Slides, Sand, & Sun

In the mornings before it gets too hot outside, Elise and I usually head to the playground. Sometimes Holly and her kids come too, which is fun. Elise loves going to the playground so much that sometimes she won't eat her breakfast very well because she is in such a hurry to get going.

Leighton and Savannah like to run ahead on the way there.

Even first thing in the morning, the Arizona sun is pretty intense.

my beautiful girl

Savannah on the big slide

Elise is quite the little climber!

"Come on, Mom!"

Ryland loves to talk into this pipe telephone.

Handsome man!

Savannah and Leighton (posing)

Thirteen months old and fearless!

Sweet Chocolate

Today my brother-in-law Jonathan got a dog. He has been wanting one for years, and he is really excited. The kids are all super excited too, Elise included. Did I mention that she is obsessed with dogs right now?

The new puppy is a chocolate lab, and Jonathan named him Hershey. The dog will be six weeks old tomorrow.

Leighton doesn't want to put him down. Ever.

He also made sure that I knew we couldn't take the dog with us when we move out. (Whenever that will be.)

Don't worry, Leighton. He's cute and all, but . . .

He likes napping on the cool tile

(because it's still really hot in Arizona in October).

He really is pretty cute.

Cobweb Commotion

Living with my sister Holly and her family has been a lot of fun.

Maybe too much fun sometimes . . .

In this video, we are trying to knock down a cobweb that is especially high. Jonathan had been throwing the duster like a javelin for a while without success, so we were trying to come up with a better method.

Never a dull moment in this house! Even when dusting. It's a wonder we didn't wake up any of the kids.

Movie Party

The kids had a movie party, which included popcorn and cardboard hats, and they had a lot of fun. The "hats" were from the packaging between the bowls in a set of new dishes Holly bought.

Here's Elise wearing hers.

I helped some with her hat decorations.

Here's Leighton, all ready for the movie to begin.

Ryland decorating his hat

Savannah coloring hers

Movie time!

Potty Mouth

Today I found Elise playing in the toilet water. When I called out her name so she would stop, she turned around to look at me and put her hand in her mouth. Toilet water up to the elbows. Toilet water in her mouth. I guess it could have been worse; at least the bowl had been flushed since it was last used.

The toilet paper picture above was from a different day. Unrolling the TP is another favorite activity.

Obsession: Dogs

Elise moved on from elephants to dogs as her favorite things. And by her favorite things, I mean her obsession. She constantly finds books that have pictures of dogs in them, opens the books to that page, and signs away, trying to vocally say "dog" at the same time.

Of course, her favorite dogs are real dogs. We were in the Apple store at the mall recently, and Elise and I were waiting for Matt to finish drooling over an iPad (which can take a while), when Elise spotted a man with a dog on a leash. I tried to let her look at it from a safe distance without him noticing, but she was so enthusiastic that he eventually invited us to come pet it.

Here she is showing me this toy dog.

Notice the book she opened at her feet.

Besides two different counting books with dog pages in them, dogs are also featured in Go, Dog, Go! and Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? I know because dogs are all Elise wants to talk about these days.

[poor baby has bruises on her legs from her shots :( ]

Better than looking at books, though, is seeing and hearing the real things. From the backyard, Elise can usually hear dogs barking. Occasionally she even gets the treat of seeing people exercising their dogs on the greenbelt.

She signs "dog" in these videos. The baby sign is patting your leg, but sometimes she pats her chest instead, especially when she's standing up.

Maybe if Elise still loves dogs this much when she is much, much older, we can get her one.

(The fact that I'm even considering this is evidence of how much I love this kid.)

Obsession: Elephants

Elise was obsessed with elephants recently. She learned the sign for elephant, and that was all she wanted to talk about for a while.

It all started with these elephant figurines. They are in the kitchen on top of the cabinets, and for a while Elise insisted on pointing at them constantly throughout each meal, refusing to take another bite until I told her what they were. Elephant. Elephant. Elephant. About a million times per meal.

She moved on to noticing them in books. I never realized elephants were pictured in so many children's books until this kid kindly pointed them out to me.

Here she is wearing her elephant attire.

playing with her toy elephant

signing elephant

Now she has moved on to another obsession. But we'll save that for a different post.