The Life of Ally

Sunday, August 28, 2011

Fishing

We just got back from New Hampshire, and have a pile of great photos to share. On our way out of town, we got a kid-sized fishing pole for Ally along with the bare minimum of tackle (hooks, sinkers and bobbers). We had a blast with Ally and her friend Stella, showing them how to fish for the first time. They were both very excited. (Stella's little sister Violet was excited, too).

The rod came with a plastic fish-shaped weight for practicing casting. We were shocked when the girls were able to cast so quickly!

Discussing the finer points of casting

Violet even tried casting.

We had no great bait, so I grabbed the end of the loaf of bread and we soon headed to the water to give it a try. What a gorgeous day!

Sometimes Ally would cast herself, and sometimes she'd get me to start it off, but she held the rod most of the time.

Alas, the fish liked the bread, but we didn't catch anything the first day.

The second morning, however, Ally and Julie went to the local store to buy WORMS. Our first attempts were in a canoe - Julie showed off her expert hook-baiting skills while rockin' in a boat. She has a true talent. Ally's canoe-sitting stamina did not last very long, so no fish were caught in the boat.

Ally took turns fishing off the dog-swim steps with Stella. They did a very good job sharing the fishing pole.

We watched the teeny fish eat the worms at our feet, but soon a BIGGER teeny fish came along. Stella caught a fish!

The girls were very excited! (They looked scared of the fish in this photo, but they weren't really!)

What a catch!

Stella and Ally inspected the fish closely.

The NEXT day, after Stella and her family had gone, we stuck around to do some more fishing. At the dock, Ally did great and reeled in the big one.

The hook was in good, and we had no pliers (I have no idea what we would have done had we caught any serious fish!), so we had lots of chances to check out the fish before I finally got the hook out.

Ally was super-excited!

A proud girl. She had a great introduction to fishing!

Thursday, August 25, 2011

Play date

We had Alice and her mom over for a dinner play date recently. While Becky and I made dinner, Ally and Alice got manicures.

They insisted on painting their fingers themselves, but Cheryl cleaned them up a bit with nail polish removal afterwards! Needless to day this was a drop cloth, not a table cloth and it was trashed after two 4 year olds self-applied nail polish! I love how Ally is carefully holding her hands to let the polish dry.

After dinner it was of to the park. Ally loves to show off her monkey bar skills. Alice tried so hard to do them. She was a great sport about it and kept working at it.

A group shot. Becky took the picture.

We had not seen our friends in a long time so it was good to get together. The girls will be going to the same school next year, but in different classes.

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Sick on a Saturday

Saturday morning Ally woke up with a fever. She had the sniffles too. But she got to watch a lot of TV.

Her current favorite show is Dinosaur Train. Its on PBS, but we have now purchased all the DVDs available of old episodes.

The show is about a family of Pteranodons - Shiny, Tiny & Don and their adoptive brother Buddy who is a T-Rex. Above is a shot of Shiny & Don with Buddy and the Conductor (one with the hat on). The Conductor conducts the Dinosaur Train that the 4 children/dinosaurs ride with their parents to explore other time periods and meet and learn about other dinosaurs. Buddy always has a hypothesis and now Ally likes to say she has a "hypopothis" and she can define the word as well - its "an idea you can test".

After a long period of TV we made a short trip to Target, where we bought baby Lucy a tent and a sleeping bag. Let me say that putting together the doll tent was almost as tricky as putting together our actual full size tent, and it did in fact take two of us.

But Ally was very happy with the finished product. She put baby to sleep in the tent and then took her own nap - 2 1/2 hours of sleep in the middle of the day. She was pretty tired and sicky feeling.

When she woke up she cuddled on the couch with me, baby and Nali. Then we watched a movie.

Because as we kept telling Ally, the only good thing about being sick is that you can watch a lot of TV. After the movie, and some more dinosaur train Ally was actually bouncing off the furniture. Literally she was jumping and doing somersaults on the couch. She still had a fever, but I took her to the park anyway to burn off some more energy. She took it easy and played in the fountain a little, and ate dinner there. Then came home, took a bath, showered, watched gymnastics with mama on TV and then went right to bed. No complaints or anything.

She slept all night, and woke up better on Sunday.

Monday, August 22, 2011

The Band Cont'd

Last weekend Becky and Ally went to PA to visit Becky's parents. I had 4 days home alone. I painted for 2 days and worked for 2 days. But I did manage to slip in some shopping. After the recent post about the "pretend" instruments Ally was using and a sad incident during a playdate. I decided it was time for Ally to have some actual play instruments of her own. So I surprised her with a gift when she got home from PA.

