Favorite words of Apple

This girl has quite the personality, and the words to go with it!  She is so talkative, it is so much fun to hear what new things she like to say.  Here are some personal favorites, maybe I can get her to say them on camera sometime so I can hear it forever!  But, you know babies, they don't usually perform when you want them too.

I's sleeping!! translation: I am sleeping, leave me alone!  She says it very emphatically.  She says this whenever she wants people to go away, she never says it when she's actually going to sleep.

Careful of Ice! She says this one pretty clearly, and I can't figure out how to write it the way she says it, but it's winter right now, and we have a lot of ice on our driveway, so at some point in the last few weeks, she heard someone say to be careful on the ice as they were going out the door.  Now, whenever anyone goes out the door, and she sees them doing it, she shouts at them, Careful of Ice! She pretty much shouts most of what she says, she's quite loud that way.

Com down! translation: Calm down! She likes to say this to her cousin who is a month older than her when he's busy running laps around our house, and she's standing on a chair, trying to be his mother.  Super cute.

Nose a Running!  She really hates a runny nose, so if it gets going, she will shriek this at you, and you better wipe that nose pretty quickly, or she'll take matters into her own hands, or sleeve, or whatever is closest.  The other thing that she usually says right after this is: I cryin.  Meaning, my nose is running because I've been crying.  Smart little lady.  Of course, she only says this when she's been crying, otherwise, it's just nose a running.

Bum medicine..like it...nope!  So, recently we had a issue where I couldn't get her to eat and drink enough fiber full foods apparently.  She got very uncomfortable let's just say, so that we had to take some measures to get things working properly.  Now, pretty much every diaper change we get this comment.  Her way of saying, she really didn't like that situation.

I guess I should publish this..I started writing it months ago, sigh..oh well.  I'm glad I did, I had already forgotten some of these! She is so much fun and quite the talker.  What a doll.

The latest favorite of mine is how she says her name.  Oweeva- so, so cute.

She also is 2 and going through the extreme clingy stage.  She literally will sit on me all -day- long, if I would let her.  She alternates sitting on me, next to me, or clinging to my leg.  She is usually reading a book, or wanting one read to her, and she will throw the book at you to get your attention if you don't respond fast enough.  I don't even know why I keep toys around, as she really thinks books are toys.  I should just pack them all up for grandkids or something.

 She says, No, don't go! while chasing me down if she even thinks that I'm leaving the house.  She is also very polite in her tantrums, there are always sobbing pleases in her sentences when she isn't getting what she wants.  It's a good thing that I'm old and more patient now though, otherwise, I think I would go crazy with all of this stuff, good thing she's the baby.  :)

As I put her to bed tonight she said, 3 little monkeys jumping on the bed....after a bit of singing that song, she said, Squirrel (used her real name of course) monkey and Nutmeg monkey too! With a big grin.  Then she decided mommy was a monkey too!

She likes to call everything silly goose lately, too.  Nutmeg was cutting a box down for garbage, and she looked at her and said, "Nutmeg what you doing? Silly Goose."

I'm glad we have her, she's keeping us young.  :)

Treehouse Museum! What fun!!

Last week we went to the Treehouse Museum.  It is geared to mostly younger kids, but our older ones found things they liked as well.  We were supposed to go with all of Mr. T's family who are in town visiting or just live nearby, but his parents ended up sick, so the thing was cancelled.  But, we had already bought our vouchers a month or more earlier when we found a deal on line for half price, so we decided to go ahead and go anyway.  Here are some pictures of the fun we had that day! Apple was so much fun, I love the joy and magic that little ones bring to everything they experience.

She didn't know quite what to think of all the dolls.  And the fact that she couldn't touch any of them made it so that it wasn't as fun as she'd have liked. 

She LOVED to gather all the 'horses' and thought it was great that she could carry them.  

Here she is gathering the horses.

A great team building activity that required many hands to make it work!

Fabulous building and bonding time with dad!  Love it! Mr. T loved all the planks to build with. 

And dad wasn't the only one loving the planks.  Dad went for height, Ginga' went for style!

