Saturday, May 11, 2013

Muffins with Mom, chillin' on the weekend

The mothers from Mrs. Hawthorne's class were treated Friday to "Muffins with Mom," an adorable set of songs devoted to their mommies. We also had gifts!
Cora drew some pictures of us together, and wrote out three coupons - one for making my bed, one for 10 hugs, and one for her picking flowers for me.
On our way back home, she was happy to hear I hadn't made my bed yet, and insisted I allow her to do so. When she finished, she even gave me the coupon back, so I can use it again in the future. I like that kind of coupon best!
You can hear the first song the children sang here. They continued on with four or five more, but my camera was running out of battery power.
Our Saturday was very relaxing. It was a warm one, so after soccer, we knew we were headed to the pool. Thankfully, Genia was more than happy to bring her kids too. Stace had a lot of fun with them in the water, while Genia and I chatted.
Owen loves to relax - above, you can see his favorite relaxing pose. He and Violet are having their post-dinner drink together; cheers! They are such an "old couple!"
They bicker and argue and laugh and play and follow each other around.

Thursday, May 09, 2013

Thrilling Thursday

Violet is in her last few weeks of "My Buddy and Me," so Stacey wanted to take her one last time. He worked it out with Rigo, who also went Thursday to play with Liana.
I'm not sure who had more fun with Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head, daddy or daughter.
While I'm on the subject of Violet, here are a couple of Violetisms:
About an hour after we put her to bed, we hear: "Mom, I need some help getting this feather out of my nose."
And...
Me: "Violet, you need to listen to my words. I asked you to put away all the panties you threw out of the drawer."
Violet: "But I'm looking at my panty collection!"
 


After class Thursday, Stace went back to work while we played at the park with several friends from class. And since it was Liana's 3rd birthday, after I picked up Cora, we three girls met Colleen, Rigo and Liana at Chick-Fil-A for lunch and play time.

After school, Cora was playing out front with Ave and Johnny, while Owen and Violet were having fun in our house while I started to prepare dinner.
Genia announced that since John was out of town, she was treating her kids to dinner out, and why don't we come along? One doesn't pass up such an offer!
I knew that Melanie was serving at Lazy Dog (her new employer), so that's where we headed. It's nice that all of our kids are at a great age to eat out at a restaurant; this is something we actually haven't done together very often since we've become so close to the Roberts.  


Wednesday, May 08, 2013

Winding Down

 This week, we went over to Sophia's house for lunch after Mom2Mom on Tuesday. Sophia had come over to play the prior week, while her mom Sue was in Burbank to be in the audience of the Ellen talk show.

So this week, the girls played while Sue and I watched the show, and picked her out in the audience shots. Here, the kitty-lovers are pretending to be "Super Kitties."
It's hard to believe we're already in that time of year, with various programs winding down.

On Wednesday night, we attended the closing ceremony for Pioneer Club. I also had my last church small group of the session - we start back up after summer - and I went to my last Mom2Mom meeting, too.

Here, Jill has charge of the 3-year-olds. Good thing one of us had the sense to bring in books and drawing paper!
 Here's Cora with her small Scooters class. Next year, she'll move up to the next age group, and Violet will be able to take part as a Skipper.
Sadly this was the last Pioneer Club meeting for Ave, Johnny and Owen. They had fun seeing each other every week here.

Monday, May 06, 2013

Underwood Strawberries

Last week, we went to Underwood Farms in Moorpark for our annual strawberry picking trip with our Mom2Mom friends.
Behind Violet, you an see the smoke from the huge Camarillo Springs fire. We were several miles away, but the smell was pretty strong and later in the day ash was floating through the air.
Violet enjoyed it, and I took Cora out of school an hour early so she could come along too. 
Our friends Michelle and Brooke met us too, since they now live so close. Moorpark is about 45 minutes from us, but 10-15 minutes from them in Camarillo. 
 Unfortunately, our trip coincided with one of two very hot days, with temps in the upper 90s.

