My Name Is Now Mom

  Tomorrow TerraDactyl will be starting her first day of summer camp.  It's twice a week for 3 hours each day.  The class is super small (5 kids) and they're all 3 or 4 years old.  It's only for the month of July.  Hopefully, she'll like it.  It's a nut-free building, so I was struggling to find filling snacks for TerraDactyl to bring with her.  I ended up finding these snack cups of olives and pouches of pickles.  I was so excited about my find.  And you know what DH had to say?  "Olives and pickles for snacks?  What are you trying to get TerraDactyl bullied?"  :P  (I'm still packing the olives for her). TerraDactyl really does like olives though.  She seems to kind of like the pickles, but the olives pretty much always get cleaned off her plate.  I'd also like to point out that neither DH nor I taught her to shove the olives onto her fingers.  She just started doing that one day.  Maybe it's innate.....

Check out all the candy TerraDactyl collected from the 4th of July Parade!  DH said she had a blast running out and picking up the candy.  For most of the parade they were spaced pretty far away from other kids so she actually had a chance to get the candy.  After a while though, another family with older kids camped out on their other side and they pretty much cleaned up the street before TerraDactyl could get to it.  She's not super aggressive with these things (yet - I'm sure she'll inherit a decent dose of competitiveness).  Also, check out her awesome snow boots that she insisted on wearing.  She's such a nut. Parade snacks!  DH and I weren't sure what kind of parking there would be, so they drove to a train stop and rode the train downtown.  TerraDactyl was super excited about the train ride.  DH wanted to walk back to the car after the parade, but TerraDactyl insisted on riding the train back.   A bit surprisingly, TerraDacty...

 After several setbacks (being ghosted by companies, an incorrect quote that had to be redone, having to reschedule the installation visit, underestimating installation time leading to a second visit...) we finally got our heat pump installed and working!  Just in time, too!  Check out that temperature difference!  This indoor temperature is probably a little bit hotter than actuality because it's right next to the window.  It was more like 74 degrees inside.  It's nice having the day time temperature being so reasonable, but the real benefit is the night time temperature!  It's so much easier to sleep now, especially since I'm pregnant.  I've barely been using a sheet to sleep with for months, I wasn't sure how I was going to sleep in the heat of the summer.   This picture was a special request from TerraDactyl.  She wanted a picture of herself and her little sister together.  She's been pretty sweet hugging and snuggling with...

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, dusti...

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 ...

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 activitie...