late Christmastime pictures

This is eating at my mom and dad's for dinner.
This is T and cousin A playing in the cribT and cousin G at Muggy and PawPaw's house
T opening some play food at home
B with his new DS game system and me with my new pots; T with her puzzles!

sleeping

Since we'd gotten back from Jordan in July I've had to ride around in the car for her nap. I did that for many months until around early December when she didn't want to nap any more. Now she'll take occasional naps after watching the aforementioned Toy Story or other video, or on the way to pick up B from school, which is at 3pm and kinda late for a nap. So on days when she doesn't nap I try to bathe her early and then get to sleep by 8, which occurs in my bed after watching Toy Story and/or Pooh and then maybe reading a couple books (these days she wants Herbie the Hippo and Cruzer the Crocodile in Spanish). But oftentimes, too, she just wants to fall asleep to football which is a good thing we have the NFL network! I try not to be lying down with her as she drifts off into slumberland and she does very well with just staying in bed and calling for me sometimes without getting out of it. After she sleeps, I put her in her crib--which is soon to be dismantled because she tries to climb out of it and I know another family that needs it-- and she stays in her bed all night sometimes but this week she's been waking at the 2-3AM hour which is when I bring her in bed with me/us.

Toy Story & conjunctions

For the past few weeks, she's been wanting to watch "Buzz & Woody" which we have in English and then purchased in Arabic. Nemo and Pooh have been on the back burner because she's all consumed with Buzz and Woody! She still asks for Dora and occasionally Nemo now and will want Pooh AFTER she watches Toy Story at night. She's a character.

I've noticed with her language that she's been using "by" and "and" and "so" recently...

We started again with playgroup, in the nice new big room, and we stayed much longer than our group time because of the big room.

new language development & interests & news

I am amazed at her language development over the past months. If I tell her to say "gracias" and it's to a person who doesn't speak Spanish, she'll say "thank you" instead of gracias. It's also cute how she'll say thank you/ you're welcome even though she's not the one who is supposed to say you're welcome. "wha that means?" "wha that is?" she's asking a lot. I tell her how to say that in Spanish and she'll say "que esto". ... she's getting to be more aware of bobos and if I accidentally scratch her or poke her, she might say "ow, no hit me, mama" OR she'll say "I forry" which she does sometimes even though she doesn't need to say that for hitting something. She needed band-aids tonight for bobos on her fingers, I think from paper cuts.

She says fo-ah for sofa, pienda for pierna (leg), no instead of don't (as per in Spanish).

Oh and this past month she's loved Winnie the Pooh and Buzz/Woody from Toy Story...along with Nemo and Dora too. She's not liking to take walks too much in the stroller but she'll sit in her push car or walk herself to look at the Christmas lights around the neighborhood.

She's slept in the bed with me this week while Baba works and her crib is full of stuffed animals she was playing with one day (and B slept in his room with his friend J and then cousin A). So she's slept mostly through the night but awoke around 6/7 calling out things in Spanish/English (zapatos, haga do yit, guantes, laughing or crying--apparently vivid dreams). For some reason for the past 2 weeks she's woken up needing gloves and while the gloves on, gloves off, cream on her hands, cream on my legs, then gloves again episode hasn't repeated in the past few days, she still wants gloves.

with the cousins

T loved playing with cousin A, letting her rub her hair while almost falling asleep. A and B decorated their cupcakes with my homemade frosting and sprinkles, and A,B,G, and T loved the lights at the Tammany Trace park area

Santa Claus

She loved Santa at the 3 parties she saw him--family party, tot group party, and taekwondo party.

toilet training

She's doing pretty well with the potty. She doesn't want to wear diapers while going out and we've successfully gone out to Michael and Jessica's for the Christmas party, out to Lela's to see Nye and Debbie, and to the tot group Christmas party and then to the mall today. At the mall she announced she had to pee so I dropped everything with Baba and picked her up to run to the bathroom. We made it in time! Yay. She's gone to her nap the past 3 days without a diaper and of the 3 days, today she didn't wake up with a wet bed. But she slept for about 2 hours each day and that's when she awoke crying that she'd wet the bed. But today I had to wake her up to go get Bekher from school so we had a dry bed.