Things You Love... Part 1?

Illy bear-

I don't know if you've noticed a trend, looking back at these photos from whatever age you are now (at least I hope you're doing that... that was the whole purpose of this blog :D). There is one item that can be found in many, many photos of you... And many days on your body, as well. Can you guess from the picture below?

It's your rainbow necklace. The very first thing that you EVER picked out on your own, unprompted by either your Dad or I. Your very first fashion choice, the very first thing you felt a NEED to own.

You and I were shopping in Wal-Mart one day, walking through the toddler section to check if there were any clothes on super-clearance, when you looked up at me with this sweet little smile and pointed to the rack with all the hair thingamabobbers, gloves, hats, and other random accessories on it and said "Mama, I want THAT."

So I stopped, because we weren't even looking at that rack. It must have just caught your eye. I thought about it, and you had been very well-behaved that day, so I figured I would get you what you wanted. I picked up a headband and said "Oh, you mean this?"

"No, Mama. THAT." *points at the rack again*

I picked up a package of elastics: "This, you mean?"

"NO, Mama. THAT." *points*

I picked up a cute little baseball cap: "This?"

"NO, Momma. I want THAT." *points*

Finally, I came to the rainbow-colored necklace and bracelet set- "This?"

*Big grin cracks across your face* "Yeah. That." And you took it from me, immediately started playing with it, and remained content the rest of the way through the store.

Ever since that day, you've loved your necklace. It's your big statement. You wear it with anything- which is perfectly fine with me, since being multi-colored, it always matches :) You usually don't wear the bracelet- opting instead to let your Dora doll wear it as HER necklace.

When we got home the other day, you walked in the door and the first thing you said was "It's so nice to see you, necklace!" since you had forgotten it at home that morning. Now THAT's love. :D And (aside from your Mommy and Daddy- and of course, the rest of our awesome family), it's one of the first things you've developed an attachment to.

Erm... Text From Post?

For some reason, with the MSNBC widget I was using, I wasn't able to post my text- it just kept disappearing when I tried to include it. So here's what I had to say about that, mostly addressed to my beautiful daughter, whose future was in the balance during this election.

Text from post:

All that hoping and crossing our fingers and teaching you to chant "O-BAM-A, O-BAM-A" has paid off, my girl. Starting 1/21/2009, our country will be led by someone who I believe has the intelligence, the empathy, and the even-keeled manner to pull our country out of this awful recession and put some policies in place that actually benefit the mass majority of us middle-class American families.

Halle-frickin-lujah!

Election '08 Results- Canigedda woot-woot?!?!

TRICKERTREAT!!

We took Ilyana out trick-or treating on Friday night. We weren't sure how she would take it- she's a pretty brave little girl, so we weren't too worried that she would be afraid of the costumes or decorations, but I wasn't sure if we'd be able to get her to go up to houses and say "Trick or Treat" or "Happy Halloween" and I didn't know if she would understand the whole getting-of-the-candy thing.

So first, we went to this place called the Powerhouse Mall. It's basically a small indoor mall, probably about 20 stores in all, but each year they do a Halloween trick-or-treat where the employees will dress up and stand outside their stores passing out candy. When we heard about it, we figured it would be a good place to start, since it's inside and not too huge, and we'd be able to get her used to the idea before possibly venturing outside to trick-or-treat.

When we arrived, things were not looking up. The woman at the Yankee Candle outside the mall tried giving her candy, and Illy didn't want to take it, didn't want to talk to her, and was having a meltdown because (a) she didn't want to wear her hood, which had the kitty ears and whiskers on it; and (b) she saw another girl with the same princess treat bucket as her and forgot I was carrying hers. She ran up to the other girl, hysterically screaming "Mine! mine!" I hurriedly exlplained that I had hers, and the other little girl just had the same one... I was thinking, uh-oh, this is NOT going to be good.

Of course, in the middle of said meltdown and pulling at kitty ears in anger, I ran into my boss outside the mall. We were able to distract her from the kitty ear situation for just long enough to get her to smile for a pic and say hi to my boss' daughter, who she goes to daycare with, before she got angry and wanted to go inside.

