Sleepy Head

Even with her Do Good Chart, Alyssa still fights us sometimes on going to bed. Last night was one of those nights. We told her she could watch one more episode of "Diego" and then it was time for bed. We then went downstairs to play a little Wii and after awhile we realized we hadn't heard from her. So we went up to check on her and this is what we found.

She had taken a pack of Ritz crackers up with her to eat while she watched.If only she could learn when she was tired and put herself to bed. Usually she falls asleep in our arms when she won't go to bed, but this worked too.
They are so sweet when they are sleeping. They can be sweet when they are awake too, but they are always sweet when they are asleep.

Story Time

Alyssa still likes to play with her stuffed animals. She carries them around the house and sets them up in so many different positions. On Saturday morning after breakfast, Danny offered to read her some books. She insisted on him reading to all of her animals too. Here was the scene.
And of course, the books of choice always seem to be Dora books. Occasionally I find a good library book that holds her interest for a day or two, but then she returns back to Dora.

We were trying to decide the other day when she will start naming her animals. For now, they are "doggy", "kangaroo", "teddy bear", "baby"...well I think you get the pattern so I'll stop there.

Partners in Crime

Fridays are the day that I clean all of the floors in the house. I usually start downstairs and then move upstairs. It takes me awhile to vacuum all of the carpet in this house and it is quite a challenge getting it done before our two little "destroyers of order" move in on their toys. Once I get upstairs, I like to start with the girls' rooms at the back of the house and then move my way up towards the stairs and do our room last. On Friday, I did my normal routine without taking any pauses to check on the girls. I started with Ashley's room and then went to Alyssa's room, then our hall and office, then the play loft and last our bedroom. By the time I was done, I realized the girls were being very quiet. So I quickly walked through the freshly vacuumed house to find them. Through the play area...

down the hall... a peak into Ashley's room...

and then into Alyssa's room. That's where I found the partners in crime.

They were very pleased with their accomplishment and gladly posed for a picture.

I had a good laugh when I saw it. It could have been much worse for how quiet they were.

Dora the Explorer

Like most little girls her age, Alyssa is a big Dora fan. Her whole little world revolves around Dora. We probably let her watch it a little too much, but I'm okay with it because it took way too long for her to show any interest in TV. We find her quoting things from Dora to us often. Things like "I need the sticky tape" or "let me see if there's something in my backpack.." She also walks around the house singing the different songs (which I'm pretty sure she knows all of them word for word) and she can count to about 7 in spanish.
This week, Danny had an event at work which he invited us to come to. The biggest reason being that Dora the Explorer was going to make an apperance at one of the booths. Alyssa was thrilled about meeting Dora. Once she was close, she didn't want to leave. We had to keep calling her away from Dora so that other people could get pictures with her. They were taking pictures to give to people, so we got one with the whole family. Unfortunately, Alyssa wasn't looking at the camera in it. When they saw her sticking right by Dora's side, they said we could have another picture. So they took one with just Alyssa and Dora.
We finally lured her away from Dora with the promise of a treat. We catch her sleeping with her picture and carrying it around like it's one of her stuffed animals. She had a lot of fun and still talks about seeing Dora at Daddy's work.

Alyssa's Do Good Chart

Shortly after we moved here, we could see we were having some serious issues with Alyssa obeying us. Danny came up with the idea of a Do Good Chart that she could put stickers on whenever she did good things (pick up toys, go to bed, brush her teeth, etc.). The chart has worked like a charm and we are so glad that we decided to do it. After she finishes a row on her chart, she gets to pick a prize from our prize bucket (which originally was our go potty prize bucket). When she fills up the chart, she gets to go to Chuck E. Cheese's or somewhere else like it. This week, she finally filled up the chart (It took a long time to finish the "pick up toys" category) so I took the girls to Chuck E. Cheese's. I was a little bit concerned about doing this without Danny, but it was actually a lot of fun for all of us. Here are the girls riding a roller coaster ride together.

Alyssa chose to go on these roller coaster type rides a lot. I think she liked being able to do it with Ashley. Here is Alyssa enjoying one by herself.

Here are the two of them on a Teletubbies ride. I thought this one looked kind of boring, but they seemed to like it.

While Alyssa was climbing through the tunnels that run along the ceiling, I took Ashley to the toddler zone. She loved this slide. She didn't quite get the whole going up the steps and down the slide thing. She would go down the slide then turn around and try to crawl back up it. Fortunately, we pretty much had the area to ourselves so this wasn't a problem.Here is a video showing her going down the slide. This seemed to be her preffered method of going down no matter hom much I tried to show her other ways of doing it.

