Up to Speed

I've been a blog slacker. Oops. Let's update!

We're in the process of creating a playroom upstairs for Leah. Up until now, our upstairs rooms have mostly been used for storage. It was great to have a place to put things that was out of sight, out of mind... but it became a disaster. So, within the last month, we finally started going through everything, sorting it into categories of keep/donate/sell/trash. After pulling items I wanted to save for memory's sake, we now have a huge pile of Leah's old toys, clothes, and baby equipment that will either be sold in a consignment sale next month or will be donated. We even made $65 last week by bringing some needed items to a local baby consignment shop! Feels really good to get all this clutter out of our home and, in some cases, give them to someone else who can use them.

Dan has been working on scraping, sanding, and spackling the popcorn ceiling (ugh) and then he'll repaint the room white. We wanted to keep the walls basic while adding color with posters, new ceiling fans, curtains, fabric storage bins, and of course, Leah's toys. It's going to be exciting to see the finished product!

As for Leah herself, she's still as silly and bossy as ever. ;)  Though she still prefers to be in my company, she is becoming more outgoing with other little kids. At the park recently, she went right up to a couple other little girls, said, "My name is Leah", and started playing with them! When they left and other girls arrived, she joined them as well. I was proud of her confidence and so glad to see her initiate play.

Leah is also learning how to subtract... sort of. Awhile back, in order to help her learn numbers, Dan showed her on one hand how many days he had left to work. Together, they counted down until the weekend. "Daddy has to go to work three more days" and Leah would hold up the correct number of fingers. Now, after he's completed a day, she knows to take a finger away and then she'll tell us how many days he has left. It's cute. She may not recognize numbers by sight, but she can do this! ;)

Project 365

I started a new blog for the New Year. A few of my friends are doing a Project 365 Challenge - where you take at least one photo everyday for a year - and I decided to join them. So, here's my shameless plug:

Amanda's Project 365

Yes, I will continue to post here on Life with Leah. :)  Still, since many of my photos will, I'm sure, feature Leah, I figured some of you may want to check out the other blog as well. I'll be updating that one more frequently.

Thanks and enjoy!

Chocolate: noun, adjective, verb

Sunday afternoon.
Dad: "What do you want to do tomorrow?"
Leah: "Go see choo-choo and get donut."
Dad: "Cool, we'll do that."

Monday afternoon.
Dad: "That was a great train ride. Now what?"
Leah: "Let's go get donuts."
Dad: "Oh, yeah. I forgot about that."

The display case at Publix is looking a little sparse. Leah sees a large cookie with M&M's baked into the cookie. That's the choice. So, we tell the lady at the counter that we want one chocolate chip cookie with M&M's. Then Leah eyes the donuts. Only two types: one with a white glaze and one with a dark chocolate glaze.

Hmmmm. We now have one chocolate cookie and one chocolate donut.

Leah instructs that we will sit at the cafe-style tables in the front of Publix. Chocolate (noun) can go bad very quickly if not eaten at once. Leah sits down. Daddy removes her jacket.
Dad: "Which one do you want?"
Leah: "Chocolate."
Dad: "The chocolate cookie or the chocolate donut?"
*Notice, chocolate is now an adjective.
Leah: "Choc-o-late!"
Leah (still): "Chocolate, chocolate, CHOCOLATE!"
Dad (uncharacteristically calm): "They're both chocolate [you pleasant angel]. Do you want the donut or the cookie?"
Leah: "Yeah."
Dad: "Uh, donut?"
Leah: "Yeah."

Leah proceeded to eat the (chocolate) donut. I don't know how much chocolate actually made it in her mouth. For such a small donut, she had enough chocolate on her hands, mouth, chin, cheeks, coat sleeves, and tabletop to cover a donut. This is where chocolate becomes a verb. She chocolate herself. Other people in the cafe area seemed to exit as she chocolate herself. Fortunately, Publix stationed a water fountain near what must be an endless supply of napkins. After cleanup, Leah decided that she was up for more. She sampled the cookie. The chocolate cookie, it's the size of a frisbee. She had half of it.

Trains, toys, and "Everyone Poops"

A complete day for Leah includes a long ride around a shopping mall in the coal car of the kiddie-train, followed by a quick visit to the toy store. She played in the kitchen set-up towards the front of the store. She enjoyed the mini-sandboxes by the cash registers. She climbed over boxes to reach the little house for the animal figures. Then, she found the item we had to bring home.

"FINALLY! A book that says everything I find funny in life."

By Monday evening, we have read it from beginning to end three times. That may not sound like much, but it exceeds any other book Leah has been exposed to. The best part is that everything in the book is clearly making a strained face. The fish, the whale, the camels. Take a gander at those illustrations and see how you would read that to a child.

