A quickie

We have a lot of catching up to do after a fabulous weekend in Chicago celebrating Lylabird's FIRST birthday. Keep an eye on www.threeaustins.blogspot.com for the details.  In the meantime, here's a quick photo to hold you over.  This is Josie just before she went on a coffee run to Starbucks with her dad and Baby Stella. She pushed her little stroller all the way down the street and back.  LOL!

20,000!

Wow. Really. Wow. That's all I can say. Wow. I just noticed that we have 20,000 hits on our blog. Thank you everyone. Hugs, Your Three Schneiders

"Look what I can do"

If you've ever watched MadTV and had the pleasure of laughing your buns off at "Stewart" then you know what I mean when I say "Look what I can do".  While Josie doesn't actually say this (yet, wink) - I gotta say I've thought it many, many, many times.

Here are some of Josie's new "skills":

• She can spell her name.
• She recognizes all the uppercase & lowercase letters.
  
• She knows about half of the sounds that the letters make (because at some point it occurred to me that if a toddler can remember that a cow says "moo" they should be able to remember that a b says "buh").
• She can count to 20.
• She recognizes a bunch of words. (The first word she recognized was "zoo".  She started pointing it out in books to us.  Then, when she looked at the word "school" and said "two o's just like "zoo" we decided it wasn't a fluke. So, since then we've been teaching her to read lots of other words - like cat, dog, mommy, daddy, etc and short words like up, to, etc. She also recognizes her name.)
• She speaks in complete sentences and puts sentences together to tell "stories" and recall events. She also asks lots of questions.  For example... "Mama, what was that noise yesterday in my room"?  ("What noise?") "It was loud, then the lights came on and the fireman was coming. And daddy opened the window to let the smoke out...." ("Oh! That was called a fire alarm.")  Sidebar: Yea - we set off the fire alarm. Oops.
• She can put on her own shoes and socks. She can also put on her own pants and shirts - as long as putting them on backwards counts. 
• She has spent the past several days wearing panties. And to borrow from my friend Ali, I'd say we're still in the "potty practice" phase and not yet "potty training."  We've had some big successes and a few setbacks, but we're getting there. Like most other things, we're letting her lead the way. It takes a little longer when you don't use stickers, candy, etc. but years of experience teaching second graders taught me lots of valuable lessons about the negative side of using rewards.
  
• She loves lining things up, sorting, etc.  For example, she lines up her toys in long lines from smallest to biggest, groups similar things into piles, etc. 
• She sings constantly. My favorite is when she randomly busts out songs from the Musikgarten classes she took as an infant (seriously, how does she remember them) and when she enthusiastically belts out Bob Marley or Toots & the Maytals lyrics. ;)
• She is starting to draw, color, and paint with more intention and precision. She doesn't just scribble randomly anymore. She can draw clear circles and attempts other shapes, animals, etc.
• She has a very active imagination and has started to play more by herself putting her imagination to work. This usually involves her dolls and/or her dollhouse but using other things, too.
• While her toddler-negotiation skills are definitely in full working order (i.e. "But I do want to eat a lollipop, right now"), we're pleased to report that she is a lovely, patient, calm two-year old 99% of the time.  She's very good at communicating what she wants and needs, which definitely helps. At the risk of totally jinxing myself, we're officially two months into two-years old without a single tantrum.
  

In other news, we have decided to pull her out of school for awhile. The combination of 6 hours a week in the car to get her there back plus week six of an ear infection that needs to heal to prevent getting tubes plus Carissa's soccer season ending so she has full availability again plus me taking on a second job doing adjunct work for UC again and then getting bumped up to full-time at my research consulting job equals Josie back with Carissa full-time.  It was not an easy decision (are any of them easy), but we are confident it is the right decision for our family.

More around Casa de Schneider

Here are some photos from around the house this week.  These are from the "slumber party cake" that Josie wanted to take when she spent the night at Carissa's house. Problem is, she came down with another fever so the slumber party got canceled.  We were still able to go out to dinner for Lou's birthday, but Josie - and the cake - stayed at home. I should say, Josie was the one who initiated the cake.  When I told her she was going to have a "slumber party" - she said "I want a cake with a heart."  (Because every party warrants a cake, right?) That later turned into a cake with a star - which later turned into a cake with shooting stars - as you will see below.

