Hooked on Phonics worked for me!

Mia is really getting into reading and writing. It's amazing to watch your children develop, just one of many things that makes parenting worth all the trials. Watching her sound out difficult words and putting them together to read sentences, read books. It's awesome.
The girls received some early Christmas presents from her great grandparents on Chuck's side. They were in town for Thanksgiving and wanted to see them opened. One was a little Disney Princess (of course) diary. Side note - I promise to try really hard to NOT be one of those parents that reads their kids diaries but I think at age 5 it's not yet considered an invasion of privacy.

She has as of yet just written one page and then gave up because she was tired of trying to figure out how to spell things. She created a title page for her new diary and her title is this:

Printsess Slepnge Byoode

(translation: Princess Sleeping Beauty)

10 points for creativity! The kid's got the greatest imagination.

More love for fall

Another thing to add to my list of fall loves - the sunsets. During Mia's soccer practices, Layla and I take walks around the soccer field. Last night I had to take her picture while the sun was setting. The lighting was just too perfect to resist!

The overalls she is wearing were a battle. They're pants. Layla didn't want to wear pants, she wanted to be a princess. So when the snaps came undone and I tried to fix them, she started yelling "No, don't fix them - I'm a princess!" Even at bedtime, I undid all the crotch snaps to change her diaper (come ON potty training!) and she insisted that not only do I leave them undone to give the illusion of them being a dress and thereby being worthy of a princess but that she wear the outfit to bed so she could sleep as a princess. I felt mildly justified this morning to see that she had shed them at some point during the night. Rogue snaps aren't so comfortable for princesses.

Pretty in Pink

A couple weeks ago we did a huge purge/clean up/rearrange session in our house. This effort finally gave us our living room back by creating an office upstairs and finally making enough space in the girls' room for their Disney table & chairs to fit. In doing this, I finally opened a tea set they got from their Nonni Great for Christmas. It was like Christmas all over again and I should have done it from the start because now the girls are glued to their room instead of the T.V. and that is a triumphant moment for any parent!

We recently had a group of friends over for a game night and after getting the full tour from the girls, Ashley commented, "I feel like I've just been drowned in Pepto Bismal." I couln't disagree.

Her colors will be Blush and Bashful

Could this birthday get any more precious I ask you? It's like Disney just exploded in our house. God bless my sister who, after going cross eyed looking at all the princess parafanalia, went with something completely different. She gave her niece a life size hamster wheel. Oh yeah, check tomorrow for some video. We're breaking this baby out today!

Mom made this cake. She is amazing! Please feel free to comment if you agree with me and everyone else that she needs to start selling these things!

A glimpse at my future of getting my daughter off the phone. This is, of course, a Disney Princess phone. It came complete with a purse, sunglasses, and CREDIT CARDS!! So mom gave her a little lecture about being careful with credit cards because you can get into trouble using them too much. And be careful not to lose them because then other people can use them and steal all your money. This morning she let Layla borrow her purse while she is in school. She told Layla to be very careful with the credit cards. They're very important.

See the insanity

This is an old video since my daughter Mia is about to turn 5, but it acurately portrays a 3-year-old's frame of mind. Note how once the amazing present is opened, everything else must be said in full on scream mode! Well, you can note it if you can hear Mia over the howls of laughter coming from my family.







This is Mia this past Christmas. You can see that not a lot has changed.