Bedtime

Susan is usually ready to go to sleep about 9. She has a bath in the paper tub (we used it to recycle newspapers) about 8. She brushes her teeth wrapped in her duck towel and sheds it to run around the house. I guess every child likes to do that at some time in her life. We put on a diaper and pajamas to get ready to sleep. She sits in Granpa's lap to drink her milk out of the sippee cup.

She doesn't like to have her hair washed, so we do something special. I can't get her to keep a dry towel over her face to keep the water off, and she doesn't like lying in my lap like Silvia showed me. It may be partly because she has grown so much. She is at least 2" taller than she was in May. After the struggle to rinse out the soap, I dry her hair and face if there is anything dry within reach and let her blow bubbles for a few minutes. She loves to do that.












When I take her to the bedroom with bebe and sometimes some stuffed animals, she is usually sleepy and can go off easily. I had been telling her the names of all the people who love her. Now she joins in with names, sometime of inanimate objects like bebe, milk, couch. I lie down on the bed next to her bed until she goes to sleep. If she would rather play in her bed for a while, I usually leave to go read my book or whatever I was doing.

We haven't been very successful with the potty training. I'm not sure Susan notices if she is wet. In the past few days I've tried using a sticker chart when she tells me and uses the potty. It sometimes works.

Tuesday is usually our day out. We go to the quilt shop and sew with the applique group. The first week, Susan went in the stroller and wouldn't get out. The next time we left it in the car and took some toys. She met one of my friends whose name is also Susan and took right to her. Susan spent some time learning a new song (This Little Light) and watching Susan B. sewing.

There are some magnetic shapes in bright colors on the front door. Susan likes to rearrange them. She also loves to feel the "Minkees" (a soft fabric) and the bears made of it. Every week we walk around and look at the designs on the bolts; there are animals and shapes, letters and colors to see. Maybe I'll make a quilter out of her.

Susan's favorite TV show is Dora the Explorer. Dora wears a back-pack with Dora's things to help in her adventures. I made Susan one with some blue Minkee scraps and some alphabet fabric. She has a map pocket and a star pocket and can carry a few toys.

Yesterday we had lunch at Frank's Bakery. Susan didn't care much for the quiche, but she liked the bread and salad. She had a pink meringue bird for dessert. We had a few errands to run and came home for a nap.

Susan and I did two new things Saturday. We made a stepping stone for the garden out of a kit from the craft store. It's made of cement and has colored glass stones and black rocks and Susan's name and '06. We had a great time doing it. We had been in the yard pulling weeds and playing with the wagon.

We also picked peaches at the neighbor's house next door. She is not able to get the high ones or anything that needs a ladder. I climbed the ladder and Susan got the low ones. Carolyn got the ones in between. We got half the peaches. They weren't ripe yet, but the birds were beginning to peck them. They can ripen on the washer.

We rushed in from our projects to talk to Silvia on the webcam. Susan is doing better about talking. I think she has gotten more comfortable with seeing her on the screen.

Bubbles

Susan loves to blow bubbles. She was given bubble soap and wands for her birthday. I try to keep it mostly in the bathroom. It's a special treat for hair- washing nights. That is not a fun experience, so the bubbles make it easier. One morning she blew bubbles for Silvia on the webcam so her mother could see how much fun it is.
Susan also likes to "help". She puts her clothes in the dirty clothes box and picks up toys--sometimes. When we take my sewing machine to quilting in its wheeled bag, she holds onto the front strap and pulls. She washes her hands in the bathtub (so I don't have to lift her).

Susan and I took Lucy to her physical therapy in Amarillo on Tuesday. We had about 1 1/2 hours, so we went to the mall. Susan rode in her stroller, and we visted the Disney store. She loved looking at all the stuffed animals. Afterwards we had a sandwich and smoothie in the food court.
Susan's favorite TV show is Dora the Explorer. Dora is a little girl with a friend Boots the monkey who has adventures and follows a map to explore. She wears a backpack that holds lots of useful stuff. I made Susan a Dora backpack. She puts her important things in there and can carry them around.

BeBe

Garrett washed Susan's quilt this morning. It was getting pretty dirty. We try substituting a piece of fabric with Dora the Explorer when she can't have Bebe. It's okay, but not the same. When he brought the real thing back a few minutes ago, we gave it some big sniffs, and she promptly fell asleep. She had been watching Sesame Street.

Here is our daily routine: Wake up between 6 and 9, milk, sometimes breakfast if she is hungry, play or go quilting, lunch about 11:45, nap 12:45 to 3 or so (sometimes less), snack, play or go to the library, fix dinner, eat, play, bath about 8, play, sit in Granpa's lap for milk, bed about 9. Sometimes we go to Amarillo to run errands. She likes to eat out for lunch. A few times we have

Pizza at Fazoli's
shared an ice cream at Braum's. That is her favorite thing to do. We go to the library a couple of times a week to get more videos. Our library has lots of Barney, Elmo, Dora, Rainbow Fish, and Little Bear. There are also a few Baby Einsteins. She watches a video when I cook and before bed.
Videos from the library
Susan's language skills are improving. She's making 3- to 4-word sentences: I'm coming, I sit in yellow chair, I do it, I put on Dora shoes. I can't always understand what she is saying, put she seems to understand most of what we say.

Ezrie's birthday

July 28th was Ezrie Camp's second birthday, and she had invited us to a watermelon party in an Amarillo park. We went on Saturday morning at 10. The kids had a great time playing on the playground: swinging, sliding, climbing, picking up rocks.

Cole and Jenn had bought three colors of melon: red, orange, yellow. They were all delicious, but I liked orange the best. When Susan and Ezrie got pieces, they cleaned them right down to the rind.
Susan and Ezrie eating watermelon and playing in the rocks at the playground