 

Josie adds milk from her cup to the batter -

 

 And we wonder why the cake didn't turn out "just right" -

 

 Josie adding more ingredients with Lou -

 

 The shooting star cake -

Napping Josie and happy Mama -

 Josie "meditating". Seriously, she climbed up on the stack of pillows - Ohm...

 

 This is Josie's "gallery" down the hallway.  It's where we display all the masterpieces she turns out.  It's so cute because when she makes something she's proud of, she says "Go put it on my gallery...."

 

This is just one of those "you know you're living with a toddler if"  photos.  It's two frogs and a sock monster toy asleep under a washcloth on Josie's floor - right where she left them. :)

 

Here is Josie with her dolls  - and her purse -

 

 

And finally - her favorite little guy - Billy Goat, dressed in playdoh - because why not? (You should see him in his beach attire.)

Finally - I'll leave you with a piece of exciting news. 

Josie has a new uncle.  Her Aunt Paula (Lou's sister) got married over the weekend. 

Welcome to the family Uncle Mark! :)

A Girl and her toys

Ya know, I've said it before and I'll say it again. There are just some things that are "hard-wired" according to gender.  We've made a real effort to have all varieties of toys available to her and to never assign things as "for girls" or "for boys". But, at the end of the day, Josie really is more into things like dolls, dressing up, etc than we expected. It's so fun watching her with her dolls (which I vow to diversify with something aside from yellow-haired ones ASAP because it's even more obvious seeing it now on film).  She sings to them, reads to them, cuddles them and tells them everything she knows.  It really makes me ache for the day that she will have a sibling to sing to, read to, and cuddle. (Trust me, we're trying!) In the meantime, here are some photos and videos of Josie with her dolls and the dolls at the Children's Museum. Enjoy!

Here is Josie reading to her dolls. She set this whole thing up as I watched...and filmed.  One doll in a stroller, one in the highchair and another on the floor.

And here is Josie trying out her first BMW. Daddy start saving now, she wants a real one in 14 years.

Who Dey!

Welcome to the Jungle... aka "Gramma's Living Room"!

The Bengals are a big deal to this family (as evidenced by the photo above, note the decor). Josie has been wearing Bengals gear since she was just a few weeks old.  This season we've been taking turns watching games at our house and at Grandma and Granddaddy's house. This week we went to Xenia to watch the Bengals beat the Browns. (Ok, so barely, but a "W" is a "W"!)  Here are some photos from the afternoon.

There's a photo of Lou & Josie almost identical to this one when she was about 2 months old.

 

[Bear with me, Blogspot has made some changes and it's frustrating the heck out of me.]

Here are some photos of Josie playing with my old-school Elmo and playing with her "DD".

And here she is having a blast in the ball-pit courtesy of Lyla.  (Thanks to Chicago's weather, Lyla's ball-pit had to relocate from Tia & Tio's roof to Grandma & DD's living room. Thank you Windy City!) Really, she wouldn't have made it through this very...long...game without it. It was a real crowd pleaser, and as you can see in the photos that follow her little buddy Makayla really enjoyed the balls, too. (Mak is my BFF Suzie's little beauty.) You can definitely see the progression of J & M's relationship as the afternoon continued. 

And I'll end with the photo the captures the end of the game pretty well. Leave it to DD to devise a way to both entertain Josie and prevent having to watch and see if we'd win the game in those critical final minutes of overtime.

Oktoberfest 2009

I gotta say - as much as I whine about being "stuck" downtown - living here definitely has its perks. Tonight we randomly found ourselves at "The Midpoint Music Festival" on Fountain Square where MTV was taping "Taking the Stage"- and we were enjoying Graeters ice cream for dinner - and Josie was splashing in the fountain and playing air guitar to a band of pre-teen rockers who blew everyone away. (Seriously, check the "Trouble with Boys" website and scroll down to their video. They're adorable.)
AND - last weekend OKTOBERFEST (second in size only to Munich) was right in our backyard. So, as I say A LOT, there are worse places to be "stuck". Here are some photos from our afternoon celebrating our inner-German.
Here's Josie with her "Weiner Dog" balloon animal that she absolutely could not believe that she got to take home!

This is actually during "The Chicken Dance" (another Cincy tradition) - which Louie did a stellar job of performing with Josie on his back. (Yes, there is video that I will only share with his permission.)
And here are the scenes from the "Berry Go Round" aka "Josie's first spinny-ride" (post GIANT-pretzel).