This is Illy in her kitty costume and my boss' daughter in her adorable witch temptress costume frolicking in the background.


This is the picture we got her to smile for... And it's before the hood was rejected for the night, so it's one of the best!

Then we went inside. She refused to say any of the obligatory Halloween phrases at first. One of the nice employees gave her a blow pop anyway, and I think she thought that was it. She started running past all the other stores, clinging to her "poppy" for dear life! Some people tried to stop her and give her more candy, but I think she thought if she got something else, she'd have to trade in her poppy, because she was not having any of that! Whenever someone tried to hand her something, she'd go "NO! Mine!" and hold the poppy to her chest.

This is, apparently, the best *poppy* that was EVER made. She is not giving it up.


Luckily, there was another little boy who happened to come up to one of the stores at the same time as us. He said his little "trick or treat" and they gave him candy, and it was as if a light had gone on in her head. She immediately went "TRICKERTREAT!" and was given candy by the employee, which she tossed into her bucket like good little kitties do.

YAY!

Trick or treat success has been attained!

After that, she was a little more into it.

Me and the girl in the Powerhouse Mall. Trick or treat, here we come!


Not exactly sure what she was doing here, but it's cute nonetheless. Notice the absence of hood.


Hey Momma! I trickertreatin'. Like my poppy?

Then we decided to grab a bite to eat and go downtown for some real, outdoor trick or treating. The candy at the mall was just not enough to suppress our sweet tooth. Oh, what, you really thought it was all gonna be for her?!? Pshaw. As if. What does an 18 month old need with all that candy, anyway?! But don't worry. We'll share some of it with her. And we won't eat her poppys. Pinky promise.

I'm kicking myself now, wishing I had gotten more shots of the outside trick or treating. But it was getting a little crazy. We didn't really want to let her walk because the roads we were on weren't shut down, so there was still the occasional car, and also... she walks slow. lol. So, Will ended up carrying her most of the way (I offered to help, but she wanted Dada...) which left me carrying coats, purse, trick or treat goody bag and camera in between houses. So you can see why I was a little frazzled. But still. No excuse. I coulda done better. Here's what I got:

Mmmmm.... Poppy.



Random scream blow up guy I saw at someone's house and thought was cool. Now, though, I'm thinking it's a little creepy?



She's looking at the other kids, going "Suckerrrs! My Dad CARRIES me AND I get the candy. What?! I know, I'm the coolest."


Okay, so I took this pic with the night setting on my camera, which apparently is only supposed to be used with a tripod, because the shutter is open for longer, which causes the above blurring if you or your subject moves at all. Who knew? I'm still figuring this cam out. In any case, I liked the result even with the blurring. I thought it gave the pic a little bit of cool movement. You might not agree. Whatevs. It's a pic of her and some cute little fairy girl she was fascinated by on the street.

All in all, I would say trick or treating was a success. After initial worry on my part and anger on her part, and after finally giving in and allowing her to NOT wear the kitty hood (after she yanked on it incessantly, saying "ouch ouch"), she was good. She had fun. She liked seeing the other kids in their costumes and thought the decorations were funny. She even attempted to say Happy Halloween to some people, although it came out as "Happy happy." I think they got the point, though. And she learned what trick or treat is- and the merits of dressing up in a ridiculous getup in return for a free sugar high.

Poor Dada, though. His arms were practically falling off for the next two days after carrying her around all night. This little girl just isn't so *little* anymore.

*sigh* Why do they have to ever get big?

~The Little Girl Secret Friends Handshake~

Yesterday was our day to return to normal life.

