Fairy making Fairies

I got this little craft set for Mia a while back, but decided to wait until she had a little more attention and fine motor skills before we'd put it together.  It's a set where we created these fairies using the provided pipe cleaners, flowers and yarn, among other things.  It also came with a little fairy house for her new friends to hang out in after we put them together.  Mia had fun gluing the green tissue paper to the roof in chunky pieces and then painting the whole thing in glitter glue.  She then put insect stickers all over it, which is always a good time.  While the glue dried, we put the fairies together.  I say we, but this was more Mommy than Mia, although she did put the heads on and chose all the colors and flower dresses.  She did a pretty good job, I think.  The colors were pretty coordinated.  We had used all the flower petals and yarn when I realized that we still had one more fairy to make.  Now, most people would probably let that go and just be happy with four, but I had to find a way!  All we had left was one ugly orange and creme long petal so I took some leftover tissue paper and cut and shaped it into a flower and folded the orange petal to make it look like two.  I also had to use black sewing thread for her hair since we were also out of yarn.  I think she turned out pretty cute, considering she was the forgotten one.  Then I just had to draw the little faces on the wooden heads.  We had a lot of fun with this - more than I expected.

It had only been a day before Mr. Zig-Zag got a hold of the little forgotten one.  Poor, poor Petri.  Once left on the floor, she never had a chance...

Hideaway

Mia has a play tent that she's had forever it seems, and aside from her little red wagon, it has been one of her favorite and most played with toys.  For some reason, she thinks it's her secret fortress that cannot be penetrated, as she uses it for plenty of mischief.  Her "Ink'd" incident was done in her tent, we know, since we found the smoking gun (the blue pen) inside of it.  We've also, on more than one occasion, found a trail of Cheerios and milk leading from the table, down the hall and straight into her tent.  Also, if anything goes missing, one of the first places we look is the tent because she'll hide things away and covet them.  The funniest thing, though, is when she makes a break for it and literally dives into the opening of her little fort - totally reckless and no regard for safety, just full on dive.  The very middle of our house is the dining room and it has four different doorway openings, one on each wall, that lead to different rooms or parts of the house.  So it's very open, but at the same time Mia can easily hide in any room.  So when it gets quiet and my Mommy senses tingle, I know she's up to no good.  Sometimes after one call of her name it's still quiet and it takes the tell-tale first and middle "Mia Fay!" to get a reaction.  After that, all I hear is the thump-thump of her feet and all I see is a streak of half-naked baby running through each of those doorways as she makes a mad dash for her tent.  Sometimes she's quiet and sometimes she laughs the whole way, depending on how much trouble she knows she's in.  Either way, it's very funny.

Mailing letters

Our mail is dropped from an outside slot into our house by the mailman.  It has a distinct sound and Mia takes pride in getting the mail after it comes and bringing it to us.  We recently realized that she'd been "mailing letters" without us knowing.  She has a playschool mailbox that her Grandma got her for Christmas that came with several letters and even a package to help little ones understand the concept and play pretend.  Mia takes those little plastic letters and puts them in our mail slot as outgoing mail.  We usually catch them before the mail comes so that they don't get knocked outside or so that the mailman doesn't have to pick it up or anything.  But one day we heard the mail slot open and then we got a knock at our door.  Christopher answered and the mailman handed him our stack of mail saying it wasn't going to all fit through the slot.  He then held up a little orange, plastic letter and said, "Is this for me?"  Christopher laughed and said "Yeah, that's my daughter.  She mails her letters all the time."  The mailman chuckled and said, "Yeah, I've seen them before."  I guess a few had slipped by us in the past...oops.

Will help for $40

To preface this little story, I should explain that any and all paper money is "forty dollars" to Mia.  We have no idea where she got this stuck in her head, but that's how she understands it.

So I was cleaning the bathroom and Mia all of the sudden came up to me very excited and said, "Mamma, I help you."  Now, she doesn't really ever ask to help me clean.  Usually, she just finds a rag and goes around "cleaning" on her own.  So I said okay and asked her to pick up Ziggy's toys and put them in his bed.  She went off to pick them up and I continued cleaning.  She came back a few minutes later and said, "Mamma, I picked up Ziggy's toys."  I said okay and thank you.  She then said, "I can have $40, Mamma?"  I think she meant "can I have" but nevertheless, I couldn't believe she had actually tried to pull that fast one at all of 2 1/2! 