Trying to convince her this will be fun... She's feeling a little bit skeptical (and holding on before the ride even begins)...

"Weeeeee....this is fun"... "Umm...wait...what's happening?" "I feel funny..."

"Why is everything spinning?"

"Is it over? ''Everything is still spinning..."

Not gonna lie, there was a minute there when I was sure she was going to "spill" giant German pretzel all over that giant berry. And to those of you wondering, we actually didn't spin the wheel, we just rode around in the giant circle. All in all, it was fun but she definitely didn't beg to do it again.And we'll just call this last one: "Maybe we should've been focusing more on what Josie was doing and less on taking the photo" because as you can see - we're smiling away and Josie has her mouth wrapped around the wheel that's been touring the globe - one county fair and festival out a time. All together now.... "Ewwww!"
I'll end with a video of Josie enjoying her balloon dog once we were home. I was so bummed that I missed the LOL moment when Josie pulled on the dog the wrong way and the whole balloon animal unraveled into one long piece. I thought she was going to cry, but she just looked at me with a huge smile and said "Look Mommy, I made a snake all by myself!" While I was lamenting that I didn't capture that on video, this transpired - which is even better. We just love her imagination & creativity! Enjoy!

Autumn Improv

Fall is my favorite. I love the crunch of the leaves. And the smell of it all. And the cooler days. All of it. One of the images I've always envisioned is raking and playing in the leaves with my kids. So, this week I've been a little depressed because Autumn has arrived, another season has passed, and we are *still* in our condo... desperately yard-less. So, I'm moving on now to hopes of building a snowman with Josie in the frontyard I really, really, really hope to have this Winter and trying to bring a little Autumn into the house to compensate. Out of nowhere this afternoon, we found ourselves on the couch - each with scissors in hand, cutting fall leaves out of construction paper. (Josie saw us cutting and went to her play-doh box to get her plastic scissors, then situated herself between us and "cut" her own leaves.) Minutes later, we had leaves of all shapes & sizes and sang & danced, pretending to toss, rake, and jump in the leaves.

A little improv goes a long way! :)

Artist At Work

Josie is starting to get more used to the idea of getting messy, and frankly we've decided to quit limiting our fun just because the condo is for sale. This has added up to lots more artwork around the house. (Which reminds me...I've gotta get a photo of her new "gallery" posted soon!) Here are some photos of the budding artist at work - creating one masterpiece at a time. ;)

This is a "pig". We play a game where I draw a circle and she turns it into something. I drew the circle and she did everything else. See the ears, body and black "snout"?

This was another "quick, where's the camera?" moment...she was coaching "Baby Stella" through how to use the markers.

It really is amazing how children model what they see and know. It seems like just yesterday that I was holding Josie's hand showing her how to make marks on the easel paper, and here she is repeating the process with her doll. Too sweet.

Animal Army (We salute you!)

So, you remember "Animal Olympics" right? Well, that has somehow morphed into a new game that Louie & Josie play called "Animal Army" (you won't be surprised to hear that they're a peaceful army that spreads love and happiness throughout the world). As you saw in the Olympics photos, she has a ton of little stuffed friends. Louie & Josie love lining them up and "saluting" them, and "Play Animal Army Daddy" is usually the first thing out of Josie's mouth in the morning. There's even a song that Josie sings regularly. Anyway, the other day Josie was in her little "corner of the world" behind the couches, keeping herself very busy. I snuck behind the couch to see what she was up to, and this is exactly what I found. She had taken all of these animals and lined them up herself. Then she sat down on the monkey's lap and drummed a song to them. You can see she was quite proud of herself. Gotta love these big grins!

"Super-Nanny" and MORE!

As you all know, Carissa has already earned the "Super-Nanny" title, and I don't know what the level is above that, but whatever it is - she reached it when she swooped in to save the day and give Josie her first "real" haircut. I cut Josie's hair about a year ago, but just the sides. Carissa on the other hand did a totally pro-job. And Josie looks adorable! Here are some photos from the big event - which started in a dry bathtub fully-clothed but quickly turned into a full-bath for Josie and Carissa & I with our jeans rolled up and our feet in the water. Oh - I should mention...we took Josie to "Cookie Cutters" for a proper haircut, but she *flipped out* and wouldn't let the lady near here. I figured she was just going to have crazy, uneven hair forever. Thank goodness for Carissa. [Really Sis-Sis, you are too good to be true.]

As you can see, Josie even had fun!