Despite loads of sunscreen and water, Violet was still searching for shade on our wagon ride back from the strawberry field. She only found it under the bench seat.
Underwood has quite a few animals to check out; here Liana and Violet insisted the alpacas were baby camels.
An old combine is now open for the children, and has a slide.

Cora did very well playing with Cora and Liana. Maybe because they're now bigger girls, she had a lot of fun bringing them into the imaginary games she loves to play. They ate it up, following her lead most of the time.
Here, Violet was hiding in part of a wooden train play structure.

Despite the warmth, it was a really fun day out. The breeze cooled us off and we found enough shade to make it comfortable. And, we went home with four boxes of freshly picked delicious berries!

Sunday, May 05, 2013

Soccer and a boat ride

On Saturday, Stacey played in a golf tournament, so Grandpa came over to take Cora to soccer and practice his photography.

He's getting very good!


 After soccer, Grandma and Grandpa took the girls on a harbor cruise in Ventura. They saw dolphins, sea lions, pelicans and colorful starfish.
Then they enjoyed the interpretive center.

I'd love to say I enjoyed my free time, but our cats were sick so we spent our time at the vet. Turned out Spencer caught giardia (an intestinal parasite) on one of his outdoor jaunts, and shared it with his brother.

In the evening, Stace and I went out and watched "42," the Harrison Ford movie about Jackie Robinson's first year with the Dodgers, when he broke Major League Baseball's color barrier. Good film.

Violet at Three


Violet had her three-year well-check this week, and all went very smoothly. She had one vaccine, and it was hard for me to believe how easy it was. I held her tightly, and she didn't even cry!

Size-wise, our pint-sized princess is barely clinging onto her spot on the height chart. At 34.5 inches, she is in the 5th percentile! I know she is several inches smaller than her same-aged (and younger) friends, and I know Stace and I are, um, diminutive ourselves, but wow. Ninety-five percent of 3-year-old girls are taller than Miss Violet.

Violet's weight of 28.8 pounds puts her in the 30th percentile.


Now, for some details on our 3-year-old.
Naptime has become a bit iffy with Violet. She still sleeps most days, but sometimes, she plays instead. Here, she made sure both lambies got a rest (with the basket she stole from the dresser), but she remained wide-awake.

Whether she sleeps in the day OR not(!), Violet has been falling asleep quite late into the evening. We'll put her down at 8, and she will still be awake and talking, playing, singing at 9:30 or even 10. Thankfully, she doesn't cry or demand much, and since she is alone in her crib, it's really not a problem. (Yes, crib - we haven't had any reason to move her into the toddler bed, and so we haven't. Maybe this summer...)

For several weeks, she was needing to use the toilet at least once, and often twice, after we'd left her at night. She actually would "go," but the routine was still tiresome, so last week Stace told her "no more." She hasn't been asking as much since that night.

She wakes up dry about half the time in the mornings, and has been day-trained since 2 years, 10 months.

See that gaping hole? Violet's days (or nights) of using a "night night" are over. Stace and I didn't even have to do anything to break a habit I thought would be much more difficult to end.

One non-napping naptime, she bit a hole in what I thought was her last dummy/pacifier. She went without for a day (with a lot of tears), and then I found another by her bed. A week or so later, she bit a hole in that one too, after lots of warnings that this was the last night-night, and wasn't she getting to be a big girl anyway???

She had no problems this time at all. She even said, "I'm a big girl, I don't need a night-night anymore," and was quite proud of herself.

That night, she also said she didn't want Seahorse (above) either, that it was "a baby thing." But we've kept that in the bed for her when she wants to play with it.

Our girl is a silly one. Here, she emerged from the bathroom with a new hat. "I have Minnie Mouse on my head," she said, in her husky, breathless, silly voice.

She also likes to get naked, especially when she's not-sleeping in her bed; several times when she was still "needing" to wee after lights-out, I went in to find her naked.
When I'd ask why she was naked, her answer was matter-of-fact: "Because I got my clothes off!"

