First Bath and Today

 

 

 

 

Who's Who?

People are constantly either asking me if Eleanor and Charlotte look alike or telling me that they do. Do you see it?

Charlotte at six weeks

 

Eleanor at six weeks

 

Charlotte in hospital

 

Eleanor in hospital

Aw, sisters.

 

And to the anonomous Meme who posted: Sorry, we didn't get any Halloween shots. Yeah, we're bad parents. I forgot to take pictures, but I didn't forget a child, so we're really doing pretty good.

S is for Sisters

The blog was a bit overdue for a new name.

So Many Decisions

Eleanor loves to lay out all her clothing options so she can better choose what she wants to wear. These were the top five contending outfits today. She was excited because I washed all of her "favorite twirly clothes" yesterday. The winner today was the white skirt with pink leggings and a green and blue plaid top.

LA County Fair

We ventured out to the LA County Fair today. Unfortunately, since it was Labor Day everyone else had the same idea. What should have been a 30 minute car ride turned into two hours of sitting in traffic. I guess it wouldn't be the LA County Fair unless you experienced a major part of LA in getting there. Once we finally got in, we went straight to see animals. We saw a baby sheep that was two hours old and all sorts of other livestock. While we were in the maternity barn, a goat was giving birth to twins (at least, one was out, one was immanent and there might have been a third). There was a huge crowd around that pen, so we didn't see that, but a man was giving a play by play of the birth over the loud speaker. As someone who will soon be in a similar situation to the goat, I felt very sorry for the poor goat.

Matt and Eleanor went through a hay bale "maze."

Eleanor wanted to ride a Ferris wheel. I'm not sure how she knew about Ferris wheels, but it was a major attraction for her. The closest one to where we were was in the kid's area. It was smaller, but she still loved it. She said, "I was a little bit scared, but when we when we went faster and faster and faster, I liked it."

Here's the little bit scared part:



It wouldn't be a fair without a funnel cake. I introduced Eleanor to this delicacy today. She kind of liked it:) Her plan was, "every time we come here to the fair, we need to buy one of these for the whole family to eat." I told her that was a good plan.



One of my favorite sites was in the parking lot.

Eleanor is a good passenger, if not a bit mischevious.

Sushi, Parking, and the Carousel

The other day I found this pouch that had six tiny dolls in it. I had bought them at 10,000 Villages once for a small purse toy. They have helped her quietly play in church services, resturants and such. At some point E added various tiny nativty scene characters to the bag: a couple of wise men, baby Jesus, a camel, a cow and a sheep. I stuck the pouch in my purse and pulled it out later at a resturant while we were waiting for our food. E played happily with all the small people/animals. When we got home, she asked for them again. She said they were hungry. When I walked in the room, I found them all eating sushi. My favorite was baby Jesus upside down on top of some sort of fish eggs.

I had a doctor's apointment this morning. Eleanor went with me, and since our doctor's office is within sight of E's favorite mall (is it bad that she's four and has a favorite mall?), we decided to have a mall day. Mall days consist of riding the carousel, boba (the boba place at the mall has mini boba, which E calls "baby boba"), and "Panda Food" or lunch at Panda Express. I don't go there with E if I want to get any shopping done, but it's a nice air conditioned place to walk. Today I even let E play in the play area, which I usually avoid, and realized that she is getting too big for it. This didn't stop other parents from allowing their school age boys to trample toddlers and flip each other off. My favorite thing about today's trip:

There are three of these parking spaces that I've found in various lots. I got the one in the parking deck, which meant not only was I right by the door, but my car stayed cool. Beautiful.

Eleanor's favorite part of the trip was the carousel. She got a letter last week with money earmarked for carousel riding. She was pretty happy about that.

Decisions

I heard Eleanor scoot a stool over to her new wardrobe and ponder, "What do I want to wear today?"

Dancing

Eleanor's favorite thing to do these days is dance. She loves skirts that twirl, ribbons that swirl, and, most of all, an audience. I'm looking for a ballet class for her that fits her age and development. In the mean time, ask to see her arabesque. She's quite proud of it.

Four Years, One Hat

(She wouldn't wear it on her second birthday. It was there though.)

Happy 4 Years to E!

Monday was Eleanor's fourth birthday. Crazy, isn't it? Here's a couple of pictures from her birthday. We'll have a party on Saturday and break out the good camera, so you can look forward to better pictures.

We took E to Kidspace, a muesum/play area for children. Scout (and fam) went with us. We had a picnic while we were there that included cupcakes with princess rings on top. I think they liked them:)

There were these huge climbing structures. This one is called raindrops or something like that. Eleanor would go up ten or fifteen feet, but wouldn't go all the way to the top. She enjoyed seeing a blue world.

After rest time, E got to open some presents. Of course she wanted to wear her Cinderella dress while doing so. It was so fun to watch her open these gifts. You could see the thought process of wanting to open the next one, but really wanting to play with what she had just opened.

Cinderella

I Tom Sawyered Eleanor into scrubbing the kitchen floor tonight. She kept thanking me for letting her play with the spray bottle (filled with water). My favorite part was she was wearing her Cinderella dress.

Pregnancy Through the Eyes of Eleanor

Last week, E drew this picture of me:



This week, she drew this one:

Apparently, as the baby and I grow, we get less happy. She told me that the scribbles around the baby are the "am-ni-odded fluid."

Eleanor, Curious George and Lisa Bear (her Carebear) were giving the baby hugs and feeling it move. A fun time was had by all.



On a side note, mixing red silly putty with play doh can have disastrous results. Eleanor and her friend Scout had a blast playing with this concoction until I literally caught them red handed. I must have scrubbed their hands for five solid minutes, only to leave a ring around the sink--very much like the cake ring in The Cat in the Hat Comes Back.



Just so you know, we are constantly stopping to smell the roses.

Camping

We went camping over Memorial Day weekend with a big group of people from our church. The camp grounds were in Malibu cayon and were beautiful. This state park is most famous for being the filming site of MASH and something else I forgot. All the landscape looked very much like MASH, but not so much like Korea (from pictures I've seen).

We spent Saturday at Leo Carillo beach. Matt surfed. Eleanor played in the sand. I hung out under the umbrella.

I'm pretty sure Eleanor loves camping so much because of the food. We had a very loose policy this weekend concerning what she ate and she enjoyed that immensely: Frosted Flakes for breakfast, Cheetos for lunch, s'mores after dinner.

Sunday we went hiking. We only made the three-ish mile hike instead of the 5ish one to the MASH site or longer to Reagan's ranch. Eleanor caught a ride the whole time. Matt was pretty wiped by the end of the hike.

Eleanor enjoyed sharing snacks with Brady. Mostly because Brady had Cheetos.


She was also able to get a little fishing in using Brady's pole. She didn't catch anything and I'm pretty sure she would have dropped the pole if she had.

Eleanor also decided this weekend on a new profession: a "wheat cutter." Forget dreams of being a "baby doctor" or an artist, she's on to more noble pursuits.