Never a Dull Moment Around Here

Today, my sister asked me what new and exciting things Wyokiddo was doing these days.  What isn't she doing these days?  Here's my list of recent funny/cute Emily antics...

• Emily is obsessed with looking down my shirt.  If I'm wearing something even remotely loose-fitting, she's pulling it out and trying to stick her hand down my shirt.  It's sort of like a Friday night in the Cowboy in college.  
• Emily is also obsessed with the back of my pants.  She loves to lift up my shirt and inspect my underwear.  Sometimes, if I don't nip it in the bud, she'll try to stick things in my waistband.  Like magnetic letters.  Or little people.  Or a carrot.
• Mommy's clothing notwithstanding, Emily's new favorite activity is playing in her playpen with every single stuffed animal she owns piled around her.  Sometimes she wants me to throw in laundry, too.  Or binkys.  One day it was my shoes.  Hey, it works!  She's confined and entertained and I can wander around the house getting some things done.  
• A few months ago, Emily was obsessed with climbing on the couch.  After the 6,000th time I put her on the couch one afternoon, I figured she could do with a stool to help.  So I bought a little step-stool. And it did help her get on the couch, but not to get off the couch.  After the third time she bailed off the couch like a lemming off a cliff, I put the stool in the closet until she was older and more concerned with her own safety and well-being.  It's been buried in her closet ever since.  On Thursday, though, Em was playing in her room, throwing all her stuffed animals in her playpen.  I was in the kitchen when I heard her banging in the closet, then saw her sneak into the living room carrying what I assumed was her Cowboy Joe Pillow Pet.  The next thing I know, I see her sitting on the couch, which she still can't get on unassisted.  Then I realized she had found the step-stool, took it out of the closet to the couch and used it as a means to chillax on the sofa.  Uh oh, she's starting to understand the use of tools.  Crap.
• One of my favorite things she does is come grab my finger and pull me toward what she wants.  Usually she wants me to pull the crib away from the wall so she can rescue the binky that fell behind it during a nap.  Yesterday, after a particularly frustrating round of baby charades where I for the life of me couldn't figure out what she wanted, Emily threw her hands in the air, grabbed my finger and drug me to the bone dry dog's water dish.  I'm afraid the toddler and the hounds may be in cahoots...
• Emily loves to give 'mooches.  To me.  To Daddy.  To the dogs.  To Aunt Mindy.  To the bear on the Super Golden Crisp Cereal Box in the supermarket.  She's an equal opportunity 'moocher.
• Her newest word is hush.  We love to read "Goodnight Moon" and she'll finish the part about the quiet old lady who whispers "hush."  Makes my heart melt every time.
• I finally got around to starting her family photo album.  We "read" it several dozen times a day.  Each time she excitedly points at someone in the family and claps or gives them a 'mooch.  She's a people person!

All about the bling...

Keep this girl away from Bourbon Street.  She's lovin' the beads!

Ice Chalk Painting

Wyokiddo and I enjoyed another great summer day with a little ice chalk painting.  I got the recipe from Reading Confetti and made it in an ice cube tray.  Wyokiddo seemed to enjoy the sensation of the ice in her hands and wanted to suck on the ice cube itself.  She also had some spreading the "paint" around with her brush.  She did well keeping the paint cube itself out of her mouth.  Unfortunately, I couldn't keep her hands out of her mouth, too.  Oh well, at least it's only water and cornstarch and a teeny bit of food coloring.

I made the ice chalk last night using 1 part cornstarch to 1 part water and poured my mix into ice cube trays.  I wanted a few different colors, so I added the food coloring right to the tray.  This wasn't a huge hit with Wyokiddo, but the chalk paint was easy enough to make.  I think it's a recipe we will keep on hand and try again when she's a little older!

Spectacular Sunset

I love the wide open spaces of Western Wyoming.  It sure does give us some spectacular sunsets!

Buckets of Fun!

I decided to change it up a little bit and give Wyokiddo some water time without setting up the sprinkler.  I set her up with her stacking buckets and a few toys borrowed from the sandbox and bath bag and found a nice sunny spot in the driveway.  She had buckets of fun, literally!  She spent almost an hour dunking toys, dumping water and generally making a big, wet mess.  She eventually figured out I was refilling buckets from the faucet on the side of the house.  When a bucket was empty, she'd toddle to the side of the house, stick her bucket under the faucet and beg for more water.  Even the dogs got in on some of the water fun, draining a bucket or two when Wyokiddo dropped her guard!

