P is for Potty

I am learning my ABC's and yesterday and today I recited "A-B-C-D" and then continued "C-D-C-D-C-D", until mommy told me that EFG is what comes next. When she said "E" my face lit up and I said "Eat!" So now I know that E is for eat.

I haven't gotten as far as P is for potty mommy tells me, but I have been using the potty! First mommy got me a really great potty book by Dr Sears. I love it and for days we always had to read it 2x in a row. Then one day mommy got me a new potty. I kept walking around the house exclaiming "new potty" and occasionally "Grrr" because the new potty has a bear on it. I just love my new potty and as of 1 PM today I have yet to have an accident having put 1 poopy and 3 pees into the potty! It is so exciting. I call everyone around to come see "Sarbuck, Puppy! Hum Hum! Daddy Hum!" I say and I quiver with excitement as they come running. Then I excitedly ask for a treat and mommy gives me an unsweetened carob chip which i think is just grand.

A few weeks ago, mommy and I had a long conversation about pee pee. (one of my first lengthy conversations btw). It all started with mommy teling me she had seen a deer while we were driving in the car. She was telling me about how deer live outside. THen our conversation went soemthing like this:

H - "I saw a deer"
M - "You saw a deer?"
H - I saw a deer outside"
M - Yes, deer live outside"
H - Deer go pee pee outside
M - Yes, that's right deer go pee pee outside
H - Daddy go pee pee
M - Where does daddy go pee pee?
H - Daddy go pee pee inside in potty
M - Yes, daddy goes pee pee inside in the potty
H - Deer go pee pee outside
M - Yes, deer go pee pee outside
H - Puppy and deer go pee pee outside
M - Yes, that's right, both puppy and deer go pee pee outside because they are animals. Animals pee pee outside and people pee pee inside in the potty.
H - Mommy pee pee
M - Where does Mommy pee pee?
H - Inside in potty
M - Yes, mommy pees inside in the potty
H - Hay-knee (that's how I say my name) pee pee
M - Where does Helena pee pee
H - in potty (mommy found this quite amusing as I had yet to do so)
M - Oh really? Where does a baby pee pee?
H - in didey (diaper)

From mommy ... And so our conversation went - for all of about 10 or 15 minutes! Back and forth over how everyone peed and then over it all again and again and again.... P is for potty!

Bag Lady

My favorite play thing of late is a little brown bag from the bookstore. I swiped it off of mommy as soon as we got home, before she had even taken her books out of it. She made me a bag for Christmas, but this one is way better! It stands up and stays open all on it's own so it's very user friendly. I like to carry it everywhere with all my little treasures in it: wood farm animals, the farmer "yady" and man, magnets from the fridge, playsilks, anything small works. I even have to bring it bye bye with me when we leave the house. Mama says it reminds her of a story great grandma told her about my grandpa. He used to have a little juice can full of treasures that he carried around.

One of my other favorite play things is a little baby spoon mommy just gave me to feed my baby with. I fed her "oat" from the bowl and had to have my apron on to do it. Then I ran into the kitchen and told mommy "e yikes it. Num num!" Mommy says you should know that I am running around with two little pony tails sticking up so I look like pippy longstockings - whoever that is. I can't imagine she is anywhere as cute as me!

Stuff from Mommy

Ok, I'll let my mama write some to catch you all up...

Helena is 30 inches tall now and weighs about 21 lbs. She is growing like a little weed and healthy as can be, for which we are very greatful.

Every day with her is a joy, watching as she discovers the world and learns to exclaim about it all. She is talking more each day - at least 4 new words per day, too many to mention them all now. She also throws out a pile of full sentences, things like "I cook. I cook puppy" which means that she is cooking FOR the dog, not cooking him. ;) Or she will come into the kitchen and tell me "Eat, eat apple, in bowl, on chair". Often when she wakes in the morning she says something like "I pease see puppy" and then she will call "Puppy! Puppy! Hum! Hum puppy!" She substitutes an "H"sound for "c" or "k" all except for kiwi fruit which is pronounced "piwi" with a big breath of air escaping with "P". And If we don't have piwi in the house Iwill hear about it all day long. Just out of the blue "piwi, piwi, piwi". She can be a little broken record sometimes! Especially in the car where her favorite phrase is "Uppy! Uppy! Uppy! I wan uppy!"


