Mommy's Little Helper

So, lately Violet has turned into quite the little helper. I'll list a few of the ways my little girl is helping...she's getting so big and smart!

She tries to help me put her socks on in the mornings. She knows they go on her little feet, but she usually tries to put the one she's holding on the same foot I'm already putting a sock on! Of course, she also likes to put her socks in her mouth, so we have to watch her carefully. It's so funny, when she notices her socks starting to come off, she pulls it off and then stuffs it in her mouth! What a silly little girl.

Another thing she helps with is putting on her own headband. We have a couple actual headbands instead of the elastic-y ones that go all around her head. Those are the ones she'll pick up and try to put on by herself! So cute.

She also is very good at helping me & John send text messages. For example, yesterday I got a message, and I quote, "C. Fg ;);565(;:::fgddgo lhad". Not quite sure what it all means but I do see two smilies in there, one in each direction so she must have been having fun with Daddy's phone!
And boy does she like playing with our iPhones. There's an app on them called "I Hear Ewe" that has pictures of animals and when you touch one, it makes the sound of that animal. She loves it.

"Oh, mommy, thank you for giving me your phone. Now I can play my game."


"This game is sooooo fun. I just love it!"


"Which animal should I choose..." She actually flicks between the two screens picking which animal she wants to hear the sounds for.


"The rhino!"

"That was so fun, I need my own phone so I can play it all the time!"

We're probably going to be the only parents whose toddler wants an iPhone! We'll be lucky if she makes it to kindergarten before asking for her own phone!

New Pink Bow

So, I think I mentioned this already but I won the raffle I posted about a few weeks back and won some really cute bows for Violet. The other day, she had an outfit on that her new pink bow matched just perfectly (it's almost the same color as the pink pants she has on!) so I couldn't resist the photo-op.

Apparently, neither could Violet! She can be such a little ham sometimes! She just got right up in the camera like, "Okay mom, take my picture! I'm ready! I'll smile big for you!"
This one is a little blurry because our (old) camera can't always keep up with her. Since then, we've gotten a new camera which I love and will be posting pics from it soon...I think I have one more post after this one from the old camera.

"Oh, I just love playing in my new bow and getting my picture taken. I'm so cute!"


Here she is, clapping her hands, having fun being the star of the show.


"OH! There's the dogs! Do you see them mommy? I must go get them!"


And that's about when I lost her attention, she squirmed until I got her out of the chair and she immediately crawled across the room to go get the dogs! Silly baby!

Violet's First Playdate with Alex

Friday, June 12th we babysat my nephew Alex for a short while. He's about 5 months younger than Violet. They actually played together really well. And by playing together, I mean sitting beside each other playing.

At first, Alex was just playing with his giraffe and Violet was eating her veggie-cheeto thingies. Funny thing, when I set Alex down on his blanket, V crawled over to the edge and sat up there, almost like she wasn't sure if she was allowed on his blanket or not!

Take notice that while Alex is 5 months younger than Violet, he's almost the same size! Long baby!

Here she is with the veggie-cheeto thingy hanging out her mouth. She likes to leave it half in and half out of her mouth and sit there like that. Then she pushes the rest of it in after the first half has dissolved.


One day, if she ever looks at this when she's older, she may hate me for putting up these pictures. I know I wouldn't want pictures of me eating posted, but I'm her mom and that's what moms do, post embarrassing pictures! Hehehe.


Okay, so back to playing with Alex...here they are again, Violet still eating and Alex still playing with his giraffe.


Once V was done eating, she wanted to play with some toys. So I got a couple out, and Alex wanted to play as well.


At first they were both content playing with their own toys...


Then Alex got curious as to what Violet was playing with. "Hey, what toy you got? Looks fun."


"Excuse me, I would like your toy!" I really like how she's just seeming to ignore him. I believe she has learned this from being at daycare and having to share with other babies all day long.

They always want the toy the other baby has! =)

Not terribly long after this, Violet got bored of her train and started playing with her ball toy. Alex was very interested in this toy and kept trying to get it from her and I actually had to move her b/c I didn't want her to hurt him (the ball has colored panels that she could have accidentally snapped his finger between). Then it was dinner time for Violet, and Alex's parents (Kristen & Ryan) came to pick him up. So I didn't get any more pictures.

Overall, their playdate went really good. They are both such laid-back babies and got along really well. She's so lucky to have so many cousins close to her, age-wise. Noah is 5 months older, Alex is 5 months younger, and Josslyn is 7 months younger. Slightly further apart include Kate (14 months older) and one on the way (Tiff & Wade's 2nd), who'll be about 17 months younger. What a crazy bunch of grandkids from John's side, and that doesn't even include Natalia (4 1/2) and Anthony (9)! Holy cow! =) We're lucky we all live in the same town so she'll get to grow up with all her family nearby.

