Graham Cracker Houses 2009

We made our graham cracker houses a little later this year than previous years. We had trouble trying to be more creative than last year. This is what we ended up with.

A nativity set A lighthouse with a boat and gummy bear sailor

Daniella's sayings

Dani decided that baby Jesus was hungry and needed to eat some of her sandwich.

A week ago on Sunday (20th) I was running late for sacrament meeting because of my primary duties. Dani was a little upset that I wasn't there yet. Nana was visiting and she decided to bribe Dani with chocolates to be reverent for the prayer. Dani was reverent during the prayer but as soon as it was over she shouted out "AMEN! MORE CHOCOLATE!".
This Sunday she did something similar, but it was in anticipation for the sacrament. We had already been served the bread and right after the next prayer she yells "AMEN! WATER NOW!" At least I know she likes being there.

On the way home from a birthday dinner last Monday, Dani was patting her Daddy's hand saying pat-a-cake. So Dad decided to help her finish the rhyme.

Dad: Pat-a-cake pat-a-cake, bakers man. Bake me a _

Dani: -cake. fast you can-

Dad: Pat it and-

Dani: roll it. mark it with D and throw it in the kitchen and bake cookies!

Christmas Party

Our Ward had a fun Ward Christmas party this weekend. We started by visiting Santa in the foyer. Though Dani was terrified of him again this year, she still talks about the gift he gave her.

Then we moved on to the gym to find a table. While waiting to eat there was a small room just to the side of the gym labelled "Santa's workshop" for kids to make graham cracker houses, or structures out of candy and toothpicks. We made a toothpick square and Dani ate it quickly.

Then everyone was invited to get their food and eat at the individually decorated tables. After everyone went to get their food the Primary kids sang, then an singing group, and then a dancing group performed excerpts from the nutcracker. Dani even tried to copy the motions by waving her arms and tapping her feet.

Afterwards a few people from the ward performed a couple special musical numbers. After the performances Dani decided to dance on stage like the "dancers" and "papa bear". It was nice to have such a child friendly party. She loved it and still talks about the dancers and the big bear.

Funny Saying

When Dani is going potty she says she is "pottleing". Then last night as we were walking to the car Dani saw a man smoking and then said "This man . . ." (she thought for a second and continued) "foggle-ing". We learned about fog about a month ago, I'm not sure I want to teach her about smoke.

Processing through play

The last few months Dani's play has been a representation of what she is learning. A couple weeks after Halloween (Nov 16) the nativity set was arranged as below. The wise men on the right are "trick or treating" and the angel is flying in an airplane to Texas. I have no idea what the cougar is doing or why Mary is walking away, this is just how she left it when she had to go to bed.


Then last night Dani was playing with her baby doll, Barbara. We overheard her saying "Bahbwah pee potty" and then a few seconds later using her comb and saying "wipe bahmin" and adding "Ahhh!" as if Barbara felt better.
I particularly thought it was funny how she created Barbara's toilet with the coaster holder and Tupperware. It is somewhat similar to Dani's little potty with a bowl that can be emptied.
For those who may wonder, no, I never did wipe her bottom with a comb and we are unfortunately not flying to Texas soon. Those were just part of Dani's creative additions.

October 18-24 Dressing up

Monday, Oct 19th we watched Dani's friend, Michael. Dani was very excited to show off every one of her toys. She then decided to get dressed up by wearing the strings from her bead set as a scarf and wearing our car wash mitt which we just got. She was very proud of this playful look.At one point this week I was stressed over something trivial and Dani just starts singing "happy family". It made me remember that we do have a happy family and that is what is important. She still says "happy family" almost everyday, especially when we are all together. This week I was in charge of the preschool/playgroup again. The focus I chose was pumpkins. We hid paper origami pumpkins, and tossed them in the air on a blanket, we opened a pumpkin, read pumpkin books, planted pumpkin seeds, and played "ring around the pumpkin" as well as a few other quick activities. If you are interested in the link for the playgroup blog, email me or leave me a note and I'll send you a link. Here are the 26 pumpkins I made. Each one has a letter of the alphabet on the bottom to match to a board. A few of them I accidentally made upside down.I attempted to get Dani to draw with shaving cream this week, but she wouldn't have it. She is very concerned about touching something that has texture that she is not allowed to lick of her fingers. As long as she can lick it, she will touch it. Otherwise, she will yell at me to wipe it off her hands.

