A Swing

A few weeks ago now Danya's speech therapist brought a piece of fabric that was sewn into a tube creating a tunnel. She also showed us a new game where Danya lays down in the center of it and then 2 grown ups swing her back and forth. Well after her therapy session was over I made the mistake of swinging her by myself. Well a couple of hours later I was exhausted and thought there had to be a way to make a better swing using the same concept.

TaDa!

Happy Santa Lucia Day

You may remember last year I wrote about the different Traditions we wanted to celebrate with Danya. Well one of them was the Celebration of Saint Lucy Day. Refresher: Saint Lucy lived during the time of the persecution of Christians in Rome. She was from a wealthy family and used her wealth to provide for the Christians who were hiding in the catacombs and other places. She often carried so much food and supplies that she didn't have hands enough to hold the candle to light her way. Being an industrious woman she made a wreath and put candles on it so they would fit on her head. A wealthy man decided she was the one to marry and she turned him down, he was against the Christians and hated her activities. So since she was wealthy enough she just turned him down. He, however, was vindictive and turned her in for her support of the Christians. They were going to kill her, he gave her one final chance to turn to him, she refused again and he gouged out her eyes before starting the fire to burn her. I think it is an awesome story about faith and giving. Kind of a depressing ending, but would we have any record of her faith if it wasn't? Now that she is a toddler there are many things that she is more oppinionated about. One is what she wears. There was a small fit when it came to putting on this dress, but she soon realized that it meant donuts and got over her objections.

Here she is bringing the plate of doughnuts to Daddy.

Then she is "giving" one to Daddy, just as soon as she held her hand out for Daddy she pulled it back and started eating it.

So Daddy and Danya ate together. Which worked really well until Daddy decided he wanted another donut. For some reason she felt that she had to have 3 cookies on her tray. Big tantrum. She got over it pretty quick though when I showed her that if she wanted to throw a tantrum she would have none.

Silly Face!

YuM!

A day of Discovery

Yesterday we got up early and made some home made Krispy Kremes for John's co-workers for Christmas. It wasn't as much work as I was afraid it was going to be. So then we loaded up the car and went to John's work to drop them off. Afterwords I planned to go to the Children's Discovery Center. It's like a children's museum. The layout is a bit crowded and the exhibits kinda run together, but Danya had a blast. The best way to describe her actions was ADHD not saying that she is, but she was everywhere and in a hurry too. If we had a theme song it would have been "flight of the bumblebee". Get ready for photo overload....





Mainland winter inside. Sledding and Ice fishing.






There were several preschools in the center with us. When we left they were just finishing up their picnic on the hill and used the boxes for sleds and did some Hawaii Sledding. I had to take a photo because I'm sure some of you didn't believe me when I said this was how locals go sliding.

Crafty Momma

Okay so most of the Christmas gifts I have made I can't share, at least not yet, but one crafty project I can show off a little bit. Like I said before Danya has been really into Thomas the Train lately. She has this set that we got with her birthday money, but for Christmas she is getting even more so we needed a bigger space than this left over piece of wood.
Buying a train table was out of the question too much money and not enough space, so I went out to the spare wood in our garage and found a larger one.
And Danya and I spent one afternoon sanding it so it has rounded edges, and then with the help of Google I drew out the island of Sodor, Thomas' home.
Painted it, sealed it, and voila!
Because it doesn't really wrap well, we've already started playing with it. I think she approves.
It still spends a lot of the time resting on the chair like the small board, but when it's time to play it fits perfectly on our coffee table. The whole thing cost me $4 for the sealer and some white paint. The rest we had around from previous projects. Sorry, but I just had to brag a little.

Catching up... again

Somedays it seems like there is never enough hours in the day. For me it has been one of those couple of weeks. I've been putting a great deal of my free time into sewing and creating Christmas gifts. There has been a lot of fun adventures in sewing that will be shared after Christmas because too many of you are receiving the fruits of those labors.

In the mean time we have also been doing a lot of new and exciting adventures. Those of you who are friends on Facebook know that we had a deep cleaning weekend to get ready for Christmas that included moving and cleaning behind all the furniture in our living room including the entertainment center. That is one of those big things that just never gets moved but it did that day, YUCK! Anyway, I did a lot of the cleaning of the nasty while Danya was napping, but I waited to shampoo the carpet until she woke up. I had taken the futon mattress outside and set it on our patio chairs and sprayed it with Fabreeze. When Danya woke up she decided she didn't want to be near the carpet cleaner so she went outside. I kept an eye on her easily since all the curtains were down for a washing too. Anyway all of a sudden it is quiet and I don't see her so I step out side and she says "hi" from her perch laying down on top of the futon mattress. It was too cute to scold, so I got the camera instead.

The Park! Our local park is a big grungy and I am so glad Danya can't read yet, but it still provides us with lots of fun adventures. It's so amazing to watch her discover new skills at the park. She can now climb all the ladders, and thanks to a little boy from the sped preschool class she thinks she knows how to work the firemans pole.

We've made some new friends this way to. This little boy gave Danya her first "flower". It was really a seeding piece of grass but Danya calls those flowers and he called it a pretty, so I think that counts. There is a part of me that hopes it doesn't happen again for a loooooong time and another part of me that hopes she is blessed with lots of flowers from boys growing up, but learns to be choosy too.

Then there is always story time at the Library. Danya's not so sure she likes giving certain books back though. We've had to renew one book a couple of times. I think even John just about has it memorized.

Tea Party with Momma

I've been rather remiss about posting about all the tea parties we have around here. For her birthday Danya received 3 tea sets. We tend to play tea party every day around snack time so that we can get to use real water in the tea pot. This day though we were pretending and what fun we had!

Thomas the Train

Danya has many toys, a good chunk of them stay on the shelf and don't get played with, I think that is true for most kids. As soon as I try boxing them up to give away she takes them out of the box and plays with them for several days straight. Not all her toys suffer this fate however. A few months back, I'm not even sure how it started, but all of a sudden she really got into trains. Specifically Thomas the Tank Engine. She loves them so much they go everywhere with her. We decided to get the take a long sets rather than the wood train sets because the trains are die cast so they don't show chips from being dropped or thrown. We used to take them in the car with us to run errands but somehow, even though they never left the car with us on purpose, 3 Thomas' ran away. It's a good thing every set comes with Thomas. Shh don't tell but she is getting more train tracks for Christmas, and you will notice the rather rough looking board that Thomas is set up on, well that is being retired for a bigger board that we had in our garage which momma spent today sanding and painting the island of Sodor on to. Whew what a challenge, but it turned out great.

You will also hear at the end of the video Danya's new sassy demand. "Leggo!" or let go. Argh it can be frustrating, but as the grown ups we have put our foot down and she does not get what she wants unless she can ask for it and it is appropriate to have it. I say it that way because a week ago she determined she didn't need to hold my hand in parking lots and would yell "leggo!" and throw one doozy of a tantrum, but I won. She is doing much better now, but still is a little bit bossy.