Thanksgiving

Hi Luthien,
Well first I will start by telling you I cannot believe all the new things you are doing/saying on a daily basis. It would be far too much to record, so I will just list a few new developments.

1. You say the funniest, and we think most clever things. I really need to start writing things down right after you say them so I can record a few of the classics here. Something you have started saying often is, "Say it louder Mom!" when I say something you like- as if that seals the deal...? I can't really figure out where you got that, other than I think I say that to Dad sometimes because my hearing is not the best. You also have started thanking everyone, and you always say "Oh" as if whatever polite gesture someone has done for you is a surprise. So if you ask me for milk and I give it to you, you say "Oh! Thank you Mommy!"

2. You are really delving into the world of imaginary play these days. You love to play 'going to the grocery store or the farm' and finally you love to help me cook! I've been waiting for this day! Of course sometimes it's a bit of a hindrance when I'm trying to prepare something quickly, but most of the time I really enjoy cooking with you- you mimic what I'm doing in great detail with some of your own tools and I get to teach you the ropes. You've even started helping me set the table and load the dishwasher.

3. You can now retell stories, daily events, etc. with pretty good accuracy. I love asking you what happened in a particular book or when you went to the store with Dad and hearing what you have to say. Every time you go somewhere with Dad you say that you got candy, which Dad then denies, so I'm not sure about the accuracy there :)

4. You still are pretty into letters and words and what sounds make up words. I actually started a little informal "assessment" the other day on a whim. I presented you with 3 letters and then asked you to point to a particular letter or sound, and you could point to the correct one almost every time. Dad tried this but he quickly found that he was giving you too many letters at a time. A visual field of 3-4 is the max for now (I'll explain this to you later I guess). Also, you point out print in the environment when we go places, which is exciting!

5. You are getting really good at singing and right now of course Christmas songs are your favorite- you love anything to do with Santa, reindeer, or snowmen.

Okay, that's enough for now! Here are a few pictures from the past couple weeks as well as some from our Thanksgiving trip to Brooklyn...

I think I told you you are loving to paint right now. Sometimes I find paint in interesting places, but I love that you love to create.

We've still been hanging out with your friend, Dorothy and you LOVE her gecko. You always want to hold him and for the most part you are very gentle. I'm just impressed that you don't flinch when he crawls all over you!

Here you are with your cousin Georges the night before Thanksgiving, in your favorite of places. You can sort of see that you have extreme dryness right now in various places on your body (where your skin is thin?)- under your eyes, behind your knees, etc. The eyes worry me- whenever you cry, you then start screaming because the tears sting! Poor girl. I'm working on a remedy for this.

Along with pretend play, you love to dress up. Shoes are your favorite and hats are a close second. A big thing right now is that you can put on most of your clothes by yourself so you love to practice. Here you are getting dressed up in Georges' shoes/hat:

Thanksgiving with the East Coast cousins...you all loved playing in front of the mirror and Bastian started really scooting fast that weekend:

You were very excited to eat. Your appetite has really increased these days! You can also see that Aunt Maria made everyone a personalized placemat with fitting artwork...

Jumping on Dad's full belly after a fabulous dinner:

We drove home from Brooklyn the day after Thanksgiving and although it was late, we stopped and got a tree!

And lastly, a bit of nostalgia- you showing off your Grand Canyon shirt (it's one of your very favorites and you love to tell people about it).

I forgot to mention that you weighed in at an impressive 23 lbs when we went to the doctor. Only 4 lbs more than your big/little brother :)

Goodnight my little peanut,

Mommy

Brooklyn

Dear Luthien,

Last week I decided to hop on a bus to Brooklyn with you and Bastian; we went for 2 nights and 3 days to visit your Uncle Beau and Aunt Trisha/families, and to see Aunt Shannon with cousins Jack and Ryan who were visiting from AZ. You had such a great relationship with Jack and Ryan that I couldn't stand the thought of not seeing them when they were less than 4 hours driving distance from us. We didn't have the gas money and Dad didn't have the time to take away from his studies, so we took the bus! It was actually great! Of course there were moments on the bus that were difficult, seeing as I was the only one with kids, let alone a toddler and a baby, but I would definitely do it again. It was good for Dad to be able to study while we were gone. The trip was really wonderful- good food, good conversation, and nice playing (for the most part) between you and your cousins. I couldn't have asked for more!

Bus ride from Providence to Manhattan- I managed to get you and Bastian to sleep at the same time!

Playing with Georges in his room:

Playing (and not really wanting to share) with cousin Olivia at Aunt Trisha's house:

Playing at the park with all the cousins. You were delighted to find the big turtles, frog, and whale!