This is the drawing station.  They were creating their own eggs.

It's a bit bigger and almost done...

getting closer...

Finished!  Wait til you see what happens next...

What baby can resist a tower?  Especially when her favorite game is, Timber?

She thought this horse was so cool..and she loved the hat too! 

It's not very often we can capture such a great smile on her! She was in heaven on this horse, obviously.  Isn't she adorable? Love this picture!

It was a fun day which we ended by having lunch at Tony's Pizza, which is a place Mr. T used to go get pizza when he was little.  The kids thought it was a bit strange to actually be able to go in and sit and order a pizza, instead of having it delivered.  :)  Over the summer we had reading goals, and we said that if everyone met their reading goal, then we would do something fun as a family.  We decided that this would be it, it was a fun time together. 

A dog with a bone...

Have you ever heard that expression?  Well, it has been put to good use around here as we have all endured Ginga' diligence and perseverance at learning a new piano song.  I love it when he has a new song finally done to the point that he can play it easily and doesn't have to play the same measures over and over again.  It is quite a feat of patience for some of the other children though.  Sometimes it would be nice if we had a piano room.  Hmm..maybe we'll have to think about that.  :) I wonder who would like to give up their room for it?  I sure love to hear him play though and I am very glad that he enjoys it and is working so hard to learn to read music on his own.  If I can get it to upload, I'll put a video clip on here of him playing his latest endeavor.  The new song is called, Love Story meets Viva la vida by The Piano Guys.  It really does sound awesome.  I think he is setting an incredible example for his siblings as well.  He will literally practice for hours at a time, thank goodness for home schooling!

Here it is!  We had a little whining from our Squirrel, so we'll see if we picked that up as well!

Way to go Ginga'! Keep up the hard work, just please give a little reprieve every so often.  And, we would love to hear a few more hymns.  (hint, hint)  ;)

Apple-funny girl!

What a girl! She is so much fun.  We are so glad to have her as part of our family.  Some things for mom to remember for the future mostly, but feel free to read on if you like.

Here she is making a pattern of the Sequence game pieces while the rest of us are trying desperately hard to hold onto the ones we have and keep her from removing them from the board.  Someday, I'm sure I'll miss this.  :)  Rock showed her one time how to do the pattern, and she was off after that, what a smarty!

She has so many words she can say.  It has been so nice having another child who has learned to speak early.  Ginga was the last one, the three in the middle were all almost 4 before they really bothered with learning to talk.  She loves to count, with your help of course, if there isn't any help then it goes something like this: one, two, six!  

She does this super funny thing when she wants to be left alone, she goes and sits, or lays down or even just turns her head away from the person who is bugging her and says, "I sleeping!!"  Apparently, that means, I want alone time!  She is actually pretty good about going to bed, she does seem to enjoy having that time where no one is in her space.  She isn't a big crowd person, she tends to get a bit nervous in those kinds of places, but even at home if certain siblings are giving her too much love, she tends to get overwhelmed.  

She is still potty training, today at church she insisted that she had to go right then!  Even though sacrament was almost over, she just wouldn't wait.  I decided that her hollering, "Potty!" over and over was probably not very reverent.  So off we went.  I am going to have to keep track of how long this process actually takes her though.  We are going on four months.  She is just too young to be coordinated enough to help herself.  She can't physically pull up and down her pants, so it's a lot of high maintenance for the rest of us, but mostly me.  She doesn't often consent to let anyone else help her.  But she is so aware of her need to go, and she won't take not right now for an answer.  I've tried.  She's famous for declaring her need right before nap or bedtime, of course.  And I'll try to say sometimes, not right now, when you wake up, or just use your diaper.  Yes, that is an indignation to even suggest.  How could you do such a thing mom?  But, I have to say, she always manages to do something when she is insisting on going, so..what does a mom do?  She plays along, and dreams of the times when she can just take care of it herself.  And has the sense to realize that poop is gross.  She has a bit of a fascination with it, and we have to watch her like a hawk to make sure that it stays in the potty.  Ew.   

