Happy Thoughts

Erica is with my M-I-L today. yippee! last time her "nan" took her for the day, i spent the whole time cleaning. BLA with that! today is all about ME ME ME! Well, in the morning i had a dr apt. then i went to Barnes and Noble to get a cappuccino and work on some of my writing, just using a notepad b/c i dont have a laptop. [i'd LOVE to have one. it would be so convenient.] Then i headed home; stopped to get some grocceries first though. then had lunch. now its back to me.
I'm torn between two things
-Should i work on my book [i'm now at 25 pages; i know, that isnt really "much" in terms of how long a novel should be, but i'm getting somewhere.]
-Should i blog?
Well, obviously i'm blogging.


It occurred to me the other day that i've been a bit pessimistic lately. erica was going thru some REALLY cranky times, and it made me cranky too. She's much better now though. Anyway, there is so much that she's doing and learning that i forget to write about it all. And i should. I dont keep a "baby book" for her anymore; the one i had was only for the first year, and she's almost two soon. So, if i dont write it here, i'll never be able to look back to see when she learned new things. So, i'm just gonna write things as they come to mind...

-Erica can name almost all of the Strawberry Shortcake characters. The ones that she cant say yet [like orange blossom], she can at least point out. Her favorites are "snap" [ginger snap], "pie" [huckleberry pie-- the only boy], and "pony" [honey pie pony].

-She's putting LOTS of words together. One of her favorite things to do is hide her baby doll, then ask "where baby go?" then she'll pull the doll out from under the blanket [or whatever its hidden in] and say "there is!" or sometimes "there she is."

-There's a boy about erica's age that she sees all the time. His name is Dylan. well, she just loves him [except for when they fight and push over toys]. She calls him "dee-en."

-She loves tea parties. i mentioned that before, but she's really getting into it. And she's a good hostess-- she always "fills" her baby's cup before "filling" her own. [And i'm actually surprised that it doesnt matter to her that the cups are really empty. she's happy to pretend... though, we do have something to eat, like raisins or crackers.]

-After the tea parties, erica "washes" the dishes in her play kitchen set.

-Erica is getting pretty good at dressing herself. of course, i've complained in this blog about her undressing herself, which she still does. but most of the times, when she does it during the day its b/c she wants to then put it back on. Her shoes are normally hard though-- she sometimes gets them on the wrong foot.

-She likes to pick out her own clothes. I try to give her a choice of two things to pick from, b/c that way i can try to make sure it matches. but sometimes she's just so stubborn that she looks all wrong! oh well, she's happy. Wednesday she wore a dress with jeans, snow boots [the bottoms of her jeans were tucked under the boots, which looked just awful], and a blue vest. She eventually realized that she couldnt go up and down stairs very well w/ the boots on, so she switched them for sneakers.

-On a very similar note, we went out to shop the other day, and she wanted to wear her slippers! she wouldnt let me put sneakers on her. So, we went shopping with her slippers on. People looked at me funny

-Since i'm dieting [doing weight-watchers], i weigh myself once a week. well, now thinks that the scale is so cool. she likes to see where the red arrow points because thats how big she is.

-Ha Ha. i once wrote about always making a "hot" breakfast [french toast, pancakes, oatmeal] b/c i didnt want to serve her just cereal. Well, one day we had to have cereal b/c i didnt have anything else, and now she's ADDICTED to cereal. she wants it all the time. three bowls a day. ... well, at least i dont need to worry anymore about her not drinking enough milk.

-She has a toyset that is a castle, and there's lots of little people and horses that come with it. also fences that can link together. Well, she's constantly putting the fence together, taking it apart, putting it together, taking it apart. it thrills her. She'll put her horses in it then, and she thinks its just so neat.

-When she was a bit younger and learning how to walk, do stairs, she would walk up and down the stairs. well, she still walks up. but when she comes down, she now sits on her bum and slides down. i didnt think much of it... but when her "at abby" came over, she commented that its actually a developmental thing-- erica's old enough now to realize that she can get hurt doing certain things, and walking down stairs is one of them.

-She's obsessed with stickers. especially her Strawberry Shortcake stickers. but she gets frustrated when she puts them on something and then they wont come off. So, i'll sometimes put out wax paper for her to put them on, b/c they come off easily and then restick somewhere else.

-Erica LOVES saying "cold." everytime we go outside, she squeals "is cold, is cold."

-She also loves "mic." can you guess what that means?... music. i have a kids CD that we'll listen to sometimes. She loves this one song: "i put on my walking shoes. my walking shoes, my walking shoes. i put on my walking shoes. Cuz i want to walk with you." And of course, she NEEDS to be wearing shoes when we sing it. Then we'll either walk in a circle or just march in place.


there is so much more to say. but i have other things i want to get done.