upon:

This photo is more recent:

Leah takes the Llama Llama book and pretends to read it, saying "Mama mama mama mama."

More photos of Amelie with her book at church (this time outside).

Also showcasing one of her all-purple outfits:

James is also reading really very well! Here are a couple of videos from December:




And Amelie is just flying with reading now. (Though she didn't want me to post a video.) She's generally got a few books going at once and we have to get on to her to stop her from reading at the table during dinner. Here are her favorites at the moment: Wings of Fire (Grandma Mary got her a bunch more for  Christmas), Warrior Cats (another very long fantasy series with an animal protagonist), Zita the Spacegirl, Cleopatra in Space, Phoebe and her Unicorn, and Geronimo Stilton.

C'mon with the pictures, mom!

Dr Visits

I took Leah to her 2-year well child check Tuesday.

She is doing just great! I didn’t remember if she had kicked a ball yet, but she is able to jump with both feet off the ground (and happily demonstrated) and stack blocks, and copy a straight line.

After I made the post about her vocabulary, of course she started saying a ton more things and coming up with longer and more complex sentences. (She said an 8-word sentence this morning: "I need watch baby Elmo on the TV," except she pronounces it "tee-bee".) She's also coming right along with potty training.

She really likes to play pretend and take care of all of her various babies/stuffed animals. She’ll also take any given pair of inanimate objects and declare one the “mama” and one the “baby.”

She had to have blood drawn for a lead screen, and while we were over at the lab, she heard a baby crying and noted, “baby’s sad.” She was a trouper for her own blood draw - it was no fun but not terribly traumatic.

Weight: 25.25 pounds (29th percentile)

Height: 2 feet, 8.3 inches tall (17th percentile)

Head Circumference: 47.5cm (59th percentile)

Up about 2 pounds and 2 inches from her last appointment.

But then she woke up the next day with a 101 temperature, and I decided to take her back into the doctor since I know the flu has been going around. Less than an hour later, Amelie’s school sent her home with 100.2 temp and so we all three went. Amelie was acting pretty chipper - she ate a pork chop with Sam when she got back for second breakfast and was chatting up a storm and her temp was down by the time we got to the office, but Leah's was up to 102.2 at the doc and she was positive for Influenza A.

All pictures are from Tuesday when she was well!

Library

First, there has been some kind of technical calamaty and many of the pictures from blog posts I made since the end of 2017 have gone missing. I'm not sure why it happened (though I suspect it has something to do with the free Blog Touch app that quit working so I deleted it from my phone). If anyone has any tips, ideas, or technical expertise, I would really, really appreciate hearing from you!

Second, Leah turned two yesterday! I'll post about her doctor's visit tomorrow.

Now on to the regularly scheduled post:

We have had several days off school (planned and otherwise). One of those days, we went to hang out at the library (off-duty). Amelie did a program for bigger kids and James and Leah and I played in the children's area. Here's James with a minecraft book he found:

I didn't let Amelie and James play with the computers when they were Leah's age. Ha!

Though Leah's favorite toy is the magnetic whiteboard:

Then these are photos from a different day (and maybe a different program that we took Amelie to!)

Class Pet

James's teacher is a big fan of projects, and this time it was James's turn with the "class pet" (really a stuffed dog) this past weekend. Leah appropriated the toy and slept with it and mostly wouldn't give it back. I read the note the night before it was supposed to go back to the class and realized we needed to send the teacher a picture of James with the dog. His idea was to have their toy shark game eat it. I hope this does not traumatize the other children.

And to put the dog on his head:

More dog-eating-shark.

This was the one that made the cut. I wonder what his teacher made of it. Haha.

More Snow

Well, really videos of the same old snow:




Plus these of some indoor snow.

And then it was all over - I could have predicted this, but all she wanted to do was eat it. Yum, unflavored snowcone.

Haircut

Leah got her first haircut! Kind of!

She has a wild mess of tangly, curly hair. James's was similarly curly but didn't get quite so tangled and he and Amelie didn't have their first haircuts until they were 3 years old - and Leah's not quite two. Anyway, she had a big tangle and I cut it off in the bath and then I evened it up as much as she would let me. She was moving the entire time, but since it's so curly, it really is very forgiving.

I'm going to call this a before picture:

This one might be a little clearer:

And here's the after:

And after it's dried some.

So, not much difference, but that was the goal! It really has been easier to wash the last few days.

Snow Days

Well, we have had an epic ton of snow. These are pictures from our last several snow days (all mixed up and in no particular order). 

This one might be from way back at Christmas, but there's still snow on the ground now (March 5!) 

James drawing on a piece of plywood from our kitchen remodel. 

