Grrrr
The lions say rar and the bears say grr. So yesterday, when Ally found a hidden pack of Teddy Grahams, she started growling. She brought it to me and said "open" (which sounds a lot like "happy". I'm not sure how, but it does) Then stood there grr-ing at me til she got one in her mouth.

night night
For some reason, Ally has abandoned the phrase "night night" she will now only say "bye-bye" at bed time. Very strange - she used to say night-night every night

visiting daddy
Rob had to work an extra shift today (overtime - yay!!). Since that would put him gone both days of the weekend, Ally and I went to visit him. Sundays are usually not too busy at work, so it was ok. He grabbed his partner and they brought the abulance to the park and we met them there. Ally played on all the slides. She did a lot better then I thought climbing some of the ladders. She does okay on regular ladders, but these were just climbing bars and stuff.

Then we grabbed lunch and went back to the apartment (where the ambulance crews stay). She ran around and played . Then she found the phone. We have a cordless at home, and I'm not sure she's ever seen a corded phone that wasn't a toy. She thought it was just great. We unplugged it and let her play. She just kept picking it up and saying "hello" and "bye" over and over. We had a pretty good day.

sleeping & knock-knock
Aly is still sleeping pretty regularly. She goes to bed around 9 and usually doesn't fight it. We've had to adjust the temperature in the house a little, but she usualy sleeps until I wake her up in the morning at 6:30. Yesterday morning, I went ni her room to get a bag of diapers for day care. I was going to put them in the car first and then come back in and wake her up, so I didn't turn on the light. I heard behind me "knot-knot" I turned around, and she was sitting up in her crib pretrending to knock on the door. I don't have any idea why though. Maybe she was telling me I should have knocked?

peanut butter computer
Last night I went downstairs while Ally was eating a peanut butter sandwich to do some things on the internet. After a little while I heard her yell "Mamom" So I hurried and finished what I was doing. i caught her most of the way down the stairs coming looking for me. I was afraid that she would get peanut butter all over the computer because she loves the hit the keyboard if I'm trying to do something. Rob had washed her hands though so it was safe. I wasn't however, because he forgot to wash her face.

eat now
Grandma Darra was in town last night with Matt and Nic and 2 of their friends. She has a meeting this morning, so came up to play at knights action park and stay at a hotel. Rob was working, so I picked Ally up and met them all there so swim after work. I put Ally in the water but it wasn't long before she started yelling. She wasn't happy about it. I thought maybe it was too cold for her but don't know for sure what the problem was. We wandered around for a while. We wandered past a table and chairs. Darra sat down, so Ally climbed up in a chair and sat down and said eat. I told her it wasn't time to eat yet because it was only 4:30. She said eat eat. I told her we'd get something a little later for her to eat. She said eat eat eat. After about 5 minutes of this, I decided to go ahead and get her some chicken poppers. She ate almost all of them. That's about twice as much as she normally eats for a meal. Them she had some Teddy grahams and about 2 hours later at Olive Garden she had a bowl of fruit and some croutons and ice cream. I found out that they had roast beef at day care for lunch and she had hardly eaten anything. She definitely knew she was hungry though

phone book
I was looking in the phone book tonight when Darra called. While, I talked to her, Ally got the phone book and gave it to Rob to read. When I got off the phone, she was playing with something else. I resumed my search of the phone book. When she saw me, she ran over and took it from me, said "No Mama. Book Daddy.", and ran over to his lap to read some more.

mad
Ally woke up from her nap MAD today. I don' tknow what got into her, but it wasn't pretty. I couldn't figure out what it was she wanted. She may have been hungry, but wouldn't eat anything I gave her. She calmed downa little, so I took her outside for a change of scenery. When I started watering the flowers though, she freaked out. She kept telling me no and trying to take the hose away from me. Then she went around the yard yelling "Dad-dee". I don't know if she was tekking on me, or just thought it was his job and I shouldn't be doing it... I hope that mood doesn't show it's face again for a while

play date
Well, we did it. I invited all the day care kids over, and 3 of them said they were coming. It was kind of a relief, since we weren't sure how Ally would react to having them play with her stuff (She's learned the word "mine"). Anyway, Ellie showed up first, and when Ally saw her, she got so excited!They ran around the backyard playing for a while together before anyone else got there. It was nice to see her running around. She doesn't really do that with us. Then Alec got here. He played in the sandbox with her while Ellie explored the stairs. Ellie had to leave early, and left right as Olivia showed up. It was probably a good thing. 2 might have been enough. It was really hot out, Ally had about had enough, so she drug Rob inside for a drink and snack. Everyone was a little hot, so we all went in and played a little. All in all, it went pretty good. It made us feel a little better about her social skills. She did a great job of sharing.

