Another Yaya Roll

This is the Yaya roll compiled from the time the "Kates" took the Furman girls to SNOG:

All I can say is brilliant!

A New ART Time

Yaya has been making more and more by herself during our art times.

After talking to my friend Rachel, who is an art teacher, she helped me realize that one useful thing gained by drawing and creating is that Yaya is able to improve her fine motor skills.  So instead of trying to force her hand to draw something, we've just been letting her creativity flow.  Talking to Rachel also reminded me that during this developmental stage, things shouldn't look like they do in reality because she is figuring out her own way of expressing herself.

Alas, this is one of the first things she came up with:

A Christmas Tree in April

The Next Yaya Reel

Yaya's in love

with her pink big girl bike.

This was Yaya as she opened her eyes to see her big present on her birthday.

That beautiful hair featherness on her head was another one of her presents, from Norah.

And this was Yaya with her new wheels.

Don't be alarmed, this is her traditional and customary "I love this!"-face.

Who needs a prince when you have wheels like this?

Playdoh Princess

Aliza loves Playdoh so much that sometimes she ends up looking like this:

Notice her jeans.  It seems that her Playdoh has become one with her.

If I didn't know better and I saw her walking down the street, I'd say she looks like a pretty serious artist.

Notorious C.U.P.C.A.K.E.

Cupcake has a few more letters than B.I.G.... but I figured this title would work anyway.

The girls helped us celebrate Aliza's birthday last week, and boy- what a celebration it was!  It even included cupcakes.  And I found out what happens when you mix those two things: the girls and cupcakes.
It's notorious, as in: famous, well-known, or scandalous.

Let me show you, this is how it started:

Here's Subject A:

Seemingly interested in the art of making cupcakes.

And here's Subject B:

Obviously more interested in the sprinkles.

And yet look who ended up inhaling the sprinkles after the cupcakes were made:

Notorious Subject A

Even after the incident shown above, Subject A had enough room in her tummy to eat one of her birthday cupcakes.  Thank Goodness.

And Subject B made it out okay too.

Playing the Prince

I have noticed a trend in my life.  I am always the Prince and Aliza is always the Princess.  At least 5 times a day Aliza approaches me and says, "You be the prince, I'll be the princess."

This morning, I was sitting on the couch and Aliza informed me that I was the Prince.  After a few minutes of watching her I tried to say something to her and she shouted very seriously:

"The Prince doesn't talk to the Princess.  You're not supposed to talk to me!"

After this incident, I've reasoned that it's hard to pursue your princess when she doesn't talk to you.  But because of my nobility and station in life, I have decided to continue to pursue Aliza through all of these regulations.  So my new "Prince Strategy" is to make googly eyes.  It's worked on me before, so I figured....  I'll let you know how it goes.

Yaya Has Moved Up in the World

Or back, depending on how you look at it.

She's now the cool big sister that gets to sit at the very back of the Pajero!

One Early Morning...

I went into the girl's room and was surprised to find that Yaya had already dressed herself.
This is the ensemble she put together:

I'd like to point out a few things:

1. She looks like a tennis player.  You see the way that headband is adorning her head?.. Yeah, you see it now.

2. I don't know if you noticed, but there seems to be a color trend...

3. She's wearing socks with Mary Jane's, always a classy look.

4. I loved this moment because I could tell that she was so excited about her selection.  It really touched my heart to see her like that.

A is for...

I'll never remember the difference between an alligator and a crocodile.  That's just a fact of life for me.  No matter how many times I look up the facts and re-educate myself on the topic, I forget seconds later.  But you'll never see me spending even an entire second worrying about this fact of life either.  So the above statement isn't meant to make you worry about me.  I'm not worried, so you shouldn't be either.  And hey, maybe you have the same problem, in which case we should get some tea and talk about it together.  Maybe we'll form a support group, I'd be up for something like that if you would.

But I'm moving away from the real reason for this post, which is:  I used to talk to kids about science.  All the time.  And there was one class that I taught where we would talk about the inherited traits of animals and how those traits helped them in their ecosystems.  Alligators or crocodiles, which ever one I would talk to them about, have some pretty cool inherited traits.  Like their color and scales, which help them to blend into their environment.  Or their jaw strength.  Their jaws are much stronger when they are biting down then when they are opening up.  That's why an alligatordile (new term coined by me) will sit in the water with it's mouth partly open to catch some dinner, as opposed to keeping it closed and then opening it really fast only to bite down again.  That's also why when I wrestle an alligator, I just put a piece of tape around his mouth to keep it closed and win every time, impressing all of my friends.

Here is a picture of me wrestling an alligator:

Oh wait, the alligatordile newsreel must have gotten mixed up with my fish dinner newsreel.

Maybe I can find that picture some other time...

But this brings me to my next point.  You can admire alligatordiles without even knowing any information about them.  Aliza would fit into this category of person.  She does know one good fact about them though and that is that they start with the letter  A!

A Pig Nurse

The other day Aliza was nursing her pig, Wilbur, back to health.  I think his fever may have been induced by the extra bright light next to his sick bed.  But what do I know?...  I'm not a doctor.

"Grocery Shoppers"

After J-Town came into the world, two super heros emerged from some kind of rubble somewhere to help the cause of the villa mates.

The cause: Tummies: We need food to eat and the fridge needs to be well stocked.

Because we are super heros sometimes we go incognito to the grocery store to keep our identity a secret:

I can't reveal the identity behind this zucchini or my own identity.

Oh, wait... did I say "my" identity.... I was talking about my friend.

It's Art Time

We haven't had as many art times as it would take to fill the MoMA in New York City or the Louvre in Paris, but we still have heart.  And besides that Aliza's collection is growing.

A Blue Seal

Princess Yaya

Our First Airplane: The Stingray

Does anyone recognize this face?....

It's the face of a flying machine.  A Captain's face.

There is a captain inside each one of us and you'll be happy to know that Yaya discovered hers today.

Because of this beauty:

The Stingray

Courtesy of the Gonyea-Alexanders!

Here she is flying:

The plane must have been really flying because I could never get a real picture of it in the air.

But look how Yaya has her arm extended...  She's a real Captain of the Air now.

Ice Skating

After our outing at the park, the girls and I usually head to the mall to do some banking and some drinking of coffee.  I'm really the only one who enjoys the actual drinking of the coffee, but they really like the snacks.  

Last week, after resting at Starbucks we had to run a few errands in the mall.  I was pushing Norah in the stroller and Yaya was ice skating through the mall in front of us...

I have the proof:

The picture above shows a highly technical double camel lux jump slide.

I will say, Yaya made quite a few peoples' days as she was ice skating through the mall.  You can't see the faces of the people in this picture, but I could and it was priceless.  They were looking at her as if she were an angel.

This one is really blurry, but you can tell how fast she was ice skating.