Katharine Lange: Leia Week 101: The Little Singer

Josh, my parents, and I got to attend a little two day golf camp at Old Greenwood this week, so on one of the days when she couldn't go to school, Leia had her very first non-family baby sitter. Alison was awesome, Leia had such a great day with her, and she totally put us to shame as parents! We have such a hard time getting Leia to eat and figuring out what she will eat, so we've gotten pretty lazy as far as the meals we put out for her. So we get home at dinner time and Leia is sitting in front of this amazing plate of food that Alison has prepared for her, which consisted of nothing that we had left for her and nothing like we ever do. Hot dogs, broccoli, fruit, beans, etc...it just looked like such a well balanced meal...we always just put out one or two things and call it good! And had we not arrived right then, I'm sure she would have eaten it, but she was so happy to see us that she was totally over eating at all. Oh well.

Leia has also made such a huge improvement in her ABC's. She can sing the whole song by herself and gets all the letters right! I'm so impressed, it's really fun to watch. What's not fun to watch is how much she seems to like pink...ugh! It's my worst nightmare, she's totally killing me, and of course we got a big box full of pink in the mail! Ok you blog readers out there: no more pink please! I figure if she doesn't have any in her closet to chose from, then she'll have to pick other better colors. And believe me, I don't have much control over what she wears anymore, she loves to pick her clothes and try to dress herself. She just tosses anything I pick out and heads to the drawer to get what she wants. Like I said, my only hope is a drawer stocked with gook looking clothes that I like!

Josh has been taking Leia to the Squaw Park a lot, and she's become quite possessive of the place: "My Park!" She's pretty much pissed if anyone else is there playing on her swings or slides (except Emmett, he's the only one she was willing to share with). It's pretty funny because anytime we drive past, she points out the park and says "My Park! I want to go to my park!"

We're back to our hot tub adventures with Leia. Even though it's a small space, we are always trying to get her to swim on the noodle and do kicks. Sometimes she does it little, but mostly she just wants to walk around the sides. Well she finally figured out she's tall enough to stand in the middle, so she wasn't afraid to swim across it anymore. She actually floated on her noodle and kicked across from Daddy to Mommy without help! It was so great.

More good news, Leia is liking school again. She's been a little clingy and needy because of the impending baby, so sometimes she doesn't want to leave us for school. But this week when we've arrived to pick her up, she's not as excited to leave with us. In fact, she wants to stay. And then when forced to leave with the promise of being able to come back tomorrow, she instantly says she's tired and ready for bed, which never happens. But I realized her logic: the sooner she goes to bed, the sooner tomorrow will come, and the sooner she'll be able to go back to school. She's so brilliant to have figured that one out, I can't believe it!

Leia's been doing lots of singing this week, and it's really fun to watch. It was even more fun to watch her strum on the guitar while singing! I've posted a video below, along with the videos of her singing happy birthday to both her grandmothers.

Finally, no sooner did we get the house buttoned up from the pesky woodpecker, when a pesky squirrel shows up and starts gnawing as well. Another target for Daddy and his sling shot! Leia loves the excitement of the whole thing saying, "Get the bad squirrel DaDa, get the bad squirrel!" We then had to do lots of hunting for the bad squirrel who got away!