It finally happened.

One of Alice's favorite activities this fall (and late summer), has been picking and eating "teeteetoes," or tomatoes. She'll lift the electric fence over her head, and go into the garden and start picking and eating cherry tomatoes. She's pretty good, and gets ones that have turned mostly orange or red. Strawberries are a different story...she likes them green. Anyway, today she was picking teeteetoes when I looked over and she had a thai dragon chili pepper in her mouth. She bit off the end, and I yanked it out of her mouth. I don't know what made her cry, the pepper or me prying her mouth open to fish out the end of the pepper. Luckily for her, and true to form, she picked a green one, not a red one, so it wasn't that hot (I checked).

Crash!

Alice fell down the stairs the other day. A real fall. You see, going down on a small riding tractor doesn't count (Alice did that a few months ago). After she fell, she cried, I comforted her, then she climbed from my lap onto the side table, jumped onto the couch, and did a somersault off the edge of the couch. I told my lithe Ron law that I wished she would get hurt sometime so she would have some fear instead of none at all.

Cair

Alice's new cair game is to stand in my lap and press Bobby to my face and then press her face against Bobby. Its very cute, but unfortunately sometimes she gives me a head-butt. Update, she also likes to take my finger and point to all the "tars" in yaddie when we read it during "cair." She'll alsopoint to the sharks face.

Me and Mommy and Daddy and not Alice.

Today on the way to school, Lizzie proclaimed that she wanted to do pasting work with Mommy and Daddy while Alice was sleeping. Then she turned to Alice and said, "me and Mommy and Daddy and not Alice." So sweet!

Potty-mouth

Yes, Lizzie is almost 4, so she is learning her swear words! Just kidding, although we have heard a few... On the other hand, Alice is spending a lot of time on the potty, and she is learning lots of new words from the books that have been dedicated to the bathroom. Good thing...her vocabulary could use some improvement. She seems to be interested in animals the most right now. A week or so ago it was colors -- she knows most colors, but gets them wrong most of the time. There's a page in Yaddie (where's that fish) that has many different colored starfish. First she wanted to look at the stars ("tar, tar, tar"), but then she started getting interested in the colors. Now we need to get some ABC books and some counting books...

Bou, Teedalee

Lizzie and Alice's favorite games to play together are Bou and Teedalee. Bou is the game of bouncing on their beds before going to sleep. I'm sure there are some movies on Picasa. Teedalee is the game of romping on the couch, or other piece of furniture, or Mom or Dad. Very silly. Update, there are two other games similar to teedalee. They are called teedala and teedaloo.

2

Alice's birthday isn't for a few weeks, but oh my she is acting like a 2 year old. During a meal she'll exclaim "yucky," then "more," then "no," followed by eating whatever is in front of her. Its very funny. Sometime she'll say "yucky" and then throw her bowl...

Writing

As well as the recently mentioned drawing spree that Liz has been on, she has also been writing words lately. Mostly this means she is stringing together random letters, but she's trying. When we coach her, she can sometimes put together a simple word. As well as her own name, I think she can write Mom and Dad, and maybe Alice.

Potty time.

Alice made a nice big pee on the potty on Saturday (the 8th). This is her first real pee on the potty, i.e. the first time she's tried to pee on the potty and succeeded. She's done a number of pees on the potty before bath, but this was a real one during the day. So, yes, Alice is potty training. She had a nasty diaper rash, which turned out to be fungus, so we decided to put her in underpants to help clear it up. Side note: medicine works better. Now that the genie is out of the bottle, its hard to get her to wear a diaper any more. Time to get with the program kiddo!

School

Lizzie started her third year of Montessori preschool last week. Seems to be going OK now, but there war some hiccups. First is that as the youngest kid in her class and the only one who is not 4, she doesn't get to stay for the afternoons. On the first day of school, I had to fetch her from the classroom and as we were leaving, one of her classmates told her that she was a big girl and she could stay late. In the lobby Liz got very upset that she could not stay late. I think she feels like she is not one of the big kids. Second, there is a new teacher in Lizzie's classroom. Lizzie clearly misses her old teacher, Miss Danielle. Today I asked Lizzie to draw a picture for Miss Caitlin and then gave Caitlin some advice on how to break the ice with Lizzie. Once they got talking, Liz was happy to go into the classroom. You see, there had been some crying and clinging to parents at drop-off previous days. Hopefully that is behind us. Lizzie's job in the classroom right now is to prepare snack for the class. She seems to like it, and its good that she gets some responsibility. Miss Michelle tells me that the kids do 2-3 week rotations on different classroom responsibilities. Lizzie's best friend at school is Irene. I'm glad she's bonded with another kid there. Last year Lizzie and Seton became good friends, but Seton moved away to Colorado. Liz still talks about her, and each time I explain that Seton had to move away. When I tell her that we moved from Virginia to New Hampshire, she seems to get the analogy. That reminds me that the other day we were looking at pictures on the computer, and we saw a picture of Anastasia. Liz claims she remembers who Anastasia is (friend from Virginia). She also claims to remember her old house in Virginia after seeing pictures.

The artist

Lizzie has turned into a prolific little artist. Her primary tools are markers, paper, and a stapler. She draws wonderful pictures, creating scenes that use the whole piece of paper. She draws people, monsters (eek!), the sun, grass, the sky, clouds, cars (for her sister, who loves cars), butterflies, jellyfish, hearts, and much more. She makes books, using a few drawings stacked together, folded and then stapled at the fold. She makes paper plates by drawing on a piece of paper and then folding/curling the edges up. She makes fans by folding a piece of paper like an accordion and then turning the end over and stapling it. She makes bags, by folding a piece of paper in half and stapling around the edges and leaving an opening. She makes paper airplanes, which don't really fly (but she's a bit young to be making ones that actually fly). The list goes on. There must be many great pictures hidden in folded and stapled paper. This has been Lizzie's primary activity during the last half of the summer. I swear she's used more than a ream of paper in less than a month. I'll try to get some pictures up on Picasa, and maybe post some down below.