Best part:

That's right! A pipe! This book has levels! Once you get past the subject matter, and the drawings of strained animals in mid defecation, you get the absurdity of a man treating his toilet as his inner-sanctum. I guess his cup of coffee is on the other side of the porcelain throne.

Nevermind Kipling, Carroll, or Dickinson. All a three-year-old needs is a little-known author from Japan and the perverse illustrations of a freelance artist to come together in 1977. To compare this book to a mineral, it is gold. To liken it to film, it is Citizen Kane. To christen it a milestone, it is an enthusiastic trip to literature for a little girl, who finds nothing funnier than the fact that everyone poops.

(For those who may not be familiar with his sense of humor, this post was written by my fabulously witty husband. :) )

I Can Do It Myself

This seems to be Leah's three year old mantra: "I can do it myself." She is very independent and tries her best to be self-sufficient. When we change into pajamas at bedtime, she wants to be the one to take off her clothes. If we're playing outside and she wants her sidewalk chalk, she'll go back inside and get it on her own. When we come inside, she refuses any help to take off her shoes. As long as her cup is on a shelf inside the fridge that she can reach, well, she can get it herself. And so on. It's really rather nice!

Leah is becoming a great helper as well. When she sees me unloading the dishwasher, she always comes over, grabs the utensils, and neatly puts them away in the drawer. She'll also set her plates, bowls, and cups on the counter. One day, a couple weeks ago, I shook out our small kitchen rug before washing it. Before I could sweep up the dirt that had fallen out, Leah grabbed her own broom and told me, "I can do it. You don't sweep." When she was done, she even grabbed her little dustpan and threw all the dirt in the trash! I could get used to this!

At the Sandcastle

A couple months ago, Dan & I were still figuring out what we should do for Halloween. Did we want to trick-or-treat in town (as we ended up doing), go to a church's trunk-or-treat, go the library for their activities? I told him that a friend of mine from my mommy board was going with her family to Disney World right around Halloween because apparently, they do a trick-or-treat type of event right in Magic Kingdom. We were curious, so we looked it up on their website. And yep, Mickey's Not-So-Scary Halloween Party is held on select nights throughout September and October. It sounds spectacularly fun and age-appropriate for Leah...

So, that is what we're planning to do next Halloween. :D

However, we may have made the mistake of already telling Leah this. Naturally, she was curious about what we were looking at on the computer since we seemed rather excited by the whole thing. So, we showed her some pictures of Disney World, telling her it was "Mickey's House", and showed her Cinderella's castle. We told her we'd like to go there sometime, where we could see so many of the characters she knows and loves from her favorite movies.

And now, every single day, she talks about who we're going to see "at the sandcastle" (because, yes, ever since going to the beach, every castle is a sandcastle!). Here's a sampling of what we hear regularly:

• "Are Bolt, kitty Mittens, and Rhino going to be at the sandcastle?"
• "I want to hug Cinderella and Snow White."
• "I want to sit next to Miss Piggy."
• "The Wiggles won't be at the sandcastle. They're at their house."
• "I don't want to see the mean ones, just the nice ones." (the mean ones are the villians - Scar, Jafar, the Wicked Queen, and so on)
• "Simba, Pumba, and the meerkat - they'll be at the sandcastle?"
• "Ariel, Sebastian, and Flounder - they'll be at the sandcastle?"
• "Woody, Buzz, and Jessie - they'll be at the sandcastle? And Rex and Slinky Dog and..."

You get the picture, I'm sure. ;)  Whenever we put on a different movie or she remembers a different character, she asks about whether or not they'll be there and tells us if she wants to hug them or sit next to them. It's awesome she's so excited (and frankly, so are we!) yet it's obviously difficult to convey to her that it's going to be a loooooong time until we go. It may be a long year...

...but on the plus side, when I asked Leah if I could hug Flynn Ryder, she said yes. ;)

Family Art

Oooh, posting two days in a row. ;)

Like I mentioned last month, Leah's drawings are getting better and better. Lately, she is all about drawing faces, people, and animals. I think we sit outside with the sidewalk chalk nearly everyday, unless it's raining. Dan and I usually draw too, as have other relatives when they come to visit. I tend to repeat the same objects - flowers, birds, trees - and I can sometimes sketch a decent drawing of an object that is in front of me. Dan is much more creative and artistic, able to draw various Disney characters and objects from memory.

This is best illustrated with pictures.

Here are a couple of Leah's recent drawings, a smiley face (which looks like it's in a lightbulb!):

and what she described to me as "a bear with sneakers":

Cute, right? :)

Here is a sketch I did of Mickey Mouse, while looking at a toy that Leah brought outside:

And here is Dan's drawing, from memory with NO visual aids, of The Little Mermaid:

What a show-off. ;)