Conversations with our 2.5 yr old

Monkey: "Dadda, do you like bubbles?"
Chris: "I like you."
Monkey: "Do you like bubbles?"
Chris: "I like you."
Monkey: "Do you like bubbles?"
Chris: "I like you."
Monkey: "Do you like bubbles?"
Chris: "I like you and I like mommy."
Monkey: "What?"

Who wants to get their picture?

This took up a lot of our day yesterday. 

Our little monkey has her own stool for washing her hands and putting her dishes in the sink.  But yesterday she just dragged it around to different parts of the house, then would sit on it while saying "raise your hand if you want to get your picture!" and then would do this with her pretend camera. Goofball.

Do you have a reservation?

Her clever teacher usually writes something very creative with each photo/video that is sent out (sometimes up to 4 a day).  So I'm including her original caption here as well because I couldn't think of anything more clever than this.

Just hanging out with my mouse and my sheep

Thanks for the cute apron, Grandma Shauna!

"All Aboard!"

We got our monthly supply of diapers delivered to our house one day and the little monkey decided to line up all the packs into something a little more interesting...

...a railroad and train of course!  "Come aboard, dada! Choo-choo!"

Just chillin' at the playground

A little late

some yummy treats from the Gibbys for my birthday

Happy Halloween

My squirmy kid...

...could not get a good picture of her costume.  Oh well...

Now with a little more attitude...

Our little hipster

I don't really know what is going on here...

Like mother like daugher?

Might be a little bit similar to what I look like most days I'm working from home..

Why is the Lego block next to Elmo?

Because that one has a fish on it and Elmo needs his fish, Dorothy, to go to sleep of course.

According to our little monkey anyway.  Sleep tight, Elmo!

just chillin' with Aunt Sash

Reading books and getting ready for bed time

The eye of the tiger

As part of the school, our little monkey gets exposed to different classes once or twice a month.  Mondays, she has Amazing Athletes, where she can learn about different sports in each class.  So far, she's been more excited about the stamps she gets on her hands, but this photo just cracked me up...

...she means business.

If you look closely, she has a band-aid on her little chin.  She got a pretty bad gash this morning while she was pushing around one of her favorite toys.  Probably at full speed.  But tripped over her feet and smacked her chin on said toy.  I am sure she'll need her ice pack a lot over the next several days.

Frozen blueberries

The fruit of choice lately...

...this was the photo of the day from school, so not great quality.  But just had to share :)

Circus time!

Beautiful day for a horse ride.  I thought for sure our little monkey would be petrified to ride the horse, but she loved it! 

She won't go near dogs that are bigger than she is, but a horse, I guess, seems less scary? 

"I'm ready to go"

She told me as she waved and walked toward the front door.

Not sure where she is going with her little frog rain boots and her sleeping mat, but she walked around saying "Bye, I'm going on my trip"

Stances!

 It's a new game that the little monkey and her dad play.  She yells Stances!  and makes this pose.  He counts to three and they crash into each other.

Sometimes she makes sure to grab her new favorite stuffed animal (pink puppy), sometimes the puppy gets left behind.  But every time, it makes all of us giggle. 

Happy Labor Day!

"I gotta finish up my work"

Is what the little monkey told us as she opened up Chris's ipad and started typing away.

==========================

And on our way to one of her cousin's birthday parties she told us "It will be a-maaaazing"  

80s day in the Baldy household

Got my retro-colored shirt and my acid-wash looking pinstriped cut-off jean shorts.  Now all I need is the side ponytail and I'm ready to go!

Is there a parrot in the house?

Recently, our little monkey demonstrated a couple of things that we apparently say to her quite often.   

1) Playing upstairs, she found her little goggles that one of my aunts gave her while we were in Moab just recently.  As she put them over her head and on her eyes, we hear: "Look at your daughter."

2) As Chris was trying to get the little monkey to come inside so he could fix dinner, he decided to try the tactic of "I'm going inside. You can stay out here."  Her response?  "Don't. You. Dare."

Back from vacation

...and back to the grind.  Our little monkey did OK for the most part on the flight back, but was definitely fighting falling asleep a couple of times.  Luckily, she completely passed out as we were literally descending into Philly (can you sense the sarcasm here?)  Landing, deplaning of all the passengers didn't even wake her up.  Crazy kid...