This week Dani was using 3 word sentences more often. I also noticed that she is starting to use names more. Instead of just saying bye she said "bye Michael" and instead of just saying Thank You she said "Thank you daddy". When she knows she is going to be in trouble, she now says with a disappointed tone "Oh Dani!" because this is what I say when I see she has made a mess, or broken something. I didn't realize how often I said it until she starts using all day long.

After the pumpkin preschool/playgroup, I made pumpkin muffins from the little pumpkin we cut open and Trent carved our pumpkin for us. That night the bishop came to visit. I was grateful that the apartment was somewhat picked up after the busy day.

While we were waiting for Daddy to come home on Saturday, I decided to grab my Sarongs and make a fort. Dani enjoyed creating her own house between our couch and chair.


She used the small window as a door for the duck to go in and out of the house.


I decided to help her dress up with a sarong as well. I loved doing this type of thing as a kid. When we were supposed to be going to bed, my little sister, little brother and I would do a little fashion show by doctoring up our pajamas with belts, blankets, or t-shirt pulls (from the 80s). Dani insisted on having her "shirt" (washcloth) on during the pictures.
She then asked me to put more sarongs on her. This picture was taken as she realized Dad just walked through the door. Notice she is running toward him with a huge smile.

Halloween Week

I am so behind on the journal part of this blog. It will take me a while to catch up.

Sunday October 25 Daniella had lots of fun in nursery. It was the first week she participated with the activities and was very proud to make a book about Jesus. She told me all about the pictures she colored and what they meant after we left.

While browsing parent blogs and trying to figure out what to do with Dani, I found a way to make puzzles more challenging and entertaining. Dani only has two puzzles, and one of them has become very easy because it has the same picture underneath. To challenge her a little and add a new element to the puzzle, I traced the puzzle pieces onto a white piece of paper and added the names of the puzzle pieces (horse, cat, dog, cow etc) and had her put it onto this piece of paper in the correct place as she was taking them out of the puzzle. I was pleasantly surprised by how much she enjoyed this and being able to help her problem solve by using the first letters in the animal names to know where to put them.



This week we were studying the letter P. Unfortunately this was the last week I really put effort into a letter of the week. I really need to start back up just so she has more focused time again. She is much happier when I give her a little extra attention in teaching. Anyway, we played with pumpkins and made the letter P out of pumpkin seeds.

This was the first year I had Fall decorations.

Dani LOVED to play with the pumpkins and asked me to take pictures of her while she was playing.

She insisted on her animals being in the picture with her. Our jack-o-lantern was carved with an image of a cat which Daniella was very excited about. Here she is showing me the small pumpkin.


After creating a "house" last week with sarongs, Dani decided the space behind her glider was a house for her stuffed animals and she asked me to take a picture of her back there. She seemed really excited to have her picture taken this week.

That Friday we drove to "Albuturkey" and stayed in the "ho-tel". Halloween we went trick or treating with Trent's Aunt, Cousin and her children. Dani went up to the people and their cars and said "trick or treat" multiple times until she was acknowledged. She said "thank you" after every hand out and quickly was saying everything without being asked. She had lots of fun playing with her second cousin and ever since that night has been very interested in trick or treating. It was also lots of fun that Trent's brother, Scott, and his wife were able to come with us. I wish we could see family more often.

New Calling

If anyone is wondering why I haven't been blogging lately, I have been called as the New Primary President for a 2 Ward Primary. For those of you who don't know what that means, I am in charge of organizing the children ages 18mo - 12 years old for 2 congregations (with 2 counselors and a secretary). With 2 hours of Sunday instruction we're responsible for, weekly cubscouts, Activity Day Girls 2x a month, Quarterly Training of teachers, Quarterly Activities for the whole primary outside of church, Ward Council and a few additional yearly meetings, my schedule is filling up much faster than I am used to.

I'm not complaining; my schedule was fairly bare to begin with and I'm actually enjoying and thrilled to have the chance to serve and get to know the amazing kids in our wards. I have been VERY impressed by the reverence of the children despite the young ages and large class sizes. I've also been very impressed by the older children's dilligence in learning. Our 11 year olds are well read, our 5 year olds remembered my lesson from last week, and our class of 15 4-year-olds are extremely attentive.

I've been very blessed. I couldn't do it without my counselors (and Secretary).

October 12-17

I know it has been a while since I posted. We have been keeping pretty busy with our many library trips and art projects.

A couple weeks ago (~Oct 16th) Dani helped me do a leaf family by picking out which leaves to use. The book I read ("Look What I Did With A Leaf") told us not to use glue sticks, but that is all we had. As you can see, one of the leaves on the sun has fallen off as a result.

