Entries from January 2011 ↓

She likes the trampoline.
It was going to be a holiday gift, but after assembling her play kitchen Eric ran out of steam. I leave assembly to Eric, because he has the gift.
Anyway, it was assembled during naptime yesterday and this morning felt a little like Christmas again.
It might have been excitement overload to add this one Christmas morning anyhow.

Here is a still photo.

But to get a real sense of the love you need to see it in action.

Ezri loves the large hot dog poster over the checkout at IKEA.
She used to be all about the Big Baby with his bottle of milk on the wall over the Target Grocery, but now GIANT HOT DOG is the thing.
It’s nice that the giant hot dog is over checkout and can be used as an incentive to leave kid’s IKEA which has a slide and head towards the car.

Don’t let that second face fool you. She liked it. That’s her food attack face.

Today Ezri napped on top of me and Sushi cat napped on top of her. It was just like The Napping House. Sadly, due to the napping, no one was available to photo document.

You never know if you don’t try, right?

I enjoy Ezri’s observations. Today she told me, “Cookie monster has no nose.” That one’s just true.

Awhile ago she pointed at a photo of my grandpa and grandma in their youth smiling at each other around a tree and said, “Grandma scratch tree.” She had decided that the way my grandmother’s hand was resting on the tree meant she was using it as a scratching post.

When she and her dad were pretending to peel a plastic orange she brought over her Miss Kitty puppet and used the puppet’s paw against the peel saying, ‘scratch, scratch.”

Ezri watches children’s programs over at the babysitters, but we don’t watch T.V. much at home. Ezri had this to say about that, “Jenny’s house T.V. Ezri’s house just cats. Just cats.”

Ezri likes to announce that she’s “getting bigger.”

She’s still not big enough for my sweatshirt.

Yep, there ain’t no party like Ezri’s tea party!
The attention span on Ezri is growing. Half hour tea parties, forty-five minute play dough sessions and fort building adventures. . .
Ezri will also sit through much longer books these days.
The possibility of actual plot increases.

Clifford’s Puppy Days by Bridwell is a current favorite. Ezri likes when Emily Elizabeth bathes Clifford in a soup bowl and when he gets covered in whip cream after in an incident in the local bakery.

Hairy Maclary Scattercat by Lynley Dodd
Another requested title. In this one a dog named Hairy Maclary is out chasing cats until he runs into Scarface Claw, the meanest tom in town, who proves too much and chases Hairy Maclary all the way home. Ezri delights in the appearance of Scarface Claw and the turnabout of the chaser being chased. Come to think of it she likes Scarface Claw in the original Hairy Maclary too.

Tuck Me In! by Dean Hacochen
This book is a clever one that makes me think I really should’ve thought of that. Each page features a baby animal in bed who needs to be tucked in. The next page is a half page that is the animal’s blanket that the reader folds over the animal by turning the page. Now the animal’s head is still visible but the rest of the animal is tucked in under the blanket. The text simply asks who needs to be tucked in and then says goodnight to the tucked in animal. Ezri enjoys tucking in the baby animals. I enjoy the detail that the front endpaper has the animals awake and the final endpaper shows them asleep. Ezri likes to flip between the endpaper pages saying, “asleep, awake, asleep, awake.”

After the fun of snow angels earlier, Ezri decides to reenact snow angels on our kitchen floor.

Making a snow angel in the yard. . .

“Let me be your salty dough
Or I won’t be your toy at all
Honey let me be your salty dough”

Today Eric made play dough in four colors in the kitchen.
Ezri spent 45 minutes playing with the dough.
I sang her my new Salty Dough song and she was suitably impressed.

Here are some photos with Ezri quotes.

“Ezri cut. Ezri cut.”

“Ezri squish.”

“Ezri poke.”

“Ezri have headband.”

We also used cookie cutters to make play dough animals who frolicked together playing catch with play dough balls.
The play dough hippo liked to “kick, ball, kick.”
While the play dough rabbit preferred to hop up and “throw ball.”
Good thing that hippo was there to catch it and kick it back.
She also made a play dough tower and wore a play dough mustache (photo snapped too late- drat!).

Ezri even remembered the important no mouth rule of play dough for the entire play time. Good job, kiddo.