Graduation from "night-night"

This weekend, all of the sudden, the little monkey just started picking up various things (a small purse she had no interest in until now, a plastic teething set in the shape of keys) and saying "bye bye...have a good trip!" and blowing some kisses to Chris and me.  Not sure we're completely done with the "night-night" game, but this one should be fun for a while...

'We asked Hannah to make a silly face and this is what she chose"

We get daily pics and sometimes video from the little monkey's new school.  That was the caption that we got with today's picture.  We'll have to teach her something a little more creative I guess:

Some weekend fun

We went to Chris's aunt's house this weekend and she reminded us to bring a bathing suit so we could enjoy their above ground pool.  The day before, I frantically searched for some kind of floating device for our monkey since there is no shallow end in the pool.  Finally found something after searching in about 5 different stores.  Apparently shopping for swimming supplies in July is too late.  Could barely find anything and even saw some Halloween costumes out already!  WHAT??? 

Anyway, I found this cute little turtle.  It was a little too big for her, but she had fun anyway...

Answer to the all the questions in life according to our little monkey...

"Because it's raining"

Me: "Why did you throw that toy?"
Monkey: "Because it's raining"

Monkey: "I don't wanna take a nap"
Chris: "Why not?"
Monkey: "Because it's raining"

Chris/me: "Why are you a clown?"
Monkey: "Because it's raining"

"Yellow Truckses"

She liked this ride, but didn't really LOVE it.  But because it was yellow, and on a "truck" she loves looking at the picture over and over again.

More Storybook Land

One of the favorite parts of the rides were the ability to go up and down.  Some of them even gave you a lever inside the car so you could go up and down as much as you wanted to.  Here's one of the times the monkey actually stayed down - she mostly wanted to be "up up up."

Let's go to the horses!

By far her favorite ride at Storybook Land

Storybook Land

Never heard of this place before, but apparently it has been in NJ for decades.  Also, my parents seemed to know about it but never took us!  Oh well, it was perfect for our tiny monkey.  She loved it...more pics to come.

Last day of day care

She battled a little fever her last couple days at school, but rallied through the fun parts and the goodbyes (it took 30 minutes to say all her goodbyes, though!).  And even though she crashed on the drive home, she was still holding on fiercely to some of the goodbye presents her nice teachers gave her. 

We'll miss her teachers, but can't wait to have a school that's only 5 minutes away from the house.  Fingers crossed she likes it as much as she likes her old school! 

Low key Father's Day

Our little monkey got very little sleep on Saturday, both her nap and her night's sleep weren't sufficient.  So needless to say our early morning on Sunday was a bit rocky.  While I was making breakfast, things got a little quiet so I went to see what was happening and saw this:

Just lasted for 10 minutes or so, but still very cute...

Silly Monkey...

As we were getting ready to go to Chris's mom's house on Sunday, our little monkey found one of my shirts and insisted on putting it on.  As Chris was helping her down the stairs, he asked "Do you want to take off Mommy's shirt before we go?"

"Umm...no."  replied the Monkey.  Chris asked, "Why not?"  Her response, "Because it's cute."

Happy Birthdays!

The little monkey is slowly starting to understand minutes vs. days and sort of understands that now that her birthday is over, there are other birthdays to be celebrated.  Last week, we had two that we celebrated, so in honor of that:

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO DAD AND GRANDDAD FROM THE LITTLE MONKEY!!

(a little late on the post anyway)

And the hot summer days are just beginning...

It wasn't too hot yesterday, but we had some fun in the sprinkler anyway. 

Still a little freaked out by grass, our little monkey insisted on wearing her shoes with her bathing suit while running to the sprinkler to get a little bit of water in her container and then running back and pouring it on the sidewalk.  Either way, we're ready for the summer!

Celebrating with a second cupcake for the day

well, really she only ate the frosting.  but it was still fun!

happy second birthday my little monkey!

Buon compleanno la mia bambina

She's two today!

Elmo's new blanket

The obsession is still going strong...a lot of times she'll come over to Chris or me and say "blanket him"  or "her" (one of her cabbage patch dolls), or "me"...now she has a super new blanket for her favorite doll, Elmo!  Thanks, Grandma Shauna!!  It is a little hard to see in this shot, but the blanket has monkeys, lions, butterflies and leaves on it.  It's awesome.

