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.

honk, honk
Ally has some books about animals on the farm. There is one about ducks and one about geese (among others). She doesn't know the difference between the two. She was "quack, quack"-ing and pointing at the geese book the other day, so I told her it was a goose and they say "honk, honk". She looked at me kinda funny, then poked at the book. I didn't know what she was doing, until she grabbed her nose, and then mine and said "honk". First she had tried to honk the "duck"'s nose. After all, ducks don't say honk - noses do.

sleep
I haven't talked about sleep much lately. It's because I've actually been getting some!!! Ally has been sleeping pretty good for the past couple weeks. Her teeth aren't bothering her as much. We had a couple days where she was waking up in the middle of the night, but that was when the temp dropped, but the humidity didn't. We turned the thermostat down a little and she's sleeping all night again. She goes to bed at 9:00 and I grab her and her clothes and go to work. I change her at daycare when we get there. She's much happier too. When she goes to bed at night, she sometimes protests, but once we go down, most of the time she's out.

baby bumblebee
On the way to Knight's action park today, Ally learned the song "bringing home a baby bumblebee". She may have already known it, but she definitely knows it now. She was sitting in the backseat with her hands cupped waving them around in the air, so I thought she knew the song. I started singing it, and she looked kinda confused, but she picked up right away. Now, she says "bee-bee-bee-bee" when she wants to sing it.

peanut butter sandwiches
Ally has finally decided that peanut butter sandwiches are great. I spread PB on 2 slices then put them together and slice them diagonally. The first thing she does is to pull them apart and scoop up a fingerful of PB. She does that a couple times then gets around to taking a bite from one of the separated slices.

Last night Rob had her one his lap eating supper. He could see that it was inevitable that he would get PB wiped all over him, and tried to head it off by convincing Ally to put the sandwich backk together and take bites. So, first he told her that by having the slices apart, she was reaching across the table and sticking her arm in oneand getting PB on her arm. So Ally looked at the underside of her arm and grabbed it with her other (PB covered) hand making it worse. Rob pointed out this fact and told her that's why she should take bites instead. So Ally immediately followed his advice and tried to put her arm in her mouth. It cracked us up.

scrapbooking
I got hoooked on digital scrapbooking. It's much cheaper than paper, and I can do it without carting all the supplies around. This is what I've come up with so far. http://home.insightbb.com/~j.swaner

baby dolls
I cleaned up Ally's toy room the other day. She "helped" me which meant it took twice as long. I cleaned out some stuff she's too big for, and made room for what was left. Ally liked it a lot. There's more room for her to pay now, and she re-discovered a lot of stuff she had forgotten about. She found all her baby dolls. She tries to feed them and sit them up and lay them down. i told her one of them needed her hair washed in the fake little bathtub, so she got a rag and wiped down her head. Then she had to repeat it on all the other babies (even though some of them wear hats). One little baby is now naked and she carries it around a lot. It even went swimming with us the other day.

ring around the rosies
Ally learned "ring around the rosies" this week at day care. I wasn't aware of this though, so when she started turning in circles, I was puzzled. She kept looking at me like she expected something, but I couldn't figure out what - until she "fell down". Then I got it. I started singing the song to her and her face lit up. She ring'ed around til she got dizzy. I love watching her fall down though. She very carefully sits on her butt then flops her legs out in front of her. She won't even fall all the way to the floor unless I do it first. Then she slowly leans back and kicks her legs in the air.