"Big Girl" Play

Sometimes I can't believe how grown up Ally is getting. She is more of a "big girl" every day. It just makes my heart melt. Here is an example of a typical Ally play time. Its narrated in her voice.

Hmmm... what am I forgetting?



My phone.

Now I just need to get it in my purse. I have no idea why there is not enough room.

Have to make sure that Big Bird is all buckled in. Safety first, you know.

Now who should I go for a walk with, Big Bird or Cookie?

Cookie

Then another day she insisted on carrying her purse while she rode her bike.

Cute in the Car

Cooking

Lately Ally has enjoyed cooking. She says "Ally cooking" and then tells one of us to go into our kitchen and cook. Yes she is wearing her snow boots in the house. Yes she actually wears them now. As long as they are dry I don't mind, I'm just happy that with this super cold spell we're having she will actually wear boots, and these are insulated to keep her tiny feet warm.

Cooking Chicken. Her play kitchen is super cool - it cooks chicken, corn on the cob, spaghetti and meatballs, hot dogs, and macaroni and cheese. At least so far that is what it cooks. Becky and I keep discovering new food that it cooks. (Its a hand-me-down play kitchen and even though we've had it for about 10 months now we are still discovering neat things it does. Apparently there is a magnetic piece that activates the stove when the food is on the burner and you turn the knob on the stove.)

Silly Ally

As you know I am a bit obsessed with cute clothes. There was a HUGE sale at my favorite children's clothing store and so we bought Ally some new things, since she has outgrown (length-wise) all of her 12-18 pants, I felt justified. And don't we all have to do our part to keep the economy going by continuing our spending habits? When we got home she tried on this new outfit. Her expressions just crack me up.

Playing doctor and eating chicken nuggets

We got Ally a S.esame Street doctor kit for Christmas. It is pretty funny - the stethoscope is Cookie Monster, the blood pressure cuff is Ernie's rubber duck, and the thermometer is Bert. Thanks to Michelle G., Ally now does not mind getting her temperature taken, in fact she LOVES the ear method - she calls it "check ears" and insists we do both ears, not just one. One day I caught her doing this:

Taking her temp on her foot (and no she is not supposed to have chicken nuggets on her chair)

checking her ear

trying it out in her mouth

too funny


enough playing its time to eat!

Ally went to the doctor again yesterday, she was running a fever and had a runny nose, it was just as we suspected - another ear infection, this time in both ears. This is her third in 2 months. She is on a more powerful antibiotic this time and we hope it works. The medicine tastes pretty awful so Becky is bribing Ally with chocolate chips to get her to take each dose. The doctor suggested bribing with m-n-ms but all we had is chocolate chips! We'll go back to the doctor in about 10 days to make sure Ally's ears are all cleared up and discuss whether or not Ally needs to see a specialist and have her hearing checked out.

Inauguration

The 44th President is Barack Obama. We are so thrilled to have entered a new era with new leadership guiding our country. My boss had everyone in his office over to his house yesterday to watch the inauguration ceremony. This blog is about Ally's life, and I wanted to document the event. Ally was as usual very well behaved, so that meant we could really pay attention and listen. I think the sheer quantity of people in DC was one thing that really got to me. I thought the speech was ok, but to see that many people, and know how many people in our town and around the country were celebrating was and still is an amazing thing.

Yes even Ernie was on hand to watch the ceremony.

My co worker Alyssa, my boss Charlie, and his family.

The TV.

Ally's feet.
Yes I know this might seem strange to you, but this is also the very first picture Ally took on the camera all by herself. I have the same camera for work that we do at home. I always have my work camera with me in my work bag, and Ally of course found it. Playing with the camera kept her occupied for about 20 minutes. She was so cute moving around the camera to see what was displayed on the camera screen.

More fun in the snow

More fun in the snow! We were the lucky recipients of 12-14" of snow over the weekend. After shoveling the sidewalks and such, Becky took Ally on a walk to the park (Dana). On the way there they scooped snow from every house into the sand/snow bucket. Becky said it was a riot! I got home after the walk and Ally was excited to see me, but not so happy about going inside. Becky was laughing, because apparently she had to drag Ally outside in the first place, but then once she got out she did not want to come in. So Ally and I went on a walk to the other (smaller) park near our house. I coaxed Ally in to walking to the park, by telling her would we stop at her friend Thora's house on the way to the park. Thora lives across the street from the park. We did stop there, but she was not home. So we went on to the park.

