Baby's got the blues

Lately when things don't go Bumble's way, she starts crying and saying over and over again, "I get down!" Since she is also going through a phase where she is enamored by song and dance, Mike and I have been constructing blues songs for her tantrums. She provides the rhythms "I get down, I get down."

My sippy is empty-- I get down, I get down
Wasn't juice anyway-- I get down, I get down
I need something harder to wa-ash my bloo-ooos awaaaay

Maybe someday we'll add the guitar to the mix and take this show on the road.



It's not all tantrums, though! Here's a picture of the Bumble spying on her pet snail using the magnifying box that her aunt Tess got her for Christmas.

Happy 2011!

We had a wonderful Christmas. We were flown to Florida to be with my family and there we were spoiled rotten. The Bee is still telling me she wants pizza for breakfast and asking me what happened to her doting populace.

She got her very own Dora the Explora bed!

She got allllll the farm animals. (A cow says Moo, by the way.)

She worshipped her older cousin "Yaykob," though he was less impressed with her. ("She can't even say my name right.")

She opened all the presents and got all the toys.

She practically got to live on the swing for a week.

And when we got home, our porch was covered in packages from Mike's family. And though Mike was weary from a long day's travel, we had a second little Christmas right away and were spoiled all over again.

Yes, it was a very good Christmas. But she can't expect the same for next year. Santa doesn't look kindly on little girls who punch airline pilots once in the face and then again when their mother is apologizing.

Extremely stubborn and suspicious

The Bumble prefers to eat off of my or Mike's plate. When I fix her her own plate of food, she regards it suspiciously. I don't know why, she's always eaten exactly the same thing as us. We totally skipped jarred baby food, so if you ask me, we have done nothing to earn her distrust. But now she's asking me to take a bite first before she agrees to eat anything I make for her, even if it is off my own plate. I think she thinks we are trying to poison her, perhaps so that we can finally get a decent night's sleep. Rest assured, little Bumble. If we find a sleeping potion, it's going in your sippy cup.

Welcome to Toddler Town

I was chopping vegetables for dinner last night when a slow slurp and a "Yum! Good!" made me turn around to find that the Bumble had pushed her stepstool up to the sink and was drinking dirty dishwater with a spoon.

How does your garden grow

The Bumble is very interested in all our houseplants, but she's not allowed to touch them. I felt bad for her since she obviously wanted to play with the water and the dirt, too, so last week I started a little kitchen scrap garden for her. We planted carrots tops, garlic cloves, beans, and lettuce seeds in some old food containers, then placed them all on a lipped tray in the brightest room of the house and since then, she has been watering to her heart's content.



She loves being able to use the watering can and moving her rock from one pot of dirt to another. I don't think she actually grasps that anything is supposed to grow in her garden, though.



Still, when her lettuce seeds sprouted yesterday, I excitedly called her into the dining room to check it out. I thought she would be thrilled to see a change in her little garden.



She ran over and got down low on the ground to examine the sprouts closely.

What, that's it?

But what she saw left her questioning my mental acuity.

More snow!

I forced the Bumble out into the snow for a while this morning. Our neighbor threw a snowball at her, which she picked up and carried around for a while, contemplating.


She insisted on walking to the playground, despite my efforts to persuade her that she wouldn't like it covered in snow. She kept insisting, so I relented and off we went.



She practiced catching snowflakes with her tongue along the way.




When we got to the playground, she found out that I actually know what I am talking about every once in a while.

Photos can be deceiving

To look at this photo, you'd think the Bumble loved snow. But here she gives her real opinion: