Christmas Time!

Roxanne and Tucker on the Blue Ridge Santa Express. My grandparents treated us to the train ride and a night in Blue Ridge. It was wonderful!
Roxanne and Santa on the Santa Express.
Chloe, Roxanne and Ella on the train.
"Decorating the tree," or at least taking a break from doing so.

We are excitedly gearing up for Christmas (and Roxanne and Justin's birthdays). We spent the weekend decorating the house, and bought our family's very first live Christmas tree. It was a fun experience, and Roxanne loved it. She really loved decorating the tree more than anything. She kept putting almost all of the ornaments on the lower right corner, so were were trying to help her find other spots, too. But she was determined...

In other Roxanne news, she is really getting too big for her britches. Here are some anecdotes from recent Roxanne-ness:
*She insists that "ridiculous" is a "not nice word." So every single time me or Justin say it, she tells us in a panic: "You can't say that word! That's not a nice word!" Every time, we tell her that it really isn't a bad word, but she's not buying it.
*She is very very dramatic. This afternoon, she went for a walk with Justin and insisted on taking her singing/dancing Christmas Snoopy. I bought it for her last year, but we just brought it down from the attic, and she loves it just as much this year as she did last year. Apparently, on their walk (with Katie), Roxanne started crying and freaking out, and wouldn't tell Justin what was wrong. He finally realized she had dropped Snoopy, and he told her that a car was coming, so they needed to wait for it to pass before they picked him up. By the way, the dropping things and not telling us, but just crying instead is fairly common. Weird. And dramatic. Anyways, as soon as they came home, Roxanne ran in to talk to me, "I dropped Snoopy in the road and Daddy got him for me but he got run over by a car!" She told me about five times that he got run over by a car, and I kept looking at the non-harmed Snoopy and trying to figure out what she was talking about. Justin filled me in...
*She is very independent, as always, and she has learned to climb into her own carseat and buckle herself in. Usually, if you do it for her, she will scream until you undo it and let her do it again. She's learning to put her shoes on, and we're working learning to get her coat on and off (it has buttons, and she already popped one off by trying to just pull the sides apart).
*Activity-wise, she loves painting, drawing, and reading more than anything else. She will get up in the morning and pull books out of her book bin and sit in her glider and just read out loud. She makes up narratives that don't necessarily match up with the stories, but are usually pretty close because she has them memorized. She also loves playing with "babies," which are any small figurine she owns, like animals, Yo Gabba Gabba characters, etc. She makes them have really elaborate interactions. Usually they involve dragons, and fighting and someone getting in trouble and then getting forgiven. It's like a toddler soap opera.
*She is extremely excited about Christmas. She talks about Santa all the time, and how he is going to bring her ladybugs (these little rubber ones at Fernbank) and new "babies" (see note above). She also wants him to bring her some more Hello Kitties. A girl can never have too many Hello Kitties...

OK, that's all for now! We hope everyone is doing well, and getting ready for the holidays.

Blog Neglect!

Poor Roxanne. If I ever get my act together and get this blog printed like I always planned, she's going to think she was abandoned at the age of 2. At least in terms of blogging...

School is overwhelming me right now, but just two more days. I plan to spend this weekend catching up on things. In the mean time, here's some video of Roxanne. Forgive me? Sorry about the quality. I take most of these short videos on our regular camera which cuts off after 90 seconds. Some day, I want to get one of those nifty flip camcorders that are digital and easy to use. Just when I was telling Justin that it was ridiculous that we hadn't been videotaping Roxanne more with our real video camera, he told me that he was pretty sure ours got ruined in the basement flood. Thanks water pipes. Have any of you had experience with those? I'd love some product recommendations...

Pink Pig!

We went last night. Justin took her around this time. So cute. :) She got so so so excited about going. I promised her we would go back again. She wants to go with Nana and Ella and Chloe and Kendree.

More Drawings

I've been meaning to post about Roxanne's drawings. She love, love, loves to draw. We got her an easel, and she spends hours on the dry erase marker side of it. She also spends hours on Ben's dry erase easel at work... She just can't get enough... She also loves drawing on paper, the floor, furniture, the wall... Yeah. But these little people she draws are so neat looking. Sometimes they have hats. Sometimes they have ears, and if they only have one eye, they are Muno (the cyclops monster from Yo Gabba Gabba). She also loves to draw on herself... Sometimes random scribbles, but usually she tries to give herself whiskers on her face, kitty stripes on her arms, and she colors her finger nails. No matter how many times we punish her for it, she just keeps doing it. Last time, we took the markers away for a week, and she still drew on herself shortly after getting them back... At least dry erase markers come off easily with baby wipes...
Here she decorated herself. Lovely.
This is our family. Plus one. No, I'm not pregnant. But apparently, we have an invisible baby member of our family.
Here's a person drawn on the credenza.
Here's people drawn on the living room floor. Perhaps they look a little sad because they know they are not supposed to be there?

