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!