She likes to make us laugh, and she laughs and smiles easily. Lately she also has been more defiant and slower to obey; we're keeping a close eye on this and hope to nip it in the bud.
She is a pretty girly little girl, much more so than Cora was at this age. She likes dolls, Calico Critters, fairies, bubbles and play-doh, and has begun to enjoy dressing up.

I still get the joy of realizing it's very quiet in the house, and finding her reading or playing with puzzles in her room.

She loves playing with Owen, Liana, Marley, and of course her kitties and Cora.

And she loves going to Ms. Diane's class; just another few weeks of My Buddy and Me, and then she'll be headed for the dropoff summer camp and "Terrific Tots" in the fall (both also with Ms. Diane).


Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Fun with Friends

 We celebrated Marley's third birthday Sunday with a little party at Meadows.

Cheers!
 Jill made all those adorable Spiderman cupcakes.














 Jill brought Silly String, a first-time play thing for most of the kids. They had fun with it (though Cora, watching me write this post, is whining that her dad used up all of her string).
 On Wednesday last week, John had his last Valencia High Jazz Band concert at Vincenzos. We had a good time enjoying the music, and JT and Jim came up with their children too.
Cora really had a good time with baby Jonah, who's now 6 months old. And Violet played well again with Callie, who's only 9 months or so younger than her.

More birthday goodies


Violet's birthday started Saturday with a happy girl waking up with the full awareness that she was now THREE years old.
She opened her gifts from me, Stace and Cora; all were Calico Critters, the line of sweet miniature animal toys (called Sylvanian Families in England, as they used to be called here). 

Cora and Violet have been very interested in Calico Critters for the last couple of months, which we think is just great. They're cute, quiet toys that provide for lots of imaginative play (when they're sharing nicely).
 On Sunday morning, Violet was excited to move up into the 3-year-old class at church. Sadly, there were no more doughnut holes left when the service was over, leading to a very 2-year-old-like tantrum from Violet Mae. Stace and I have seen signs from Violet recently that make us think 3 will be a lot harder than 0, 1 and 2 have been. But that's another post!
 Also Sunday, Violet celebrated her birthday with Nan, Pop, Dean, Jenny and Euan via the computer. On the right you can see the Calico Critter treehouse Nan and Pop sent over, which was a huge hit. So was the ice cream van, a gift from Dean and Jenny. Thanks!
Violet's new birthday toys have provided lots of fun for Cora and her friends, too. In fact, Cora was more excited to open the rest of Violet's presents than Violet. Here, Cora, Violet and Sophia are playing with a new play-doh doggy toy. Cora also really got a kick out of giving Violet presents and handmade cards and pictures. She wrapped up some trinkets, including a "jewel," which Violet opened with delight. It was adorable to watch.

Saturday, April 27, 2013

Violet's Circus Party

 Violet Mae is 3!

We celebrated with a trip to "The Circus is Coming to Town," a children's theater show Auntie Mel is acting in.

As a birthday group, we got to sit in the first two rows, and most of the children in our group got to take part in the interactive story.
 Barbara Schwartz, the Storybook Theatre co-founder, brought Violet onstage so the whole audience could sing "Happy Birthday" to her.

During the show, Violet got to pretend to be a circus giraffe. When asked by the "ringmaster" what giraffes have, she said "tails" instead of the expected answer "long necks." All on stage were asked to wag their tails like giraffes.
Violet loved being on stage, smiling away.
 

 Here's most of children in our party with the actors.
After the show, we headed over to the pony rides/train ride area of Griffith Park.

We were fortunate to get a couple of empty picnic tables on a busy Saturday afternoon. Melanie set up a face-painting station, which the little girls loved.
 Violet picked out a clown cake (made of cupcakes), in honor of Mel's show.
 The pony rides were a hit, as well. Cora, Alexyss, Sophia and Lucas took a ride on the trotters, while Violet and the others went around the track at a more sedate pace.
The day ended with a train ride for Cora, Violet, Grandma, Morgan and her girls Sophie and Norah.

It was a long and fun day; Violet and Cora both had a brilliant time. Violet loved her birthday, after talking about it all week long.

Happy Birthday, our sweet Violet! We all love you and are so proud of the big girl you are becoming.