Setup and clean up was simple...gather up the buckets and let everything air dry!  If you don't have buckets, storage containers of any size would work.

Fun with Foil

I bought a new photography book and was eager to practice using my camera, so I wanted  to set up Wyokiddo with a quick activity.  She's been into exploring new textures lately, so I cut up some squares of wax paper and tin foil and let her explore!  She had fun crumpling the tin foil and combining crumpled balls into bigger crumpled balls of tin foil.  I made some strips that I wrapped around her wrists and legs like bracelets, which Wyokiddo thought was a hoot.  I didn't get much done with my camera, because I was too busy enjoying the time playing with her!  She definitely liked the tin foil better than the wax paper, and I only had to reminder her once not to put it in her mouth.  This was so simple to set up and clean up.  I might even cut up some squares and keep them in an old travel wipes container to use next time we are stuck in the doctor's office!

Pompom Fun

Wyokiddo decided she didn't want to nap after we got home from a trip to town and the park.  But she was cranky and not interested in any of her toys, so I needed something new to keep her attention and get her smiling again.  I broke out the pack of rainbow colored pompoms I bought at the dollar store to make a discover bottle with, and handed Emily the bag of pompoms and muffin tin.  I had seen something like this with cotton balls and an egg carton on Pinterest and figured, close enough!

It was a hit!  She played for about half an hour, putting the pompoms in the muffin tin or the empty wipes container she found in a drawer.  When that got boring, she looked for other balls to put in the muffin tin...soon we had pompoms, a tennis ball, a hackey sack and balls confiscated from the ball popper in our tin.  That led to her experimenting with shoving the pompoms into the trunk of the ball popping elephant.  What to do you know, the ball popper can shoot out a handful of pompoms like confetti.  What fun!  This was a great activity for a cranky toddler that required about a minute of setup and clean up.  I had to remind Wyokiddo not to put the pompoms in her mouth a few times, so this is not and independent play activity.  But I highly recommend it as a boredom buster!

This Kid Cracks Me Up

Somewhere along the way, my baby has grown into a little person.  In the last few weeks, Emily (now 10 months old) has grown mentally leaps and bounds.  I'm constantly amazed at the amount of information she is retaining and learning.  A few examples:

• While playing in the bathroom drawers (a favorite pastime of the 10-month old set), she located my hair comb and brush and set them aside to find the next treasure that awaited her at the bottom of the drawer.  I looked a the pair on the floor and said, "Look Em, it's a comb and a brush, now all we need is a bowl full of mush, like in Good Night Moon."  (Good Night Moon is one of about 10 books we rotate through reading, which are kept in our living room.)  Emily stopped pulling out my curling iron, dropped to her hands and knees and promptly crawled to the living room where we keep her books.  She dug through the stack, located Good Night Moon and held it up to me.  I tried to pass it off as coincidence, but I'm pretty sure my kid is a genius.  Outdoor Dad's response to this act of intellectual acumen?  "We better start watching our language around her."  
• Our dogs used to have the run of our house.  Oh who am I kidding?  As far as I was concerned, they had the run of our lives.  Now, because Emily makes them nervous when she's on the floor, the dogs spend quite a bit of their day outside.  I noticed now that when I ask the dogs if they need to go outside, Emily will crawl around to the kitchen and the backdoor to "help me put the puppies outside."

Emily knows my redneck sign language sign for all done.  She'll crawl to the backdoor when she hears the garage door open because she knows that means DaDa is home from work.  She nickers like a horse when prompted.  If you hear her nickering and there isn't a horse in sight, chances are good she's pooping.  Somewhere along the way, she's also developed the beginnings of a sense of humor.  Emily loves to be chased.  She also thinks it's funny to put her binky in my mouth (the handle, not the sucky part, that would be  an overshare).  

Lately, she's taken to cracking herself up with her ball popping elephant and stacking cups.  I shot some video of her playing with the cups and squealing in delight.  I myself laugh every time I watch this video.

It's truly amazing to see how much her little mind has grown in just a few short months.  I can't wait to see what developments the coming weeks and months bring as we approach her first birthday.