She also decided it would be fun to draw on the wall with a pen that Friday (Oct 16). The next morning I was reading on of my library books "First Art: Art Experiences for Toddlers and Twos" by MaryAnn Kohl, and she mentioned that giving the child a vertical place to draw will help draw attention away from the wall. So, I made an easel by folding a box so it has three main sides instead of four (as described in the library book). Dani loved making designs on her easel and has colored a lot on it since. However, a couple days ago, she came to me distraught that she made a mess because she decided to draw on the "pi-board" (aka keyboard, this is her mix between piano, and keyboard). Luckily the pencil erased quite easily.

Below is a few details of the week to describe Dani's development, probably not interesting to most readers, but it will be of interest to grandparents, and my memory book which are the main reasons for this blog.

• The week of October 12th, we borrowed the book "Chicken Little" by Ed Emberly from the library. Dani thought this book was hysterical and laughed after talking about it and said "funny book". She still talks about the names in the book and how the fox tricked the birds.
• Dani's favorite phrase that week was "some too". She now LOVES juice like her Daddy and begs for everything he has when he gets home from work.
• That week, Dani also started singing "Rubber Ducky", though she doesn't know all the words, or the tune and generally just repeats "Rubber, rubber, rubber... Ducky".
• Thursday (Oct 15th) Dani decided she wanted to call Nana. She had practiced on her play phones by picking them up and emphatically saying "Hi! Nana?". She talked to Nana for over 30 minutes and threw a tantrum when I had to take the phone away. Nana is very patient with a little one who doesn't say much but likes being on the phone.
• Dani is now recognizing where we live and where Dad works.
• At our play group, we made a paper Jack-O-Lantern and did Rhythm activities. Dani really enjoys seeing others teach lessons (other than me).
• This week Super Why became available on Netflix and Dani became obsessed with the Giant in Jack and the Bean Stalk. When she first said "giant", we could not figure out what she was talking about, it sounded like dayants (dance with a 'y' in the middle). In this story, the giant is tired and needs a bed. Dani gets really frustrated with the "super readers" when they continue to try the wrong answers first to help the giant. I now explain to her when she is throwing a tantrum like the giant that this tantrum often means her body is tired and needs to go to bed. This actually has helped when it is bedtime or nap time.

How are you?

After reading a ladybug counting book, and talking about numbers, I mentioned to Dani that she was 1-year-old. Shortly after that I noticed her spacing out and asked "How are you?". She replied "old".

THANKS JAKE!!!!

While we are being hit by the worst winter storm I have ever seen (though, that doesn't say much since I'm not originally from here), our heater started acting up.

Everytime the heater turned on yesterday, I momentarily noticed a natural gas smell. Then this morning I noticed that the heater was not working. Trent went out to see what the problem was and it just would not ignite when it should. After we called repair shops to see what it would cost for them to look at it, and called the gas company to make sure we didn't have a leak, we called my brother. Jake was able to explain all the parts of our furnace to Trent so that we could figure out what was likely happening. Just a few minutes on the phone with Jake and we are able to start the heater again and we have a "differential diagnosis" of the problem. We also realized that it is cheaper to fly Jake out here to visit and fix our heater than it would be to pay a technician to just look at it. I'm so lucky to have a handy brother! Thanks!

Building Blocks

Sunday morning Daniella made this "house" all by herself. I didn't touch it at all. I was pretty amazed by the height and balance she was able to create.

Weekly Update

Last Saturday and Sunday we enjoyed general conference. I felt spiritually uplifted from listening to the talks. I especially liked the routine described by President Monson of a father who asked his children at the end of the day what they had done to help someone else that day. I think it would be fun to add that to our routine as well.

Dani has been trying to help me and Trent lately. She helps clean her room and load the dishwasher. She puts her toys away when asked. At times, she will even clean up the water she spilled without being asked.



Tuesday we went to the pediatrician for Dani's late 18 month appointment. When the doctor came in she handed Dani a book from the Reach Out and Read program and Dani looked at it with excitement and said "Clifford!". The book is "Clifford Barks". The doctor was surprised by this response and asked her what color Clifford is. Dani thought about it for a minute and replied "red". Dani does not know her colors yet, but she knows Clifford is "the big red dog", so it was an easy question. Obviously, the pediatrician was not worried about her development after a few minutes of visiting.


