New Passports

Going for new passports this week, the kids and I. I thought the newborn photo was hard, well the 3 year old photo was not much better.

Sit up. Not so up. Put your head down. Lift your chin up. Look at me. Look at me. Don't look over there. Don't turn your head. Move your hair off your ears. Don't turn your head. Sit up. Don't smile. Don't show your teeth. No, you can't do that either. Almost done, Gemma. Almost done. Look at me...

Guinness was equally brutal. Pray they get accepted!

Survivor, anyone?

Usually we watch Dora before bed. So you can imagine my surprise when Gemma said,"Can we watch Survivor?" Adrienne was here and said, who do you want to watch on survivor? And Gemma replies, "Shambo!" (I guess you need to be following survivor to get it...)

She got some awesome new winter hand me downs, including some beautiful shoes. She insists they fit, even though they are 3 sizes too big. "Look," she says, "My feet are this big and they are this big! So they fit!". She was traispsing around ins some lovely pink dress shoes with pointy open toes and a small heel. Other treasures? A pair of white cowboy boots! She showed Chris and he said, No way. I don't like them. So she told Adrienne later that, "Daddy don't like them!" with her very serious face.

Gemma's baby

The imagination of toddlers...

Something Gemma loves to play with in the bathtub is hand towels and face clothes. She needs like 6 of them and then drapes them over the tap making a tower, or whatever. The last few months she's been pretending they are a baby.

She balls them all up and then cuddles it. And announces it is her baby. And she wants to bring her baby out. One time I got her a pan to put her baby in (you know those times you think it will be only one time and turns out to be the beginning of a very long tradition?) So now she always asks for a pan for her baby. (Usually it is a loaf pan, but sometimes it is an 8inch circle pan). She gently places her soaking, saggy, dripping baby into the pan, and refuses to let you dump it out. Weird, right? (I am reminded of Kaitlyn and her sleeping with the spatula days...)

turning the corner?

She slept completely through the night the last two nights. My toes are crossed, my fingers are crossed and every piece of wood in this house has been knocked on. Could it be we are rounding this corner?

Birthday

We are starting to get ready for the birthday party. Decisions to made on:
date
time
snacks? supper?
cake? There are about a million Dora cakes to choose from
decorations
guest list

Have some stuff organized, but not much. This weekend I'll get to it.

What does Gemma want? Hmmm, pretty much anything. She loves to say when we go out shopping, Can I get this for my birthday? It could be a pen, a drink, a book... On the real gift list is sand for her mini sandbox, construction paper, new paints, a dora doll with clothes I bought from Kijiji this summer, and some barrettes and hair things. A late birthday is good because any extra presents she gets can be saved until Christmas. She loves princesses, she needs some new coloring books.

We'll keep you in the loop.

Let's have a meeting

You can tell that Chris and I do a lot of church work; Gemma is all about meetings. She sits down with either one of us and says, "Let's have a meeting." So we pick a topic and ask eachother questions about it. We've had lots of meetings about Gemma's upcoming birthday, we talk about what we are going to do that day, or about Gemma's bedroom. Whatever. Today at Starbucks Chris and Gemma had a meeting about coffee. Chris asks her, What kind of coffee do you like? She says, "Strawberry." They go through some dialogue about cream or sugar, room for milk, ice or hot. Then Gemma takes on the role of interviewer and asks Chris what kind of coffee he likes. Black is his reply. Well, the little wheels in her brain start turning... She thinks about this for a moment and then retorts, "'I like pink coffee" (get it? Because she liked strawberry coffee but learned you should use a color when describing coffee, so she thought back to her answer and what color it was.)

papier mache

Had a great night of fun with Gemma. Took a nice walk, did some window shopping, then came home to finish up a papier mach project the nursery is working on for our church's 5th anniversary party this weekend. (Cinco de Pearlo). Gemma and I had to o the second layer because our friends are coming to help paint/decorate on Wednesday.

Her medicine makes her groggy and go to sleep really fast. Is it wrong of me to love that ;)

And today's lesson is...

Don't put sticks in your mouth. Especially if you found them outside. And used them to make nature stew with every rock, leaf, berry, flower, etc, you found while playing outside.

This is what happened at our house today. Gemma came in from outside, with her stick. I caught her with the end in her mouth and said, Gemma, that is so gross! Take that out of your mouth. Well 5 minutes later she starts bawling her head off that her mouth is hurting and burning. I look at it and it is all red around her lips and chin, and on her palm where she was holding the stick. Of course I assume the stick has been in poison or something and I run Guinness to the neighbour and we head to the doctor.

No official diagnosis (sigh, Taiwan) but got some medicine and a recommendation from the dr. not to eat sticks anymore. Thanks, buddy. The red is gone, but then at church she started crying because she said her hands hurt, but that seems to be ok now.

Such is life.