Pommes de Terre

Yup, that's right, apples... of the ground. A.k.a., potatoes! Rebecca has taken to removing potatoes from my little bag of highly treasured white fleshed vegetables (a rare treat because of Justin's allergy to them!), and eating them as if they were apples! She takes little bites out of them all over, and thankfully just basically takes the peeling off, because I want my potatoes! It's meaning I'm having to cook them more often, but I suppose since I've had them for 2 weeks already, I probably should be using them up sometime soon so they don't go mushy. I mentioned to my dad this evening that she was eating the potatoes like they were apples, and he told me they were great... with salt! Now I know where she gets it!!! He even went so far as to tell me that it's even better to cut them into chips (fries) and salt them, and then they're raw potato sticks!

The above picture is Rebecca's solution to the extra pair of shoes in our house! Justin was showing her how to put the shoes back on the shoe rack, and about 5 mins later he walked out to find her carefully balancing my crocs on the backs of his crocs! :-) She loves to take the shoes off and put them back on the rack now! She also loves to help me put things into containers... so she actually helped me put her toys away this evening, and pick up her bath toys... and she likes to shelve her books! If only she would actually leave them on the shelf when she was done with them, I would have about 1/2 the work! :-)

Rebecca showing me her very dirty finger!

Our neighbour realized just a few days ago just how much bigger than Rebecca her little one is (said neighbour's child is in the picture in the below post), and gave us a very large quantity of clothing. I'm pretty sure it would have filled two trash bags, seeing as it had one nearly overflowing, and then it was overflowing from a large box as well. Justin and I sorted through it, and got rid of about 50% of it already, and then some of it is kind of "wait on it" type decisions, and others are ones we just LOVE... and the sizes go from newborn all the way up to 2T! So... while it sounds like we were just given a lot of clothing for her to wear right now, we weren't, actually. Unfortunately, while a lot of it is gorgeous (and is really great brand names like Carter's), it's also a lot of summer weight stuff. If we happen to have a girl that needs summer clothing in the 6-12m range, we're VERY well equipped! But, with Rebecca I'm having to put stockings and sweaters on along with the adorable clothing. Oh well... who can complain about free clothing?? Especially when there are actually outfits that fit her, right? :-)

Trying to share a leaf with me!

Also with the clothing came a few pairs of shoes in Rebecca's size (our neighbour was thrilled that she fits a size or two smaller than her daughter, lol), and so now Rebecca seems to have two favourite pairs of shoes. One of her favourites is still the pink pair my mum and sister sent down for her, and the other is this little pair of silver and pink "Nikes". She was actually trying to get Justin to put them on her feet this morning as he was getting ready to go to his allergy appointment! However despite the fact that he did bring the two of us along with him, he failed to put any shoes on her feet! And then, the lady who gives Justin his allergy shots noticed she didn't have shoes on her feet and got excited about the size, because we commented it was hard to find people giving away the size 3 shoes, and said she had stuff she was going to bring for Rebecca (including various shoes and sweaters and outfits) as well, lol! I feel almost like I'm running a "free clothing shop", with how much clothing I bring in and send out my doors! Thankfully freecycle works well... when the people don't decide to be "no-shows"!

This afternoon I took Rebecca out to play in our lovely wet grass and muddy lawn and flower bed... and she had a blast. I'm sure her tummy has mud in it, because I didn't realize she was chomping down on clumps of dirt!! Anyway, she had a great time collecting white rocks and tossing them into the little puddle at the end of the driveway, and trying to see just how close she could get to the water in the ditch. :-) And, she ended up completely covered in mud because she went digging through my flower bed, while sitting on top of the dirt! She had a great time though, so I'm not complaining... until the stains won't come out!

Speaking of stains that won't come out, does anyone have ideas for how to get stains from an apple out of a top? For whatever reason, Rebecca and apples almost always end up meaning that there are little brown stains on her shirts wherever the juice touches, and I can't get it out. I've tried soaking it in OxyClean, a paste of OxyClean, Shout, and if it wasn't involving a nice orange colour, I would be tempted to try bleach... Currently I'm rather tempted to try out that new "Clorox2 Free" stuff they have out, since it's supposed to bleach stains but leave the colours alone...


Anyway, there's a little bit of what's going on around here. :-)

We're About to Take a Walk

But first, for whatever reason Shannon asked me if I've been taking any pictures of Rebecca lately, so I thought perhaps I should put some up?!

Rebecca and the little boy from across the street had a good time playing with her ball for about 15 minutes one day. He usually wants to be off playing with the big boys, but there was literally no one around for him to play with aside from her, so he sat down and played quite nicely!






Rebecca just loves to pet the guinea pigs. This is one of the baby guinea pigs, though they all look about the same size as each other now!


This is a picture of Rebecca and our neighbour's little one. Believe it or not, that other little one is only 7 weeks older than Rebecca is! That gives you a very good size comparison-- the other child is pretty much "average" for a 12-15 month old child!

Rebecca has a great time playing with this little drum. We take it with us to handbell practise, because it is one of the few things she actually will do without getting into trouble there!



And... this is just a picture of a dress I wore when I was a baby. Not sure, but I'm suspecting it was my Christmas dress...?!

And, Rebecca has started making use of her little rocking chair lately. She often needs help sitting in it, but she likes to sit and look at a book, or just hang out in it for a few minutes every once in a while through each day.