Playing with the Dogs

So, Violet really likes our dogs. She especially likes "petting", which is more like hitting, them. Because of this, the dogs don't seem to like her as much. Oh, and the fact that she's a little unpredictable probably doesn't help at all! =)

The other day, Violet discovered the rope toy the dogs like to play with. I believe at the time that Smokey was playing with it. She waits til it's on the floor, crawls over there, and steals it. He actually did play with her for a few minutes before he learned she had no intention of throwing it for him, which is his favorite way to play. That, and he really likes to shake his toys, and I wasn't letting him do that by her for some reason.

Anyway, here's a pic of her trying to get him to play.


After a failure with Smokey, she tried to get Daisy to play. Look at that ornery face!


"Why won't you doggies play with me?!!!!"


"Fine, I shall come and get you!" Notice Smokey watching her like, "what is that crazy baby doing now?!" Also, Daisy doesn't like her so much any more because she tries to pull to standing using Daisy!


"Hi Smokey!"


He really didn't like it when she laid on him. He very quickly struggled to get out from under her! But I did get a cute pic! I believe she was actually trying to crawl over him, which she does to our legs frequently by crawling up, laying over the leg, and then trying to push over! It's very cute, but the dogs don't like it so much.


"Doggies are so much fun!" =)

Little Engineer-to-be

So, sorry for the delay in posts! As some of you know, part of being an engineer requires a little OCD. I had taken Violet swimming for the first time on May 30th, and Laurie (my M-I-L) took some pics of her. That next week, I took several pics of her as well doing various things. However, I didn't want to post them because then my posts would be out of order! But I decided I can do it. So on with the post! =)

Violet always seems very interested in random things...she turns her little piano over to "inspect" the screw holes, she sticks her little finger in the saxophone on our little singing snowman, she looks intently at the wheels on her Hot Wheels car...things like that. She's a very curious baby.

Well one day, she crawled into the office and took interest in the router. She's always looked at it, but she's never really "inspected" it before.

Here she is reaching for it like "Oooh, what is this thingy?!"


And here she is inspecting it. "Hmmm, I wonder what THIS does?"


Now mind you, John was on the computer whilst she was playing with the router and he had called me into the room to get her away from it...instead I ran into the other room, grabbed the camera, then took some pics! After that, I did remove her from the router and we went into the other room and played some more.

Oh, and an update on the raffle I posted about a while back...I won! I won 3 bows and a headband for Violet so expect pictures soon! I picked a double hot pink bow, a black and white bow, and a dark purple and light purple bow. They are absolutely adorable! =)

Memorial Day Weekend

So, as some of you already know, the refinery I work at (presently owned by Sunoco) was recently purchased by Holly. The takeover date is June 1. That means for the rest of the year, we'll get our vacation pro-rated by 7/12's. Well, John and I have some trips planned for later this year, so that means all my vacation with Holly is spent. So, I decided to extend my Memorial Day weekend by taking off the Friday before and the Tuesday after, since this will be my last chance for "vacation" until the end of August.

By the way, in case you didn't know already, 5 day weekends ROCK! We didn't really do anything exciting, but it was just nice to have some time off. We did go see two movies in the theater: Star Trek (which was AWESOME!) and Terminator: Salvation (which was pretty good).
On Memorial Day itself, we partook in the typical activities...John played some golf, we barbecued with his family, ate some watermelon, all the good stuff. Although we missed my family, my dad was recovering from a cold and we wanted to play it safe so Violet didn't get sick.

Here are some pics of Miss Violet riding on the Barbie motorized car.

Note John in the background steadying her so she doesn't fall off!

This dress was handed down from her cousin Kate, who wore it on Easter in 2008. It is just adorable, and I couldn't help but put a bow in her hair to match!

She had so much fun riding the car like a big girl!

One of Violet's favorite thing to play with during bath time is her rubber ducky. Well, after her last bath, she snuck it into her bedroom! Actually, she was still holding it when I picked her up and wrapped her into her towel and I just didn't notice until we were in the bedroom, but the other way of telling it is more fun.

So now, she gets to play with her ducky outside of the bath. Here she is in the living room talking to it.


And here's just two more excuses to show of her big blue eyes and two-bottom-toothed smile!

1.


2.

Such a happy baby!

Oh, Violet's fourth tooth broke through around Friday, May 22nd. She now has her two bottom center teeth and her two top center teeth!

More soon! It's finally warming up so we should get some good pictures outside...swimming and blowing bubbles and all that fun stuff! Yay!