My Name Is Now Mom

We've been visiting some serious extremes this week as far as adorableness and...  anti-adorableness goes.  The other day, TerraDactyl asked me for pancakes.  I told her I'd have to make them, so it would take some time before she got to eat them.  She wanted to help.  Turns out her idea of helping was shoving her hands into the flour.  So, I gave TerraDactyl her very own bowl of flour to mess around in.  She was happy with this solution.  I mixed up the batter while she got floury up to her elbows.  The doorbell rang and I went to check on it.  It was just a package, so I was back in the kitchen in about 30 seconds.  I came back to the scene above.  TerraDactyl's bowl of flour was dumped out on the floor and she was rolling around in it and "making snow angels."  Amazingly, I kept my cool...  until TerraDactyl hopped up, dodged my attempt to wipe her clean, and ran around the entire house, climbed onto a couch, dusting everything in flour before I could stop her.

Today's blogpost is going to be a series of vignettes.  We've collected some pretty good TerraDactyl stories this week.  First up:  DH stealing TerraDactyl's nose.  DH frequently "steals" TerraDactyl's nose, or ears, or other random body parts.  She usually "snatches it out of his hand" and puts it back where it goes.  But the other day, DH's hand was out of her reach, so she just put her hands over her nose and said "I'm giving myself a new TerraDactyl nose."  It was so funny and DH and I really had no idea how to react to that.   We went to the library the other day to pick up our held books, but TerraDactyl wanted to look for a Curious George book.  We got distracted in the Children's section and ended up finding some 5-minute Mickey Mouse stories and I don't think TerraDactyl has allowed us to read her any other books since then (that's what she's reading above).  It's been like a week.  She really loves Mick

TerraDactyl attended a birthday party this weekend.  There were 4 kids:  TerraDactyl (3 yo), two 4 year olds, and a 5 year old.  We had told TerraDactyl we'd be going to her friend's house for her birthday and she was very excited leading up to it.  We probably dropped the ball a bit because it didn't occur to me to explicitly state that there would be other kids there, too.  Anyways, we showed up and TerraDactyl just went straight to the corner of the family room where there were some particular toys that she liked and just played by herself for like 90 minutes.  Well, she did try to make me stay with her.  I stayed for a bit, but I thought maybe she'd be more likely to leave the corner if I wasn't there.  She wasn't exactly upset when I left.   It was time for lunch and she said she wasn't hungry.  Everybody ate lunch while TerraDactyl just kept playing by herself in the corner.  She came over to ask me something and stole a couple blueberries and cashews

TerraDactyl got to go to the zoo again last week, but this time with a friend.  The kids liked seeing the animals, but it seemed like the best part for them was playing in the dirt.  We spent more than 5 hours there and the last two or three were spent with the kids digging around in the bark and stomping in a puddle.    TerraDactyl had her 3 year check up last week.  She's 30 lbs and 36" tall.  The doctor was happy with her developmental checklist and very pleased with her verbal abilities.  The checklist asked about whether she is using 4 word sentences, but she'll often make 7 or 8 word sentences.  The most difficult part of the visit was getting TerraDactyl to wear a mask the whole time.  She got tired of wearing it pretty quickly and kept trying to take it off.   The part of the checklist where TerraDactyl was borderline behind was on fine motor skills, but that is because I haven't thought about having her do certain activities they asked about.  Like threading b