How much is that gog in the window...

Alex is fascinated with dogs. Last week when we would see or hear a dog she would point and say "gog". Now whenever we go outside, prompted by an actual pup or not, she points next door (home of gog #1) and repeatedly says "gog, gog, gog" Alas, given our schedules and overwhelmedness with Alex alone, this is as close as she'll be getting to having her own gog for a while...

Drain, drain go away...

There have been dudes in the house working for the last two days, and they may or may not be here tomorrow. We had to have our footing drain (whatever that means) replaced per the City of Ann Arbor. Luckily the city is paying for it. Unluckily they are tearing up the yard. Here is a view of the destruction so far...





But , how cool is it that they put down this sticky-plastic-floor-cover stuff to keep out some of the grime?


We may have to make this a permanent feature...

Splash-y-splash...

Alex would take a bath multiple times a day, everyday if we let her. I know we have mentioned her love of baths before but she shows no signs of waivering from this enjoyment. What is really funny is that now she knows the process for her bath- like she knows the steps. First we start the water and dump her frog. Her frog contains all her bath toys and is stuck on the shower tiles. As the tub is filling up with water, we take socks, pants, and shirt off. We then wait for the tub to be filled and temperature checked prior to taking off her diaper- it seems that the sound of water does have an effect on Alex.
Once in the tub, she plays with her toys. Then we wash her body and then her hair. She is down with all of this-she never has issues when we dump a bucket-full of water on her head...these days her new phrase is wwhhhhoooaaa after the water is dumped. She is a crack-up!! We then spend more time playing with her toys. Then we ask her if she is "all done"- signs and all. She answers by pointing to the frog on the wall. She knows that her toys need to get scooped up into the frog and even helps. Then when the tub is completely empty- she likes to splash. It is always the last thing she does. Last night Wes asked her to splash while her toys were still in the tub- once they were removed, she had to do it again!
I just think she is so smart and it amazes me how quickly she gets things- where her toys are in the tub- can pick out the pink pig, the yellow boat, her duck, etc. The whole having a process thing is a bit concerning though- too much of a daddy's girl already. He loves things in order and by a schedule and she is following in his footsteps....

Erin go bragh...

This morning I had corn beef hash, eggs, and Guinness for breakfast... Michele took the monkey to school and went to work. I tried to make up for this slight with a beer at the door and my take on green eggs for dinner...


The presentation may be a bit off, but I think it hit the spot. Olde world rye bread, thin slices of tomato, lightly dressed baby greens, and a poached egg topped with fresh made pesto and shaved parmesan reggiano. I ain't Emeril, but I can feed my girls.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!!!

Reading is fundamental...

Alex has always loved books... mostly loved eating then, but the words and pics are nice too. Her favorite part of reading for the last year or so has been turning the pages. For the last few months she has been happy to sit by herself and flip through the books. Only recently has she combined all of these pleasures with "reading" the books out loud. Yesterday she was in her room for at least an hour, carrying a book to her chair, "reading" it, and then going to get another book and starting over. I'm pretty sure that if cute was a WMD we would be on the terrorist watch list.

Reckless abandon...

You may have noticed in the fashion show pics from this weekend that sometime between the baby shower and dinner Alex got a pretty nice shiner on her left eye. She fell and hit a toy while playing... kids will be kids, no big deal.

Yesterday her black eye was just nicely fading by the time I picked her up from daycare. As soon as we were in the door and coats, etc were off she headed over to play with her toys. As she picked a heavy one up her little feet came right out from under her... no-grippy socks+hardwood=whoops! No big deal, except that she managed to whack her head on the corner of the leg of a nice hard table on the way down. Ouch.

Once the crying subsided we busted out the boo-boo bunny and iced it down, but it was ugly. It didn't slow her down for long, and she was back at it in about five minutes.

It looks much better today... but it's still early so I'm sure she'll find
something else to run into/jump on/roll off/fall on before the day is over!