Happy Halloween!

This year Sylvie was a butterfly fairy for Halloween. As soon as I put the skirt and wings on her she was ready to go and literally took off running down the street, with me, my mom and the two dogs running after her.

And of course, the dogs were dressed up in matching tutus as well:

We had an impossible time getting her to pose for pictures, because hey a butterfly fairy just needs to be on the move, communing with nature, man. There are trees to hug and flowers to smell and leaves to count. I guess she had a profound understanding that this whole woodland fairy thing probably wasn't going to be an everyday occurence, and she wasn't wasting a minute on posing for the camera.

When we finally explained the whole trick-or-treating thing to Sylvie she seemed a little intrigued. Candy? If I knock on that door? Sounds good! Of course the realization that a person, a stranger mind you, was behind the door and the key to actually getting the candy, well that just brought the whole thing to a dead halt. We thought maybe she'd feel better about knocking on Grandma's door, so we could show her how the whole thing works in a more familiar setting.

And it worked! She did it! And she loved it! And she sat right down on the sidewalk in front of Grandma's house and opened her candy to eat it right then and there. And then walked back to the door to get more candy from Grandma. Repeat. A couple of times. We tried to get her to trick-or-treat at Grandma's neighbor's house, but Sylvie wasn't interested and wanted no part of it. She kept looking at me saying "Meah-ma? Candy? Trick Treat?" And I guess she figured while she had my attention she may as well throw in a "Elmo? Watch?" (nice try kid!)

By this point John was getting home so we decided to meet him there and hang out on the stoop, waiting for trick-or-treaters.

Sylvie loved it. She loved the kids, she loved the action, she loved hanging with Daddy. And most of all, she loved the candy.

Dissing Your Toddler

Gee, thanks Sylvie. I've never really understood the need for crisp clean sheets anyway, so I think you're "accent" really adds a special something. I especially enjoyed coming out of the bathroom today to find this little "present" in bed waiting for me. What a nice surprise! Now, I know you'll be busy all day tomorrow cleaning the sheets and dealing with this mess. Oh, no, wait a minute, that's MY job. I'm the one that slaves away in a hot laundromat while you stay at home and play with Daddy.

Remember, there's one thing stronger than your toddler's sense of self...her sense of irony.

This is NOT a Pumpkin

It's orange and it has a stem,

it's big and it's round,

but this is NOT a pumpkin. Why?
Because everyone knows that pumpkins...

don't SMILE!
No, this is not a pumpkin,

THIS is a Jack O'Lantern!

This blog post is brought to you by the book This is NOT a Pumpkin, a gift from Aunt Susie. Syl reads it just about everyday, and now spends most of her time outside pointing out and screaming about the pumpkins she sees. It's a really cute book, we highly recommend it.

And here's a very blurry shot of us surveying our Jack O'Lantern skills:

And another picture of the rest of our Halloween decorations. These are the windows in Sylvie's room. She loves the kitties.

Uncle Kris!

Sylvie is unfortunately still a little scared of her uncle, the poor guy. He takes it amazingly in stride, and I know one day she's going to totally and completely idolize him. If she only knew that he came up with the idea to dress up as Elmo for Halloween, in the hopes that she'd warm up to him. Or that the other morning he came downstairs and told my mom that he had just had a dream that Sylvie really liked him. I mean, c'mon! The poor guy! John went through this with my goddaughter, who was just inexplicably terrified of him until she was about 3 years old. And it killed him, every single time we saw her he'd practically do back flips to win her over. And now they're best buds. Here's hoping Sylvie gets a clue sooner than later.

We love you Kris, happy 18th birthday!

So after Kris' little birthday celebration we all went down to Great Adventure for the afternoon. We stopped at the safari first, and Sylvie loved it. Let me repeat that, she LOVED IT. There are only so many things better than real live ostriches banging on your car window and elk causing traffic jams, and right now I can't think of any of them. She was squealing and screeching and yelling and laughing and at one point actually went hoarse from the hootin' and hollerin'.

Parallel Play

We spent the day with Ben and family today. Sylvie really loves Ben, so when we told her we were going to his house today she ran around the house repeatedly yelling "Bennie's house! Okay!" When they're together they interact like pretty typical toddlers: they play near each other (as opposed to with each other), occasionally grunt or babble at each other, and often try to take the other's toys away. They crack each other up a lot too. Good times!

Don't let the door hit you on the way out.

Sylvie stayed with "Meah-Ma" (Grandma) tonight while John and I saw a movie. Our departure was met with little fanfare, as you can see. We did each get a kiss goodbye, but it was more of the hurry-up-and-kiss-me-so-I-can-get-back-to-my-Elmo-thank-you-very-much variety. Sylvie loves going to Meah-Ma's house. And we love our date nights!

Squeaky Clean

Sick Day

Sylvie's a little under the weather right now. I'm not sure if she picked it up from one of the kids, or if we gave it to them, but we're all fighting some kind of bug. We seem to do this every time one of us gets sick, we just pass the germs back and forth between houses for awhile. So since Lauren was home sick we got to stay home and take it easy today too.

We watched a whole lot of Sesame Street. Sylvie was thrilled. Then I busted out her new playdoh and we played with it while waiting for John to get home. We made snakes and flowers and carrots, and as I'm sure some of the more experienced moms can predict, Sylvie took a bite out of the carrot. Whoops! I tried to explain to her that eating playdoh was a no-no, she whined a bit at the unfairness of life and then mischievously took another nibble while looking me right in the eye. So.....away went the playdoh!