hitting
Ally's teachers told me she had to leave circle time today, because she hit someone for being too close to her. She has issues with her personal space. She doesn't like for anyone to get too close. Like, sonetimes, if she's sliding, and someone gets behind her in line, she freaks out. It makes me a little leary, since we're having kids from day care over tomorrow. But, that's why we're doing it. She never has time to interact with other kids at home. I thought a play date would be good for her.

rocks
Ally currently has an obsession with rocks. She can't walk past one without picking it up. I made the mistake of taking a walk with her the other day, and letting her walk instead of using the stroller or wagon. It took forever to get down the block. She had both hands ful of rocks, so she made me hold them for her. Then she picked up more. I love hearing her say "rocks" too. It's so cute. It sounds an awful lot like "walk" though, so sometimes it's hard to know which she's saying.

party
The cookout was great! Thanks to everyone who came. I love geting everyone together at least once a year. We'll do it again next year.

grilled cheese
I actually got Ally to eat a whole grilled cheese sandwich the other day. I could never convince her it was cheese before. She loves cheese, but didn't trust me or something. She always looked at me like I was crazy when I told her it was cheese.

more scrapbook pages
http://home.insightbb.com/~j.swaner/

teeth
Ally now has 8 teeth !! 4 on top and bottom. She's still chewing on her hands a lot though, so maybe even more are coming in. I haven't seen signs of it yet, but I'll be so happy. teething sucks!

day care
The day care teachers have told me that they are proud of the way Ally defends herself. They say that if someone takes something from her, she tells the no and mine and cusses them out in baby talk. But she only does it when appropriate. The other day I was in there picking her up, but she wasn't finished with snack yet. Aden tried to take her cup. She shoke her finger at him and said "NO. lkjd asdfio alksdfjpl skdhfiuyhkd judhfiu CUP". It was really cute.

another slide
Prior to last night we had 4 slides in our backyard, 1 at Darra's house that she's bringing up to us next weekend, and one that Ally has outgrown in storage. So, what did we do last night? Bought her another one of course. None of our slides would fit over the side of the bigger blow-up pool we got for her so she'd have more room, so, now we'll have 6 in our backyard.

It was outside at Wal-mart without a price or sticker of any kind, so I went lookig for a way to buy it while Rob stood in line at the deli. I got the info, and carried the slide over to him, and Ally got excited. So, we stodd in line at the deli for half hour (they are always soooo slow) and let her slide. I highly recommend having a slide with you for standing in line with a toddler. It makes the time go much quicker and much quieter.

apple
July 4th we went over to my Mom's for dinner. She had some honeydew there, that Ally couldn't get enough of. She is convinced though that it is apples. We tried to tell her so many times, but she insists and argues with us. We say "no that's honeydew Ally, can you say honeydew?" (or sometimes even just melon) she shakes her head and says no apple. She more stubborn than us, so we kinda gave up on the fight now.

The thing is, she eats apples sometimes, and knows what they are. They definitely aren't her favorite. Tomatoes are apples too, and sometimes in books oranges are too.

bossy
Ally can get her point across pretty well too, when she wants something done. She knows the words for "come here" (and the hand gesture with it) "out" "up" "help". she uses them pretty effectively. When she wants something gone she tells us "out" and pushes it away with her arm. If she wants us to go outside, she grabs us and pulls and tells us to get "up". When we ask her what she wants, she says "out". If she gets the point across the Rob, then she grabs me too and makes sure we're both coming. She's getting really bossy

animal sounds
Ally has been talking up a storm. She has added so many words, I couldn't list them all. One of her favorite things to do now is to get a book that has a bunch of animals in it and point out all the ones she can identify by word. Like, she doesn't say cow, she says moo, but fish don't say anything, so she knows the word fish. And bunnies don't say anything, so she says hop. frogs say "m-bits". and pigs say "unh, unh, unh". Bees are about the only thing that she says the name and sound of.