Every day is a new day

What can I say about how fast Alice is growing up....

We have real conversations...
She has independent ideas and acts them out...

She talks about family and friends...

She has a wonderful imagination...

She can be as stubborn as an ox...
She can be as sweet as honey...

We sing and dance and recite our ABC's
She sings songs I've never heard before...

She teaches me new games...
She thinks me and her dad are funny...
but she also finds us to be insufferable ;-)

Jumping for Joy

Alice is jumping straight up and getting some serious air. 
Ginger looks on; impressed.

In the warm part of 2010 we went to Dog & Duck pub.  Todd and Ginger (the pictured dog) came with us, and we had a great time having lunch, beers, and watching Alice being silly.  Alice had milk, and enjoyed the little corn dog nuggets.  Its a great Austin pub - family friendly and dog friendly too.

Pictures of our Sweet Alice

I finally got around to getting a photographer to take pictures of Alice and the family.  We met on a Sunday afternoon at a hiking trail near the lake, and the photographer took us down to the water to take the pictures.  Alice did great, even stopping to pose for him on occasion.  We collected rocks for Alice to throw into the water while the photographer just took candid photos while she played. 

A few weeks later, the photographer came over to the house to show us the pictures. He had even put together a slide show with the pictures. Alice likes to looks at pictures of herself, but for some reason, the video with the music makes her cry ;-( Big tears began to well up in her eyes and she just started bawling...but she wanted to see it again and again. The music is Louis Armstrongs "What a wonderful World".  We ask her why she is crying and all she will say is that shes sad and scared.  We don't know if its the music or what, but we finally had to put it up and not let her watch it again.

These are just a few of my favorite pictures.  We take pictures of Alice all the time ourselves, but others are able to get a different side of our sugar bear.  We also wanted some of her personality to show through in her clothing choices and accessories. 

Robot Maintenance

Alice at Papa and Gamy's house for T-Day+1.

We got a new Roomba robot recently and Alice really likes it.  She loves pushing the buttons and running away as its starts cleaning.  The last few days she has started helping me clean the robot.  She brings her step stool into the kitchen and helps wipe down the Roomba after a cleaning.  She is very interested in robot maintenance and asks me what parts are called (listening closely to answers) and wants to help clean each piece.  Its fun and its generally awesome that Alice will grow up with robots. :-)

Alice understands it to be asleep when it is recharging on its base (a.k.a. its bed).  Also, the robot is often silly.

Alice learns to pedal

It took Alice a while to understand the concept of pedeling,
but she finally got it last Friday.

She has taken a few spills on the trike,
but she always gets back up and tries again.

Thats my Girl!

Room 10 Montage

Dora, Dora, Dora the Explorer

We avoided Dora as long as possible.  We knew an end to the no-Dora era was coming to a close when she came home from a visit to Grandma Didi's house with Dora Pj's, which became her favorite.  Then, she started Spanish classes at school  and they use Dora to teach the kids spanish.  So when we asked Alice one day what she wanted to watch and she enthusiatically yelled "DORI" we knew it was over.

 

Every since she has started watching Dora, she has not wanted to watch a single movie...no Totoro, no Iron Giant, no Anastasia.  Although we dreaded Alice succumbing to the Dora bandwagon, we have noticed some benefits to her watching the show.  She is getting better at counting, following directions and answering questions.  She has also started to create her own Dora pretend games.  We take turns playing "Swiper de Box" (she has a hard time saying Fox) and Alice and Daddy create maps to follow to find the items Swiper takes.

Maybe I'm just trying to rationalize how something we dreaded but could not avoid, could actually turn out to be something beneficial and educational for Alice...and therefore was not as loathsome as we feared ;-)