Alyssa and Ashley loved the outing and Alyssa didn't even fight me when I told her it was time to go. It helped that we had enough tickets for her to pick out two candies on the way out. Now she is even more determined to fill up her new Do Good Chart.

Danny's Birthday

Danny's Birthday was on Tuesday. I'm finding that birthdays for everyone become more fun each year as Alyssa and Ashley get older. This year, Alyssa helped me make the cake, pick out the presents (with A LOT of help), and as usual she helped Danny open all of his gifts. My favorite part about Alyssa helping me make the cake is that she wanted to wear her little play apron to match my apron. Here we are at work.

Alyssa loves to stir anything I am making. She does pretty well with it as long as I get a few good stirs in first.
Here is the bithday boy! We don't usually put candles on our cakes because there are too many candles now, but I thought that Alyssa would like seeing all of those lit up candles in comparison to how her and Ashley's cakes looked. Happy birthday Danny! You are the best Daddy in the world and we love you!

Valentine's Day Playgroup

Our Ward had a play group in celebration of Valentines day on Friday. It was the first chance we really had to interact with people outside of church on Sunday. Alyssa was very hesitant to go in at first. I think maybe she thought I was going to leave her there. But after I came and sat with her she got right to work on the craft they were doing. In the picture, she is decorating the bag that they later used to collect valentines that they passed out to each other.

Here she is working with the other kids.
And here is the finished product. She decided to skip the games and songs that the other kids were singing so that she could color her bag.

She did participate in the bingo game that they played, but couldn't resist the temptation of eating the candy they used as the markers. She almost didn't have enough to play by the end of the game. After bingo they had cupcakes and juice. Here she is about to enjoy!

Here is Ashley enjoying the fun.
It was a lot of fun and very well organized. I thought it was nice to let Alyssa interact with some other kids.

Sledding

We got 1/2 a foot to a foot of snow last Tuesday, so I took Alyssa sledding in our backyard. We didn't have a sled, so we used the bottom of our exersaucer. It actually worked pretty well for her, but not so well for me and her together. Here she is at the top of the hill.
And here she is at the bottom. It was a pretty good little sledding hill, it just lacked a flat part at the top to get onto the sled. We lost our sled a couple of times.

She loved playing in all of that snow.

I went out and bought a real sled the next day and we tried the hill right outside of our gate. It's probably in our neighbors yard, but we saw a lot of the neighborhood kids sledding there, so I didn't fell bad about using it. It was nice because we could start out where the sidewalk is and where it was flat and the hill was a little bit longer. I find that I'm a lot more willing to take Alyssa out to play in the snow here since it melts so quickly. Our sledding hills are mostly grass again now and it has only been five days. We aren't complaining. We actually think it is perfect because you still get the fun of snow (the sledding, snow angels, snowmen, beauty, etc.) without the pain of having snow (mostly ice on the roads for days and the way snow gets ugly after the first couple of days).

The St. Louis Science Center

We had some beautiful weather on Saturday and Danny had the whole day off, so we decided to make our first trip into St. Louis. Our destination was the Science Center. St. Louis has a number of kid friendly places that are free admission. This is one of them. On the way their, Ashley was really fussing and acting tired and we thought we had made a mistake in not letting her take two naps. Fortunately, she fell asleep in the car and got about a 45 minute nap so it made the Science Center more pleasant for all of us. We were sad that Alyssa wasn't more willing to try out all of the different exibits. We did manage to get her to try a few. This first one is the slanted room.They had a dinosaur exibit that Alyssa was scared of. I think we made it to "Walking with Dinosaurs" just in time back in October because now Alyssa is scared of everything. Danny had to hold her while we were close to this robot T-rex. It's hard to see it in the picture, but it is there at the very top. They had these blocks that are supposed to stack up into an arch. I tried to start it, but Alyssa just wanted to build towers.
As she played I watched the people across from us carefully build their tower. When they got it to stay they proudly walked away. We thought it was nice of them to do all of the work for Alyssa to see...

...and quickly knock over.

Then she went back to building a tower again.

These last two pictures are for you to see the cute faces of our girls.

We had fun, but we probably won't go back and do it again for awhile since Alyssa wasn't that much into it. Next time, we will try the zoo which is also free.