Garden & Camera

Sunday was an uneventful day for the Muffin family, nice & quiet.

Muffin and I went shopping Sunday morning for pansies to plant in the garage flower bed. Then we planted the flowers together (sort of). She enjoyed taking out the old poitting soil from the container, and somehow kept covering the whole flowers with the potting soil as we were planting them. She even got to water them, now I'll be teaching her to watch the flowers as they grow. I tried to get her help in clearing out leaves from the garden bed but she was more interested in climbing over all of her yard toys. She does miss running back there, we need to start getting the yard ready for the summer. Can't wait!

In the afternoon, somehow Muffin got the idea that she wanted to take pictures. Probably because she saw Daddy Muffin taking pictures during the birhtday party we had just gone to. I offered to lend her my camera so she could take pictures of her most recent toy, and she did a pretty good job (with just a bit of help from me). Watch out Daddy Muffin, you've got competition!

Disgusting

When I came home yesterday evening, I was greeted by Muffin, who gleefuly declared "I'm DISGUSTING", while she danced around, smiling and clearly proud of herself. She seemed to think this was hysterical, and was having a blast being "disgusting". We asked her where she got the word, she said it was from Max & Ruby (a cartoon she watches sometimes). Clearly there was nothing disgusting about her (just adorable as usual). But she had a blast pretending to be disgusting. Go figure!

By the way - the spanglished word of the day is MILKA = which is her version of Milk in Spanish, she just added an 'a' to translate it. Yes, she knows the correct word is 'Leche' and clearly thought she was very clever calling it something else. She did tell me earlier today that she can sometimes speak in Spanish. I'll take what I can get!

Whining

Muffin seems to have entered a new developmental phase, the one where she thinks she needs to whine to get what she wants and she will not take "no" for an answer. Daddy Muffin came up with a great way to deal with this… when she wants something unreasonable, he just says yes, you can have it, but be aware of the consequence. So far seems to be working like a charm! Typical dialogues go something like this:

Muffin: "These aren't my pencils, I want my regular pencils." (spoken with a whiny complaining tone)

Daddy Muffin: "Those are your travel pencils. Sure, you can have your regular pencils, we'll just leave Nana's & Grandad's house, and drive home and get your pencils. Come on, let's get your coat now."

Muffin: "No, I don't want to get them. I'll play witht these"

It seems to work (so far), we'll keep using this as much as we can! Certainly much easier and gentler than saying "because I said so" or yelling. Go Daddy Muffin!

Cabin Fever

For someone who's been cooped up almost a week at home with the flu, she's done pretty good. It probably helped that we used TV a lot more than we normally do.... though we've been telling her that this is ONLY because she's sick. I hope she doesn't start pretending to be sick now so she can get more tv! We did have one evening when she was very contrarian, doing the opposite of whatever we asked her, I blame cabin fever for that. Daddy Muffin has been a trooper, surviving the flu himself, and playing with her a LOT.

Today is the day cabin fever ends - we think she's well enough to go to ballet class this morning, hurray!

BTW, if anyone feels like leaving comments, please feel free! Would be nice to know others are reading this blog ;)

Play Dough

Muffin is getting better but she's now gotten used to all that TV watching, sigh... to try and reel her back into play mode, I decided to make some play-dough from scratch and let her use cookie cutters on the 'dough'. Of course I had to dye it a nice reddish/ fuschia color. Thankfully it was a big hit and Muffin loved the dough. We cut out shapes which she proceed to bake in her playkitchen's oven. And a great time was had by all!

Her fever finally broke, she's just got a runny nose, every time she sneezes, we're rushing to her with tissue to clear her nose/hand from the wicked buggers coming out - not pretty! She's still coughing a bit and energy level is not up to normal but she's much more active than the last couple of days.

The Flu

I had taken Friday off so that we could go with some friends to the Crayola Factory (Easton PA). But Friday morning we had to change plans. Muffin woke up with a fever! Plus she had low energy, glassy eyes and a drippy nose. Spent most of the day watching tv which is rare for us (we try to limit tv watching to 1 hr a day or so).
Daddy Muffin has been sick too, so they both shared a little tv watching.