It was a beautiful weekend- a bit warmer than New England so the leaves haven't fallen off the trees yet. Here are the adults hanging out:
Saying goodbyes:
You were very happy to see Dad when the bus pulled into Providence. We love the city and can't wait to explore it more since it's so close to us! Here you are near the river where the gondolas float- very picturesque in the daytime...
You are growing up so fast! Lately you have been singing more and talking in even more complete sentences. Sometimes you mix up your pronouns but we have been working on that. You are learning your phonemes, letters, and visual letter recognition slowly. When you want to get your point across you call us by our first names, and your new favorite thing to do is painting and coloring on the walls :) Every time I reprimand you, you say, "No Mommy, I'm just drawing a big whale!!" As if that makes it all okay. But I am glad that you seem to have an artistic eye- unlike me, much like your father.

Love you,

Mama

Staying In

Dear Luthien,

Last week we stayed home on a Monday, which is rare for us. You see, I would love to stay home in the morning and actually get things accomplished around the house, but I have this fear that we will stay and you will get so bored and cranky that I won't be able to accomplish anything anyway, so I always end up taking you somewhere. I admit that I am not very good at multi-tasking. I have a hard time even folding laundry while playing with you and watching Bastian. This is mostly because once I begin a project I want to do the whole thing; interruptions tend to bother me so much that I would just rather save a particular task for later (which is why I either don't get things accomplished or don't sleep). But I am happy to say that last Monday we stayed home and accomplished lots! And it felt great! And we had lots of fun finding new ways to play with your toys. So, I have decided that from here on out we will be staying home at least twice a week so we can do chores together and you can learn to be more creative with the things we have.

Here are a few pictures from our day together. I should say that it definitely wasn't perfect. Toward the end I could tell you were getting bored so I had to get more and more creative, but it all worked out and we really did have fun together. I loved coloring with you and playing on the bed together, among other things. You also tried on your new boots given to you by a friend...

By the way, I don't think I have mentioned that you have been sleeping in your own "big girl" bed! You can see your bed with the railing a bit in the picture, but I will have to include more soon. You have fallen out once because you move soooo much when you sleep, but so far so good otherwise.

Love,

Mama

Trick or Treat

Dear Luthien,

I think I'm almost caught up now! Here are a few pictures from Halloween this year. You were a giraffe (again). The costume was definitely too small but it worked. A friend offered a monkey costume a little too late which you ended up having an opportunity to wear also. As Mom's friend Carrie put it, "New Englanders are waaaay into Halloween, and holidays in general..." We found this to be true, and for some reason it got me into the spirit as well (Dad and I are usually not very big on Halloween). You definitely got way too into the candy aspect for me (Dad's fault- he admits it), but I have to admit it was really fun and cute to see you so excited. I was also happy and surprised that you grasped the idea that eating candy was a very special/temporary thing, and we're back to normal now.

Friday evening we went to our church's "Trunk or Treat" that included a potluck dinner. Somebody brought homemade chicken nuggets cut into dinosaur shapes which I thought was brilliant considering most of the kids were set on eating candy only. You definitely had your fair share of those...I actually think that was the first time you had ever had a chicken nugget!

Dad wanted to get a shot of the three of us as were rushing out the door, as usual. Here are the results:
Collecting your candy... You were so excited to get the candy that you actually said "trick or treat" to every person/trunk we went to. Usually you are more shy but there were no reservations that night.
Admiring your candy afterward... I was happy to find that you received a pencil, sunflower seeds, organic fruit jelly beans, and Newman's Organic Oreos! Even the baked Cheetos were a step up.
I'm not proud of this one...but I love it! You actually only took one bite of this Tootsie Roll and then put it aside. You don't really like chocolate. And really, your favorite part about the candy was just looking and talking about it (and asking me over and over what the names of each of the candies are). We even let you sleep with your bag because you just liked to have it by you. We did find some of the candies unwrapped in the morning but you hadn't really eaten them!
Sunday afternoon we went to a brunch at the home of a couple who you and Dad had met at the conference the weekend before. They are both artists and have an adorable loft apartment and a daughter named Zoey. You wore your monkey costume and had a blast. Someone handed you a pumpkin doughnut from Dunkin Doughnuts and by the time I saw that you had it, it was almost gone.


No trick or treating for us on the actual day of Halloween; you got enough sweets for the year! I also have to tell you that you LOVE Charlie Brown and watched the Halloween episode daily up until Halloween. Now we are watching the Thanksgiving episode, which you love even more I think!

Love you,

Mama

Miscellaneous

Luthien,

Here are just a few more pictures of you at the whale museum, this time with Mom and Bastian...

