Thanksgiving Fun

Thanksgiving week, just might be my favorite week of the year. There's not a lot of hustle and bustle yet, and all you have to think about is eating turkey on Thursday. I had the whole week off and we played every day. Tuesday we went to the Wild Animal Park. Bailey is old enough now that she notices the animals and can say their names and sounds. Her two favorite parts were the Lorakeet Landing and the Petting Corral place. In the Lorakeet Landing, she just followed the birds around shreeking just like them. She did not get the whole concept of holding the little cups of juice out so the birds would come to her; she followed them around, tipping her cup out on the floor for them to eat. At one point, she even tasted the bird juice and liked it!

Here she's so excited she couldn't contain herself.

Grandma was completely covered by birds because she was holding all of the bird juice. Bailey thought this was hilarious!

Here she is at first sight of all the deer.

In this video she says hello to the Bambi deer. She has absolutely no fear!

On Wednesday, Toni and I took her to Sea World--her favorite place to be. This time she loved the penguins and actually sat through the Polar Express mini movie and got it. They were in the midst of decorating for Christmas, so we got a little preview of all the Christmas stuff. We were able to ride the few small rides in Sesame Street land that didn't make me or Toni sick. It was another great day!

When you walk out of the penguin exhibit, there is a penguin store so your kids can whine and cry that they want a penguin now! Bailey wanted to hug all of the penguins, so we put her in the shelf surrounded by them. Those huge ones on either side of her are just about the same size as she is. She found a tiny penguin that she loved, so I think I might be looking for a penguin for Christmas.

Bailey sat and watched the Polar Express movie, but she refused to wear the glasses.
We fed the flamingoes for a long time because Bailey only gave them one, tiny pellet at a time. They were coming right up to the fence to get their food.

This year for Thanksgiving, we went up to my Grandma and Grandpa's house. It was a lot of fun to have most of the family together. Keri, Kyle, Sam, and the kids were up at Sam's sister's house in Utah. We ate a lot of yummy food and had a wonderful day.

Sassy Santa?

Today I was changing Bailey's diaper before nap time, and we had a really funny conversation. Strangely, during diaper changing time Bailey likes to talk a lot. She will lots of times chant Doby or Daddy and other times just have a complete conversation. Today she started out talking really quietly. I thought she was saying "paci" (her new favorite word of the month for her pacifier), but it sounded like she was saying "sassy." I know that she didn't mean to say sassy, but I could not guess at what she was trying to say. I kept listening really carefully to hear any other clues about what she might say, then she stopped. She stared at me for a while and then said, "Ho, ho, ho!" I just started laughing. I asked her if she was talking about Santa, and she said yes--Santa! I'm still not sure what she was saying but we ended up talking about sassy Santa.

I have this entire week off for Thanksgiving!! I thought that I would do something fun everyday to truly take adavantage of my break. On Monday we went to get her picture taken with Santa--I figured why wait a month and have to wait in line. There was nobody in line and she got to spend a lot of time with the jolly, old elf. From now on, we'll be taking pictures with Santa in November. We walked right up and she even got three candy canes. Bribing her with candy canes was the only way that she would talk to him. She wasn't crying or screaming, but very, very hesitant. She would give him high fives and point at his pretty outfit, but no hugs. I put her on his lap and she just sat there--no smiles or frowns, just there. The picture is funny, but her outfit is completely adorable. I bought these cute stripy tights that are green and red and she looks like a cute Christmas elf!

So all day Monday, to prep her for the picture, we were talking about Santa and what Santa says--that's how we got the sassy Santa conversation. It also shows how much she remembers these days. She's growing up so quickly I can't believe it. I know at any moment she's just going to start talking up a storm (one that we can understand). She repeats a lot of words and picks up on everything that she hears. Last week in car we were driving home around 4:00 and the sun was in her eyes. She was whining and fussing and then she said, "Sunshine!" I had never specifically asked her to say sunshine, she just had heard it somewhere and then recognized it! I think she might be a baby genius :)

Since I can't load the Santa picture, here are some of her field hockey pictures this year:

My mom made her field hockey kilt and matching headband from an old kilt. I put a longhorn sticker on her shirt, put her stick in her hand, and she was set.

She had so much fun running around during team pictures.

Here's my entire team--the 2009 Palomar League Champs!! We had such an amazing season and so much fun. We won our league, were seeded 5th in San Diego for all Division I schools, and made it to the semifinals where we lost to San Pasqual (who ended up winning the entire thing) 2-0. It was a great year! I also just love that Bailey is in our team picture :)

Happy Halloween!

This year Bailey was Minnie Mouse for Halloween. My mom made her an adorable little skirt, we bought her some ears at Disneyland, and red sparkly shoes because I couldn't resist. She loved it! She even wore her ears all day long.

We went to a Halloween party in the afternoon and it was really hot outside, so she kind of melted. As a Halloween bonus, she took a four hour nap after the party! That was defnitely a world record for her. Once she was up, we went to our ward's trunk or treat. Bailey was so ready for all of it! She did not want to sit still to get a picture with me her hippie mom, but she did hold my hand all night as we walked around the party.

She really just marched around all night holding on to her bucket in one hand and taking it all in. In the gym, there was a cake walk, a fishing pond, face painting, and a popcorn table. We walked one round in the cake walk and that was enough. She didn't want to fish, but she did want to eat a bag of popcorn. Then we just walked around and looked at all of the decorations and other kids' costumes. I thought she might be scared by everything, but she was just fascinated. She really liked these two giant pumpkins that were on the stage.
When we went outside to walk around to the cars to get candy, she was ready. We would walk up to a car and say, "Treat?" Once she got the candy she would squeak out, "Thank you," (it was really just two syllables that kind of sounded like it, but everyone understood). She would have been fine after the first car because she just wanted to stop and hold the one piece of candy from her bucket. We convinced her to keep going, but she would stop and examine the candy after each car. She even tasted each piece of candy with the wrapper on and declared each piece as "nummy!" I had to take the pixie sticks out of her mouth quickly before the wrapper disinigrated, but she kept the Three Muskateers in for a while.

At one car she got a tootsie roll sucker and she was set. We took the wrapper off and she just strolled around the rest of the night and the entire way home with her sucker in her mouth.

By the time we got home, she was covered in sticky sucker slobber, but she was happy. She ended up eating the entire thing--tootsie roll center and all!

I made her a tutu to wear Friday to Trisha's house. It ended up being adorable, but she did not want to get her picture taken in the morning before we dropped her off. I thought she should wear a costume since I wore one to school too.