Helena is good at discovering things, and one day spotted a bald eagle flying behind our apt bldg. We were all at least as amazed at her at the huge majestic bird, but I think she wondered why we don't exclaim so much over every bird we see.

Another thing she likes to look for is the moon. She pronounces moon as a sound that is a sort of high pitched "oo" sound. Now she is trying to say "Bye bye moon; see you soon" something I said when I was little. If she sees a round light someplace she will tell me it looks like the moon.

One of Helena's favorite pastimes lately is cooking. She loves to stand on her booster seat at the kitchen counter and put things in the pot for me and of course to taste everything too. She actually likes raw onions! So if I"m cooking she will come along and say "See, see" and I have to show her everything I"m doing. She wants to see what is being cut up, what goes in the pot with it - every step of the recipe. If I"m at the prep point still then she will say "pot" and ask to put everthing into the pot

For Christmas we got her a little cookstove/sink combo - just a tiny one, but she has little pots and pans and utensils and some little wood food that her Aunt Kt got her. She loves it all!!! Now she goes into the living room tells me "I cook" and proceeds to put all her fruit into the pot and to stir it all around with 2 utensils at a time. Then she feeds it to me or her baby doll or the dog.

Speaking of baby dolls, those are her favorite thing to play with. She loves to wrap them up in a playsilk, cuddle them, rock them, give them rides in their stroller or in her little wicker chair. She even lets the doggie hold them, wrapping one up and putting it on his back while he is curled up. Then she tells me "E old it!" For Christmas I made her a doll with organic cotton and wool stuffing and wool hair. It's very cuddly, tho not as baby dollish as I would have liked, so I may have to try again.

Right now Helena is potty learning. She used to do her solids on the potty but really had no idea what she was doing. Now she is all into it. One of her cousins has a doll house complete with bathroom accessories. (Helena loves it all!) Over Christmas she kept putting the doll on the toilet and saying "He poop" and then she'd put the doll in the tub and say "all keen". This just confirmed to us that January would begin formal potty learning. We found a great little children's book by Dr Sears on going to the potty in B&N and Helena asks us to read it all the time and gets very excited by it. And she is doing all her poops on the toilet. Hasn't yet gotten that she can do pee there too, but we are hoping since she gets a carob chip if she poops that she will soon be motivated to do more. ;) I must add that we have been having a lot of false alarms lately as she thinks she needs to go to the potty every time she toots. LOL I'm sure she will figure it out soon enough. I'm equally as sure that she will be appalled that I have published this info on her blog in another 10 years or so.

One funny thing that we got Helena prior to Christmas was a little singing dancing Christmas dog. NOT the kind of toy we would normally buy her as it really leaves nothing to the imagination and there is just nothing natural about it. However she was sooo completely enamored by it! She had this adorable affectionate look on her face as she said over and over "puppy, puppy" and stroked it's little face. She actually had tears in her eyes. Then the puppy fell on the floor and she really did cry! I think she thought at first that it was real. Well, at that poing Mama had to buy the silly $8 puppy. It only comes out at certain times and hides in a closet the rest of hte time to preserve our sanity. When it's out she pushes the little button til she gets it on and then says in a delighted and proud voice "I did it!" and proceeds to dance to the dog's singing - which btw is "I'm dreaming of a white Christmas."

I must add, that Helena has kept herself entertained much of the time I have been writing here by pulling off every last CD from the CD shelf - as far up as she can reach.

No more for now, I will return to Helena's cute posts from now on. Just wanted to write a long rambly thing here to catch up on stuff. 

My Cousins

Every year my Grammy makes my cousins and I matching Christmas outfits. She does a wonderificalous job! Don't we all look so cute!?
 

My Very Favorite Meal...

is pasta!!! Mmmmm.... I like all sorts of pastas with tomato sauce. It's yummy in my tummy! I just gobble it all up. I also like oatmeal with applesauce, kamut, bunny crackers, bananas and kiwis. (and lots of other things, but those are my favorites)
 

Fall Glory

Hello! I really liked the fall leaves back in October!! Mama and Dada were bz and then had trouble with their computer, so now I will do lots of short posts to catch you all up. As you can imagine, I'm getting very big now...