I don't think you're quite old enough to start being money-driven there, Mr. Trump.  How about a cookie instead?

"I no hero"

We've been working on the potty-training pretty hard now for a few months.  Mia will go pee-pee on the toilet with no problem, but poo-poo is a whole other story.  She seems to be afraid to do it, not necessarily refuses to.  So we'll catch her doing her "business" in her pull-up and we make her go sit on the toilet.

Not too long ago, I caught her on one such occasion.  She was watching a cartoon (I think it was Wubbzy) and it was talking about being a hero.  She was doing her little poo-poo tippy-toe dance, so I asked her if she was about to go poop.  She said no, but the tippy-toe dance doesn't lie.  So I told her "Come on, you need to come and sit on the toilet."  Still dancing, half listening to me and half watching her cartoon, she shook her head back and forth and responded with, "No.  I no poo-poo on the toilet.  I no hero."  I could have died laughing!  Where's the damn video camera when you need it?

*On a positive note:  Mia has since broken through her apprehensions and has now been doing her business on the toilet for a couple months now like a little champ!  Yay's all around!*

3rd & 4th of July

Traditionally, we've always gong to my Grandmother's house for 4th of July since she lives so close to BC and makes the best homemade ice cream ever.  But this year, as I'm sure everyone heard, BC didn't do their big fireworks show because the funding wasn't there.  That was pretty disappointing news because we really wanted Mia to see the big show.  It just so happened that her Daddy was working in Lake Isabella during July, so we were all invited to the station up there on the 3rd to watch their big show that they put on over the lake.  The station is on a big semi-secluded hill right off the lake so we had a great view.  Before the show, we enjoyed a potluck BBQ and met some of Christopher's colleagues and their families - all very nice people.  He was on duty, so he and his partner would come and go throughout the evening when they had a free moment.  Waiting was almost torture for all the little ones, so they had to entertain themselves until it got dark.  Mia chose to entertain herself by torturing Joseph.  Poor Joseph.  But when it turned dark is when it got fun.  All the little and not-so-little ones were very excited with anticipation.  The glow sticks and glow toys came out and Mia was all over them, making friends with whomever owned anything that lit up so that she could hold it for a while.  She, too, had her little patriotic light-up sandals that got "ooh's & aah's".  One group in particular was quite attractive to Mia.  There were a few pre-teen girls and several kids and adults.  They all really took to Mia.  She kept going over and staying a while at a time talking their ears off and playing with the girls' glow toys.  She'd then come back to us for a while and before leaving again would say, "I'm gonna go with my other family now" and then she'd run back to them.  What a ham!  She mingled with basically everyone else also.  She'd run from group to group talking to everyone and asking questions and making herself perhaps a little too at home.  Nobody seemed to mind, though.  She's such a little character, I think she probably provided entertainment before the show.  When the fireworks did finally start, they were well worth the wait - big and beautiful!  The funny thing is, I find more pleasure in watching the looks on the little ones' faces more than watching the shows myself.  There's so much awe in those little looks.  It's truly magical.

For the actual 4th of July, we went to Mia's Uncle Aaron & Aunt Donna's house.  We cooked BBQ and then busted out more glow sticks, tattoos, sparklers and uh...Really good fireworks.  Lots of fun!  LOTS of pictures!

Playing Catch-up

Since early June when we were so kindly relieved of many of our belongings, including our brand new desktop, I've rarely had a chance to blog like I had regularly started doing.  We're slowly starting to re-acquire some of what was taken and part of that is thanks to our very generous family and extended family.  They're really great and selfless and we just really appreciate the kindness.  So it's only now that I'm getting around to playing catch-up with events that I would have otherwise blogged at the time they happened.  I made note and was sure to journal many of these so I would not forget them.  With all of that being said, the next few entries after this have actually taken place in the past few months.  It already seems like so long ago now.  My, how time sure does fly...