Listening intently to whale sounds (your hair is soaking wet because we all got drenched as we were walking in- I was totally unprepared for rain but getting better, since New England weather is so unpredictable):

Playing on the authentic whaling boat:
Posing next to a Right Whale:
You two look cute but Mom realizes that I should probably get a hair cut since I never have time to style it. I very rarely have time to look in the mirror these days, yikes!
Amazing sitting areas and art throughout the museum:

Here you are the next day, showing me your orange that you actually ate a little of. You were more interested in the juice coming out than actually biting the orange- you don't like the tartness or texture. We had oranges galore in AZ but you finally decided to try one once we move somewhere that doesn't produce any :) We are trying to eat seasonally and based on what's available locally so I'm not too worried about the oranges anymore...good thing you love apples!

Love you,

Mom

*Luthien- never mix up your tenses/voice when writing in a single document, as I do all the time when writing to you. Sorry for the bad example.

Outing with Dad

Luthien,
Last weekend Dad took you to the annual "Bioneers by the Bay" Conference while mom stayed home with Bastian, resting and cleaning. I really wanted to go and am sad I missed! This is a gathering of environmental, industry, and social justice innovators who come together and present information and eat yummy organic food, and it happened in our good old city of New Bedford! There were kid/family activities and free admission to the whale museum.

Now, I must digress and explain that about 2 months before we left for Massachusetts you became obsessed with the characters from Finding Nemo, in love with sea animals in general, and mostly, fascinated by whales. Your favorite activity previously had been "standing up" your little plastic animals, but it changed to playing with the Nemo stuffed animals Nana gave you and pretending a big whale was after us and insisting on "getting safe" (which involved getting to higher ground). I think you will have an imagination like your Dad's...

Anyhow, we find it very fitting that the very city which we moved to happens to be the Whaling Capital of the World (or was, when whaling was still legal). There are huge murals of whales and other sea creatures in two places in the city that we drive by all the time, and every time you squeal "There's big whale!!" Mom hadn't had a chance to take you to the whale museum yet, so Dad was very excited when he was able to go with you the day of the conference.

So, here are a few pictures from that day! First, here you are coloring at one of the activity booths. You have gotten more into coloring, which I'm happy about.
We finally found the area of New Bedford that is super cute! They have totally restored a section of the downtown area to look as it was in the 1600's. More pictures to come, but here are just a few that don't show the cobblestone streets and cool old buildings...
This was the inn that the main character from Moby Dick stayed at I believe:
Apparently you were screaming when you saw the whale museum for the first time. In the front there are two big whales and an octopus. By the way, whenever you talk about a whale you refer to them as a "big" whale, not just a whale. There is one exception, and that is when the whale is a baby or miniature- these you refer to as "little tiny baby" whales.

I'm glad we have moved to the perfect place for you!

-Mom

New Friends part II

Dear Luthien,

At our first library story/song time at the Dartmouth Library, we met Carrie and her son West. West is just about 4 months younger than you. Carrie is a very fun lady who also happens to be training to become a La Leche League leader, so we get along great. We are even going to start attending the monthly La Leche meetings in Providence this month! Carrie and her friend Gillian happened to be just in the process of starting up a weekly play group with one other friend of theirs, so they included us in the group! Gillian and her son Sebastian are currently living in an adorable old house on a private beach in South Dartmouth, right near our milk farm. You had SUCH a fun time at our first play date. You normally like the ocean but it was fairly cold and windy so all we could do was look and dig in the sand. I didn't think you would be that into it, because, as we've discovered, you don't really like to be cold! Or at least you insist on being held when it's cold, and holding both you and Bastian is a little hard for me to do for an extended amount of time, walking along the beach...you get the idea. Anyway, I was very wrong that day! You had so much fun racing up and down the dock with West and looking at all the boats and birds out in the water. Here are a few pictures from that day, and I'm sure we'll have more soon!

This isn't Sebastian's house but you get the idea...We love the grassy beaches out here!

Here you are looking into the water with West and Carrie. We were throwing rocks we had collected into the water, and you decided to grab the whole bucket that contained the rocks and throw it in. It never washed up, but luckily Sebastian's mom didn't mind :)
The three of us:
Walking on the rocks... we sure need some waterproof shoes or boots!
And here is the dock you kept running back and forth on. I actually couldn't believe how brave/aggressive you were being! You were your typical cautious self for the first couple times up and down, but after that you kept taking off until you got to the very edge of the dock, which was just roped off. I really got a work out because I was running after you each time while holding Bastian. I knew you wouldn't try to jump off the edge but of course I wanted to be safe.
After the beach we played back at Sebastian's house with all his cool wooden toys. It really was a perfect morning!

Love you,

Mom