Later on in the evening, giving John a wonderfully messy spaghetti-face kiss:

Yum!

My little monkey

This picture was not posed.

These two, however, were:

Punkins!

Considering that at this point in her sweet little life pumpkins ("punkins!!!") and farm animals are two of her top favorite things, we were pretty sure Sylvie was going to love our visit to Terhune Orchards for their annual Fall Festival. We were not wrong.

This picture was taken at the little petting zoo area, where Sylvie found a horse ("haussie") eating entire cobs of corn, which is apparently the height of comedy for toddlers. She was hysterically laughing the entire time, like losing her breath laughing, and in between fits of hysteria kept desperately telling me "haussie! corn! haussie! corn!" like "Mom! Are we looking at the same thing here?! Because clearly you do not see what I see! Why are you not cracking up? Really, Mom, do you see that right over there a HORSE IS EATING A CORN COB?!"

My sweet little lamb. Who kinda had to be forced to look through this hole. Don't you think they should paint the other side of these displays? Might make the kids a bit more interested in them. Sylvie wasn't really sure why we were so insistent on taking her picture by a propped up piece of wood with a big hole in it, but she played along.

So Syl had a great day and loved the farm. And I gotta say she really gave it her all. For a kid who pretty much never sleeps in the car these days, this was her before we even got out of the parking lot:

One Awesome Day.

Mommy had a girls day out today so it was Sylvie's day to chill with Daddy. The first part of the day was rather uneventful. We dropped Mommy off at the train station, Syl cried for Mommy for about 20 minutes (no offense taken), we drove to the car dealership to get our new license plates and registration, came home, ate grilled cheese and fruit for lunch, then napped. Boring. Yeah, but then the fun began. We took a ride to Cheesequake State Park for some kite flying and trail hiking.

Sylvie had never seen a kite before. She was pretty impressed. If you look at her close enough in the picture below, you'll see just how far her jaw dropped. Pretty far.

Sylvie enjoyed grabbing the kite and tangling the string up more than watching it fly. Daddy did not find this frustrating at all.

Then we took a hike. We've done this trail a few times before but she's always been in her back carrier. This time she walked the entire trail by herself. What normally takes about 20 minutes took well over 45. Too many leaves to yell "Leaf!" at and too many rocks to examine. Of course, we had to stop more than a few times to kiss some arbitrarily selected trees. She's so granola.

Sylvie tries to catch the rain.

Sylvie was so excited about the rain today, every time she looked outside and was reminded of it she'd scream out "Oh Yeah!" We had to make a quick run to Target earlier in the day, and Sylvie was pretty bored the whole car ride over. When we got there I asked her if she was ready to go inside, but she just sat there with a blank stare on her face. I asked her if she wanted to get out of the car and play with mommy, but again with the blank stare. I then asked her if she wanted to see the kids and toys inside, blank stare. Finally out of desperation I said "Sylvie, how 'bout we get out of the car and go run around in the rain?" I barely had the last word out of my mouth when she bellows from the backseat "OH YEAH!!!!!!!!!"

So tomorrow I'm spending the day in the city with my friends Margo and Casey. Margo is in for the week from San Francisco and we're planning on having an indulgent day of spa treatments, and maybe a pumpkin latte or two. First we're meeting at the Sweet Lily Spa, which is this super cute shabby chic manicure and pedicure place. And yes this is relevant to the Daily Syl, because the last time the three of us spent time at Sweet Lily was the day I found out I was pregnant:

photo credit: Xanthe

So John and Sylvie are on their own all day tomorrow, which means the Daily Syl is being left in the very capable hands of Daddy! I can't wait to get a little glimpse into their day!

New Camera!

Not my new camera, sadly. But man, look at these photographs! I took the one above at work this afternoon with Lauren's new Nikon D40. Lauren took the picture below.

In Sylvie news, I've been meaning to post about her new development: singing! I know I posted video a few weeks ago of Sylvie singing Pat-a-Cake, but since then she's developed an entire repertoire! (But of course each time I bust out the video camera she loses interest in her songs.) Hopefully I'll catch some of the cuteness on video soon. Sylvie's soundtrack includes the aforementioned Pat-a-Cake, Wheels on the Bus, Open Shut Them, ABCs, I'm a Little Teapot, and her all time favorite, Elmo's World. Today she asked me to sing the Big Bird song, which after much frustration on her part, I finally took to mean the Sesame Street intro song. She couldn't quite sing along to that one, but she was happily hanging on my every word while I sang it.

Studious

Doing her homework with the kids after school.

Mushrooms!

My camera batteries died earlier, so this is one of the only pictures I took today. So I'll get right down to it, IS THIS NOT THE CUTEST SHIRT YOU'VE EVER SEEN? I wish all of Sylvie's clothing was covered in mushrooms!

And here is a close-up photo of our banister. Which in case you hadn't noticed looks an awful lot like the letter P, according to a certain persistent toddler. What would we do without Sylvie around to notice these things for us? :)

21 months old

Well, at least someone's using the potty chair.

As I was changing Sylvie's diaper tonight I asked her if she wanted to do pee-pee on her chair. She looked at me and went "Elmo?" So I told her sure, Elmo could come with if she wanted him to. She ran off and got him, I puttered around for a minute or two and by the time I walked into the bathroom she already had him propped up and ready to go. She's quite proud of his accomplishment!