What is it Mommy?

A Band in a Box

loving the triangle

Later in the week, Becky was at an appointment and Ally and I had some time just the two of us. She decided we should do "shows". She went and got all of her and baby's favorite animals to watch the show. My show...

yes me playing the triangle and singing songs

I was amazing. Everyone should be very sad they missed it. But lucky for me my photography assistant Ally took a picture of my performance to share on the blog.

We took turns. It was so much fun for Ally and torture for me.

But for this face I'll submit to that kind of torture any day.

Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Summer Program

For the past 8 weeks Ally has been going to the Summer Program ("camp") at her preschool. It runs every day 830AM-1230PM. She has lunch there and then comes home for a rest (or nap on gymnastics days). Becky usually bikes her there and back but sometimes takes the car. Below is a collection of pictures from the past 8 weeks. Each week there was a theme for the children to explore and every Wednesday was dance class. I think Ally is really going to miss dance class next year in Kindergarten, she's had dance class with Katy (the teacher) almost every week for the past 2 years. There are 3 weeks left of summer, and we intend to make the most of them. But mean while here are the last 8 weeks of Ally's mornings in review:

Week 1 the theme was painting. Here she is with her friend Stella.

Hanging out with other girls in the "no splash pool". All summer Ally has had fun telling people her camp has 3 or 4 pools. People's eyes get really big and they look at Becky and I like, "seriously? what kind of (expensive) camp are you sending her to?" then she describes the colors of the pools and how they work and people are like "ahhhhh now I get it" its been a riot!

Week 2 was mud - not really Ally's thing to play with - she told me "I don't like to get so messy" and its true - she was never really into getting super messy.

But that is her hand and her foot - and this is her "worm garden" that she created all on her own - can you spot them?

There were some VERY HOT weeks and Ally learned to love water this summer.

Every day she wore her swimsuit to camp, and for the record for Ally that was a short sleeve rash guard of which we had 3 so they got swapped out every day, and a variety of coordinating bottoms. You'll see she got very good at wearing her hat as well.

Week 3 was beading. Not really Ally's thing at camp since it was so hot all she wanted to do was get wet. Here she is pouring water on her friend Audra with Semi.

Week 4 was weaving - here is her friend Erik (who will be in her class next year) he broke his elbow trying to swing on the bar like Ally during the first week of camp. But he still managed to have a great time, even with his cast on.

More pool time.

It was so hot the teachers brought out ice for the pools - I love how Semi is sitting on the block of ice.

Lounging on her towel next to Semi. Don't they look so grown up?

Week 5 was Sculptures.

Week 6 was BUBBLES - Ally was in her glory. This is one of her special talents, to blow bubbles with her fingers.

Week 7 was Paper - and in the end Ally spent a lot time working on a Fairy House.

I think they were looking for bugs - next to Ally is Tessy. Tessy and Ally were pretty inseparable this summer - it was great to see Ally branch out from her usual friends.

Week 8 was Mixed Media and the students worked on a new school sign.

Dance Class - it looks like so much fun. If you look hard you can spot Ally in her pink hat.

Ally with Tessy - they were being firecrackers in dance class.

Just love that smile.

So much fun with her friends Semi (middle) and Audra.

working on a craft project on one of the 2 or 3 days it was too cold or wet to be outside. It was amazing weather this summer and they played outside ALL the time, they were seriously only inside to eat or on Wednesday for an hour for dance class.

Here she is showing off her bridge.

After school everyday Becky would let Ally play in the basement at school - and Ally would practice her gymnastics on the mat there.

It has been such a wonderful summer.

Thursday, August 11, 2011

August Guat Girls

At the last minute we agreed to host our August Guatemala Girls gathering. Roxie has been really sick so we could not get together at her house as planned. We are always up for a play group at our house so we said come on over! When we told Ally her friends were coming to our house she got all excited and did her huge grin and clapping.

After about 5 minutes of warm up, Ally, Gabi and Rosa were thick as thieves.

We moms chatted for a while, then we all had lunch and got the girls in their swimsuits for a walk down to the fountain.

Alice joined in the mischief at the splash park. She loved to swing her hair and whip water at everyone.

They played for over an hour at the park. It was hot and humid and the moms were wilting but it was so much fun.

Ally kind of lost it when it was time to go. She was so sad to have her friends leave. She cried at home and just hated to so them go.

It was the first time this had happened for us. Usually Ally is happy to have her space back and time to herself, but not this time. It was heart breaking and wonderful all at once.

As an only child we so want Ally to have friends and we believe this group of girls is really important to her identity and self development.