Lil' and Uncle Tony

Yesterday Lil' and Uncle Tony hung out at Baskin Robbins. He got her chocolate ice cream. She in turn made herself a fancy chocolate beard and mustache to match his.

Photos

Coming Soon To A Mailbox Near You!

Dry Overnight

Last night when getting ready for bed Lil' announced that she wanted to wear panties until the morning. This came completely out of the blue as normally Lil is ready for a diaper at bedtime. Not fully confident that she would make it through the night I decided to let her try. I got her up to go potty before I went to bed even though I was nervous about her going back to sleep. She fussed a little bit but not too bad since her lamp was still on (I thought I would get up and turn it off after reading a few pages but forgot). She had a fairly restless night. Mr. Eleven spent about an hour rubbing her back and cuddling in the 1-2 o'clock hour. She was in our bed by the 5 o'clock hour because we both just wanted a bit of uninterrupted sleep. She woke up earlier than she has been. I made a big deal out of waking up dry. Being the smart "big" girl that she is she asked for a lollipop. Hoping it might help get her into panties again tonight I gave her one but made sure that she knew that the lollipop was a treat for keeping her panties dry on the first night she ever tried and she won't be getting a lollipop before breakfast again. Yay!

3

Lil woke up this morning, popped up in her bed and excitedly proclaimed

"I'm so 3 today! My birthday came."

She was excited to see her decorated birthday chair and got to open a present from Oosje and Bampa while Daddy went and got birthday breakfast at McDonald's.

Olympic Fun

The Special Olympics World Games are in town this week so this morning we took Lil' down to enjoy some of the fun.

Olympic Flame In the Courtyard. This sculpture was donated by a group of local artists from the Women of Steel Gallery.



Lil' loves characters and always has to meet them at events.





At the skating event. We got to see one Chinese competitor and then a warm up with lots of athletes getting ready to complete.

Keeping Busy

Here are some photos of a few of the things that kept Lil' busy while we weren't feeling good. It's pretty easy to keep her busy as long as she can be doing something artistic or crafty. There's more so stay tuned...Next time I'll share some letter fun and some more art.

She made this football on Superbowl Sunday. (I finally had to sneak it into the recycling yesterday because a week of playing football with Belle had taken a toll on the paper bag)

Later that night she got to sing to her Daddy and get practice on blowing out candles. Press the arrow to watch a video.



Lil' has activities that she does. One of them is a bag of 60 smallish things that can be sorted into types or colors or textures. Since Lil' has mastered the sorting she has invented a new purpose for the activity. She makes faces or monsters or soup or whatever else her imagination comes up with.


One day we made shape stamps out of sponges and two plastic caps. Then Lil' stamped away one the backside of some Christmas wrapping paper. I gave her the stamps and told her to choose three colors. She started with brown, green and purple at first. Press the arrow to watch a video.


After I rinsed the stamp she moved on to pink, red and yellow.

When our creation was dry we used it to decorate the front of our puppet show stage for a production starring Kung Fu Panda puppets (which we made from pictures on a cereal box and some popsicle sticks) and Bee Movie puppets that we made from a coloring book page and popsicle sticks. (I'm trying to post a video of this but it's not working like the others).

Thank goodness there are a lot of creative Mom's online that I can get ideas from.

Lil' Getting Some Fresh Air

It's been a long week at Lil's house and everyone has been sick and cooped up inside. We woke up this morning and most evidence of our sickies are gone, the sun was shining and it felt a little bit like spring so we decided to venture down to the zoo for a walk around and some fresh air. It was an unusually busy day at the zoo as many people in town for the Special Olympics are enjoying some of the city's other activities too. We saw many people wearing the blue and white Special Olympic scarfs that were knit by people all over the world. Mama was lucky to get one through her connections at school. You can kinda see it in a photo below.






Lil' discovered an interactive exhibit in the education center that has never caught her eye before. Today it was a challenge to convince her she didn't need to try on all 8 costumes this time and that we would be back again to try on others.

First she was a hedgehog.
Then she was a tortoise.

She is looking forward to going back and being a bat.