Jeep like Daddy's

Here is a picture of Rory's birthday present from Grandma, Grandpa, Aunt Naomi, me and Sammy. She still needs a little drivers' ed. Her little buddies that live down the street (same age) are pros at driving. She is still a little timid. Sammy will get her out there practicing though-can't let boys beat her!!

ISR

We are almost done with our ISR lessons. She is doing very well and isn't crying anymore (I am getting in with her). She actually asks for "more" when we get out of the pool. I think Thursday is going to be our last day. She is floating well and flips over to swim to the side. If she can't reach the side she flips back into her float. Sammy is going to go with us to lessons on Thursday(since she isn't crying anymore...) and hopefully we'll get some good video of her.

Princess Bed

Here is Rory's new bed. She even helped put it together after much insistence. Sammy let her put in a few screws and she even drilled them! She slept great in it!

Birthday Party

We celebrated Rory's 2nd birthday at San Gabriel Park in Georgetown. About 4 of her little friends came. She had a good time. She loved bouncing in the "Mega Bouncer." Can't believe she is 2! Time flies! She is talking so much-just carrying on conversations. She repeats a lot of the things we say. She LOVES everybody. When she sees someone, she says, "I love...." very dramatically. She is in love with the Little Mermaid right now, so that was our theme. We had nuggets from Chik-fil-a. She got lots of great presents and played so much that at the end she went to go take a nap in the Mega Bouncer.

Kernel up the nose

We have discovered Rory LOVES popcorn. We have the little snack size popcorns bags, so she tells Sammy to pop two of them, so they can share. The other night we were all sitting on the floor watching TV, Rory with the bowl of popcorn in her lap. Then she made a strange snorting noise and then started crying. She told Sammy "popcorn in nose." We didn't know if she had put just a little piece of popped popcorn, we couldn't see anything. She has never done anything like this before, so I couldn't believe she would have put one of the unpopped kernels up her nose. Well, we had to pin her down and then Sammy pushed on her cheek toward her nose and sure enough out emmerged a kernel, which look enormous to us. We just sat there and looked at each other stunned. I had to laugh because how crazy would we have felt if we would have had to take her to the ER. Ahhh!

Food

Rory loves food!! Today all we heard was "Want to eat something." It was about every 2 hours. We went to "Taco Banana" for dinner. She wanted a turkey taco. Didn't have them so she settled for a bean and cheese taco. Not too long after we ate dinner and were watching a movie, she whispered that she was going to go get french fries and ketchup. She went over to the tupperware cabinet and got a bowl and then went to the pantry. Sammy asked her if she needed help and she said "help please." "I want french fries and ketchup!" She settled for popcorn. I guess we should feel lucky we don't have to worry about her not eating!

Zoo

We went to the Waco Zoo. We had tried to go a couple of weekends before, but got all the way to the zoo (1 hour drive) to find out when went on the one weekend of the year, besides Thanksgiving and Christmas, that they are closed. I think Sammy and I were more disappointed than Rory. We really like it because we can get through the whole zoo in a reasonable amount of time and there is lots of shade. Here are some pictures. Rory, of course, loved all the animals.

More Zoo pictures

Smells like elephant and dog poop!

Swimming

Rory is taking ISR swimming lessons. It is something we decided to do because Mom and Papa have a pool in their backyard and because we wanted to be able to go to the lake, beach, etc and feel somewhat safer. It's an amazing thing. You can check out the video at http://www.israustin.com/ It's been shown on the Today show as well. We go everyday for 10minutes and right now she has learned to swim on her tummy and then flip to her back to breathe. The goal is for her to then flip back over and swim and repeat swim float swim until she can get to a wall, stairs, ladder. She is doing really well as far as learning skills taking into account she cries the whole time we are there! Sometimes she'll start crying when she recognizes the streets we are driving on to get to the lesson. I'm not sure if it is a separation anxiety thing(I don't get in the pool with her) or that she's cried for so many lessons that it wouldn't be the same without crying. Maybe it's a control thing-because Rory doesn't like doing anything Rory doesn't want to do! Outside of the lessons she loves the water and pool. Here are some pictures from a weekend at Nanny and Papa's.

Routine/Memory

It's seems amazing to us how easily Rory seems to remember things. Someone could mention something once and hours later she remembers. Our usual evening routine generally is: we eat dinner, and then we get the blankets out and lay on the floor and watch TV. After we finished dinner last night, Sammy said "Oh, so you think you can dance is on tonight." So we made sure to DVR it and then went on about other things. Sammy played his XBOX, Rory and I put together this portable desk for Sammy's computer. She took a bath. Then we set up the new aerobed in her room-to see if she would sleep on that instead of crib. (Which after we finally convinced her it was time to go to bed, she slept great.) Sammy read some books with her. She liked laying on the aerobed, so I thought maybe we'll get to bed early. Sammy was feeling tired, so he headed to the room to surf the internet in bed. I turned the lights off and laid down with Rory on her bed. We sang out songs-our normal routine. And then she jumps up and says "So you can dance, watch so you can dance with Daddy." I know she was just putting off the inevitable and maybe feeling out of sorts because we skipped part of the routine, but we just thought it was funny that she specifically remembered what we had wanted to watch on TV. She is so much smarter than we expect her to be. She knows and really likes following a routine.

So the bed thing-she slept really well last night and stayed in one place on the bed last night. It's a twin aerobed (blow up mattress). She used a pillow and everything. I hate to say it because it's only been one night and as soon as I do....but I think she likes sleeping in a "big girl" bed and maybe this will be a smooth transition. We will probably eventually get her a real bed, but I thought this might be a good transition-she's not far off the floor, so if she rolls off the bed it won't be terrible. Every kid is different and I had been taking in stories from people to decide what to do with Rory and the transition. Ava (my best friend Gretchen's daughter, 4 months older than Rory) wasn't ready and Gretchen had spent two weeks of long sleepless nights trying a toddler bed. Then Colton our little neighbor, who is 5 days younger than Rory, has been sleeping on a mattress on the floor since 6 months because he never slept well in his crib. I found out about Colton yesterday when he was over here playing and saw him climb into Rory's crib. It was the funniest thing.