Take that you plants!!

Charlotte is a gardener – any dirt, any place, any time.

The muckier the better…

She was on the back deck the other day, playing nicely with her sister – or so I thought…

I turned my back for 1 second to get them some sunscreen. When I next looked Miss C. has totally replanted my entire flower box. Dirt, roots, and soil everywhere. She was so thrilled – she grinned with all her 5 teeth in such a beguiling way I had to laugh along with her. She did help me plant them again – along with her very worried sister saying

“Is Grandma happy?”

Well, of course, who couldn’t be with the next world-class gardener helping me RE plant?

Naked Spiders

Morgan and I love to sing the Itsy Bitsy Spider song. We sing this over and over with all the actions.

The other day we were outside and the sun was shining, after days of rain.

I said to Morgan “And what happens when the sun comes out?”

Of course the correct answer, and the one I was expecting is “Out came the sunshine and dried up all the rain…”

Well Miss Morgan replies, “We go outside and get naked!!”

So there, all you hopeful bare naked spiders!

Morgan is talking so well now, and in such a short time, we are totally blown away with her verbiage. I asked her last week what her Mom might be doing.

With all her acting and mannerisms she replied that her Mom was at home. I said, and “what is Mom doing at home?”

With a huge sigh and dramatic rolling of eyes she replied that “Mom is cleaning up my room.”

“Why?” I asked innocently.

With much more eye rolling and huffing she declared “Cause it is a MESS!”

So there Beth. You know you are most appreciated in time for Mother’s Day.”

Spring Duck Marsh

We headed off to the Duck Marsh for the first time this year.  The Marsh continues to be one of our favorite family destinations.

The Lehmann Girls

Morgan knew right away what we were doing and reminded us the whole way that we had better have brought enough bird seed.

Charlotte had been last year but of course she was just a wee thing, so this was really her first time.

The girls were absolutely amazing and had a wonderful time.

The weather was gorgeous, the ducks weren’t aggressive, and the marsh was virtually empty of other people.

Charlotte is such a bad influence on her sister. She immediately headed into the drink, and Morgan stood their stunned that her sister would even think of doing such a thing… then it occurred to her that she might have fun if she joined her.

[edit: the first few pictures of Charlotte are from her day gardening with Beth.  They are not pictures from the Duck Marsh.  So relax, it is not duck poop she has all over her face, it's just composted chicken poop.]

Whining Children

The other day Beth was taking trying to take a time out from the girls.

She was sitting with a glass of her favorite white wine when Morgan came up to her insisting that she get some of whatever mommy was drinking.

So thinking that she would teach her daughter a sharp lesson, she gave the glass of wine to Morgan.

Morgan took a good gulp…

…swirled it around in her mouth, and then swallowed it down.

She thought about it for a good 3 or 4 seconds before declaring, “Oh Yum!“.

Easter 2012

It’s only been a few weeks since our last update, but it feels like ages have elapsed.

Morgan is now a very independent little girl that is three going on thirteen, complete with attitude.

The other day I said, “Morgan, could you please go put on some pants?”.

She turned and said, “Maybe” long pause, “Maybe Not”.

…

She has to brush her teeth by herself (we still have a turn, but she’s quite insistent that it is her job), she has had us change all the doorknobs in the house so she can more readily open them (we agreed, as this allows her easier access to the bathroom at night), and she’s quite the little helper in the kitchen (Beth and her make all sorts of wonderful creations).

She is also 100% certain about the things she likes and wants.

Grandma asked her what she wants for her birthday and she said, “cake, outside”.  When we followed up and asked what kind of cake, she said, “a kitty cat cake”.

Morgan is now counting to 3, can spot many letters of the alphabet, and knows most of the animals (and their sounds) in her books.

She can now carry on a pretty complicated conversation, but still signs many of her basic words.  I asked her to say thank you to Grandma the other day and she didn’t do it.  I said, “Morgan, how do you say thank you”.  Without skipping a beat she turned and said, “with my hands”.