Saturday morning we took her to the drs to make sure there was nothing else, thankfully the dr said she looked ok otherwise, and that she's just have to ride this thing out.

Carrota

Muffin and I have a little tradition at bedtime when we read our nighttime stories. Every night she will go to her "library" and pick out one book to read as "hola" and one to read as "hello" (i.e. one in Spanish and one in English). If the "hola" book is originally written in English I just translate it on the spot for her. Last night she picked a picture book as the "hola" book and I thought it would be a good opportunity for Muffin to practice her Spanish. So I asked her to tell me what the different food names were in Spanish, and if she hesistated I'd help her along... Then she decided to be sly and funny… and started inventing her own translations by spanglishizing English words - for example for Carrots, she called them "Carrota". She very obviously thought she was clever because she was giggling through the whole thing. Sigh… she's too smart for me already and she's only THREE !!!

Pigtails

Today Muffin asked me to put her hair into pigtails, then she picked out a hat that she *HAD* to wear. When I asked her if I could take a picture of her braids, she said no, she wanted a video. So that's what we did, here is a link to the video, enjoy!

UPDATE: I did manage a picture after all, here it is.

Of Pancakes & Skunks

Muffin has a new favorite story, The Runaway Pancake , which was our Valentine's day gift for her. It’s a pretty cute story actually, and the book even has a CD of John Lithgow reading the story. So now we have a new imaginary friend, the "boy pancake" who comes to visit and play and even has done sleep overs (who knew?). He even greets me whenI come home from work! Of course we all have to be careful not to sit on him, since we can't see him ;)

But don't worry, she has not forgotten about good ol' Baby Skunk... For the past 6+ months we have had an ongoing saga with the poor litle Baby Skunk that fell off a log and hurt his leg. Usually played by Muffin herself (aspiring actresst that she is), with yours truly typically assigned as the person who finds the Baby Skunk, and takes care of the boo-boo. Sometimes I'm transformed into a Princess or another storytime character, but the story is pretty much the same everytime. Baby Skunk even enters into the stories I have to spin for her - say, she asks for a story about Blues Clues, I'll start inventing it, then Muffin stops me & tells me how Baby Skunk somehow has entered this story. Thankfully both Baby Skunk and Mamma Skunk don't stink (she doesn't know how skunks smell and I’m not about to tell her).

I can just see the evolution for our next story, maybe tonight… about how Baby Skunk meet Boy Pancake. My imagination is getting tired from all this invention, help!! Actually I’m very grateful to see how creative she is, though it can be exhausting its also very rewarding.

Grandma the Clown

Yesterday we went to see a little reading & show given locally by Grandma the Clown , from the Big Apple Circus. Sofia got to sit with all the children on the gym floor of a local school, while the parents got to sit on the bleachers. We were a little nervous leaving Muffin alone even if only a few feet away, but she did great. And Grandma the Clown was fantastic! Grandma is actually a guy, he showed us how he puts his makeup on, then stepped out to put his costume back. He's VERY funny and if he's a preview for our visit to the circus this Friday, we're in for a treat. At the end of his little 'show', Muffin wanted to go see him, and Daddy snapped a wonderful picture of her.

Sock Puppet

Yesterday we made our very first Sock Puppet!! Her name is Snowman Sockpuppet. We used an old sock of mine that she grabbed from my drawer, its red with white snowmen on it (hence the name). Muffin helped me pick out the buttons for the eyes/nose and she insisted she wanted pink hair on it. Thankfully I had some pink cheap yarn we could use. And then mommy got to work sewing. Of course after I finished it she got upset because I said we couldn't use the pink yarn to make the sock puppet completely pink. By bedtime, though, she told me that she now liked the sock.

Here's a link to a little video of Muffin telling the story of the sock puppet being made by Mami.