Baby Curls

Piper's hair started growing faster just about a month ago. The same thing happened with Morgan, right around 12 months. Morgan's has a slight wave, but Piper has surprised us with CURLS! Her hair is so soft and the hair in the back and over her ears are curling all over. I love to play with it any chance I get.

Had to add this gap-toothed grin. Still only six teeth.

Getting blonder too

Curls on the sides

Dora Play-Doh

Morgan's favorite new activity is Play-Doh! Gram B. got her a Dora the Explorer set that she just loves. I usually sit down with her and help her roll the dough out and make sure the "cookie cutter" pieces are properly pushed down...but more and more she is doing it by herself.

The Dora set has all kinds of fun stuff in it. Right now I'm just giving Morgan the basics, the dough, roller, cutters and one mold. The additional items in the set are more molds, a whole "forest scene" with backdrop (I have her use the bottom part of the scene with the water and places to put the cut out shapes). We'll get to those eventually, but for now they are a little much.

Morgan knows where to put the shapes when they are cut out. The dough colors are fun, yellow, lavender and a bright blue.

See the blue "Boots" character on the picture of the bridge? That is the one mold I am showing her how to use. This particular time I had some things to do and when I came back to the table she had put the correct amount of dough in the mold and pressed it together all by herself! All I had to do was help her get it out. She was so proud of herself.

We mostly do Play-Doh when Piper is napping. If Piper is awake she wants to play too, unfortunately she just wants to put the dough in her mouth and they fight over all the cutters and other pieces. I try to keep things even. Morgan usually takes a longer afternoon nap than Piper, so I have activities especially for Piper during that time, like coloring and blocks.

To The Store

Morgan is now wearing Pull-Ups instead of a diaper. I swore I wouldn't do this, but I had to give in. We were having epic battles over diaper changes, she just didn't want to lie down and let me change her. It would become a game where she would run into the kitchen and want to play "I'm gonna get you!"...which means I'd have to run into the kitchen, tickle her and carry her back into the living room. Ugh! Exhausting. Now that she wears the Pull-Ups, she can take them off herself and only needs a little help to get a new one on. No more battles. I hope it's worth it, because it kills me how expensive these things are. Hopefully it's a short phase until she decides she wants to use the potty on her own.

Now, these Pull-Ups are also fascinating to Morgan because they have "Princesses" on them. Disney princesses, to be exact. In fact, we don't call them Pull-Ups, we call them "Princess Pants," (thanks Gram). She has learned all their names. Tiana, Belle and Cinderella. This is different from Cinderella, Snow White and Sleeping Beauty who are on her sneakers. Her overnight Pull-ups have Sleeping Beauty on them too, appropriate.

There are two patterns on the Pull-Ups, one with Belle alone and another with all three princesses. The other day Morgan looked at the one with only Belle and said "Tiana and Cinderella went to the store." Huh?! I was puzzled for a second, then I laughed. There was one time we went to our neighbor's house to see if their little girl could play. They were not home. Morgan got upset and didn't understand why her friend wasn't there. So, in the moment I decided to say "Mya went to the store," (this is how we say we are going to the grocery store). That seemed to make sense to her and she stopped being upset. A few times that night she looked out the window, didn't see her friend and said "Mya went to the store!" So, now that she noticed Tiana and Cinderella weren't on that particular Pull-up...she decided that they must have gone "to the store." OK, I can work with that. No, princesses probably don't need to go to the grocery store, but that is beyond her understanding at this point. Its just nice to see her thought process.

It's all about the "bribe"

The last two weeks after preschool I've had to deal with HUGE meltdowns trying to get Morgan in the car to leave. She loves to run up and down the grassy hill right next to the school. Two weeks ago she ran and ran and ran and just didn't want to leave. Last week it was raining and she refused to listen when I told her it was too wet.

This week I figured out how to get her in the car without screaming and tears. The bribe. Morgan LOVES these Kashi granola bars that I buy for myself. She doesn't get them very often, and when she does it's a special treat. I snuck one in my purse this morning. Once she had run up and down the hill many times and all of her friends were leaving I decided to test things out. I said, "Morgan, I have a granola bar for you in the car." She immediately started saying "Granola bar! Granola bar!" and made her way right over to the car. When we got there I pushed it further and told her she had to get into her car seat before she could have it. There was no messing around...she got right in her seat! I gave her the granola bar and once I packed Piper in we were on our way in record time!

This didn't used to work for Morgan...she usually would ignore me and keep doing whatever I wanted her to stop doing. This is encouraging in that she is understanding what I am saying. I'm sure this won't work in all cases and her stubbornness will prevail, but for this purpose it worked well. Maybe I should consider giving her pieces of granola bar if she uses the potty? Hmm...

Swiffer Sisters

Morgan and Piper have suddenly become fascinated with our Swiffer mop! I don't know why, since I don't use it a ton, but they certainly get the idea that it is used to clean the floor. We keep it in our garage, so most days Morgan asks for the "swifter" and I help her get it. Then she both pushes it in front of her and drags it behind her all over the downstairs. Piper likes to try too when Morgan is not using it. Maybe I should recruit them soon to help me clean the kitchen floor!

Band-aids

Morgan has discovered band-aids!! Fortunately there are no boo-boos involved (or "ouchies" as we call them). That would be confusing to call them "boo-boos" because that's what we call her!

Of course she loves them because they have Dora and Hello Kitty on them. At one point last week she had six of them on, three on each arm! Even with baths she managed to keep them on for several days. Lately she's started to take them off herself, so they don't have much longevity anymore. We've run into problems here and there where she keeps trying to put more on..up to a few times a day. We tell her we need to "save the band-aids for the ouchies." I think she kind of gets it... and tells us every once in a while that the band-aids are "all gone." We just nod our heads and agree with her.

Postponed

I meant to post about this earlier this week, but now it's suddenly Friday and I'm just now getting a little time to blog.

We postponed Morgan's evaluation with the child psychologist. It turns out that this particular doctor is not in-network and cannot be approved as such quickly. We would like to avoid paying out of pocket for this evaluation. It will take up to 90 days for her to be added to our in-network plan, but hopefully it will be faster. She told us she will contact us as soon as she receives approval and will get Morgan scheduled for her next evaluation slot.

I really wanted this to happen and considered forking over the money. I just want to know where she is at so we can move forward with whatever the diagnosis is (or isn't). Of course, patience has never been one of my strengths, so this is hard on me. So we will spend a while longer not knowing quite what we're dealing with, but the psychologist assured me that it wouldn't make much of a difference. Morgan has a good therapy plan in place now until she's three in December. Hopefully we'll be able to get the evaluation done around that time anyway.