Leah likes to eat the snow: 

There are several pictures of her eating the snow: 

Amelie built a slide off our back deck the day that we got a big snowfall: 

Who needs matching mittens? 

This one is from Saturday, January 12: 

And this one is from Sunday the 13th (Sam's still the one going out, but it's a slightly different group of kids). 

Amelie waiting on the bus in the morning: 

Wayback Video!

I found an old video and wanted to share - this was from my cousin Darri's wedding 2.5 years ago. 

Amelie the flower girl is twirling - she would have been six years old. She was very impressed with her dress! Plus a bonus James in the corner (he'd have been four years old).

Here's the link to the post about the wedding. 

James Says / Amelie Says / Leah Says

While we were remodeling the kitchen we had the microwave stored in the playroom. James asked, "Can we keep it?"

This fascination had some unexpected consequences, though, when James thought I was too slow with his after school snack and decided to take matters into his own hands by warming up Spaghettio's in the microwave - by putting the entire can in the microwave! There were sparks (possibly flames) and I thought the whole thing was ruined (but at least the house didn't burn down - and it turns out the microwave is fine, too). After things had calmed down, James asked Sam, "How do you make Spaghettio's?"

One day James very seriously asked me, “Did you know emojis weren’t always a thing?”

James got into trouble at school the other day and I guess is still feeling salty about it. This morning, he said, "I wish school wasn't a thing." And then a pause, "And work wasn't a thing." And then an even briefer pause, "And money wasn't a thing." 

——
We made Sam cupcakes for his birthday and the first batch turned out crumbly, so the kids and I turned them into cake balls (which I had never had before). Anyway, we needed chocolate chips to coat the cake balls, and I said I’d pick them up on my way home from work. I guess Amelie missed that I would be at work because after supper she exclaimed to Sam that “Mama went out for chocolate chips hours ago!”

—
Leah is saying all kinds of things! She's not terribly clear & they're mostly just one and two-word utterances. She's been saying "Mama, um on! Um on, Mama!" and motioning with her hand for me (or James or whoever she's talking to) to come on!

The one 3-word construction I can think of is, "I need Elmo." (Or whatever else it is that she needs.)

Edited to add: I can’t believe I forgot, “Mama, up me!” Meaning, ‘Mama, pick me up!” And then she said what might have been her first 4-word sentence today, “I need a diaper!”

She seems very concerned with who things belong to, and will say "Mama's phone," or joke and say, "It mine."

When we were cooped up in the playroom while the workers were here, I let her watch 'Baby Shark' on my phone. She started asking for "Baby doo doo," but now she'll say "Baby Shark!" She also really likes the song "Are you sleeping?" and will intone "Are you sleeping" over and over. She does this with "Row, row, row your boat" as well - where she'll just repeat "Row row" over and over.

Here's a list (as far as I know - I'm sure I'm leaving some off) of all of her words:
Hi
Bye Bye
Please ('please' and 'more' are the only signs that she still does - and 'more' is fairly infrequent)
No
Yeah
More
Uh-oh
Yuck
Hot

Leah
Mama
Dada
James (Ames!)
Amelie (More like 'Ah-me' than when James would just call her 'Ahm')
Nana
Papaw
(Grandma) Mary
Holly
Elmo

Cat / meow
Puppy dog
Duck / quack
Bird / tweet
Shark
Cow / moo
Horse / neigh
Pig / oink
Monkey / ki ki
Dragon / roar!
Bug

Milk
Water
Snack
Breakfast
Cheese
Berries
Spoon (poon!)
Chicken
Banana (nana!)
Grape
Apple
Cracker
Chips
Juice
Bite
Cookie
Ice Cream (I keem!)
Sauce (apple sauce)
Yogurt
Egg
Pepper (as in a green pepper)
Popcorn

Bath
Go
Walk
Work
Stuck
Kiss
Up
Draw
Come on!
Google! (Aunt Holly gave us a Google Mini and Leah mimics the rest of us shouting "Hey Google!" at it.)
Wash
Zip
Want (not terribly clear pronunciation, but the intent gets across)
Need
The end!

A
Mine
My
I
Me
It
This
All done
All gone

Jammies
Shoes
Boot
Jacket
Pocket
Ring
Backpack
Pants

Baby (this is both an adjective and a noun)
Ball
Phone
Soap
Book
Bed
Pillow
Blanket
Schnucks (Nooks!)
Outside
Nap (frequently 'No nap!' even though she goes down easily)

Diaper
Pee
Poop
Wipe
Potty (can you tell we are potty training?)

Eye
Nose
Mouth
Cheek
Chin
Neck
Thumb
Butt
Button (belly button)

That's over 100 words!