"More please"

This is how a toddler gets pretty much whatever she wants from a proud mom: "please." And it doesn't really matter if she already has enough of whatever on her plate if she says "more please" mom gives her more. :-)

Now the complete "more please" request is actually done in signs but we have actually heard her say or attempt to say each of those words individually as well. In fact our Miss Brooks is once again making her parents smile in proud amusement because NOW that she is SAYING new words every day she is also SIGNING new words every day ... and often the SAME words! :-) Nessa especially loves to look at her picture books and point to things and have us say the word and then sometimes she'll say and/or sign the word as well. Now knowing the word or sign when looking at books doesn't always translate into being able to calmly use the word as a request rather than getting frustrated because she wants something, but I think we're getting there.

The other request she learned and used frequently today was "Help Please." And that one was also very, uh, helpful. :-)

Nessa also frequently signs ball and hat and seems to be attempting a few others.

Nessa's new favorite words to say seems to be "apple" and "baby" and she says these VERY clearly. She also says: cup, shoes, side, bye, night night, Megan, Mama, dada (of course), book, ball, block, cow, no, mine, and then there are several others that are more like sounds that consistently come up when doing certain thing or looking at certain things. Oh, we think she was also saying "slide" as she was asking "more please" to go down the slide more tonight at the park. :-)

And the best thing Megan said to me today was : "I can go to bed early tonight so I can read more." In case you're wondering I told her that was OK with me while inside I was shouting for joy that my daughter finally WANTS to read more!!!! I think all the struggles and work at vision therapy is now paying off!!!! WooHOO!!!! :-)

And now it is time for me to go read ... or knit ... not sure which yet but something relaxing before an early bedtime.

Who's there?

Yikes I can't believe these are from way back in August!!!

Nessa still loves to close doors though ... enjoy some photos of Nessa peeking through the bathroom door.

Time to read

Well, I think our Miss Brooks things pretty much any time is a good time to read. These photos were taken today, Saturday September 30th, after story time with mom and story time with dad, when Nessa thought it was then time for her to read to her baby doll and then to read by herself in the video rocker.

Our Little Miss Brooks

Discovery Toys Fall Open House

The Discovery Toys Fall Open House will be October 27 and 28th -- Friday the 27th from 1 to 8 p.m. and Saturday the 28th from 10 to 3 (or by apt. at another time). It will be a great time to do your holiday shopping! I'll post a reminder as well as send invitations to to my customers, friends and nieghbors ... but I want those of you interested to mark it on your calendar. Even those of you that can't attend but place an order that weekend will be eligible for prizes and discounts. :-)

If you want to see the new fall toys and old favorites before that you can come and play with us this weekend, Sunday October 1st, from noon to 5 as I spend time learning more about the great new fall toys with the help of my "little assistants."

You may remember from a previous post that I was planning an open house this weekend, but illnesses earlier in the week/month (most of us have taken a turn) along with deadlines for other projects have left me feeling unprepared so I am instead using that time to PLAY, ah, I mean work, learn, and research. :-) Feel free to join us for an informal time to play with the toys ... anyone that does decide to come and play with us Saturday afternoon (from noon to 5) will receive a thank you discount if they decide to order anything at that time.

As an extra bit info -- Nessa's favorite Discovery Toys these days are the Shiny, Touchy, Smelly books, the book that accompanies the Look I'm Talking! set, and the Busy Bugs Learning Set (have some great photos of this), and she also enjoys the Giant Peg Board and several other things. The Book for Look I'm Talking! though is something she'll want to "read" every day as she goes through the pages pointing at each picture and waiting for me to say what that picture is off and then she'll start over and we can go on for, well a LONG time doing that. :-) Megan's favorites are the various school age games, the It's My Business set, and she also loves the Monkey Mouth!

http://www.discoverytoyslink.com/Groth

Overheard -- now that's potentiality!

Now that's poteniality!

So, we've been singing the song "I'm a Promise" in Sunday School. It's a very cute Veggie Tales song (http://www.bigidea.com/music/veggietunes/worshipsongs.htm) and part of it goes: "I'm a great big bundle of potentiality."

As Megan was learning to sing it correctly (rather than "I'm a great big bumble of ...) we discussed exactly what "potentiality" meant. Well, at least I thought I helped her figure out exactly what it meant, but then I heard her explain it to Nessa.

Megan to Nessa: "It's like how you're pretty good at messing up the living room right now ... but you'll get better!"

Looking around at my living room I wasn't sure if I should laugh or cry...

Finally some pictures !!! -- from Aug. / Sept.

These are Megan's first day of school pictures. They are not good because of several reasons -- it was actually after school (she left from her dad's in the morning) and the lighting was really bad in front of the house, I don't have time right now to try to fix the lighting digitally, and finally she was NOT in the mood to have a picture taken at all because apparently she's too old for that so I'm surprised that more of her attitude isn't showing through!






One thing that Megan is great at and rarely complains about is playing with Nessa. In fact Megan will go out of her way to make time to play with Nessa. This is not only a great help for me so I can do things like post to the blog (!) but also great for the girls' relationship with each other. I love watching my girls play together!!! :-) And as you can see Nessa loves her new tea set and all of the cooking stuff (we moved the big kitchen set up to the living room as well) ... she seems to love to stir more than anything else at this point!



From these pictures you would think that we let her run around in her diaper and cover all the time, but really we don't do that much but I was wanting "diaper pics" to share with my cloth diapering list friends and managed to get a few other great pictures at the same time since of course all photos were taken while she was "on the go."






This was a pretty normal way to see Nessa running around the living room for awhile (with clothes on her head) because every time I would be folding laundry she would grab clothes and try to put them on her head!




Here you can see Nessa's "look what I can do now" look. She loves playing with her baby (also *hates* being treated like one so there are a few struggles these days with things like, oh, sitting in the high chair). Nessa can also say "baby" very clearly ... but as with most words she only says it when she wants to.

What I've been doing when you see me online

Those of you with gmail or yahoo IM may have noticed that I was actually online a lot the last few weeks but that I often had my status marked to busy or even unavailable. And the rest of you may simply have noticed that I haven't been posting much here on the blog (or elsewhere ... or emailing). The reason I was online but not doing my "usual thing" is because much of my computer time was spent creating this site:

http://conference.ican-online.org/

It took me awhile but eventually at least the basics came back to me (I haven't worked with web pages directly for awhile and haven't actually been a "web editor" for 5 years!).

Check it out both to evaluate my work and to get a glimpse into what makes me so passionate about ICAN and supporting moms and babies!