Dress Up

Abigail and I played a little dress up today. The funny thing about Abigail is that she has a strong personality bent toward engineer or organizer or analyzer or something in that category. She's frequently lining things up, sorting items or gathering objects during play. Earlier this morning she got out all the hair ties and head bands and other hair accessories and organized them by type and color. When we went to the science museum and they had a little paleontology/archeology exhibit where kids could pretend to uncover bones, she spent about a quarter of a second uncovering bones before moving on to a more fun activity- gathering all the abandoned brushes and sorting them into bins.  Ever so often she takes all the clothes out of her drawers, lays them flat, and groups them by type. Thankfully, she's now good at folding too and can put them back! Her favorite games to play right now are puzzles, card games (we take any card game and turn it into matching numbers), and memory. I think you see the picture!

All that to say, when Abigail dressed up she decided to put all her dress up clothes on at the same time! (the ones that would fit, anyway) I know she's not the only kid who does this, but I love the insight into her personality. The first picture is with two dresses on. When she put the third dress on, she said, "Why am I around?" The fourth picture, the 5th layer, is a cut off shirt from the YMCA and a skirt I made for myself an eon ago and put in her dress up box.

Reminds me of this time:

She dressed me up too, said I was lovely. What do you think? I might get blond highlights after seeing this!

Top Five Friday

Top Five reasons to miss Top Five Friday:

1. Your mom is in town. And when your mom is in town, it's great. And you forget everything else.
2. You have a big sale the next day and you're getting ready for it.
3. Top five friday isn't always that funny or interesting.
4. You can't think of 5 answers to all your 'top five reasons' ideas.
5. You can always write it four days later but make the date on it last Friday.

Top Five Friday- Sunglasses

Top five reasons to wear sunglasses:

1. To protect your eyes from ultraviolet rays. Duh.
2. To avert car air conditioning from blowing straight into your eyes and causing dry eye or, even worse, dry contact.
3. To hold your hair back when you go into the store.
4. To look uber cool when you're on that side of town. You know, that side of town were people wouldn't be caught dead outside without sunglasses on.
5. To hide the eye rolling that is certain to happen when your kids are being dramatic.

Verbal Update

Okay Abigail, this is for future you. I hope you will enjoy knowing what you say these days. I'll have to continue to update this over the next week or so. It's hard to remember everything in one sitting (or two)!

What did you say?:

Bum-bo (Dumbo)

Lahmster (Lobster)

Kippy (Pippi)

Leemo (Nemo)

Scusting (discusting)

Pewter (computer)

Melonade (lemonade)

Mote (remote)
Troller (controller- like for video games)
Abby-ail (Abigail)
Da-later (later)

Mats (magnets)
Wehmber? (Remember?)

Some things you say often:

• watch this!
• that scared my heart! (i.e. I got scared)
• that hurt my feelings (i.e. it makes my tummy feel bad... or it hurt my feelings)
• she's not sharing (i.e. I want to play with that)
• you made me lose my chance! (i.e. I forgot what I was going to say)
• are you just a-kidding mom?
• I love Jonathan, but he lives far away.
• can I have a treat? (always accompanied by a big grin and hopeful eyes)
• I know how to do that! (drum corp, playing french horn, swimming, you name it, you have the confidence that you know exactly how to do it)
• Me: What are you doing? You: Anything. (i.e. nothing)
• "Can I pick my dinner?" Me: "You mean lunch?" and then later, You: "Can I have a treat after lunch?" Me: "You mean dinner?"
• It's a prize! (It's a surprise)

Some funny things you've said recently:

• when seeing red pants with white polka dots: "that tickles my eyes!"
• when I pretended to be sad about something, "Aw, that's okay little buddy, I'll hold you!" You hug me and bounce up and down while patting me on the head.
• I'm making you toast and you say, "Not any jelly. Just a little yummy thing that's white. It's butter."
• To daddy: "You have hairs in your nose! That's *really* special."
• "Look at this screw!" me: "Oh, that's a nail." you: "Yeah. You don't put nails in Jesus. He's the good guy. He's the biiiggg big boss."
• "Boys don't get married! Only girls get married. To princes!"
• "EVERYbody thinks I'm cute. Why?"
• Trying to get me to buy something for you, "But if I don't get it.... I'll die!"
• "This is beer." "No, Abigail, it's green tea." "I think it's beer. Why did you give me beer?"
• "I don't want to wear this dress. It's not beautiful. All the kids will say, 'That girl needs a beautiful dress!'"

Top Five Friday?

Recently I've been thinking of having a top five Friday... but seeing as how I'm not the most consistent person in the world, don't get your hopes up.  In the mean time...

Top five reasons to wear jeans with spandex in them:
1. If you buy the 'right' size, the first half day after washing your jeans you get to show off your undie lines
2. The rest of the day you get to have fun pretending you lost weight
3. Surely you are burning extra calories by pulling up your pants so often
4. Now they're so loose, you can finally 'accidentally' show off those special undies you bought
5. Tomorrow, you get to accessorize with a cute belt and decide where you want the jeans to pucker

Shout out to that girl I saw while driving the other day, sitting at a table with her jeans half way down her derrière and her undies way up. You were my inspiration.

I hope I didn't disappoint anyone who thought I was classy. Next week, the top five reasons to wear sunglasses!

Big Girl

My big helper (and Daddy's too) in action:

Abigail: Can I PLEASE fold??
Me: Yes
Abigail: I think you are SO nice!
Me: I think YOU are so nice!
I promise you my three year old folded all these things. I got some of it on video for proof. Tried to put the video on, but alas we are missing one camera part- the charger battery, (did we leave it in Colorado or Texas??) which for some reason is required to use when downloading video to your computer.

Here is my latest attempt at being educational. My friend April is a nanny and MADE one of these calendars for Abigail's friend James.  It is really cool.  I thought about doing that... and then bought the kit.  I'm actually surprised by how much Abigail has grasped from talking about weeks and months. She is absolutely not an auditory learner, so this was great.

Next task is to make a picture outline of our day.  For some reason, time-space-continuum is a very hard concept for her. Like, the fact that before nap and after nap is all the same day. And night time is not nap time. And dinner and lunch are not interchangable. And 'tonight' she still doesn't get. "Is it in two days?" she asks. "No. Not TWOnight, but TOnight, like as in TOday," I try to explain. "This time?" "YES, today! But tonight, not right now." "But I thought we were going to Marys!" "Yes, that's this morning."  She doesn't get it. We need a picture.

Abigail enjoys dressing herself these days. Only problem is, she wasn't paying attention when I was doing it all these years. For example, she thinks that if she is wearing a white shirt, she should wear white leggings and white undies (see above). Everything the exact same color- because it matches, right? This outfit I made her put the skirt on top of the leggings. I certainly want to encourage her style and how well she is doing dressing herself... but I have to teach her a little bit too, right? Precious girl.

Here we were just having fun taking pictures. I'm learning!