Our daycare provider had been on vacation for the previous two weeks, so Illy girl had sort of been all around- the first week was at home with moi, the second week she was with her Dada on Monday (he has a 9-hour a day, 4 days a week schedule... yeah, I'm jealous too!) and then our upstairs neighbor and friend offered to babysit for us for the same rate we pay our sitter normally for Tuesday- Thursday... Thank god because I don't know what we would have done otherwise! Finally, on Friday she was with her Cey-cey and Uncle O-dizzle, who took the day off to spend some quality time with her. Of course, they went shopping... And of course, she came home with some cute suits! (See the pics in the entry from yesterday below- the dress she was wearing in the ones taken 10.18.08 was one of the outfits)

So we were anticipating that maybe she'd have a hard time going back to daycare. She's only been in daycare for about 3-4 months now, and has never before had that much time away and then gone back. We were a little worried that maybe she would forget the routine, be nervous when I dropped her off, be shy around the other kids... Or something else along the lines of screaming-crying-tantrum-toddler-bad-attitude-morningness.

Not so for my AWESOME Bendy Ruggle!

I walked through the door with her on one arm, her bag and lunch on the other... And immediately she glances down and sees her 2-year-old best friend Kaylynn. As soon as they meet eyes, she starts doing THIS lip thing! (Link leads to a vid on YouTube which is an explanation... it's hard to explain in words exactly what it is. Keep in mind in the video it's the parents doing it to the baby, but she was doing this herself)... As soon as Kaylynn sees Illy doing it, she starts doing it too, and Illy wiggle-worms her way down from me and runs over to her little friend. They both stand there doing this lip thing at eachother, and then the other little girl Katelyn joins in... And... Yeah. I wish I had my camera. It was the cutest thing ever! I've never seen such a weird secret handshake... lipshake? before in my life~

Oh, the things they do.

She must have missed her little friends... I'm so glad we've found such a great daycare provider- she feels at home there, which is more than we could have asked for!

MILESTONE MAYHEM~ Big Girl Bed!!!

I had the day off yesterday. I haven't had my job for over a year yet, so when we got our paid time off for the new fiscal year, I didn't get as much as most other people- it's prorated. Rather than waste my time by taking a whole week off at a whack, I decided I would just tack an extra day on a couple of our long holiday weekends so it would feel almost like a whole vacation... This was one of those weekends :)

I spent most of the day cleaning and cooking, trying to get the house looking nice so that I didn't have to deal with it for the rest of the weekend and could just relax. Well, I was trying to avoid doing the mountain of dishes in my sink (we don't have a dishwasher... ugh) and got the idea to transition Ilyana's bed to a toddler bed with the rails. I just knew she would be so psyched to be a "big girl" in her bed.

Will and I had discussed this a couple of weeks ago and hadn't really come to a conclusion. We thought she was ready for it, but were worried about spending a week dragging her back to bed, trying to explain that it was night-night time. So we sort of skirted around the issue and never came to a conclusion. Yesterday, I finally took matters into my own hands and did it myself :) It took me a while, because I couldn't find the right allen wrench (the one I needed was an "L" shaped one, and all I had was one of the straight ones) but I managed in the end.

She was really excited about it, she kept running across the room and flopping herself onto the bed, laying in it and saying "night night" pretending it was bedtime... It was really cute. Well, then real bedtime rolls around, and we were a little nervous as to what would happen.

We put her in her bed a little early with the t.v. and explained that if she got up, we would turn the t.v. off. Well, she got right up, and off went the t.v. Then we decided we'd put the child gate up in her doorway, so if she got up she could play in her room but she couldn't run around like a maniac and be fully up. After we put up the gate, she cried for a couple of minutes... And then it went quiet. I walked by the door and saw her laying in her bed, drinking her sippy. Ten minutes later, this is what we found:

WHAT A BIG GIRL!!! I was soooo proud of her, and I was blown away by how easy it was. At least for this first night. I am sure we'll have a couple more nights of fussing, but overall it was not nearly as bad as I expected. She was out like a light by 8:30

Of course we had to go on a pic-taking spree... Here are a couple other cute ones of Bendy in her big-girl bed for the first night!

My little angel peanut. I can't even believe how fast time has flown by. It's a little bittersweet, all this growing up she's been doing lately- where did my BABY go? She's a little girl now, with her own opinions, her own moods and preferences and ideas. *sigh* People told me when she was born that it would fly by, I just had no idea it would be THIS fast.