"Mommy, Look!"

Lily pulled me into her room today, proud of what she had made. She told me what her picture was, but I had to ask her at least half a dozen times to figure out what she was saying. So, my question for you: what is this? "Mommy, look at my ______________!" Try filling in the blanks....

It's a Boy!!

Allow me to take a moment to welcome the newest member of our family -- Max! Max is a 14-week-old "tabby-mese" (Tabby-Siamese mix) kitten that has adopted us. He showed up at church about two weeks ago, and he ended up coming home with us. He was underfed and crawling with fleas, but both of those things were easily fixed. When we took him to the vet for his first check-up and kitten shots, we also found out that he had ear-mites; he's on meds for those now. (And so is Tucker, since Max managed to share them with him....) Overall he's a pretty sweet kitten, though his behavior is more dog-like than cat-like. We're in the process of training him not to rummage through the trash cans, drink out of the toilet, or eat the plants. Lily's enjoying the new kitten, though she gets a little upset and frustrated when he misbehaves....

ASL Update

The alphabet is mastered!! Lily still has trouble forming a few of the letters, but she can recognize all of them easily and quickly. When signing, she almost always asks for help with the M, and she uses her other hand to move her little pinkie into place for letters like I and Y. However, she can now do the ASL alphabet as she's singing the aplhabet song, and she's becoming interested in spelling words with her hands. At this point she's more interested in the letters and spelling than learning the signs for words themselves, but I'm hoping that will come soon.

I Need Drums!!

Lily's been enjoying all of the toys at Grandpa Brad's house this week. Among the favorites is the drum set. Also, she's taken note of the guitar collection....

We went to the Tennessee State Capitol and the Tennessee State Museum today. We managed to navigate downtown Nashville without too much trouble, and we must have climbed dozens and dozens of flights of stairs today. When we went to the museum, and Lily noticed an old guitar that was on display there: "That's just like Grandpa Brad's guitar!" she said excitedly....

The Hermitage

Among today's stop was the Hermitage, the Tennessee home and burial place of President Andrew Jackson. It's certainly interesting to see how history is presented differently in different parts of the country....

The Zoo

The first stop on our Spring Break agenda today was the Nashville Zoo. Lily was very excited about going to see the animals, and the weather today was wonderful. However, a whole lot of other people also seemed to think it was the perfect day to go to the zoo. The lines were exceptionally long when we got there; we stood in like for over 45 minutes before we even managed to make it through the front gates. The zoo was certainly busy, but it didn't seem particularly packed once we were inside. The overall outing was enjoyable, but the zoo was a little disappointing -- no bears, no otters, no lions. At least there were elephants, giraffes, zebras...and that was enough to make Lily one very happy little lady.

One Long, Rough Day....

It's been one of those "when it rains, it pours" days around here, except the water wasn't coming from the sky.... We started with a visit from an electrician. We did some work in our garage, and we decided that it might be a good idea to have a professional electrician look things over to make sure everything was done correctly. Everything checked out okay, so that was a relief. After the electrician, spiderman (AKA, the exterminator) came. He sprayed outside and treated the inside of the house, and everything was okay with that as well. However, he did leave the door to the hot water heater closet slightly open when he left. The door sticks a little bit sometimes, and I always check to make sure the cat didn't run into the closet whenever the door's left ajar. When I opened the door, I found a nice puddle of water under the hot water heater. We figured out the the hot water heater had a leak, so we turned off the water, drained it, and went to find out about getting a new one. We ordered a new hot water heater, and it will be delivered and installed on Monday. The bad news is that this means we're a whole week without a hot water heater; the good news is we're to be gone most of the week for Spring Break. And regarding Spring Break, we were originally supposed to leave yesterday, then plans got rearranged so we were supposed to leave tomorrow, and then today (sometime between the exterminator and the hot water heater) plans got changed again and so we ended up leaving today. Amid the flurry of people and things today, there was also packing and preparing to travel that complicated everything even more. At this rate, I'm just hoping that "Spring Break"actually yields some sort of real "break!"

ABCs, ASL, and Ws

Since Lily seems to have a pretty sound mastery of the ABCs (upper case letters, most lower case letters, and basic phonics), I decided to hunt up something else to try to keep her interested in letters...and I ended up with ASL. I downloaded an ipod application that has the ASL alphabet, numbers, and colors and I printed off a couple of little basic sign charts. Lily's doing pretty well with them so far, and she seems to enjoy making the letter signs. Her hands, however, aren't quite coordinated enough to handle sign language yet. It's kinda cute to watch her use her left hand to pull and move the fingers on her right hand to form the letters...

