Using Her Gift

Since we've been having lots of rain lately, Abby has been getting lots of use out of her Mega Fort. I've built most of the configurations that they have instructions for, and Ryan has built some of his own creations as well. This was a really great gift from her birthfather!

Pretty Princess

Abigail loves to dress up, so when I saw this frilly hoop-skirted dress on the clearance rack after Halloween, I had to get it for her. I waited for a rainy day, which means I didn't have to wait long, and brought it out to keep her busy. She adores this dress, as well as the gloves, slippers, hat, and wand I also bought!

Ever Feel Like You're Going in Circles?

(Footage taken October 20th)

New Shoes Will Soon Be Dirty Shoes

I bought Abby a new pair of cute canvas shoes last night at Wal-Mart. When I got home and gave them to her, she was so excited and said, "Thank you, Mommy! They're so beautiful! I can't wait to get them dirty!"

(Sigh.)

Curly Girl

Last Saturday Daddy took Ryan to work, and then afterwards they did a little geocaching and went out to dinner. So Abby and I had a girls day together. We mostly did chores and things around the house, but we watched a movie together and Abby got her hair put up in rollers for the first time! She thought it was great. Unfortunately, I used too small of rollers for her curly hair, and the front was one big fuzzball when I took them out. Maybe next time...

Can You Guess What's In Her Hair?

I thought we were going to have to cut her some very short bangs, but thankfully I was able to get this out without doing that.

Our Butterfly

Hey, now she's got it! (Family joke.)

Naughty and Silly Girl

When we went in to check on the kids before going to bed last night, this is how we found Abby. She had brought her stroller full of all her babies up into her bed to play, apparently. She was pretty quiet about it because we never heard her get out of bed, which we usually do.

What We've Been Up To

I haven't been able to keep my blogs as up to date as I'd like, so instead of doing a post for each event, here's a photo post of what we've been doing for the last couple weeks.

What the cupcakes looked like before Abby stuck her fingers in them!


Playtime with a friend.


Snuggling with her brother.


Free lunch at the local elementary school.


Another geocaching find.


Running through the sprinklers and taking a drink each time through!


Playing with friends.

Bedhead

Abby sleeps long and hard, and often when we go to tuck her in before we turn in for the night she is all curled up in a little "nest." I don't know how she can sleep with all the blankets and buddies she wraps around herself, but even in the hottest weather, she will be buried in the covers.

Do you have to snap my picture before I am even fully awake?
This kind of sleeping yields pretty wild morning hairdos, especially when Daddy forgets to remove her ponytail holder and comb her hair before bed!


There's a morning smile from our Sunshine!

Pirate!

Abby loves to dress up, and usually she dresses up as a princess or a something very girlie, but today she was begging to wear Ryan's pirate costume. She is quite a cute little pirate putting on her best Arrgghh! face. As she was playing I heard her calliing herself the Dread Pirate Roberts and she was off to rescue Buttercup! What a crack-up.

Belly Art

Abby got into the body stamp markers (we use them for some of her therapy) and went to town on her belly. She looked like she had some weird disease, especially days later when, even after repeated scrubbing, the hot pink ones were still there.

Sleepyhead

Abigail had been skipping naptimes back around the end of last year, but with her regression or whatever it was, she has been much more tired and gone back to napping quite a bit. I have the kids take a "quiet time" every day even if they don't nap. They have to sit quietly on their beds looking at books or playing quietly with quiet toys for one hour. Abby has never really mastered this discipline, frequently getting out of bed and not being very quiet, but I keep pluggiing away hoping to train her. Last week she didn't seem tired enough to nap so I let her have quiet time instead. She had her dollhouse on her bed and was playing nicely every time I checked on her. Then after about 25 minutes I noticed it was very quiet and when I checked on her I found her sound asleep. She had pulled her pillow over and covered herself with her blankie and quietly dozed off. She looked so cute I couldn't resist taking a picture.