Socks, Shoes, and Other Odds and Ends

Well, we finally have a pair of size 3 sneakers for Rebecca, courtesy (indirectly, I think) of Jenn. My mum and sister sent them down. So, Rebecca finally has a pair that fit! They're actually just a little on the big side, but sure look a lot sturdier than the only pair of size 2's we'd been given here. They also sent a cute little pair of Sunday/dress shoes down, and every single person at church that saw them commented on how cute they were, and we're still getting comments, lol. :-)

And, since we're now putting shoes on her feet when we're going places, she's also wearing socks more often. I'm seeing more and more what grips on the bottoms of socks are for. She's really not very good at staying upright in slippery socks on a wood floor! Of course, she wasn't doing so well in the balance department all day today. I'm starting to wonder about excess fluid... or potentially an infection? in her ear, perhaps, since she's been tugging at her ears a lot in the last couple of days, and has been fussy two nights in a row... she doesn't seem to be in pain though, so I don't know. And then, to make things that much better, we have no idea what our niece has, and so don't know if it is airborne or anything at all about how it spreads... and our neighbour's baby had pink eye on Saturday, and was playing with Rebecca on Sunday... and then they finally mentioned it to me today. *sigh* So, I'm hoping we kept Rebecca far enough away from our niece and anything potentially contaminated over the weekend, and that she won't have picked up pink eye from the neighbour's kid.

In with the two pairs of shoes, was a bucket of snap beads, which Rebecca gets a kick out of removing from the bucket... and then she spends time putting the lid back on... and taking it off... and putting it on... and taking it off... it seems to be a fun "game" to her! She hasn't quite figured out how to put the beads together into chains, but she's discovered that I am quite effective as a tool to use in the putting together of these things, so when she gets the beads out we sit on the floor for about 10 minutes as I put them together and she takes them apart, over, and over, and over again. :-)

Lately

We've been having a lot of fun watching Rebecca and seeing all the connections she is making lately! One connection I would like her to make is that she cannot simply walk straight off our front porch without expecting a drop. She has fallen and hit her head two or three times doing that. However, other things are really neat to see!

We were waiting for people to arrive for sign language class on Wednesday night, and the door to the church was locked. She had my car key, and when she realized that the door was locked, she kept trying to figure out how to get the key to go into the lock in order to open the door!


At choir practise a couple of weeks ago, she was pushing a chair around the room, and she got the seat portion under the (grand) piano, and checked about five times to be sure that the back of the chair was going to fit, and then proceeded to push the whole thing under the piano to the other side... and then used the back of the chair as a "stage" so she could clown for all the people on the other side of the piano. I don't think there was a straight face in the room!


Rebecca likes to carry a pen or pencil around with her a lot of times lately. She finds her writing utensil lying out, and then goes off in search of paper. When she has both items, she will wander around for 1/2 an hour or more, pretending to write. The most we've seen come of this is little scribbly lines, but it's kind of cute to watch her do it anyway. :-)


Rebecca loves to talk to Daddy on his way home from work, and has recently started holding not just my phone up to her ear, but any phone she finds... which is funny, because almost all of my phone calls are done on speaker, and she doesn't see many other people use telephones, so we sort of wonder how she figured out how you're supposed to use a telephone!


And, recently, I've started noticing that most times Rebecca holds books right-side up now! And of course, turns page by page. And gets upset if we skip pages in her numbers book. Which, as mentioned, is her favourite, and drives us nuts! :-)

Fun With Daddy!

Rebecca and I hung out on the front lawn with Justin for a while last week, and I took advantage of an extra adult to get some fun pictures. :-)



(well, except for that one, since I'm in it... Justin took that!)



Rebecca just LOVES to fly through the air, and Daddy loves to toss her around, so they have a lot of fun when they have the opportunity to play like this!




Justin has also recently started doing what is shown in the following series of pictures. He swings Rebecca back and forth upside down, and then flips her up in the air and catches her on the way down. It makes my heart stop every time, but she loves it, LOL!







And, finally, what would a day of fun with Daddy be without giving him a nice, slobbery kiss at the end? :-)

Various Pictures from September

Rebecca really likes to empty her "toy bin" boxes. We only have one available in her reach, so as to keep the toy mess down a little!

My apologies for the many shots with part of her head cut off. It is becoming increasingly difficult to take pictures of Rebecca, because she thinks it is really neat to look directly into the lens of my camera! However, a lot of them turned out quite cute, so I thought I'd share them. :-)

Playing with her balls is a favourite activity of hers! Oh, and peek-a-boo as well, as evidenced in the above picture!

That book is her absolute favourite book. It's "My First Numbers Book" by DK publishing... and I really don't see what is so interesting about it. But, she loves it. She gets us to read it over, and over, and over... I've got it memorized!


This is an outfit I wore when I was a baby. Admittedly, the pictures of me in it are from when I was about 6 months old, but I thought I'd take a couple of pictures of her in it anyway. :-)


Rebecca got this apple for herself out of the bag of apples, and proceeded to eat a fair portion off it! We were quite surprised she went further than a couple of bites, but apparently she thought it was great!

The silly faces of Rebecca:

Rebecca likes to go digging in my garden. I'm not quite sure how I'm going to keep my new bulbs and flowers in the garden with how much she digs out, but it seems she is often most interested in pulling rocks out and chewing on them, so perhaps the plants will survive.

How to climb down the step (Rebecca's version):

And then when you're done going down you have to climb back up! :-)


Rebecca likes to look in when we're outside, and out when we're inside. It's quite amusing. She's trying to see over the bottom of the door by climbing it in the picture.