5Nov2008: Day 163: Guy Fawkes Day aka Fi Dough!

It's our busy play-day. We went to the playgroup at the church in the morning and then another playgroup in the afternoon. The one in the afternoon had sparklers for the kids for Guy Fawkes day. I knew Makenna would be excited by fireworks but that she would be too frightened to hold it - which I was glad for anyways. She stayed a good distance away on her own accord.

Guy Fawkes was involved in a gunpowder plot in 1605 by a group of religious conspirators to kill James I of England, his family along with parliament. Although, from my understanding, was caught the day of or the day before being able to set the explosives on fire. So why they celebrate this failure but idolize the guy is beyond me. I guess I need to ask someone. To celebrate, they set off fireworks, like I said before, all week long. Although it's been about two weeks now.

This of course all brings up the whole "Fi Dough" conversation (See Sunday Nov 2nd if you need more explanation). Although, it's not really a conversation. More like a broken record. It had died down a bit from Sunday but was full force tonight. After dinner, I took Makenna to the spare bedroom upstairs. This bedroom has a desk in front of a large window and it was perfect to sit Makenna on in order to watch the various fireworks being shot off.

"Fi Dough" was repeatedly said...after the fireworks, during the fireworks, asking for more fireworks. What was interesting was that Makenna noticed the shadow on the wall of the window frame. So when the fireworks went off, it would throw a shadow of the window on the wall and she started watching that more than the fireworks. I think she was fascinated by it and couldn't quite figure it out. After a half hour of sitting their watching them, I knew the only thing that would tear her away was to mention "bath time!"

4Nov2008: Day 162: How About...

Pretty mundane day. We did have a health visitor come to do a check up on Makenna today and to see how I was doing with being a stay at home mom. She gave me some information about more groups and things available for Makenna. Chris and I happened to weigh her this morning and she's up to 31 lbs.

The health worker was amazed at how active and talkative Makenna was. Makenna, happy as ever that someone else was in the house besides mommy, was being a little show-off. The worker wanted to check her skills, such as being able to drink out of a cup, and that she's off the bottle. Also, that she can go up and down stairs, and that she understands commands, not that she'll necessarily obey. She had a small bag of toys and wanted to see her pronunciation of certain words. She had keys, then little miniatures of a cow, tree, horse, house, a duck, truck, spoon, fork, plate etc. She wanted to see that Makenna could make the pronunciation between words that were close such as keys and cow, or horse and house. She also had blocks for Makenna to build with but Makenna wasn't too interested in stacking them. She wanted the lady to stack them so she could knock them down.

The other thing Makenna did this morning was to say "How About...." I had asked her what she wanted to watch and she just goes, "how about..." and then she named something after thinking. She even had the inflection of one who says it while thinking. She did it again tonight when I asked her what book she wanted me to read. Again, it's hard not to smile when you can hear your voice coming through a little miniature of you.

3Nov2008: Day 161: Happy Birthday Katie

Makenna's cousin Katie turns one today. We wish we could have been there to celebrate and see how much she's grown. So we're sending her this Happy Birthday wish in the picture.

Speaking of birthdays, Makenna got a couple of more gifts today. One was from her Aunt who is Great...Lori. I figured she'd like that better than reading that she's her Great Aunt. Another was from my mom who sent her some clothes, like this coat in the picture. Makenna absolutely loves the coat. I gave her a choice of coats to wear and she picked this one both times that we went out today. In fact, she didn't want me to take it off when we got to the nursery at the gym.

Today was a perfect day to wear her boots as it was rainy and foggy. Even at 3 pm, it was hard to see out the windows. It gave her an opportunity to stomp in puddles. She kept saying, "stomp, stomp" as she did so in the puddles.

She also came up with a couple of new words today. The first one was squishy. At the gym, they have this little play area outside of the nursery that she likes to go to when I pick her up. So she wanted to bounce on these rubber step-like things they have. I told her that they don't really bounce because they're squishy. She laughed quite a bit at the word and then started saying it, but it comes out sounding more like "sushi." Then tonight, when I was putting her to bed, I said the word "ridiculous" and she laughed and laughed. She repeated it and it sounded like "dises" (imagine dishes without the "h"). She kept saying it over and over. At least we got off the Fi Dough. Although, she did say it today, just about 50 times instead of a thousand.

She also helped me to clean this morning. She saw me mopping the kitchen floor and immediately came over and held onto the mop. I told her to push it and she did. She moved it back and forth, a few times on her own even. She then proceeded to help in her own way by getting things out all over the floors that I needed to vacuum.

The other thing she did today was feed herself yogurt. I have been quite reluctant to let her do this because usually I'm feeding it to her in the carpeted living room near the new couches. But today she wanted to sit in the kitchen chairs which are pretty high up and I gave her a spoon and let her finish one I had started with her in the living room. Then later tonight she wanted another one and Chris was amazed how much she did all on her own. She did make a bit more of a mess tonight as she had the whole thing of yogurt compared to the little bit she had in this mornings cup, but she still did pretty well. Chris is already thinking about how it won't be too long before she won't need us.

