Fall Festival Pics

I was right; it took the full two months to make the Green Giant and Sprout costumes, but I got them finished. Without further ado, here they are.

They posed on the fire truck and listened to the siren. Ella liked the siren so much that she wanted the fireman to turn it on again. He did. She has been making the fire truck noise when she sees pictures of them since we took her to the Fire Prevention Parade at the beginning of October.
When we all sat down for awards and supper, she entertained herself with a giant bucket of crayons. She did actually color on the cardboard, then she piled and sorted and when there were enough crayons on the floor, she left to find something else to do.

This is my favorite picture. She is "feeding the frogs" at the bean bag toss - which she did over and over again, barely waiting on other kids to take a turn.

She and The Giant went fishing for prizes. She also played the ring toss, bounced in the bounce house, and generally ran all over the place with the rest of the hooligans. There was one boy there with a wolf mask and every time she saw him she said, "Doooog!"

She had a great time, and after the Fall Festival we went to Grandpop's house to trick or treat. She and Grandma gave out candy to the other trick or treaters, and she had so much fun that got upset when the kids stopped coming to the door. Grandma taught her how to put the candy in their pumpkins, and when Grandma said, "Where are the trick or treaters?" she gave a great big "I don't know" shrug. She was convinced to go home with the promise of a bath. She was one tired Sprout tonight.

A 2 for 1 Deal: Roll Tide and Happy Halloween

We carved our "Puh!" Saturday night, and in the spirit of the activity Ella insisted on wearing her Halloween leggings. They are her favorite pants. She needed me to get them out of the bottom of the laundry hamper and put them on her. She didn't care that they clashed badly with the cheerleader outfit she was already wearing. I'll admit that I had a few moments of inner struggle over allowing this to be recorded on film, but the part of me that thinks it cute when she insists on wearing Halloween pants won.
Her favorite part of the pumpkin carving process was stomping around on the garbage bag on the floor. She wanted nothing to do with the pumpkin guts, and seemed a little concerned that we were cutting up her "Puh!" I definitely think she liked it better before we carved it. She was so proud while she rode in the grocery cart with it, and she needed it to sit in the living room floor so she could pat it. Now that we've cut it, she's interested in the candle inside it when it's lit, but otherwise she's indifferent.
This is the whole Halloween outfit, but she really could care less about the shirt. The pants have "ki-kis" on them (that's "kitty kitties" if you don't speak Toddler).

You can't really see it in the picture but there is a huge white stain down the front of her shirt because she spit her antibiotics back at me when I tried to give them to her. She has a double ear infection thanks to the yucky cold she caught from her Da (that's Daddy) last week. He caught it from the Jefferson County Jail. (Thanks so much, County Jail. I was really due the character building exercise of taking care of a husband who was coughing up his spleen and a toddler who couldn't breathe and cut two teeth last week.) Now everyone is feeling better, but we have 15 more doses of antibiotic to get down the little hatch and the diaper rash to deal with. I can't blame her for spitting out the medicine; it is really, really nasty. I even took it back to the pharmacy and got it flavored, but that didn't matter. We reached an unspoken agreement that she would eat it with a teaspoon of yogurt as long as we pretended it wasn't in there, but she knew. I think that trick has expired. Chocolate pudding will be my next approach. I guess that I'll also be exercising my creativity along with building my character.

She now has 8 teeth on bottom and 6 on top. The bottom canines came in this week, so now we are waiting on the top ones. They don't look like they will make an appearance any time soon. I really just wish those and the 2 year molars would come in now so we can get it over with. It's really no wonder that most kids don't sleep through the night until they are three-ish with all these teeth coming through all the time.

This is just a cute picture I found on my camera when I uploaded the new ones. That shimmery thing is her Invisibility Cloak, which she wraps around her fist and gnaws on as she falls asleep.
Here she is in her new tent with a tunnel. We bought the tent to hold the balls. Yes. I wrote that. Are you laughing yet? I laughed quietly to myself all the way home from Target that day because my poor disillusioned husband actually thought the balls would stay in the tent! He moaned and groaned about the basket full of toys and general strewn about mess in the living room, so he "solved" that problem by buying her 150 ball pit balls and a tent. :) She does love it.Aside from recent illness, everything is well with us. EGR is talking about everything, though lay people wouldn't understand most of it. Last night she came into the bathroom while I was cleaning up the tub toys and told me: "Mama! Jabberjabberjabberblahblahblah!" while pointing candidly at her bedroom. I followed her, telling her to show me. Indeed she did. She bent down, pointed under the dresser and said, "Ba!" Her ball was under there, just out of her reach.

The Case of the Missing Phone

"Mischievous and conniving." That's what Dave said about dear, sweet EGR this morning. He was referring to her absolute refusal to let him hold her until she realized there was a pen in his pocket, and then she didn't want him to put her down.

The latest report from Grandmother's House tells a similar story. Apparently the phone was missing all day. Grandmother searched high and searched low for it, but it was nowhere to be found. She even asked EGR if she knew where it was. Oh, she did, but it was stuck so she didn't give it up. The search continued. Grandmother turned off all the other phones and the answering machine, then called the house from her cell phone. She followed the ring to the musical playground, which happens to have a convenient ball hole/tunnel thingy. It was in there, and it was stuck. Grandmother was working hard to dislodge it when she heard a suspicious giggle from behind her. EGR was happily sitting in her highchair, watching the whole scene and laughing. Mischievous? Most definitely.

Everything I've read says that between 15 and 18 months is a weird, difficult age. I'm here to say that it's true. It's weird. It's difficult. It's hilarious. It's oh so sweet. Sleep is weird - fabulous one night and horrible the next. Bedtime is so easy one night, and takes an hour the next. The tantrums have already started - including a nice fake gagging noise whenever she's not getting her way. It's somehow funny and annoying at the same time. If it actually produces vomit one of these days, that will be a different story.

Separation anxiety has reared it's head again. For the first time, the well-baby information from her doctor's office said we should expect it at this age. I should really have considered that a warning. She's had it during every major milestone phase, but this is the worst yet. I'm thinking it's because she's turned into a monkey-child and she now not only cries when I attempt to leave her, but also climbs my body and hangs on for dear life - whether it be around my neck or around my legs while she stands on my feet. Honestly, I think if the child could get into my skin with me, she would do just that. Again, both funny and annoying at times - though I do love the feeling of little arms clamped around my neck.

She's talking more every day, and more and more words are becoming clear. A baby crying on TV woke her up and she pointed and said, "Baby!" I was asking her to come to me so I could put her shoes on, and she pointed to her feet and said, "Shoes." When I was telling Dave about it this morning, she got her shoes and brought them to me to put them on her. She got new shoes last week, and she loves them. She barely took them off all weekend. When she found them sitting next to mine on the floor, she needed to put them on. Then she went outside in tennis shoes and pajamas - straight to a mud hole to get them broken in.

She pays so much attention to conversations going on around her. We've always thought this, but now she demonstrates it by acting on what we are saying - like getting her shoes, or laughing when we say something is funny. Now when we correct her for hitting or throwing or generally acting out in anger/frustration, she leans her head toward us to give us love. I'm finding that I can tell her something privately in her ear, and she is much more receptive. This has worked when asking her to give a toy back to another little girl in the nursery, or asking her to give bye love to Grandma and Grandpop.

Her 15 month check up went well. She weighs 21.5 lbs and is 31 inches long. She did not like the doctor this time, but he says that all kids are like that at this age and it will be better when she's three. He had to pry her mouth open with a tongue depressor to look at her teeth, and that was really only successful because of the screaming.