Daily Lily - Jan. 26

Around Christmas, Jeff and I went on a candlelight tour of homes around town and discovered this GORGEOUS working farm 10 minutes from our house.
I try to feed the family as organically as we can afford, so an organic farm this close to my house was DEFINATELY worth a second look.
They have a store, a canning kitchen, and a working farm full of animals. This is NOT a petting zoo, but they are kind enough to allow kids to visit with the animals.
Lily Grace was in HEAVEN. She loves animals and was signing, saying and making animal sounds as soon as we set foot on the property.
Everyone was so friendly and we will definately be back. They have reasonably priced organic meat, eggs and wool yarn.

Welcome to Old McCaskill Farm!



She thought those herding dogs were bears.



Super friendly sheep named Blue.



That poor chicken was running as fast as she could from Lily Grace...





"Thanks for the trip to the farm mom! I can't wait to go back!"

Daily Lily - Jan. 17

It was almost 70 today. In the middle of January, it was 70!!! WOW, what a change from LAST year when we were in the house FREEZING half to death.
In any case, Lily and I took FULL advantage of the pretty day and walked to the park.
Things have changed quite a bit now that Lily Grace is running, climbing and more curious about the world around her.
She spent the first 10 minutes or so just RUNNING. It is pretty rare that Lily can just RUN. I imagine it was very freeing for her because she was just beside herself with giggles.
After she was winded, she spent a while checking out nature. Ladybugs, a few winter moths fluttering about, squirrels and random sticks and leaves. It was only until we were about to leave (I like to leave before the school age kids get out of school), that she realize that there was playground equipment around. Boy, is it scary to watch a tiny toddler try to climb on a play structure meant for children 5 and up. I don't have any pictures of her on it because I was too busy monitoring her, but I do have a few pictures from our day. Jeff got me a new camera for Christmas. I think it takes pretty good action shots of my girl!

Excited!

Running!

Daily Lily - Jan.12 Christmas/2011 wrap up

So, I am a horrible mom blogger.
It has been over a month since my last update, but seriously life has been a complete whirlwind these days. We went to PA for Christmas to visit Jeff's family for 14 days, my best friend got married and Lily is BUSIER THEN EVER! At the end of the day I am exhausted and want to vegetate. I have not even knitting.

Here are a few bullets about our girl:

- She is not walking...she is RUNNING! Lily Grace is ALL over the place, full throttle ALL, DAY, LONG. She is so happy and full of life.

-Lily Grace is 17 months old. I have not taken her to her 18 month appointment yet, so I don't know her exact stats, but she is still tall and lanky. She is officially in *pinned* 18 month pants for the length and still wears 6-9 month tops. She can wear some 12 month tops, but most things just look a little big on her these days.

- She knows about 20 signs and uses them everyday. She can say about 25-30 words and will try to mimic anything you do or say. Her latest skills are correctly answering questions with a nod, a shake of the head or a shrug. Lily knows 10 animal sounds and can identify and correctly sign 8. Any animal she does not know she says it's a dog, cow, cat, or bird. Really cute.

-She is amazing at pretend play and is developing a great imagination. She mostly reinacts our everyday things, (changing diapers, bedtime, reading, feeding, ect)but she chatters and babbles away and seems to go into her own little world, she is completely content playing alone. The most impressive scenario to date is when she took her Elmo doll through her entire bedtime routine. Read him a story, nursed him, kissed him good night and patted his back signing "sleep."

- Her stuffed Elmo from Busche Gardens is her FAVORITE TOY. She also LOVES books and will often force anyone who comes to the house to read to her. If Jeff sits on the floor, she IMMEDIATELY grabs a book and plants herself in his lap, forcing a book in his face. He is always more then happy to read to her. She listens like a child much older then 17 months.

-Lily loves being around other children. We go to play group once a week and story time once a week. She is very social and will often try to communicate with the other children using sign language. She doesn't understand that not all of them understand her. She is not shy at all though and will interact with kids she has never met. I am hoping preschool will be an easy transition for her. She will be starting when she turns 20 months.

-We are very loosely potty training. We still cloth diaper her and she is NO WHERE NEAR official training, but she signs "potty" and sometimes will even use the potty when I put her on it. I try to put her on it at the same times during the day, just to get to use to the potty in general. When the time comes, I will take it slow with her. I know she will be easy to train though.

Ok, now for some pictures....this is a mash up of Christmas and other stuff.

Daily Lily - Nov. 20

So....Jeff and I attempted to take our own Christmas pictures this year....I think next year we will go to Sears. We were able to get a couple of cute shots for the Christmas card...but most of them came out like this,

Daily Lily - Nov. 20

I get ideas for activities to do with Lily Grace from all over the internet. This is SUCH a fun age to explore and learn for her.
A week ago I found an activity on Pinterest. Pinterest an AMAZING website full of neat ideas and SUPER addictive too. Anyway, I found an activity for using dyed rice as a type of fun indoor sandbox type activity for toddlers.

To dye the rice you take plain white rice and put a few scoops into different ziplock bags.
Add a few teaspoons of white vinegar (I used two or three depending on the amount of rice in the bag), then add drops of food coloring. The more you add the more concentrated the colors. Seal the bag and rub the rice around to distribute the color. Pour onto parchment paper to dry overnight.

This is what it looked like after I poured it in an old chips and salsa bowl we had lying around.



I layed out a big blanket in the dining room and set Lily up with measuring cups, spoons, and bowls. I did not get many pictures at all because I was trying to keep the mess ON the blanket and Lily really wanted me to scoop and mix with her. Most of our activities here at home are like that....she wants me to do things WITH her, not sit back and snap pictures.

Here she is happy as a lark! She REALLY enjoyed this activity. We have done it before, with just PLAIN old white rice when she was younger and she did not seem too interested. That was when she was 9 or 10 months. Now at almost 16 months, she was able to pour and try to sort the rice into different sized cups.







Head on over the www.thehalsteadharold.blogspot.com to check out Lily's friend G. His mom tried the rice activity with him too!

Daily Lily - Giant Halloween Weekend Post

Lily was SO BUSY on Halloween Weekend! Whew! I needed a vacation after all that fun! She attended a Halloween Party at MyGym (which is where our weekly playgroup meets), We did crafts here at the house, she helped her Daddy carve the Jack o'lantern, we went to the fall festival at our church and handed out candy on Halloween night to all of the ghost and gobblins. Lily had a blast. She dressed up as a pumpkin this year, a costume she picked out all on her own! Boy does she have opinions these days. I had a sparkly sequins dragon costume picked out for her to wear, but she insisted on the pumpkin...so a pumpkin she was. I have to admit, she was a VERY cute pumpkin. :-)


Jeff and Lily getting the Jack o'lantern ready



Doing a little school lesson about seeds.



Lily's turn!



Intrigued by the slimy feel of the pulp and she really enjoyed picking out the seeds.



They had so much fun doing this together.


Mommy's little Pumpkin.




Snippets of our other activities....



Riding a pony at the church fall festival. She LOVED every minute. She smiled and squeeled the entire time.


At the play group Halloween Party.

Daily Lily - Oct. 14

Today, Lily and I went to Mcleod Farms in McBee with some friends to visit the pumpkin patch and old country store. We went on a hayride and picked our very own pumpkins from the patch. Lily had a blast! As you can see, Lily is walking now! She is still not very good and has a long way to go, but when she is around other children who can walk, she keeps up pretty well! Here at home though, she is still mostly crawling if she REALLY wants to get to something fast.






When we got home I let Lily paint her pumpkin ANY way she wanted....so now we have a charming blue pumpkin on our porch. Complete with darling toddler finger prints all over it.