Eggs over Easter

I hope you all had a very Happy Easter! I had a great day with Mom, Dad, Bobbi, Dido, Grandma, Grandpa and Aunt Jess. (Uncle Ryan had to work. He was sad he couldn't make it up.) There's a lot to share, so most of this week's postings will be devoted to all the Easter fun I had. Let's start from the beginning: on Friday I colored Easter eggs with Mom. We somehow got the eggs to change from this color...



To this color...



Cool! It was neat, and I was a good girl and didn't make too much of a mess. Here's a look at all the fun I had (watch me remember that the last time Dad filmed me in the dining room, I was making a gingerbread house at Christmastime, which prompts me to start bouncing in my seat just like I did in the gingerbread video):



So what did we do with all those pretty eggs? Check back tomorrow for lots more Easter fun!

Walking in Dad's shoes

It's been a year and a half since I tried taking a few steps in Aunt Jess's shoes. Remember that?


I had a few big obstacles to overcome back then. Mainly that I couldn't stand or walk. Now that I'm a lot steadier on my feet, I wanted to try it again, so I gave Dad's shoes a test drive. Here's how I did...at least until I decided I'd rather look at myself on the camcorder's LCD screen.

The secret of Mom's old Nancy Drew books

One advantage to all the new shelving in the basement is that I now have dozens of new books at my fingertips. All the books that Mom and Dad had been holding onto for me now have a home. Exhibit A: the Nancy Drew books that Mom loved reading as a kid. I decided to see what all the fuss was about.



I'm sorry, but the mystery that Nancy Drew should be solving is where all the pictures went in her books. Because who wants to read a book that just has a bunch of boring words?

Christmas in April, part 2

Ever since I opened it at Christmas, I've been staring at a big box with a picture of a dollhouse on it. It was on the front porch for most of that time, but then a couple weeks ago it migrated down to my new playroom. I've been getting impatient demanding that Mom and Dad "open" it. And finally, last week I came downstairs to discover this:



At long last, I have a dollhouse (and a playhouse)! Within a few minutes I was serving tea to my dolls...



...and calling Mom on my new "house" phone.


As you can see from the last picture, it's a combination dollhouse/playhouse. You can either close it and use it exclusively as a playhouse, or open it up and use them both separately. Here's a video of me at play (and at one point, I finally realize that the dollhouse part is that same as Audrey's!):



I heard Dad grumbling that it took him four hours to put it together, but I don't feel bad for him because I've been waiting almost four months to play with it!

Christmas in April, part 1

Even though it's springtime, I'm still opening Christmas gifts (maybe that's why I keep talking about Santa!). Taryn gave me my belated Christmas present when I visited her recently (it had been a loooong time since we'd last seen each other). It was a tricycle, which Dad put together for me last weekend. My first ride, well, could have gone a little better...



And that's not the only Christmas gift I finally got to play with last week. Check back tomorrow to find out what else I got!

Rockets trip

I love going to the mall. And while my favorite mall used to be the Garden State Plaza, because it has a carousel, it's been surpassed by the Short Hills Mall, which we've been going to a lot lately and eating at a place there called Johnny Rockets. That's the '50s style restaurant where the waitstaff dances every half-hour or so. Grandma and Grandpa came to visit over the weekend, and I was so excited to take them there:



Did you see my use my french fry as a spoon so I could slurp the ketchup off it? I do the same thing at Tinga, using the dipping chip only as a means to get the guacamole to my mouth. How would you do it any differently?

Also, as you can see I'm as ravenous about my milkshakes as ever!

No foolin'

I know that today is usually the day for elaborate pranks and jokes, but I wanted to do something different. Instead, I'm going to share a bunch of things about myself that might sound too good to be true, but are in fact 100 percent real! Here goes:

I sleep with the door closed. It's true! It took Dad almost half a year to transition me from being rocked to sleep by him or Mom, to having him leave alone me in my room with the door closed, but that's what's been going on for the past few weeks. There were a lot of steps along the way:
1) I insisted on holding Dad's hand while I fell asleep, so he had to lie on the ground next to the crib and hold my hand through the slats.
2) No more handholding, but Dad sat on a chair next to the crib but stil had to touch my head or back with his hand.
3) Dad moved the chair a few feet back from the crib, so no more touching.
4) Dad moved the chair a few more feet back.
5) Dad moved the chair back until it was right in front of the bedroom door, but still inside the bedroom (I backslid a little at this point).
6) Dad moved the chair out to the hall and sat there with the door open so I could watch him.
7) Finally, Dad convinced me to go to sleep with the door closed because I'm a "big girl." And I am! The chair is still out in the hall, and I see Dad sitting in it while he closes the door. So I assume that he sits in it all night long while I sleep.

I'm sleeping through the night — and sleeping in! Hand-in-hand with the above, I'm sleeping through the night almost every single night (I've only been up once or twice the past month). And while I go to bed a little later than I used to — closer to 9 now than 8 — I'm also averaging close to 11 hours a night, up from 10 hours. So now I get up around 8 instead of 6 or 6:30. It's almost cruel in a way, to give Mom and Dad a little taste of a full night's sleep for a couple months until my brother arrives to take it all away again!

I watch TV. Remember how Mom and Dad vowed I wouldn't watch TV till I was older? Well I guess I'm older now because I watch a little bit every day. You'd expect Sesame Street, but no, it's usually Barney, Angelina Ballerina (which I call "Mishka," the Ukranian word for mouse), Thomas and Friends and The Good Night Show. Pretty much everything on PBS Kids Sprout on Demand.

I like joking. I learned the phrase "just joking" from Dad the other week. I like to joke, for example I tell Dad during the day that I want to go to sleep. Of course I'm not going to sleep when it's light out...I'm just joking! Or when Dad asks me every morning if I'm going to be good for Bobbi and Dido, and I say no. Then I smile. Or when I pretend to be choking during meals because it turns Mom into a basket case. But I also like when other people joke, like Gus, who owns the diner in town that I go to every week. He's always joking with me. On Saturday he tried to get into my highchair, and every week he comes and goes bang-bang on my plate. So silly!

I know colors, numbers and letters. I can recognize and say all of the following colors: blue, red, green, orange, yellow, purple, pink, white, black, brown and grey. I can also count from 1 to 10 (I've come a long way from "1, 2, 8, 10"!), and I know about 90 percent of the alphabet. I think I'm ready to apply to Yale!

I went pee-pee on the potty! Okay, that last one was a joke. It is April Fools Day after all! But I swear everything else here is entirely true.