She's a Small Wonder

There are things I am always telling myself to "never forget" about my little girl but I'm afraid I will, so I'm going to blog a few of them:

1. She is always singing... real songs, made up songs, it doesn't matter. I know she gets this from me, and I know I got it from my Mom. She even plays right along when I make up a song. For instance, if I sing "Let's go get your PJs on, do da do da" to the tune of Camptown races, she will sing right back "No, no, no, no, no, no, no do da do da".

2. She named her Baby doll "Sauel", pronounced like "Samual" without the M. Don't know where she came up with that, and this is the only baby she has named, of course it's the oldest and most worn out doll that she's attached to.

3. She LOVES puzzles, she would do them all day long if I had the patience. 12 piece puzzles she can do all on her own but more than that she needs to be handed a piece that can connect somewhere at the moment. Even when I do my 750, 1000 piece puzzles she loves to help and gets a few matches!

4. She has, what the doctor called, a "geographical" tongue. She gets ringworm-canker looking spots on her tongue randomly.

Here you can see one of the sores on the left side. The doctor said they don't hurt her but they will probably just make her taste more sensitive. Which leads me to my next quirk...

5. She will only drink milk if it has orange juice in it. 3/4 milk, 1/4 oj. It's been this way ever since she switched from formula and I've tried plain milk again occationally and she won't have it. Other than that her tastes are quite advanced for a 2 year old. She LOVES tuna, tomatoes, cooked carrots, and will try anything. The only thing I've found that she doesn't like is marshmellows, what kid doesn't like marshmellows?! Mine.

6. She rubs her ear while she drinks. It's usually her right ear but she'll switch if Ryan or I start rubbing the left one just to tease her. Ryan noticed this about her quite a while ago. Here is a recent photo, and one last Christmas.

Yes, she is a small wonder, but I love all her little quirks and look forward to experiencing all that her personality has to offer!

Halloween

Halloween started for us on Friday, it was our ward's trunk or treat. The night before Ryan warned me that he might miss because of a big project at work. So I threw my big "you've missed the last two Halloween's because of work" tantrum and I think it worked. He was home by 4:30 the next day and I was very glad he got to be part of the fun this year! I stayed by our trunk and passed out candy and let Ryan enjoy taking Andrea trunk to trunk. The ward also had chili for dinner, a fishing game, a cookie walk, and a mini maze. I was very impressed by all the work that went into the night, thank you 3rd Ward!

It was fun to have my brother in the ward this year and have Amy and the kids at the trunk next to ours, they dressed as Batman characters and their trunk was the bat cave.

Saturday morning we all carved our pumpkins. Andrea chose Mickey (of course), Ryan thought he would try Perry the Platypus from Phineas and Ferb, and he had to out-do us both by using his exacto knife kit to carve through just the top layer. I chose a simple ghost but I'll show them both next year!

We continued our Halloween weekend by having Mummy hot dogs for lunch and baking some pumpkin chocolate chip cookies.

When Halloween rolled around on Monday Andrea got her costume on to visit Grandma and Grandpa Lee, and Grandma LaVelle. By the time we drove out to Kristi's she was out! She woke up enough to go potty, but I guess she had too much excitement for one night. Each year she understands the holiday more and more and I'm afraid this was probably the last year that I got to choose what her costume would be :(