The Top Five Cutest Things Chucky Sue is Doing Right Now

Lately Chucky Sue has really grown into her personality- she is so adorable!

1. Her words. her vocabulary has grown leaps and bounds. I used to write posts listing all the words she knows, but it's well into the hundreds now. She knows her colors, numbers and letters- though the letters are mostly C, H, A,  and R. She loves pointing to objects and naming them with a huge proud smile on her face.

Bonus cute thing: Getting better at doing projects with mommy!

2. Singing. She's always squeaked, hummed and babbled out musical sounds, but she has started to sing nursery rhymes and primary songs by herself! I recently sent my mom a video of her rendition of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. If it hadn't occurred during bath time I'd share it here (but I think 14 year old Chucky Sue doesn't want that floating around the internet!)

Random photo of ME! Proving to the internet that I don't live in sweat pants and pigtails.

3. Demon Voice. I've tried again and again to get this on video, but it hasn't worked out. You'll have to rely on my words. When Chucky Sue is mad or angry, she gets this VERY low, grumbly voice. for example, while at the park a few days ago, Chucky Sue didn't want to leave. So in a very LOUD demon voice she stated "MOMMY. I stay at park FOREVER." and then went right back into her very high little girl voice while prancing about the playground. We're working on using a "nice" voice and asking mommy or daddy instead of demanding- but it's still cute!

Mommy and Chucky making faces at Daddy!

4. Her girly tendencies. I don't fancy myself a girly girl, but I do like make up  and making sure I look presentable. Chucky Sue has taken this to a whole new level. She has a few favorite ULTRA poofy pink dresses that she wants to wear everyday. And the shoes. OH THE SHOES. Not only does she want to wear shoes all the time, she likes the colors or designs to match. (bow dress should have bow shoes, flower shoes with flower dress etc. etc. etc.) She even has her own box of "makeup" which consists of clear chapstick and empty eyeshadow pots filled with dried nail polish.

Chucky Sue and Dorita playing in the pool. They are getting better at playing WITH each other.

5. Reading. Chucky Sue has loved books since birth, but lately she's been REALLY into them. She'll pile up a few dozen of her favorite books and sit on her bed and just "read" for an hour or so. It's how she goes to sleep each night- surrounded by her books and stuffed animals. I love that she can entertain herself so well!

Little Girls and their...Trains?

Chucky Sue had a play date with her youngest cousin, Dorita, a little bit ago. She, her mom and dad, and her visiting aunt all joined us at our awesome perfectly toddler sized zoo to spend a fun Saturday together.

Dorita is a climbing expert, and has no fear about falling or animals gobbling her up in one bite. After visiting the big city zoo out in Oregon she was a pro at this.

And even though Chucky Sue is 10 months older, she prefers following instead of leading.

I love that the zoo is small enough that we can let the two toddlers drag us around and not have to worry at all about getting lost.

Chucky looks very grown up in this picture, I think it's her sassy attitude!

I love these pictures of Jake and Chucky Sue together, but to tell the truth I was taking photos more to prove to Jake how dangerous it was to have her up on that ledge!

 

The zoo has this cellphone text campaign, where you can win free rides on their dinky train (normally $2 a person so we've never ridden it!) Thankfully our large family got all the texting done for us and Chucky Sue and I got to ride for free! Chucky loved the ride once it started, but was a little sad that Jake had to stay with the strollers and diaper bags.

I had left the camera (D'oh!) in the stroller, so you can't quite see the anger and sadness she was expressing in the iphone photo.

 

I absoultely love watching Chucky Sue and Dorita play and interact with each other. They are going to keep us on our toes their whole lives the little scamps!

Family Summer To-Do

In and effort to keep from melting into nothing this summer in our un-air-conditioned house, Jake and I wrote up a list of fun summer-y activities to do with Chucky Sue this year, here is just a sampling of our ideas:

Go Camping*Visit Natural Bridge*Walk the Greenway*Blow Glow-in-the-Dark Bubbles*Roast Marshmallows*Make Ice Cream*Play at Smith Park with Cousins*Go Swimming at Splash Park

Look at Stars*Have a Sleepover*Pick Flowers*Take New Family Photos*Go Shopping

Find a Farmer's Market*Go To Mill Mountain Zoo*Visit Mamaw

Call Nonie and Papaw*Make a Blanket Fort*Give lots of kisses

Watch a sunset*Ride Bikes*Bake Cookies*Go to Story time*Fly Kites*Stay up late

I think we're well on our way to a fun summer!

Recycled Art: Jewelry on the Cheap!

I've written about this craft before-

  Paper Beads!

This was 1.5 pages of magazines worth of beads.

Normally I try to not write duplicate posts but the last post was back in 2009, so I hope you excuse me! I made the beads myself, but Chucky Sue helped me string them into some beautiful necklaces. It was great for her fine motor skills. She is really turning into a girly girl, so she loves anything with jewelry or makeup lately.

Don't let her serious face trick you, she was having a blast- it's just hard work to concentrate! (also the bad editing is for Jake, he didn't want to show up in his PJs on my blog!)

Our first completed masterpiece.

They are a perfect rainy day craft, all you need is paper, scissors, glue and string. 