Happy Halloween!

Some Music Room Videos (some better than others)

Pumpkin Patch Photos!

We took Roxanne to Yule Farms in Stockbridge yesterday. We are all kind of sick, but doing that thing where we take medicine and feel sorry for ourselves but try to do a little bit of fun stuff anyways. We had fun at the farm. I miss going to Burt's, but this is much closer, and we got to actually go out in the patch and pick pumpkins and cut them from the vine ourselves. And there were a ton of activities for Roxanne. Most were slightly low budget, but she didn't care. Maybe we'll get to Burt's at some point, but if not, this was really fun.
She was being very bossy by this point (we were on our way out and it was nap time). She kept telling Justin not to tip the wheelbarrow up, which of course is the only way to push it...
We had to get a mommy, daddy, and baby pumpkin. We each picked out our own.
She totally loves posing for photos now... Hammy hammykins.
The pumpkin hunter!
Braving the pumpkin patch.
Is there anything cuter than miniature donkeys? Actually, Roxanne petting miniature donkeys is pretty cute...
I realize this looks totally unsafe, but seriously, the guy was watching her like a hawk. And she begged and begged to ride the horse. Isn't she a little teensy baby on there?
The funniest was when she started slipping off, she would say in a very grown up voice, "Stop the horse, please." Then he would adjust her, adjust her helmet, and start back again.
The maze. Roxanne was our leader.
The weird pirate ship play fort.



This was a rabbit village. No petting though. :(

Fall!

In honor of fall, we went to the Smith Plantation Fall Festival this morning. My mom came and met us there, and we all had a lot of fun. We were also picking up a chair my mom found at a yard sale, but that's for the house blog...
Here's what's new in Roxanne-land:
*Although she will wear pants with some nudging (or threatening...), she is extremely partial to dresses. I have NO idea where this is all coming from, but it's insanely pervasive. She's been wearing this pink corduroy dress/overalls thing a lot since we can slip it on over whatever for inclement weather, and every time I put it on her, she says "I'm a girl now!" Sigh. I always correct her, and tell her she's always a girl, and that she looks beautiful all the time, in pants or dresses, etc. and she will nod, but apparently I'm not getting all the way through. Yipes.
*Her obsession with Hello Kitty is going way strong. She has a ton of Hello Kitty stuff since I'm a sucker and pick up little things here and there as I see them (and because I feel a little sorry for her that her birthday and Christmas are mashed together). She has started insisting on wearing "paws," which means when we are at home, she wants to have socks on her hands and on her feet. She meows, sits on the floor, and licks her arms, telling us that she's a little kitty. Sometimes she's a "sad kitty," but usually just a kitty.
*She is really excited about her birthday. We talked about it a little recently because she's had some friends/family members have birthdays and when we go to pick out gifts, she keeps asking where her presents are. So we told her her birthday is in December, and that she can have any kind of party she wants. So of course, she wants a Hello Kitty party with "Hello Kitty cake, and Hello Kitty presents, and Hello Kitty decorations." She tells us, "My birthday is tomorrow, in December, and I'll have a Hello Kitty party." We used to correct her and tell her December is a long ways away, but now we mostly just nod...We're pretty sure she has no idea what "tomorrow" really means at this point. So we're probably safe.

Enjoy the photos! Most are from the festival today. :)
At Fickle Pickle for lunch. Roswell has their scarecrows set up. Roxanne was in awe of this one. I think it was called "Pickle Modern."
She really wanted to pick this pumpkin out. But she decided it was probably too heavy. Whatever works...
Here's her favorite dress I mentioned above. She's cramming rocks and acorns into the pocket. And these are her new winter boots! We've been looking for some for a while, and these were her favorite. They are brown with a layer of glitter on top. She really likes them.
Nana and Roxanne with her pumpkin!
When she wants to, she has LASER FOCUS.
The finished product!
Getting her face painted... She was unsure about this, insisting it would hurt, but the woman was so sweet and showed her it felt like tickling. So she sat very very still and actually seemed to enjoy it.
Is this not the cutest cow ever???
Roxanne kept calling it a giant doggy. I heard several kids ask "Is that real?"
Petting a giant bunny!
I seriously think her favorite animal was this rooster. When she tried to stick her fingers in, Justin told her it might peck her, and for the rest of the day, she's been saying "I wanted to touch that rooster, but it was going to bite my fingers."
A little miniature horse. So cute.
You can't see it very well, but this was a super cute donkey. Teensy, too.
A baby pig!
Her masterpiece! Justin drew the flower on the left, but the people on the right were all her. One is me, but I'm not sure who the other one is. The green one has very very long arms. Neat!
Nana got Roxanne this raincoat, and when we tried it on her last night, she insisted on wearing it until bed time. With the hood on...