A few other favorite words of mine: nuggle (snuggle), hungy (hungry), mo (more), Keekan (Kjersten-my niece),  gama (grandma), mooie (smoothie) and there are so many others, I can't even think of them!  

Love you little Apple!

Squirrel-isms continued...

Last week, I told the girls that their room had to get cleaned up, big time.  It was such a mess, huge, gigantic practically falling out of the door messy.  Well, after a bit of grumbling, Nutmeg went in and took care of most of it, while Squirrel was the errand runner.  This is typically how it works during clean up, Squirrel just can't figure out how to deal with big messes.  Even Nutmeg was challenged by this one, but they prevailed and got it back to a somewhat passable state, not clean by my standards, but much improved.  They have also divided the room into sections, and Nutmeg tries really hard to make sure that Squirrel cleans her part.  However, Squirrel's way of cleaning her section looks more like shoving everything under her bed, into the closet, under her pillow, or into her drawers.  After she stated that she was done, I quizzed her about those areas, and she grinned sheepishly, and I told her that she had better go back and try again, or that I'd be coming in there with a garbage sack at some point in the near future.  I knew I couldn't do it that day, so I told her it would be with in the next three days that I would do it unless she got to it first.  Of course, she didn't choose to go do it right then, she wanted to go play.  I mentioned it again the next day, and she just smiled like she didn't really believe me, and off she went to play some more.  Well, the next day I decided that I had time to tackle that room, and told her that during naptime, I was going in.  She looked at me and said,

"Well, just don't throw away my journal, okay?  Those are really important."

And off she went to play in the snow.  I am sure glad she knows what is really important.  :)  And now there is actually room in her bed for her to sleep.  And she can find the important stuff (like her journal) in her drawers, since I cleaned them out for her.  I took out a kitchen sized garbage bag full of papers and other things that she generally insists that she can't live without.  Boy she sure made us laugh around here at that one though, what a fun girl she is, so glad we have her!

Nutmeg's piano recital and other artistic achievements

The other night, Nutmeg had a piano recital.  It was such a fun evening, but boy was she nervous!  She did fabulous though, I recorded it, so here it is.  Hopefully, it turned out.

She is turning into quite the pianist.  I love listening to her play.

She has tons of artistic talent that I'm blown away by, especially since I struggle to even draw stick figures.  Here are a few of the paintings she's done recently in the art class that I finally convinced her to take.

She's so funny, she was very reluctant to take the class, not feeling very comfortable with someone that she doesn't know.  Each week I'd ask her if she was enjoying it, and she would be really casual in her answer.  Not a lot of excitement at all.  Most weeks she would say, "I already knew how to do...what ever it was they learned."  But although she knew how to do it, she didn't always know why you do it.  So, I think it was good for her, and I think she's excited to start the next class in January.  

Waterlily

autumn tree

Moab?  Looks like Southern Utah anyway.

My favorite-a tree in bloom.  

Can I just say how interesting and sometimes challenging it is to home school a child who is so different than me?  She is so creative, and loves to make things beautiful, I am far more practical in the way that I approach things, that trying to find the best ways to help her learn are really trying on me at times.  But, she is coming along so wonderfully and it is so fun to see her very unique self coming out.  I can't believe she's 11 already.  Wow.  Love you Nutmeg!

The many faces of Apple

What a whole lot of fun this little girl is.  She cracks us up daily.  She talks up a storm, which is so nice since I haven't had a baby do that since Ginga was a baby, the other three took their own sweet time developing their languages skills.  She will pretty much attempt any word you ask her too, unless there is a stranger watching, then she plays mute.  Here are a few of our favorite looks from her.

 Here's a close up of that funny scowl that Rock taught her how to do. She will go from big smiley face to scowl in a second, just because she thinks it funny.

Here is the scowl in a variety of phases.  It's been really hard to capture this look, but it's so funny that I am glad I did, great to remember.

Super happy baby!

She likes sour cream, sometimes. 

She loves to wear an old necklace of mine as a crown.  It's been officially added to the play items of the house.  So cute.

Here she is becoming a concert pianist.