Her imagination is starting to kick in big time.  Every night we sing a little song that we invent each night.  She directs me to what I’m supposed to sing about and then I try and rhyme something together (sometimes even successfully).  Lately she’s been mixing and matching all sorts of weird things and then starts laughing before I even begin, because she knows it’s just silly.

Morgan is also an engineer in training.  We have these bath ducks that have little LED’s in them that blink away when they contact water.  Her green duck ran “out of juice”.  Morgan asked me to help her open her blue duck (which I did) and then she proceeded to “get the guts” from the blue duck and put them into the green duck so that it works again.  Fricking cool!

…

Charlotte is now baby running around the house.  She can say “momma” and “dadda” and we are pretty sure “bath”.

She has her sister’s infatuation with the fountain, and just loves the water.  She is [knock on wood] sleeping better but seems to be having a heck of a time with her teeth still.

She just howls when we brush her teeth, but we think that might not be a pained sound but just a “I don’t like this” sound.

Charlotte is such a loving girl.  She snuggles into all her stuffed animals and if you pick her up she’ll just curl right into your arm and neck.

She’s even started giving little kisses.  Wet kisses.  If you ask her to if you can give her a kiss she’ll swoop right in and either pucker her lips or give you the crown of her head to kiss.  You never know which one you’ll get until your lips press against soft wet lips or a your teeth break against her hard head.

And now she’s trained her sister to do the same trick.  *sigh*

Charlotte is also REALLY big into piecing things together.  She loves her toy blocks and stacks them from one tower to another.  She loves putting the blocks away into containers.  Today she was sitting in the recycling and was finding the old milk lids and placing them on the old milk containers.  That’s tough stuff to do.

And today when we did our Easter Egg Hunt, I found that any place that Charlotte had found an egg, she had gone back and placed a rock from the fountain in it’s place.   Adorable.

…

We’ve been doing a ton of work around the house and the girls have been busy doing their best to destroy it.

Beth and the girls are putting in a garden this year (this will hopefully be our first year without deer).

We’ve had a good Easter this year, with the girls being mostly good almost tolerable.

Happy Easter 2012!

Here are some shots from March, my Dad’s birthday, and Easter:

Sister Love: Hot Buns

Beth has been having a pretty tough time of it with these two.  Charlotte’s been having a rough time sleeping (or rather, she’s been waking up at 5 and will not stay still (or quiet)).

Morgan’s 2 going on 16 and is a constant hand full.

But there are still sweet moments that make you smile.  Like this morning, I had warmed up some dinner rolls for the girls to snack on for breakfast.

I gave each of them a roll and as I was making my coffee I watched Morgan go to take a bite of her bun…

She thought the buns were too hot so she  jumped across the little kids table and snatched up Charlotte’s bun saying “No Guggy Hot!“.

Charlotte started to cry and grab for her bun but Morgan kept a hand on her and kept her back.

Charlotte started to really let loose so Morgan broke off a piece of her own bun, blew on it real quick and then handed that to Charlotte.

As Charlotte was munching away (somewhat content), Morgan continued to blow on Charlotte’s bun… when it was cool she handed it back with a “Guggy bun not hot”.

She sat down and continued on with her own bun.

My coffee was ready and the day got under way.

Morgan at 2.5

Morgan can say almost every word you ask her to repeat.

She knows her basic colours, can count to 5 and can sing Happy Day Guggy.

She still signs ‘thank you’ but verbalizes most other words.

She is totally day potty trained and now likes to sit on the big toilet. Today Morgan and Ashaya played on the computer and with the big exercise ball.

Auntie Berta came and we made playdough animals, worms, and cookies, and danced.

Happy Guggy Day You!

Today we celebrated Charlotte’s First Birthday!

She was an absolute delight as she was joined by Grandma Holly, Cousin Kathy, Auntie Amanda, Talia,and Ashaya, Auntie Tracey, Taylor, and Cameron, Great-Auntie B, Great Grandma Mary, Sherry, Jim, Rebecca, and Brielle.

It was a wonderful celebration of her first year.