2Nov2008: Day 160: Fi Dough

Makenna has learned the art of driving her parents insane by saying the same thing over and over and over and over.....at least 1000 times - no kidding. At first, it had us laughing as she kept saying "fi Dough" for fireworks. They have been shooting off fireworks all week and today was no exception. She was able to see some of them from our dining room and that was it...we lost her. We mentioned fireworks and she picked up Fi Dough. She keeps begging for us to make them happen. We obviously have no control as it's just random people shooting them off. We had a hard time getting her to focus on something else. Once we got her re-directed, she would eventually go back to "Fi Dough!" I've uploaded a couple of videos so you can see what I mean. The color quality is not that great but it's off of a small digital camera. The first video is of her asking for Fi Dough. The second video is of Chris mimicking fireworks and Makenna laughing. The laugh was just so cute I had to record it.



She also had a few mini screaming fits during church. She was trying so hard to tell me something I should know and I just couldn't understand her. She's said it in past and I knew I knew the word, I just couldn't figure it out under pressure. So finally I asked her to show me what it was that she was asking for. She kept saying "fiptures, fiptures". When she went over to my bag, I figured it out...it was "scriptures." She likes to look through them and some of the pictures in them.

Her and Hannah made me glad that I didn't have twins. One was eating cereal and the other decided to spill it all over the church pews and floor, at the same time the other one pushed a book that had small pieces to it onto the floor. It was like they had a plan to drive me nuts by creating chaos in all different mediums and directions. They also were fighting over a book that Hannah had given Makenna today, as a birthday gift. Then Makenna slipped through the pew and half her body was in the row behind us and the top half was in our row. So Makenna kept yelling "stuck, stuck!" And I mean yelling. I think everyone in the church knew she was stuck.

On an interesting note, I've been working on some family history and I was able to connect to someone in AZ who is working on my maternal grandmother's line of Olmstead. She e-mailed me today and told me that there is an Olmstead Manor Castle over here in England! I've tried looking online and don't come up with anything by that name. So I hope that she can give me some more information on where this is along with some missing information on this line. Plus, she is looking for information too. As I have family that come from over here in England and so does Chris, I'm hoping to be able to find some information or at least some places that my ancestors came from. It's just finding the time to do the research.

Since writing that above, she has given me some more information. Unfortunately, it's more of a small farmhouse type dwelling but it looks as though it may only be an hour and forty-five minutes or so to get there - if we can then find it. I have to do some more research and hopefully we'll get a chance to try and check it out.

1Nov2008: Day 159: Hannah Poopy

I definitely missed going some place for the day as we were stuck inside all day. It was cold, wet, rainy, and Chris went into work. So Makenna and I tried to tough it out. Hopefully Chris will get a day off this week and we can make up for not going somewhere today.

At night, we did go to dinner with Hannah, her mom, dad, and sister. It was a "carvery" which means that you get one plate full of food. I initially thought it was like our "hungry heifers" (Old Country Buffet) but there was not much variety to choose from and you only get one chance to get food. You go up and they have roast beef, ham (what they call gammon,) and turkey. Then there was stuffing balls, which was stuffing but in ball form, cheesy cauliflower, carrots, roasted potatoes, Yorkshire pudding bowls, and other vegetables that I was unsure of, and gravy. It was pretty tasty, and for three-fifty (pounds) it was a good deal. Makenna unfortunately would not eat. We were hoping being next to Hannah who pretty much eats anything would influence her but no such luck. She ate a bit of a Yorkshire Pudding bowl which is just a pastry bowl, but that was it. The girls ran around a bit and then we felt they hassled the other diners enough that it was time to go.

We were supposed to go see fireworks but it was still somewhat rainy so we invited them all over to our house to play cards and have the girls burn off some more energy. We did see some fireworks on the ride home, but the clouds covered most of them up. The girls had fun spilling Cheerios all over the floor repeatedly. We decided to just leave them on the floor and it was a good idea because they just eventually ate them off the floor. It was funny because they would be running around, and they'd see a Cheerio and it would stop them in their tracks. They'd stop, pick up a Cheerio, pop it in their mouth, and then continue running on.

Makenna also tried barging in on the adults card playing time. I eventually gave her, her own deck of cards but that wasn't good enough, she wanted ours. She through all her cards on the floor in protest.

One funny thing was that when we all first got to the house, Hannah had a very smelly diaper. Makenna took it upon herself to let everyone know that Hannah was poopy. "Hannah, Hannah, poopy" she kept going around saying. It finally died down but when we were putting Makenna to bed tonight, she kept saying "poopy, poopy Hannah, Hannah." Again, what kids choose to remember is amazing.

