Kompare.Us

With Anya’s dad retiring, we had to say goodbye to Grandpa’s office and to the parsonage. It will be weird at church for awhile without Grandma and Grandpa. They also have moved to a new condo. No more picking raspberries in their yard. :-( But the new place has great parks nearby!

Colleen is staying with Anya’s parents while we are in the hospital. It seems that for breakfast she had berries, cheese, olives and cookies! Yes, she likes it at their house!

Here are pics, Dad sent us throughout the day.

1-dumping out her entire food set
2-decorating Grandma/Grandoa’s house
3- watching Baby Bear DVD with Uncle B about getting a little sister
4-told Grandpa that she put in her contacts and was going shopping
5-taco dinner
6-bath time with new bath toys, Pooh Bear and Piglet

This was said to Anya’s father on Wednesday morning (Anya’s parents watched Colleen while we were at the hospital to see if the baby had turned)…

“I should go in the potty, but I am going to go pee pee in my diaper.”

Ok, some of this I might have mentioned before…if so, forgive me.

We had Colleen’s first swear word at the end of May.  One morning, Tom, who is not a morning person, dropped a banana on the floor and said the f-word.  Colleen was standing next to him.  She found this hilarious and immediately started to say “Wuck, nana…Daddy wuck nana.”  She repeated it over and over throughout the day and for several days afterwards.  She would mime the banana dropping on the floor and then say “wuck nana” and laugh.  Luckily, she did not yet have the “f” sound down!

In June, Colleen was also introduced to Mickey Mouse and the Muppets.  We listened to the Muppet Movie CD and, for some reason, she really like Miss Piggy.  She kept asking for the Miss Piggy song.  What we don’t understand is that she would get sad and sometimes even start to cry when asking for the song.  But, she wanted to keep hearing the song.  It was the one where she falls in love with Kermit.  My mom also introduced her to Mickey Mouse and friends through YouTube while I was in the shower one day.  They played the “Hot Dog Song” and Colleen now regularly starts to sing “hot dog” when she is playing with her Mickey stickers and coloring book.

She has become very proficient in matching her zoo animals in her Fisher Price A-Z Learning Zoo with the corresponding letters on the mat.  Each animal has a letter on it and then there are circles on the mat that have the letters as well.  You can press the circles and hear the name of the animal and the sound they make.  She has almost all the animals names learned as well as the letter they go with.  She loves to play with them.  My brother’s girlfriend played them with her Father’s Day weekend and now Colleen demands that she “sit down” and play “animals” whenever you mention Corinne’s name.

June also saw Colleen eating tons of plums.  Her new favorite fruit.  Though, raspberries also made a quick comeback.  We also played with the “helicopters” that fell from the trees in front of our condo.  She became pretty good at throwing them up in the air and letting them float back down.

She also showed some good problem-solving skills.  One night we were playing and she wanted me to sit on the ground.  I told her that it was hard for mommy to sit on the ground and she looked at me for a moment and then went into her room. She came back out with a small pillow and said “mommy, pillow, back” and proceeded to put the pillow behind my back. How nice of my little girl!

June also brought an interest in changing diapers.  One night she declared that one her bunnies had a poopy diaper and went and got a diaper, as well as baby powder and butt paster, and proceeded to pretend to change bunny’s diaper.  She has now done this for several of her stuffed animals.  It is great to watch!  She will spend quite awhile working at it.

On June 14th, we celebrated my parents’ 40th wedding anniversary with a social hour at church.  We had a cake and the Church Council hosted a champagne toast.  It was quite stressful to get set up, but came off very well.  On June 7th, my Dad also announced to the church that he would be retiring in summer 2010. So, that was a big announcement.  It is going to be quite an eventful year!
Finally, I succumbed to the idea that this is the perfect time for Colleen to start learning another language.  All the research points to how well toddlers can pick up other languages as they are learning their own.  So, I bought Colleen a BBC language series called Muzzy.  We began with German since her cousins and aunt/uncle live in Germany and I thought it would be neat if they could eventually talk some (though Mahli and Quinnlin are very proficient in English as well.)  She hasn’t yet started using the German words, but if you give her the German word she will tell you what the English word is.  Hopefully, I can be good about keeping this up because neither Tom or I are strong at other languages, so we can’t be counted on to teach her.  I have been trying to use some of the German like saying Guten Morgen or Danke.