Merry Christmas 2012!

Yummy imaginary tea!

Doll Mansion

Wooden magnetic dress up dolls

Taking care of baby

Ketchup...works every time...j/k

Elmo has the same soccer jersey as River

Purse and accessories

Getting served...some Abby Caddaby tea

Kitty Cat

The love seat

What's that you're eating?!

Here's lookin' at you, silly face.

Soccer in the Blood

River, petting Tsosie with her dolly. Sweet.


She's a Lil' Kicker! Sometimes they kick soccer balls around, but mainly it's more bubbles and songs and cone towers...lol. Pretty darn cute.

Tutu Dreams

 These are the photos you use to scare off all potentially terrible mates...

Gift Dog

I'm pretty sure Tsosie is being shipped off on Christmas. The next step in this bubble wrapping fiasco was trying to balance a present on Tsosie's head...not sure what that was all about.

New Words, New Month - River at 19.5 months

These days River is pretty much trying to say EVERYTHING we say! It's so funny because a while ago I had my "mommy mouth" on and said "shoot!" when I dropped a nail behind her bed while trying to hang a picture. River picked up "shoot!" So (thankfully!!!) when mommy mouth was out to lunch and angry mouth came out when mommy dropped something on her toe...River said "shoot!!!" as if she had never even heard what I had actually said :).

So these are some of the words she says regularly and this is by no means comprehensive:

Fly (which she does now, as regularly as dancing)
duck, cow, teet teet (bird, which also involves a hand sign), swan
kiss
pull
box
mice, mouse
Tsosie (dog- which recently turned out to have a Southern drawl. lol.)
funny
stuck! (which has been used a lot...because she manages to get stuck a lot.)
shoes, socks
mittens
heart
money
pickle
applejuice
neck (which sometimes means Giraffe)
snake, snake
turtle
see
sit
soap
up, down (usually a very funny up and down show to go with it)
pee pee, poo poo
bye bye to the above
dolly
keys
knees, toes, feet, hand, eye
beak
bloop bloop (seriously, it sounds perfect...and it means fish)
Sita (which originally confused me to no end since I could only think of Rama and Sita), by this she means "Rosita" from Sesame street which we figured out fairly soon.
Tookie (which comes up because of both the food and the sesame street character...lol)
uh-oh, oopsie
ant
walla (which refers to koalas)
nice (she learned this in the bathtub when I asked her if the bath was too cold, too hot or nice)
pen
circle (and she draws a circle)
Wipey
towel (is a favorite this week. I play fought with her about how this is a blanket, and she'd say, noooo, towel.)
tickle
brrr (cold)
walk
people
peas
bounce
kick
stick (sounds more like deek)
broken (today the sticker was broken)
boy (mostly everyone is a boy since she doesn't say girl yet. Yet another pretend fight we have.)

She also has really begun to speak in sentances much more fluidly and regularly. It's funny, Daddy funny, It's a duck, mommy hat, what's that?, etc.

River recently went to her first Lil' Kickers "Soccer Practice." Chris and I aren't those parents who are "putting our child on a scholarship path" at 1.5 years old. As the coach said, "NO EXPECTATIONS. They may start to get it, maybe not." Perfect. It was great. Most of her class was spent balancing on the blowup partition they had between the classes on the fake indoor arena grass. Some was spent kicking, throwing, sitting on soccer balls, some chasing bubbles, etc. She was the best ever at running ;). He had them run several times back and forth and she was gone! One side to the other. Very fast kiddo.

Her sleeping (and mine!!!) has improved immensely. She will wake up, at most, once during the night. Other than that it's before bed and maybe once in the early morning. We've since set up her "big girl room" with Hello Kitty everywhere, posters of jungle cats, abc's and her new toddler day bed. She naps in her day bed and she really can't get enough of her room. She loves it. She "helped" set up her bed by using the Alan wrench to twist things in various random holes in the wood. Very cute.

She's helpful around the house too. She loves stirring food, feeding the doggie, sweeping, and she actually takes out the trash. Every few days she'll go to the bathroom trashcan, pull it out and say "ew, yuck." I'll get a trashbag and she will (by herself-seriously) dump the contents into the bag. We then go around to all the little trashcans around the house and dump them one by one. It usually ends in her trying to take the huge bag out by herself, giving up and letting me carry both her and the bag to the dumpster. Lol. Ya gotta start somewhere.

She brushes my hair and shares food. That's just the way we've always done it.
She pretends she's sleeping, playing with her dollies, cars, and jumping off of things.
She really loves hot dogs, and pizza but also enjoys brocolli, carrots, and other meats besides hot dogs...although sometimes it's hard to tell...

She counts to 2. It's more like, one, two, one, two, one! And when she sees me writing or is drawing what she perceives to be letters, she says I O I O I O I! very proudly.