31Oct2008: Day 158: Maybe They Should Put Health Food in Candy Wrappers

Fairly dull in regards to Halloween. We did have a few trick-or-treaters so luckily we have an abundance of left over candy. Here we were afraid that we wouldn't have enough. Part of it was probably because we don't know how to turn our porch light on, although, it does go on automatically at around 10:30pm for a few hours. Hopefully no one will show up then.

Makenna was all excited to hear the door bell ring and eagerly waved hello to the girls who were at the door. They all "aahhd" at the cute little girl cheering them on. The next time it rang, there was a scary mask and that was about the end of Makenna's excitement on the whole door bell ringing. The next time it rang, she literally just clung to me and didn't want to go to the door. I convinced her it would be okay, and by the time we made it to the door, they already left with treats in hand from Chris handing them out. That was about all that we got in the way of people at our door.

The night itself was quite funny. As soon as Makenna saw a candy wrapper, she immediately wanted some. Now mind you, she's never had this candy before but she knew she would like it. She didn't hesitate about putting it in her mouth, not even one brief thought of "I might not like this." Nope, just popped it right in. Daddy gave her another piece and mommy said "no more!" She didn't eat much dinner. So later when she was asking for food, I said she could have grapes. She said "okay" and then I brought them out and she wouldn't eat a single one.

I actually thought, well maybe if I put it in a candy wrapper she'd eat it without a thought. Nope, she recognized that the grape was just in a candy wrapper. She took the wrapper, looked at me, and said, "all gone". She knew the candy was all gone. We tried several times to get her to eat a grape to no avail. She decided she liked pulling them off the stem it was attached to so I let her do that and she held them in her hands and licked it. I figured if she would just bite into it and taste it, she'd hopefully like it. So Chris squeezed one open a little but again, no luck.

She tried putting the licked grape back in with the bunch so we kept putting it on the lid of the carton they were in, so we could throw it away. She was getting upset and kept putting it back in with the bunch. It was kind of funny as every time Chris put it on the lid, she'd yell, "no" and put it back in with the others. This went on about five times or so and Makenna got so mad that she picked up the grape off the lid and then threw it at Chris. We both had a good laugh at that. It's hard not to laugh at behavior you don't want to encourage when it was so appropriate.

The other thing I have to add, as this is kind of a "Makenna Journal" as well as being our travel blog, is that her and I were playing with some toys on the floor that she got for her birthday and I was putting these little people in a row on the floor with some animals and pretending that the people were feeding the animals. Makenna was pretending with me in making the munching noises of the animals eating, but then all of a sudden she decided a tornado came through and would knock down all the toys. She then would say, "fweetie" for sweetie. Chris says "sweetie" to her often when she's in the beginning stage of doing something she shouldn't.

Another thing I wanted to add is that she's getting better with her spoon and fork. She mainly uses a spoon in the morning with her cereal, and she has that about mastered (thank goodness). The fork, she can do some times but usually her meals are finger foods. I need to find some little forks, like shrimp forks or something. They happen to have little tea spoons here and I only shipped over one "spork" like instrument for her and that doesn't always get the food too well.

Well, Chris has to work tomorrow so we won't really be going anywhere but hopefully we'll be going to dinner with Makenna's friend Hannah and her family then off to see fireworks. They've been shooting off fireworks around the area sporadically throughout the week. I think some holiday "Guy Fawkes" day or something like that is coming up. It might be tomorrow. I'm not sure what it's about but I guess I better study up on it.

30Oct2008: Day 157: Come On!

Took Makenna swimming with her Dora swimming ring today. She enjoyed it. She was quite the friendly child today too. While we were in the pool, there was an older boy in the pool (maybe 4 years old), and Makenna kept waving and saying hello to him. Then as I'd take her swimming around, away from the steps, she'd wave and say bye, bye, and "see you later." Then we'd come back to the steps and she'd say "hello" again. It was quite cute and funny.

She's also starting to say some words a little more clear. Today she said "garbage" much clearer. Usually it came out sounding like "garbf" but today it was gar bige, with the pause between. Then she kept trying to say fox again, and we're trying to encourage her to say the ending clearer as when she says it, it sounds as though she's swearing.

After dinner, I offered her the last of her birthday brownie. Daddy kept asking her to share and he'd say, "come on, let daddy have some." So Makenna would just say back to him "come on." It's also cute to watch her try and sing itsy bitsy spider. You can understand some of it. She has this way of getting you to sing the song. She starts it, and then as you pick it up to sing it, she stops and lets you do it. She does it with most of the songs. She won't sing the whole song through. I guess she figures she has some other sucker doing it for her.

Late this afternoon it started to rain and actually thunder and lightening. This was the first time Chris and I had heard and seen it here, the thunder and lightening that is. It would be nice if it's like this tomorrow night as it's Halloween and we're not sure if we have enough candy. Plus, Chris has to go out of town for the day and he might not make it back until late so I might have to deal with hooligans all by myself.