Thanksgiving Part 1

We had Thanksgiving at my parents' house on the Sunday before Thanksgiving day. We didn't get to go to church before, because we had to stop at the after-hours doctor to check on Aria's cold. she coughed all night, and her runny nose had really picked up. She was great for the doctor, and even asked if the doctor would look at her eye (she's used to the eye doctor we go to every 3 months). When the doctor asked her to open her mouth, she did right away! He was shocked at how good she was. It turned out that her ears and lungs were fine, so we really didn't have much to worry about.

We had a fun time as always! First stop was through the forest in my parents' backyard to my dad's farm. He's been building an barn for his tractors, but in this picture it looks like an ark.

Aria said "I check my email" whenever she played with this toy laptop.

Grandpa and Aria giving rides to Aria's buddies

Yellow means slow

On the way home yesterday from school Aria and I were talking about the stop lights. We usually do this because there are many and it occupies her. I always talk about how red means stop and green means go. She helps me by calling out what color the lights are. I was repeating for the millionth time "green means go and red means stop" in my sing-song voice and then I heard a little peep from the back saying "yellow means slow." Haha. Silly me forgot about the yellow! She's so smart!

Elmo's Gross

We are guilty. We forgot about cleaning up our pumpkin for a week. We did finally throw it out last weekend. Aria got a good look at it before we threw it out and hasn't stopped talking about it since (even a week later).

Before

After
Check out the little chew marks! Atleast we fed a (probably starving) chipmunk.

One of Aria's many discussions about the pumpkin. She is right though, it was GROSS!

Rainy Saturday

It was an icky day Saturday, so we spent the morning at the mall playing.

Weeeee!

Aria's sporting her new hat on the train!
She still didn't want to ride a horse. She tried it out and quickly decided it wasn't a good idea. Maybe next time.

One last ride on the train before we go!

ophthal-what?

Just to add to the flurry of posts in one night, I thought I'd mention our trip to the eye doctor this morning. We've been going every 3 months or so, for regular check-ups for Aria's patching. There has been some decent improvement, but the real cool thing is that Aria was awesome the whole time—though it didn't seem it would be that way at first... (as I write this, I see a squiggly-lined fade out to a flashback—diddle-liddle-oo! diddle-liddle-oo!)

This morning, she woke up fine, got out of bed, let me change her diaper, then the tantrums started.

First, she wanted the PJs off, without my help which she's able to do now. fine. "I won't help you, please don't get upset because I looked at you, Aria."

Then she had to dress herself. "But both legs won't fit into one pant leg." I even went so far as to take my pants off to show her how to do it. didn't help. she WOULD NOT let me touch her to help. She actually did get both legs into one pant leg at one point, and to show her it wasn't gonna work like that, I told her to go look at the school bus outside. she stood up, then kinda rolled over. we both laughed. :-)

It's now almost 7:45, we have to leave no later than 8:30, and I know that breakfast, getting her lunch ready, and getting her other school stuff together as well as us into the car can take up to 45 minutes. I decided to take matters into my own hands and put JUST HER FEET into the correct pant legs. Aria was then able to pull up her pants. "You need to pull them up in the back Aria, your pants are caught on your diaper."

Now the meltdown. The shirt. I stupidly put it on her all by myself. She's hyperventilating, pulling at the shirt with all her might trying to take it off while I take her downstairs. She's gyrating as I'm trying to place her in her chair for lunch. screaming at the top of her lungs. FUN! I stay calm. I make her breakfast which she of course doesn't want. she wouldn't even want juice and popsicles with lollipops on the side if I offered em at this point.

So. I reset. I took her out of her high chair. Laid her in the middle of the family room (because she kept throwing herself back when I tried to sit her down), and explained to her that we had to go to the eye doctor and she wasn't cooperating. "I know you love dressing yourself, and you hate it when your routine is messed up, but we have to work together this morning, please?"

I let her cry for about 2 minutes while I got her lunch and other things together. Time Management 101! Then, I went to her, hugged her, she returned the hug, and I talked to her some more about everything. She was ready to eat breakfast! I always let her take her time eating, I got totally ready, we got out the door at 8:40. not bad.

Now let me flashback again. over the weekend, I kept reminding her of Doctor Territo. It got to the point where I could say "Aria we're going to see Doctor Territo on Monday morning." and she would respond with "Doctor Rito look at eye. No hurt Aria." So when all these tantrums were happening, I was getting stressed for what could possibly happen when we got to the doctor's office. It was pretty bad on previous visits (slight flashback there).

well, the whole car ride, she was fine. we get there, she's fine. we get into the exam room, and when the doctor came in, she gave him a pouty face. I thought "oh no here we go..." But she didn't cry. The doctor went through his routine, and Aria took to it. she even answered his questions, and took a little test with pictures of objects on a screen, telling him whether it was a bird, car, hand, or birthday cake.

Since this was really the first time we were able to do these advanced tests with Aria, there was no real baseline until now. Now we have something to look forward to at the next visit!

Hide and Seek

Aria is a little obsessed with Hide and Seek. She's got most of the game rules down too. I think we need to brush up though because we tend to make it into a game of jump-out-and-scare-Aria. She enjoys it either way. I think you can tell by her giggles.

Halloween 2008

After picking Aria up from school a little early, we had some time to carve our pumpkin.

Of course we carved Aria's favorite character!

Goofydaddy (and yes, he is goofy) dressed as Sponge Bob to hand out treats (Sponge Bob tatoos-how appropriate?) for the kids. He had the voice down and everything.

Aria met up with Austin and they had so much fun going around to the neighbor's houses. Aria would yell, "come on guys!" as we walked down the street and Austin had "Trick-or-treat" down. It's like they were old pros as this stuff.

We met up with Sydney, another girl on the street, for a quick picture. Kids are just so cute all dressed up!

What's Halloween without a taste of the sweet stuff. Thankfully, there has been no mention from Aria about candy after Friday night. She sure did enjoy that lollipop!