Dani may know her letters, but she does not know shapes yet (all circles are not called "circles", but are called 'O's). She is also learning her colors, but is still somewhat confused about color. We were reading "Brown Bear, Brown Bear" by Bill Martin Jr. and Dani was saying "brown bear!", so I asked her what color brown bear was. She responded quite quickly, "green". Everything else in that book is also green according to Dani.


Today as the sacrament was being passed Dani opened my scriptures and was telling me what colors she thought the scriptures were highlighted in. . . "green, purple, red". . . Then she proceeded to count starting at "13, 14, 15". She has been able to count to 13 for about a month now, but does not always use one to one correspondence. She will also occasionally forget a number or two, or decide that 4 needs to return later on in the sequence. Then she decided that her sacrament cup was a "cupcake".



Wednesday we went on a hike in the mountains. See other post. We will definitely go back some day.



Thursday it was my turn to lead our preschool. So we read Leaf Man and made our own leaf people and animals. We woke up around 5:45 so we could take Trent to work. After taking him to work we grabbed some leaves to play with in a small group. It was sprinkling and snowing as I collected the leaves and we had to towel dry some of them so it wasn't mush by the time it reached the preschool/play group. Dani was excited to hear that it was snowing because she wanted to make a snow man, but it didn't stick so that will have to wait until later. By the time we finally made it to the play group, Dani was exhausted and fussy. She did not want to leave me to see the other groups and she was not interested in making any leaf people. The activity went as well as could be expected with well over 20 kids present of varying age levels. Luckily the parents stay and help.

Friday we watched Curious George and ate popcorn. Dani enjoyed watching George play peekaboo. She talked about the monkey all and popcorn all night.

Yesterday I went to a "Super Saturday" activity put on by another ward's Relief Society. Our Ward was invited since our primaries meet together and we have lots of activities together. A week earlier I took Dani over to a home of someone who was organizing the activities to give her money for the craft activity I wanted to do. I told Dani that I was going to make a caterpillar puppet for the "Very Hungry Caterpillar". She was confused when we left her home that I didn't bring any caterpillars with me but I told her that I would make it later.

When I returned home, I asked her if she remembered why we went to the lady's house to give her money. She responded "pillar". Last night I finished gluing on the final pieces and decorating the butterfly. This is what we now have . . .

Dani absolutely LOVES this set and acting it out with the caterpillar eating through each of the foods. It will make it easier when she is able to put it on her own arm, but for now it's at least very entertaining on Mom's arm.

The person who designed the pattern for this puppet set is in my Ward, but she asked that we not use the pattern for profit. She has her own etsy page and sells these herself. Honestly, it's too much work for me to do this for profit, but it would be fun for a Christmas gift! The butterfly was not exactly patterned after hers. I designed the decorations on the butterfly's wings myself. I also made a few minor changes to the watermelon, strawberry, and salami.

I think it turned out quite cute. It has given me some ideas for Christmas presents.

Since it was freezing cold and snowing all day yesterday (thankfully still not sticking much), we went to the library to spend a little time outside of our condo. Dani brought home three Clifford books to read and I brought home a few for me. I love having a library close by.

Fall Leaves Hike Take 2

Wednesday we decided to explore the area a bit more to find good hiking trails for Fall colors. On the way to a park we drove by a few weeks ago, we missed one of the turn offs and took the next available turn. We ended up visiting a different park on the other side of the mountain range that had some scenic views of downtown.

This park mostly had evergreen trees. So we collected a few pinecones for our preschool craft and enjoyed the views. Dani walked around and collected a handful of little rocks. I'm not sure why she found them special, they just looked like gravel to me, but she would periodically have to stop to pick up some special rocks to add to her handful.There were a lot of interesting large rock formations all over. Dani enjoyed climbing on them and playing with the pine needles on them. We went on a short hike just to see what this trail looked like. It didn't have the fall leaves we were looking for so we eventually turned around, but it looks like it will be a fun trail to try in the future. Since it was likely to snow the next day, and we might miss our chance of seeing Fall leaves, we continued on and found our way back to the park we originally were hoping to reach. The light was perfect and made the trees look like they were glowing and the sunrays were gorgeous.
Dani enjoyed running through the "tunnel" of trees. The trees next to the stream were quite pretty.

Unfortunately, our camera battery died shortly after arriving at this park. We did get a few additional pictures on Trent's phone which I will have to upload later. This park is now one of my favorite places to take pictures. I hope to return later for family photos. The ~1 hr long drive is still worth it.