One of Ally's favorite books right now is A Snowy Day. She calls it Crunch Crunch, because there is a page in the book that describes the boy walking in the snow as making the sound crunch crunch crunch. It was pretty neat to recreate some of the book with her.

Ally was not happy at first to be set down in the snow - check out the huge crocodile tears.

After taking the crying pictures I picked her up.

And we went for a walk.

Every time I tried to get a picture of her from the front she would crouch down like this.

When we got to the park Ally did not want to leave, and she was a bit scared of walking in the 12" of snow, she is after all only 32" tall! I got tired of holding her and suggested the swings. It was pretty funny to traipse thru the snow and wedge her into the swing, not that easy with boots and a snowsuit on! Then her feet were only about 6" above the snow line. She had a great time.

I did too.

Light Switch

For quite some time now Ally has enjoyed turning the light switch off and on from her changing table. The light in her room has a switch at each door, and her room has 2 doors into it. Recently she wanted to use the other switch.

She went and got her step stool herself and tried so hard to reach.

So I gave her a boost up. (For the record the cords are not usually exposed, she had to move her laundry hamper out of the way in order to get to the switch.)

And just for Great Aunt Pammy - Ally sporting her new outfit. The top is super warm, just perfect for this cold winter weather. Thank-you!

Ally loves "Ruu-off"

Would some one please tell Ally that Christmas is over. Its January and she is absolutely obsessed with Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. The old one with Burl Ives, the snowman as the narrator. Now, this is my absolute favorite Christmas special. But even I am starting to get tired of it.

We have a CD with all of the songs from the show, and she begs to hear Holly Jolly and Jingle Jingle Jingle, she now knows the words to those and Rudolph (she calls him Ruu-off). She knows about Bumble (The Abominable Snowman), Clarice, Rudolph's girlfriend, Hermy the elf who wants to be a dentist and Yukon. Oh, and did you know that Santa is flying at the end? Rudolph flies too? She is so cute about it and she gets so excited and I know that soon she'll move on to some other fascination.

This is the CD case she looks at all the time. We finally bought her a book based on the TV show, so she could carry that around instead of the bulky plastic CD case.

The inside of the case - it shows all of the characters mentioned above.

Peeling an Orange

These pictures are actually from December 18, 2008. I took them and planned on blogging about this, but then one of our cats got really sick before Christmas (Carl - the orange one that is super good with Ally, but he is better now) and then we went away and well I never got it posted. But in my opinion its still blog worthy.

I came home from work one day and Becky told me Ally peeled an orange, its a clementine actually, but all by herself. She just sat and did it during her co-op. (For those of you who don't know, Becky and Ally are part of a neighborhood babysitting co-op with 6 other families, so Ally has co-op three days a week, Becky works 1 or 2 of the days and has the other time(s) off. )

I was, as usual, bummed I missed something so cool as that, so I gave her another clementine and she proceeded to peel it and of course I grabbed the camera and started taking pictures!

Ally started standing up at her kitchen sink.

Then she sat down so she could concentrate better.

She even put all the peels in the sink. (Too bad the play kitchen does not have a real disposal!)

When she was done she started eating it. She looks mad here, but her cheeks are just full of orange!

Snowstorm

During the last snow storm that hit Boston, Ally had lots of fun watching mama (Becky) outside shoveling off the sidewalk.

If you click to make this picture bigger you can see Becky thru the window smiling at Ally.


She was so intent and fascinated by the snow falling and the shoveling Becky was doing.

But I still got a big smile!

The next morning we went up to my office parking lot to shovel out my work vehicles. Ally wasn't so sure she liked riding her "bike" on the snow.

But we brought the sand shovel and pail.

Which make great snow castles, not just sand ones.

Ally had as much fun stomping out the snow castles as she does those made out of sand.

But gosh it was getting cold.

So Ally decided it was time to head back to our car.

Chex Mix

Do you call it Chex Mix or Party Mix?

Whatever its called, Ally likes it!

I think she learned this from Poppy Dave - how to dig thru the bowl and pick out the good stuff. In her case it was the pretzels. I know for Dave its the "mixed nuts" out of a can mixed nuts.

She was looking really carefully.

And so happy!