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!

Big and Little Girls

I watch my 8 month old niece, Dorita, two days a week while her wonderful mommy Chloe teaches 5th grade. We started at the end of last school year when Dorita was a itty bitty lump of snuggles and back then Chucky-Sue was wary of her, she never liked it if Jake or I held her; she never wanted t share toys or even recognize this wriggly crying thing in her mommy's arms.

Fast forward through an all too short summer and Dorita is not just a lump anymore! She plays, babbles, crawls and more importantly, fights back. Chucky-Sue has grown to like her a bit more, they will sit and do "parallel play" for a decent amount of time. But Chucky-Sue still tries to boss her around. She has just started talking in two word sentences, her favorites being "Bay-bay NO!" when Dorita crawls too close to a favorite toy and "Bay-bay Bye bye?" when Dorita grabs the toy back.

Chucky-Sue is completely certain that she is the babysitter for Dorita. She gets very worried ("Oh No Bay-bay!") when Dorita fusses, she constantly makes sure Dorita has her bink, and will jam it in her face until it actually reaches her mouth. More often than not it pokes her eyes or forehead first. When I feed Dorita, Chucky Sue goes back and forth from our snack cupboard, offering her cousin all her fruit snacks and my chocolate. When we read books, Dorita must sit and watch as Chucky-Sue shows her all the pictures and babbles her own stories. Thankfully Dorita loves watching kids play, so it's been working out well!

From stories my mom told me about my toddlerhood, I too, wanted to be a grown-up right away; I wanted to be with the adults, talk to them all the time and I think Chucky-Sue has inherited the same trait!!

For Grandmothers: Yes, Chucky-Sue has a lot more words, she is soaking them up! She now says Baybay (baby) DoughFah (Dora) Way (Wait) and WoWo (You're Welcome) and understands even more, she knows ball, cup, dish, fork, diaper (we say Diaper? and she answers yes or no for a new diaper. Classy system I know.), wait, slow down, slide, swing, run, book, puppy, and kitty. She signs thank you, more, eat, and drink almost 100% correctly most of the time. She is great with the new two word sentences, mostly "*person* bye-bye?"

Holidays Wrap-Up

We spent the holidays doing so much fun stuff! We had a wonderfully relaxed christmas with the family. Chucky-Sue and I spent the night at Grandmas Christmas Eve, we woke up  when Jake got home from his overnight shift and had our first tiny family Christmas. Jake got me a gorgeous charm bracelet and the screenplay from "Noises Off"- one of my favorite play-turned-movie. We got Chucky-Sue some grown up cups and plates, a rain stick and a mirror book. The big family Christmas was spread throughout the day- with the the grandkids getting their hullabaloo early, and Jake's siblings doing it later after their own in-law celebrations were over.

We went up to yet another Big Family Christmas in Maryland for Grandma's side of the family. We had fun showing off Chucky-Sue and her new tricks: Crawling, waving bye bye and laughing at EVERYONE. Then, on the way home, we got some of the GREATEST news we've been waiting so long for: Chloe and Superman had a beautiful baby girl placed with them! We got the call on the road, and I  bounced in my seat with joy the entire ride home. It's been so much fun watching them be new parents and I am so excited that Chucky-Sue will have a cousin very close in age.

Then New Year's Eve came and went, I didn't do anything special as Jake was working overnight again, I cuddled with Chucky-Sue until 8ish, put her down and went to bed early myself. I don't normally do resolutions, if I want to change something in my life, I don't wait until new years to start it. I did start some new things around the new year though. Jake let me drive around an empty parking lot for about 45 minutes.(for several reasons: to prove to him that yes, I have driven before and to prove to myself that no, I won't crash immediately when I get behind the wheel.) and I added new items to my Etsy!





So those were our holidays, lots of fun was had,  love was felt and now we're blasting full strength into 2011!

Obligatory photos to make the wall-o-text worth it:

(I know this one is out of focus, but she was giggling too hard!)