Dani's Letters

Dani recognizes most of her letters. I wanted to show off, so I had her "read" her Backyardigan's alphabet book for me on tape. You can tell that she still confuses M, N, and W. She also confuses X, K, Y, and V, but otherwise she is typically correct. She had only "read" this book by telling me the letters once or twice before, so it's not like I quiz her on this all the time. She looks at letters all over the house and not just in books. You can tell she gets a little bored mid way and needed the dog to "help" her finish.

I also love how she says W "double- YOU!". Lately she likes to speak in beat. Just like she emphasizes rhythmically the words Lie-BERRy (library) and double - YOU (W), she chants "NEW Dia-per" every time she is changed. She made sure to announce to everyone during sacrament meeting that she got a "NEW diap-er". She also likes to say "bug SHOES" (sounds like the emphasis given to Ahhh Choo when talking about sneezing) every time she is going to wear her ladybug shoes to go out. It's hard to show the emphasis with just words, so I may just have to try and video tape these words for you. I think it is quite cute.

Learning a Language

I find it funny as Dani is learning new words how she starts to use these words and what she does to show us she understands (or doesn't yet understand) their meaning.

In late August and early September Dani was confusing the words"you" and "me". For example if she wanted to tackle Mom or Dad, she would say "tackle me". When she wanted to lie on top of Mom to get ready for bed, she would say "top me". If she wanted to play with her other toothbrush while I am brushing her teeth she will say "your" because I called it "your toothbrush". Whenever we talk about Dani and call her"you" or "her" she points to herself and says "you Dani" or "her".

Pronunciation is always interesting. Dani is still perfecting her 's' sound. Sometimes it sounds like "sh", like when she says the word sit. This makes me pause at certain times like when I tell her we need to brush her teeth and she says "no, sit" because she wants to sit on the counter. Or a couple weeks ago after we went to eat with Uncle Sean, we were leaving Best Buy, Dani was repeatedly yelling "sit" because she wanted to sit in the cart.

I love to see what she is learning through her play. Saturday Sept 26th Dani was playing with her toy spice containers saying "soap on" and putting them under her arm pit. I think she was pretending it was deodorant.

Dani has also started copying some of my quirks. When we dressed her in a new outfit she squeals "cute!!!" just like I say when I think she looks adorable. This past week everything was "CUTE!" and she had to rub whatever she thought was cute over and over (the snake in the book, Clifford in the puppy book etc). Then today, after a little baby boy was blessed in church, she said "cute!!!" quite loudly.

During regular conversation she will sometimes mention "Dani funny". I then agree with her that she is funny. The ironic thing is that this statement is often the reason I think she has been funny.

I have lots more to add from this week, but I wanted to make sure to post these for my own records later. I think it's pretty cute.

"Lie-berry"

We started a preschool RS group yesterday. We are studying Fall/Halloween this month.Dani LOVES to have people teach her new things and tell her stories, so she will really enjoy it. Since I don't have a car during the week, my sweet visiting teaching companion who is setting this group up with me offered to give us a ride.

Here is Dani pretending to "catch" my companion's son. Of course when she actually sees him she can barely say "hi".
Here she is all excited that her picture is being taken.
Next week I will be leading the preschool group and I'm excited to read "Leaf Man" by Lois Elhert and make our own leaf people and animals inspired by "Leaf Man" and "Look What I Did With a Leaf". Some days I wish I could put together a children's book club where we would cover a new author each month and pick one book a week to study and do activities around. Perhaps when Dani is little older.

Dani's favorite place to visit is the Library. This video was taken yesterday on the way to the library down the street. Unfortunately I forgot as I was recording from the camera that I cannot rotate the video like I do the pictures. So, its' a little sideways. She thought I was taking her picture the first time I took the camera out, so it starts out with a "cheese!".

I tried to refilm, but since she knew what I was going to ask it seemed less natural to me. I just love how she says Lie-Berry similar to strawberry.

As I write this Dani is running back and forth between taking bites of a slice of bread and sniffing my arm and saying "funny" and then cracking up laughing. Randomly she will say "Dani funny".

After the library, we went to the store and bought a pumpkin.

Take Me Out To The Ball Game

Wednesday we went to a baseball game. Dani enjoyed riding on the "bus" to the field. She really got into clapping when everyone else cheered.

We had to make sure she didn't knock over the beer from the guy in the front, but she sure enjoyed dancing on the bleachers.


Her favorite part of the game was the popcorn. She did not want to eat her sandwich before coming in, but sure chowed down on the popcorn. It was a fun family trip. Even though we didn't make it the whole game due to bedtime and the cold (it was quite windy), I'm glad we got to go.