The sun was out, the kids were fantastic, and Charlotte and her sister were so sweet.

Morgan had been practicing all week to wish her sister Happy Birthday!  And Guggy just thrives under her sisters attention.

Beth made a beautiful cake (Lion) and jungle cupcakes and we had a ton of goodies to snack on.

Charlotte got spoiled rotten and was right into the whole affair. I think she could get used to having all that attention heaped on her.

Both girls are becoming such charming children.

Thank you to everyone who helped make this day so special.

Here are some shots of February 2012 and Charlotte’s First Birthday.

1 Year

We had Morgan for half a day today and we all were grieving the shortness of her stay.

It  has been one year since she came to stay with us one day a week.  What did we ever do without her visits?  Charlotte (Guggy) is now almost one year old.  Morgan is very protective and loving of her little sister.

We can’t wait to have Charlotte on Wednesday’s and Morgan on Friday’s. [editors note: ok, maybe this last bit was added by me]

Charlotte’s Tooth

Charlotte’s top tooth finally broke through this weekend.  You could actually see the stress go out of her face the second it finally cut.

She is an absolutely wonderful little plump baby that is learning at a ferocious rate.

If asked what a Lion says, she “roars”.

This morning while I was shaving,  I watched her stand up at the counter, grab her sisters potty adapter (those padded seats that help adapt a big toilet to a small bum) and place it on the toilet.

She’s learning FAST!

Counting Children

Don’t teach your children to count.

Because if you do, then they take that knowledge and turn it against you.

Over the weekend, Morgan asked for a cookie.

I said you get one and held up a single finger.

She held up three fingers and said “three?”.

I said, “one“, with firmness in my voice.

She held up two fingers, tilted her head and blinked her eyes, and said, “two?”.

The rotten child got two cookies.

Water, Water, Everywhere

We have had rains of Biblical proportions. Water, water everywhere.

Our back creek ditch is running with lovely, rippling rills of cold, clean water.

Miss Morgan discovered this delight, and proceeded to float her boats down this children’s dream of watery amplitude. Her boots filled with water, her hands and cheeks turned bright red – still she wouldn’t give up her nautical pursuits.

She laughed so hard and worked so relentlessly that the boats seemed to float away on her glee. I think she was glad to get into dry clothes and have a nice warm snack before nap time today.

Sooooo….

This is a few weeks out of date… but still a wonderful little story.

We were putting Morgan to bed and we were doing our nightly routine.  Forever and a day Morgan has always loved hiding in her mesh ceiling tents or in her closet.

Nothing new with this night.  She had jumped into her closet and closed the doors.

We were playing “where’s Morgan?” and then she would jump out laughing and the game would go on.

Tonight, however, I guess we used slightly different language.  We said, “so, where’s Morgan? have you seen Morgan? where did she go?  I don’t know, maybe we better look under the bed”.

And great joy was had by all.

Well, we had her in her pajamas and her teeth were brushed and her books had been read and we were wrangling her into bed when she slipped past us and ran down the hall.

While we were getting up the steam to go after her, we could her her trotting up and down the hall saying, “soooo, Mommy?”, “soooo, Daddy?”.

As we watched her she went to each room, looked behind each door, peeked behind curtains, the whole way saying, “soooo, Mommy?”.

In the blink of an eye she had developed Hide and Seek…. awesome!

Sooooo, now, weeks later, whenever she wants to play, she’ll come up to as and say, “soooo, Daddy?”  or sometimes she gets lazy and just looks at you with this wonderful little cock to her head and say, “soooo?”.

Oh Yeah!

The other day I was picking Morgan up from my Mom’s .

She had run down the stairs and was playing with the stuffed bears on the bench on their landing.

While we were talking she reached up and turned off the lights to the entry area.

She makes this amazing impersonation of Bruce from Family Guy: “Oh Nooooo” Bruce, Oh No

She then got this big grin on her face and flicked the lights back on with a classic Cool-Aid Man “Oh Yeahhh” Cool Aid Man, Oh Yeah