Little singer

Bedtime was a little rough this evening, but eventually Hannah went down fine after a second try at story and song time and some extra hugs. Just a few minutes after we closed the door, she started singing to herself. Hannah was singing herself to sleep with "Frosty the snowman (with the correct interval eeked out, mind you) was a great big happy soul." I didn't know whether to laugh or cry, so I did a bit of each.

Words

We're thoroughly enjoying Hannah's words these days. She had been substituting a ya or wa sound for L for a long time, and we decided to see if we could get her to fix it. So we practiced a few times - mostly in the car - and heard lots of "la-wa", and "luh, luh, wuv." Then rather suddenly, it worked.

So now she says these really exaggerated L's in her words, and it's hilarious. "Ba-lue," "Llongmont," "Aunt Ca-laire." I'll try to capture some on video soon. We even have L's where Y's belong, which makes for "lellow" and the like. Add this to our recent favorites - "rasnaut" (restaurant) and "overgirls" (overalls) and you have frequent giggles from the parents. Very fun.

Halloween 2009

Along came a spider...

Photo stories

Toast. Food of the gods.

Braids like Mama's for hiking.

Hannah's awesome spider costume. My mom was nice enough to offer to make one because she knew I wouldn't have time this year. Hannah loves it!

To top last post's snow report - we got 22 inches this past Wednesday and Thursday. Hannah and I had a fun snow day Thursday snowshoeing with friends, followed by a huge lunch to make up for 3 1/2 miles in the snow with a 32lb kid on my back!

Sledding this afternoon. After yesterday's attempt when we got all suited up and Hannah decided she doesn't like sledding, she decided to try again today. Of course we got to the neighborhood hill and she tried to bail again. I pretty much physically forced her into the sled with me and she was hooked from the first run - she even giggled through our first wipe out! Daddy joined us and we kept going until the sun went down.

Snow!

Not only did it snow on the night of October 9th, but it didn't completely melt for over two days. In Texas, I was still running in just shorts and a sports bra in October! I did run that Sunday, but it was a very short and very cold 29 degree run.

Here are some fun photos of Hannah modeling two versions of a firefighter man helmet this weekend. Check out the undies! She's not accident-proof yet, but she's doing pretty well. She's getting little-kid legs - almost no thigh roll left!

She's pretty mad at me for this one - or maybe at my students. This is my "choir ball" and it recently returned to my classroom. Just one more instance of having to share Mama, and Mama's toys, with the school kids.

"I'm a big girl now"

Recent afternoon hike at Beaver Meadows in Rocky Mountain. For those of you who are still thinking of visiting - we do this stuff every weekend!!

How many posts begin with thoughts about how big my baby is getting? She's wearing undies!!! Her wonderful Thursday/Friday day care got her to stay dry and use the potty for all that's intended for last week, so we started underwear Friday afternoon. Of course she's had an accident every day, but she's actually doing pretty well. And every time she goes to the bathroom she says "I wear undies now. I'm a big girl." And it's so cute and so unreal that she really is a big girl now.

Besides the potty thing, Hannah's latest obsession is singing, which of course just thrills me! She's learned a lot of new songs at school, and I'm always amazed when she starts singing something that I haven't sung with her in a year, if ever. Her preschool has a music teacher come all three days she's there, which is pretty cool. She also loves to improvise and make up new words or just plain new songs - love it!!

In other news - teaching is going more smoothly than I thought, and I'm no longer so tired every day that I panic about surviving the rest of the school year. Though I am awfully tired every day and I have been staying up way too late.

Sigg - shame on you

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-wasik/sigg-ceo-im-sorry_b_278291.html

I can't believe this has slipped through under the major media radar so far. Apparently the Sigg folks have been enjoying everyone buying their expensive bottles as an alternative to the "bad" plastic bottles with the BPA -all the while keeping quiet about the fact that their bottle's liners have BPA in them!

The Sigg site says only Whole Foods and Wegmans will honor the voluntary exchange (if you bought them there), but word on the street here is that REI (if you're a member - which by the way is so very worth it) and Vitamin Cottage will as well. We're planning on taking ours back to REI, letting Sigg give us free new product, and then never buying their stuff again. Forget mean people - bad people suck!