1: a dowel or skewer to roll the paper on 2: glue to hold it all together 3: long skinny triangles of magazine paper works best! 4: any string you have laying around will work 5: Scissors to keep the edges neat, I've tried tearing it before and it never turned out well!

I really love that I can make fun old necklaces and bracelets and if Chucky Sue crushes it, or it gets ruined all it cost me was a few cents and an hour or two. Quite different from when she rips my chain necklaces to pieces and I'm out at least $10!

Fun, easy, and earth friendly jewelry!

A Present to Me: Shutterfly Photo Album

Back when we upgraded to Fancy Shmancy Camera Best Buy was running a deal that we would get a free Shutterfly Photo Album with the purchase. I was already in love with camera, but this little perk didn't hurt at all. I went back and forth about how I wanted to use the photo album, a vacation themed one? My own version of the cute ABC book floating around Pinterest? I decided to make it a book by me, for Chucky Sue as she grows up. Some of my favorite memories with my mom is when she was telling about me as a baby or even her own childhood.

The book is full of poems, tidbits, rhymes, and thoughts about my first two years with Chucky Sue. There are very simple pages that I know she'll enjoy now, and then more complex ones for her to grow up with. And then thanks to Fancy Shmancy Camera, I have lots of new photos to fill this book up!

Now there are lots of coupons and promotions going on for Shutterfly, here are a few that I searched out for you lovely readers:

Free Father's Day Card, use the code: CARD4U

10% off entire order, use the code: ENJOY

as always, notify me if you want an extra 50 free prints from Shutterfly by joining through my referral link!

Summer Lovin'

And we had a BLAST!

Our trip to Ocean City, MD was absolute perfection. We lounged on the beach, cruised the boardwalk, hung out at arcades and ate way too much bad for you food. 

Thankfully I was blessed with a kid who loves to travel. She instantly adjusts to whatever new routine we take on for vacation, with little whining. Believe me, I know how rare that is!

Our goal for the vacation was just to rest and be together- nothing big or huge, just away from the house and daily grind. I think we accomplished that and more.

Where Did Tracy Go?

What a poor neglected blog.

We've been in a rut since Easter. We haven't done anything interesting, just lived our lives day to day. No one wants to see posts about me cleaning my toilet or Jake working an extra shift.  So I'm slapping up some photos from my Instagram.

Maybe I should let Chucky Sue write some posts for me...

Springtime Beauties

Spring is really campaigning for favorite season this year. the weather  in my city has been gorgeous! 

We've been park hopping lately, this most recent one was across from a school so it had a playground and a sports complex. 

Chucky Sue loved playing the in dirt in the baseball field. 

I spent a lot of time playing around with camera, testing out it's macro function on the pretty flowers in the outfield. 

How is your spring going?

Hopping down the Bunny Trail: Easter Egg Hunts in Roanoke

Instead of driving down to our normal egg hunt (Missed you guys this year!) we stayed in town to get to know our community better- our neighborhood hosted one huge egg hunt, and a local cupcake shop held a much smaller one a few hours later. As much as I miss Radford, I love our new neighborhood!! You can walk easily to so many different places. We packed up our trusty stroller in the morning and headed out to hunt some eggs.

The larger one was run by volunteer teenagers (I think they were a youth group from a local church) so it was a little scatterbrained, but still enjoyable. They had lots of games set up for the kids, a few bunnies to pet, and a HUGE egg hunt. Chucky Sue just wanted to get the 10 closest eggs to her and be done. She gets that from both me and Jake- we don't like huge crowds either.  The eggs were filled with mini chocolate eggs and stickers, a huge hit for Chucky Sue.

We walked to a really yummy restaurant for lunch, then to the cupcake shop for the smaller, yummier hunt. 

They had chalk set out for the kids while the workers hid the eggs everywhere. Chucky Sue was so mad that she had to stop coloring to hunt those eggs. We only made her get a handful before letting her go back to coloring the sidewalk. Of course the best treat was the free cupcake coupon we found- Chucky Sue and I split her favorite- the oreo cupcake!

Once we got back home, we had to break out the chalk Nonie sent us! Chucky Sue decorated our back steps with beautiful scribbles, had me draw some of her favorite animals and I sort of taught her hopscotch- she really just runs up and down the squares yelling "jump-jumpy!"

Today was the "fun" side of our easter celebration. Tomorrow I'm going to try to focus on the religious side, remembering the sacrifice Jesus Christ made for me, my family and every soul on this earth.

"Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die."

- John 11:25-26

Easter Photoshoot's Conversation

Hey Chucky Sue, Do you wanna go take some pictures for Nonie?

I know you like being outside, but I just need a few shots...

Really, could you look AT me for more than 1/8000000th of a second? My camera isn't that fast!

Hey Chucky, I see Dora in my Camera!

A HA! A portrait. With a strange look on your face. It counts.

Let's go look at the flowers down the street.

okay, you're not in focus. Let mommy fix that.

okay, that's not too bad.

NO RUNNING INTO THE ROAD!

Are you counting the flowers?

Ack. Focus. I'm still learning this camera!

No, That's the neighbor's porch sweetie- you can't dance there.

I'm sorry. Let's go on a walk!

HEY! Slow down!

Look at that pouty lip!

Just. Stay. Still!

Gosh you are cute.

Okay, We're done. Let's go snuggle with chocolate milk and Elmo's World.

-Happy Easter!