Caramel Bells and Fleas Navy Dots

Sara is loving her Christmas music this time of year. She listens to the entire Celtic Woman Christmas album every night before bed. She doesn't really know the lyrics yet though so she says what they sound like to her. She calls "Carol of Bells" "Caramel Bells" and she likes the song she hears on the radio called "Feliz Navidad" but she calls it "Fleas navy dots".

This is an unorganized post, mostly because I'm so tired but I want to write down some things before I forget them.

Sara is such a mother-er. We hung out with Camilla and she has a little 8 month old daughter. Sara really fell in love with her. She ran right over to her and gave her a hug the minute she saw her, it made me reconsider having another kid for a second (but not really). I've never seen her do that with boy children. It was funny. She also was really concerned with the girl's jacket coming off and kept trying to put it back on.

We were at a memorial park with huge ship guns as kind of a statue in the park. The two boys were climbing on them but Sara was scared and when Camilla put the little girl on the gun platform Sara was saying, "Camilla, you can't put that girl up there, she does not have any safety". Also Sara kept asking me what the guns were called. I told her they were just guns and she said, "Bubble Guns?". So I said yes and she got all excited that they might shoot out bubbles, if only.

Day after Thanksgiving

Dan's Dad spent the day at our house. Before he came over though he had been to three stores to try and find Sara the game she wanted, braving the black Friday crazies. Sara really enjoyed having Grandpa here. He played games and then he and Dan put up Christmas tree.

I gave Sara a bag full of plush ornaments that I had and ones that she couldn't hurt. I told her that she could either play with them or put them the tree. She spent HOURS putting them on the tree, taking them back off, and putting them back on. Tonight she put a lot of the plush ones in her bed to sleep with.

Sara and Dan love the Christmas tree. They sang Christmas carols tonight and sat with Brennan in the rocking chair looking at the tree.

I'm so excited for this time of year. Christmas is more fun with kids. They get so excited about the smallest things and there is so much to be thankful for.

Handimals

Sara has been really sick this week. The doctor said she might have been coming down with walking pneumonia so she's on antibiotics . I've been trying to come up with one new art project a week to do with Sara, especially since she's sick and we can't go outside as much. Today we did hand animals. I mostly traced her hand but she wanted to try to paint around it herself. Then we glued and glittered it up. We're working on sending these out in the mail.



Also, Sara's Grandpa was here visiting from Barbados this week. He spent lots of time with Sara, playing trains and reading to her. She really took to him. Also, when she was coughing and throwing up later that night, he held a bucket for her and wiped her face with a cold rag. Also, she asked him to wipe her butt when she went potty, which is a huge honor she usually only reserves for Daddy. I told her that we don't make guests wipe our butts though.

Techie

Sara is super smart. She had Dan's iphone totally figured out, she could navigate it, take pictures, pull up pictures, turn on music, get games, etc. We wondered how long it would take her to figure out the Kindle Fire and the answer is a couple of days. Dan says it's not quite as intuitive as his iphone but it didn't take her any time at all.

She plays educational games on the phone, she's great at matching, picking which word starts with what letter, and she's working on learning numbers and simple math.

Dan really got the Kindle Fire to be her entertainment device. It plays her shows and music, such a neat little thing. When she was sick tonight we let her use it in her bed to watch her shows and I know it helped her feel better by taking her mind off her illness.

The sickies

Sara is a very sick girl tonight. She caught what Dan had last weekend, which I think is what she had originally, they've been passing it around. She coughed until she vomited tonight. Grandpa Glade was here and he was a wonderful sport to follower her around with a puke bucket and wipe her face with a cold rag.

I finally gave her some cough medicine and she was able to fall asleep with her humidifier on. I layered the bed in towels however just in case she wakes up sick. I hope she feels better tomorrow but if it's what Dan had, we're in for a good 3 or 4 days of this :( I just hope Moosey boy can stay well.

Before Sara got sick, she had a fun afternoon with Grandpa, they played trains and read books. Sara even wanted him to wipe her bottom when she pooped, which is a huge "honor" in her book. It means she likes you very best. She usually only reserves that for Daddy.

Don't say that, say Uga Looga

Sara has learned some new words from her cousins, "Hate" and "Stupid". She overheard Timothy saying that he hates his sister because she's stupid and so now she's peppering her vocabulary with these words. It's kind of sad but it was sure to happen eventually I suppose.

We've tried to tell her that those aren't good words but then we've noticed that we say them all the time in basic conversation too. Sara has taken to correcting us, she says, "Don't say hate, hate is a bad word." Then she makes up a silly word to use instead, something like ooga woo.

She has also been asking us if all kinds of other words are bad words, like "weird" or "crazy". She is really over-analyzing it but she seems really concerned about it. She is very expressive so I think words are her expertise and she wants to have a good grasp of them.

Here is a pic of them playing together. She likes playing with him and he's fascinated watching.

Stuff we do in the Fall

It's fall now and the leaves are falling off the trees in droves. This week we raked a big pile of them and the Sara spent hours playing in them, even Brennan got in on the action.


We've also been trying to do at least one new craft project a week. Last week we made a Popsicle stick box, however it got squished, so we'll try that again later. This week we made this puppet with crazy yarn hair out of an oatmeal box, construction paper, a paper towel tube, and orange yarn. It wasn't much to look at but Sara had fun giving it a hair cut for 2 days. When she cuts the hair off, just pop off the top and add more yarn, presto.

Popping packing bubbles is also riotous fun for a three and a half year old.


Sometimes we just like mess around and take funny pictures or sweet pics with our Moosey brother. Sara is getting better at holding him, she will hang onto him tight even though she says he's heavy, floppy, his head is too big, and sometimes his fingernails scratch her.





And speaking of pictures, Sara LOVES to take pictures. She does a really good job with my camera but I'd rather her not take pics with mine. I'm thinking of getting her her very own kids camera for Christmas.

Sara has still been doing a lot of reading. We check out 25 library books every three weeks. By the time we've taken them back, we've read each one at least three times. One book she had mentioned gargoyles and that word stuck with her. She keeps talking about them and wanting to know what they are, as there were no pics of them in the book. So I took her over to a house in our neighborhood that is a huge brick goth house with gargoyles on it and she got a good look at them. She thought they were cool but kind of scary too.

It's her room

Sara is really particular about how she keeps her room and it cracks me up she does this every night. She likes to lay out her toys along the night stand and dresser. She says they "watch" her, kind of creepy but whatever. I think they are like friends to her. She usually lines up all the cars and trains together. She also likes to lay out all her dishes and veggies to play restaurant. She also hangs up her dress every night and her necklace and bracelet on the hardware of her dresser.



Brennan likes sitting in her room watching her play. Tonight he was fascinated with the trains his eyes followed them as she moved them along the tracks. I bet one day he will really be into trains and Lego's, I just hope Sara will still be interested in playing with him and those things by then.

Sara got some cute elephant slippers that she wears around the house. I love their trunks, it cracks us up. It's hard to get her to take things off once she wears them though, she wears that dress every day over the top of her clothes. It's been hard convincing her to take off the elephant slippers to go out in public.

Two fer one baths

Sara likes taking baths with Brennan, they share the tub well. It's nice getting both of their baths out of the way at the same time.


Sara also likes playing with water balloons in the tub. She has a little basketball hoop with suction cups on the wall and she throws the water balloons into it.