At the zoo

Cold and rainy, but Addie still goes and goes... Calvin sleeps.

Addie at school

I took a few pictures of Addie at school last week. She was so engrossed in the playdough she didn't look up. Her favorite room is dramatic play where we have a new theme every two weeks, right now it is market so there are foods and cans and shopping carts.... Addie loves the shopping carts.

Christmas Books

The tradition of a Christmas book off the shelf each night is going well. Addie seems to like most Christmas books, tonight was Babar, which was way too long... So there was some paraphrasing going on in the Alvarado house.

Farmers market

We went to farmers market after dropping Damien off at the airport. The highlight for Addie was getting to use her umbrella and stomping in the puddles. I am trying to teach rain etiquette since some of the stomps got others wet (fortunately it was mainly me and not others).

Pizza pizza

Addie is still really good at sharing; she gave Calvin the entire pizza from her set which Calvin promptly stuffed in his mouth.

Calvin is sitting

Calvin can sit on his own for a few minutes now. Addie likes to give him a hug which usually makes him keel over, I guess it isn't a bad way to go.

Addies Shopping Cart

Addie wants a shopping cart for Christmas. It is the only thing she says she wants and of course we got her tons of other stuff but no shopping cart. This week at the Y they added a shopping cart to the kids area; the same one I had ordered the day before. I was happy to see that she played with it nonstop while at the Y. I hope it is the same at home.

Picking out a Tree

We went to get our Christmas tree last weekend. Calvin feel asleep so he didnt partake in the selection. We asked Addie for input but after walking the rows several times she just kept saying "Ummm...." and "No, not that one". After about 5 minutes we over-rode her feeling that there werent any quite good enough and picked out a tree that we thought would fit well in our living room. 

Fall cleanup

Our trees are now bare, and they are big trees. Fortunatley we have gardners but they dont cleanup all of our leaves that blow onto the neighbors sidewalk so we spent an hour cleaning them up, all 6 bags full. Addie loved helping, she had a small rake and enjoyed moving the leaves around (sometimes the opposite way we had hoped). Calvin spent the time in the backpack and was content watching others work.

Addie at the Market

Crazy driver, loves to pull things off the bottom shelf... Dad gave in and got the huge car cart.

New Christmas Tradition

I read about a tradition that I thought would be nice for Addie since she loves books. Each night during the month of November we open 1 book from a row of 23 wrapped and placed along the mantel. There are so many great Christmas books, my mom would always get out the Christmas books each yerar and I remember how fun it was to get to read them all again. The first book was Elf on the Shelf (Addie has named her elf Elfie and loves seeing where he is and saying "Hi" to him). She wants a shopping cart for Christmas and is starting to get the whole Santa brings gifts to good little children. The second book we read this morning while Damien was still here was the Polar Express. Over the next few weeks we have Babar's Christmas, Madelines Christmas, Carls Christmas, the Wild Christmas Reindeer and many more. I am looking forward to reading them all with her, the last one will ne the Night Before Christmas on December 24th. It should be a fun tradition for all of us. You can see all the books wrapped on the mantle in the picture, so far Addie hasnt climbed up to get them down and unwrap them all; but I probably will have to check on her if she is too quiet in the living room for more than a minute or two.

The Flu...

I have a backlog of pictures to publish but with Damien gone most of the week and then him home for the weekend, posting things seemed to fall by the Wayside. To add to that I am pretty sure that Addie has the flu, she threw up this morning before breakfast and then was fine the rest of the morning so I thought it was a blip. Until the ride home from the airport where she threw up all over herslf and the carseat (plus the door and wondow). Good times cleaning that up all by myself. She doesnt seem phased, she still wants to go to the park, she sees Calvin spit up all day so she just equates it to being like Calvin, poor thing.

Probably wont get much posting done until our house is puke free.... the upside is that I am giving everything a through cleaning (I think the last time her carseat was washed was about 6 months ago). Plus I found all sorts of good things under her carseat that should have been cleaned out a while ago. Plus, I get to launder the couch now too; by the time Damien comes back from this next week in Dallas the house will be totally disinfected and clean everywhere. There is always a silver lining.

Both Addie and Calvin are napping now so I will try to get through a flurry of posts from the week that I havent gotten up.