Sunny Day at the Park

As predicted by our inhouse weatherman, it turned out to be a sunny day today. So on our way to the grocery store, we stopped off at the park for the kids to run and play and enjoy the sunshine. It was pretty chilly even though it was sunny, so we didn't stay too long, but Abby enjoyed every minute we were there!
Ever since watching March of the Penguins, Abby rarely slides down a slide on her bottom, she usually slides on her belly "like a penguin." She and Ryan were having Penguin Races and spent the majority of their time sliding down the three different slides at this playground.

(I actually put together a little montage video of her sliding down all the slides, but I couldn't get it to upload correctly.)

Dumping Things

One of Abby's favorite activities is dumping things out of whatever they are in onto the floor, be it water or coffee beans or clothes or toys. Consequently, I have banned her from getting into her clothing drawers without me since I grew weary of refolding and putting it all away again.

However, as you can see from the picture, she doesn't always obey me. She dumped out every drawer of her dresser and every drawer of her toy cabinet. There was another large pile on the other side of the bed. I was pretty irritated with her, but I sat on the floor and started folding clothes while directing her to put away the toys. Even though she's almost four, we can't just tell her to pick up her room or even pick up your tea set because she will just get too overwhelmed and sit on the floor and cry and get nothing done. So for about 30 minutes I told her piece by piece what to pick up and where to put it while I put all her clothes away. I really just wanted to clean all up myself because it would have been so much faster, but then how is she going to learn? Plus, what a better lesson for me in patience? :D

Tired Girlie

One of the positives about Abby's recent regression is that she is now napping again, which gives me a quiet hour to recuperate a bit. In my research I read that because of the disorganization of the brain it is extra effort and energy for her to do everything and it just wears her out (not to mention me)!


Yesterday I was going to let her skip naptime and just put her to bed early, but about 3:30 I noticed that Ryan was playing alone and I couldn't find Abby. A quiet toddler will strike fear in any mother's heart, so I immediately tried to find her. I was calling her name and looking in every room, but I couldn't locate her. Finally I asked Ryan where she was and said, "in the bean bag." You'd have thought he might have mentioned it as I was searching for her...but I digress. She had taken her blankie off her bed and crawled into the bean bag chair that was shoved into a corner by the couch. She was sound asleep and snoring away!

We leave tomorrow for Modesto where she will be evaluated by a neurodevelopmental specialist. We are leaving at about 4:00am, and I'm hoping she will continue to sleep in the van and nap some as well. It's going to be a long weekend, but we are eager to be getting some help soon.

Little Sneak

Self-portrait.

Though she knows she is not allowed to touch our camera, twice now Abby has been able to sneak our camera into her room. So I wasn't surprised when I removed the pictures from the camera to see quite a few she had taken. What did surprise me was that a few them were actually in focus! In an attempt to find humor in the situation instead of just being angry at her, here's a couple of the shots she took this week.

Inside her closet.


Her play kitchen.

Getting Dirty

I needed to get our taxes done and since I don't think well with the hundreds of interruptions I get in my role as Mommy, Daddy took Abby (our biggest handful!) fishing on Saturday.

He said she was digging in the dirt and made a comment about trying not to get dirty, so he told her it was okay to get dirty. She looked up at him in wonderment and said, "I can get DIRTY?!"



She immediately set to work doing just that! He said she put the stick down and stuck her hands in the mud and splashed in it. Before the day was over she ended up falling into the lake and getting soaking wet too, though the dip did clean her up a bit. Thankfully I had packed an extra set of clothes for her and always keep a blanket and towel in the van!

Abby Scissorhands

Abby hasn't quite mastered scissors yet, partly, I think, because she hasn't chosen a dominant hand. She often colors with two hands and eats with two hands, but this was the first time I have seen her cutting with two hands! She was "helping" me and Ryan make Valentines to pass out at a nursing home and his Valentine party with the homeschool group.

Waiting Patiently

Our van didn't start on Wednesday and we had to have it towed to the dealership. It turned out to be nothing serious. Ryan and Daddy dropped me and Abby off to pick up the van. While we were waiting for them to wash it, Daddy just lifted Abby's car seat out of the car with her still strapped into it. It worked out great since I had my hands full of things I needed to transfer back into the van and didn't have a free hand to hold Abby's. She got a kick out of it too and waited patiently in her seat till they brought the van to us.