And, regarding the W.... Up until a few weeks ago, she has referred to the letter "W" simply as "double." The later part of the alphabet has long gone "T-U-V-double-X-Y-Z." The "W" is now complete.

ABCs

Lily got a new toy last weekend when we went to visit Aunt Janet. It's a little portable case with a chalkboard on one side, a magnet board on the other, and a set of letter and number magnets that goes along with it. The toy wasn't really something that Lily needed, as she has an easel with a chalkboard and a whole refrigerator full of magnets, but she seemed particularly interested in it and it wasn't expensive, so Mommy gave in. Over the past few days, she's been working very hard to write her ABCs on her chalkboard. She can do most of the letters without help, and she's made considerable progress in the last few days. (And, at this point, none of the letters are backwards!!)

Wonderful Spring Weather

The weather these past days has been unseasonably warm and wonderful. It's been very warm outside, and we've been making the most of it. I've been working outside in the back yard, trying to get everything cleaned up and in order for spring. We have a nice little back porch, so I'm trying to get it all cleaned up and ready for the BBQ and picnic season. I also bought pots and seeds for planting some herbs, but it's too early to plant those out yet. (And I have had to keep reminding myself of that lately!) Lily's been enjoying the opportunity to be outside as well. The little neighbor girl (who is about a year older than Lily) has been over to play twice this week, and Lily's certainly enjoyed having a playmate these past few days. However, she also does well playing by herself and helping Mommy work in the yard.

Lily got a swingset for Christmas, and she's been having a wonderful time playing on it lately.

I Don't Generally Like Rap Music, But...

...occasionally I find something that I like.

Important Life Lessons

There are some things that children should learn early in life. Baking brownies and licking the bowl are among them!!

Cute, or Creepy?

This segment appeared on one of Lily's Seasme Street podcasts. What do you think: cute, or creepy?

Winnter Weather Updates

So, today's 30% chance of snow became a 60% chance of snow which ended up being a constant snowfall from 7am to 7pm.... My, aren't weathermen wonderful....

I essentially ended up with a "week off" this week. Classes and work were cancelled from Tuesday through Friday, and just about everything else has been shut down as well. We had snow on Tuesday -- somewhere between 9 and 12 inches, depending on which news station you prefer to listen to. It's been quite cold, and I don't think we're supposed to have temperatures above freezing for quite some time either. (I'm simply expecting that the gas bill for this month will be considerably higher than usual. Fortunately, we haven't had any problems with power outages or anything like that, so I certainly won't complain!) I'm guessing we had another 4-6 inches today, but I haven't heard any 'official' reports on that as of yet.

Just about everything around here seems to have shut down this past week. I ended up with an optometrist appointment yesterday (which was rescheduled from Tuesday), and we saw a couple of horse-drawn sleighs merging with traffic a few blocks ahead of us. We made a quick trip to the grocery store yesterday and then ventured all the way to Wal-Mart today. We've discovered that eggs, bread, bananas, and some medications are in short supply as delivery trucks can't make it in to the stores. However, we did see the Blue Bell truck in the grocery store parking lot. No bread, eggs, or cold medicines, but we have ice cream!! Gasoline also seems to be in short supply at the moment...but we managed to find a station that hadn't run out yet. (Granted, it was the gas station in town that nearly always has the highest price on gas, but under these circumstances.....)

Lily has been excited about the snow, and I took her out to play in it this morning. Although it was cold today, it was also very still so there was no significant wind chill factor influencing how cold it felt outside. Lily had a blast! She trudged through snow drifts and ended up face-planting in the snow several times. She made some snowballs and wanted to play catch with them, which didn't work so well....

In short, we've fared pretty well so far. The only weather-related damage we've suffered as of yet is a cracked windshield on our car. We haven't ventured out much, but we've been able to get out enough to keep from getting to stir-crazy. Ironically, the one of us who seems the most stir-crazy is the cat, and he's an inside-only house cat who never gets to go outside anyway....

Thoughts on Birthdays

I have no real thoughts on birthdays. I try not to think about them. Lily, on the other hand, has been very interested in birthdays lately. She's learning how to sing "Happy Birthday," and she was very excited when we went to the birthday party of a church friend last weekend. Today the following conversation took place in our house:

Lily: I'm three.
Mommy: No honey, you're two.
Daddy: You'll be three on your next birthday. Do you want Daddy to buy you a big cake for your birthday?
Mommy: Daddy bought a cake last year. It's Mommy's turn to bake a cake this year.
Daddy: But the cake is a Daddy thing.
Lily: No, it's a Mommy thing.
Daddy: Well, then what is the Daddy thing?
Lily: Toy shopping.

I guess she's got things pretty well figured out....