Happy mother's day...for 3 seconds

They have had a lot of birthdays at the Monkey's school lately, so she has been talking about her birthday coming up "in few minutes" for a couple of weeks now.  She came home on Friday with a little present they made for Mother's Day and she couldn't be less interested in it (Elmo and her dolls hadn't been put down for a nap all day, afterall).  But of course, when I opened the present, she came over and said "it's mine's for my birthday." and immediately took it to carry around (and get glitter all over the place). 

All I really wanted was waffles for breakfast anyway - which I got, PLUS Reese's peanut butter cups.  Perfect holiday for me :)

Enjoying the Spring weather

It was so warm outside over the weekend, I could finally put this cute little dress on her. 

We went to the Liberty Science Center this past weekend, too, and of course she had a blast.  They have a whole room just for 2-5 year olds, where she played for like 45 minutes.  After that we went to look at some tiny monkeys.  As our little monkey will tell you, "The monkey pooped.  Yuck...oh goodness"  Then we went up to see some fish tanks, which I think are her favorites.  She for some reason had a favorite fish (a drum fish) that was the biggest in that particular tank and had weird whiskers under his chin.  Every time the fish swam around closer to her, she said "Here comes my guy.  Here comes my dude."  We finished up the day with some lunch, i.e., apple sauce got all over me, and all took a quick nap on the drive home.  Well, our monkey did anyway.  But it was a fun day afterall...

Meanwhile in my world...

Stress fracture - the dr. confirmed it. And of course the vain part of me is embarrassed that I haven't gotten a pedicure in months.

Helping Dad around the house part II

Prepping the stairs for some paint touch-ups, Chris found a nail popping up so the little monkey got one of her hammers to help pound it back in.  It's a little hard to see, but her hammer is "lellow".  She spent the rest of the day running over to the stairs to show me where she "helped Daddy, the nail" every chance she got.

Helping Dad around the house

Mostly she just wanted to see bubbles on the floor.  But it was cute hearing her little monkey voice talking about helping dad-da cleaning.

Fun day in the sun

Both Chris and I decided to knock out of work a little early and meet up at the park since it was such a nice day yesterday.  Well, I don't think either one of us really left early - I think I technically worked an extra hour - but we had a lot of fun at the park anyway.

As the Monkey was running around in the park, she would occasionally get freaked out by some of the Spring growth and yell "My body! My body! Daddy, carry me, please." 

This is what happens when I leave my phone with my crazy husband and daughter

there were like 40 pictures, but this was the most silly so I had to post this one...

"So..."

...our little monkey randomly kept saying as she leaned forward to look at Chris.  Where do these kids come up with these things?

Chris...Chris...

...is what our little monkey will sometimes say to her daddy after I say something to him.  The other day, I  said something like, "Chris, Chris, Chris, can you throw this away?"  Not sure why I had to repeat his name.  So, in turn, the monkey said, "Chris, Chris, Chris...throw it bye-bye"  I, of course laughed out loud.  Chris didn't think it was that funny.  So yesterday he tried to turn the tables a little bit and said to the monkey, "Tell Jill she needs to pick you up," to which she replied, as she was crawling up to sit on my lap, "No, Chris.  Mama...Mama."  He still doesn't think it's very funny...

I running...

...is what our little monkey often says to strangers on the street as she's running past them. She often says hi first, but really only so she can make sure to get their attention.

What do you want for breakfast?

"Butter"

Okay, she doesn't literally say "butter" but if she says she wants toast to eat, we all know what that means.  She was so excited at one point this weekend to have butter on her toast that when I went to put a piece of toast in her mouth with a new pat of butter, she almost took my finger with the toast!

Here she's sporting her Elmo shirt and her Elmo socks (I know they're not visible) as well as two "bows" which is what she calls anything that goes in hair, including curlers, barrettes, hair ties, and of course, real bows.

"I cool"

"I cool.  I cool.  I cool"  She literally said this over and over again until I turned around to see this:

wearing her dad's sunglasses.  Goofball.

"Odenge Menow"

We went to a birthday party for a set of two-year-old twins on Saturday and it was farm-themed.  So much fun and very creative.  The kids got some masks to take home and of course our monkey picked a cat ("menow") that was orange ("odenge").  Don't worry, we put the "menow" night night every night with a wash cloth as its blanket before our little monkey will get in her crib.

Not sure if you can see the super cute dress she's wearing - hand me down from her cousin Mimi.  I tried to get a better picture of her in the dress, but she's SO WIGGLY!!!

Spring forward into swim lessons

First swimming lessons of the year.  She had a blast, but of course, she's more squirmy than a fish.