She's beginning to look a lot like Santa

First Taste of Hot Chocolate

Harvest Festival

Last week we went to a harvest festival a few miles outside Little Rock. It was a little like the State Fair in that there was admission to be paid, then carnival-type food to buy, and other activities and things to pay for separately (with Harvest Bucks, just like ride/food tickets at the fair) but much more low-key and beautiful than the State Fair. Don't get me wrong, lights and garish rides and air-brushed t-shirts have their own kind of beauty, but this was more up my alley.

Jason spent some time showing Violet how to skip stones.

There was a banjo and fiddle (Pickin' an' Fiddlin') contest going on. We had great seats across the lake from the performers. We could hear the music perfectly but still sit in the shade to eat our food.

Violet didn't want any of the food items that were on offer for lunch until we spotted apples that were destined to be caramel coated. I think if she'd known that the caramel was an option she would've gone for that but, in her ignorance, she was perfectly satisfied with the gigantic (plain) apple. And some kettle corn later on...

There was a hay maze.

And a hayride, during which Violet offered me some kettle corn. We all ate a ton.

It was a lovely way to spend a beautiful Fall day.

State Fair

Field Trip

Violet had her first school field trip this week and I had my first experience as school field-trip chaperone. I'm not sure that title is merited since Violet was my one and only charge - kids under four had to be accompanied by a parent - but it felt like a milestone of some kind. It was definitely nice to spend a little more time than I normally have to see and interact with some of the kids and parents at her school.

The people at the pumpkin patch had an impressive lineup of activities for the kids. First we watched some pig racing: 

Then there was a hayride but I didn't get any pictures of that because the wagon was crowded and there wasn't a good opportunity. After that the kids got to feed farm animals that must not do much of anything besides interact with small children - chickens and mini goats and maybe a mini donkey.

There was a cow train: 

Violet, mid-wave

 And then some clambering on a play structure made mostly out of hay after the cow train:

Violet seemed a little confused by the field-trip aspect of the adventure; she kept pointing kids out and telling me they went to her school. She also asked why we went to her school before and after the pumpkin patch so I'm not entirely sure that she knows it wasn't just an adventure for the two of us that happened to put us in the same place as a lot of people she already knew. I do know that she definitely wants to go back.

Joy...

...is getting your dress so dirty from playing outside that you spend the rest of the afternoon chasing bubbles in just your underwear. I realize the picture below isn't exactly an illustration of the above, but trust me, that's what happened.

And Violet was very, very happy... until she wasn't. As Juniper knows, it ain't always easy being a kid. It can be especially tough to be a kid who has foresworn naps and is out of coping skills at 5pm. No matter. She made it through dinner and bathtime and finally to bed to rest up for another day.

Welcome, Baby Luke!

Luke arrived early this morning. Welcome to Earth, kiddo!

Apparently...

A conversation Violet had with Nana when my parents were in town for V's birthday:

Violet: Apparently, I like pears.
Nana: Lots of people do.
Violet: Well, who doesn't?

Goldbug Mystery!

Sally and Aaron and Juniper visited this past weekend and got a brief tour of our most-frequently-visited places in Little Rock. Aside from a few brief excursions, we mostly stuck to home, or very nearby, and caught up on each other's lives. Busytown was in play for a high percentage of the forty-eight hours our visitors were here and the following pictures feature everyone's favorite feature of the game: a Goldbug Mystery. When the spinner lands on those magical words, all the players get to search the board for the highest number of a particular type of object (traffic cones, anchors, etc) and then everyone gets to move forward that number of spaces. It's fun, even when the toddlers refuse to participate in the actual searching and just want to put magnifying glasses on the objects the adults have found for them.

Birthday

"Yesterday, when I was playing with my birthday stuff, I was really, really happy." - Violet, talking to Jason on Tuesday morning.

Violet had a great weekend with Nana and Dziadzi in town and had a particularly fantastic time on the day of her birthday itself. After a quick breakfast, everyone headed outside to see Violet's new bike, along with a helmet and matching bell from my parents.

After she got to check it out for a few minutes, we took it over to campus to ride around for a while. Every few feet Violet starts pedaling backwards and, therefore, applying the brakes unintentionally, and she's still working on steering, but she's definitely getting the hang of it.

Campus fountain with Nana & Dziadzi

In the afternoon, Violet was introduced to another exciting surprise: a water and sand table from Jason's parents. She was immediately enthralled and spent heretofore unprecedented amounts of time playing happily by herself. The two sides of the table stuck to themselves for about half an hour but the end of water-and-sand-table time saw one big mass of wet sand everywhere.

Since everyone was outside, Violet spent a good deal of time just running around and jumping off the patio (with grownups making sure she didn't clock her head on the dismount) and generally being a kid.

And then she got some of the grownups to jump with her.

While dinner was cooking, we got to play with the last big surprise of the day: a Richard Scarry game from the absent Roswellians. It's a perfect game for Violet's age and game-playing ability, features familiar characters and we've played it one or two times a day since opening it. In spite of that fact, there's no photographic evidence of its existence yet, but I'm sure we'll get some pictures of it in use soon.

Cake topped off the perfect Kid Day. Peanut butter frosting with a jelly '3' to mimic Violet's favorite cookie (peanut butter and jelly cookies - I'd never heard of them before but we discovered them at a bakery here and Violet is now a committed fan).

Haircut

Violet donated a 10-inch ponytail to Locks of Love on Tuesday and now she can eat, play, clamber, dance etc without a grown-up chasing after her with barettes and tails and cajoling words.

Dispatch from the First Day of School

For what seem like pretty good and fairly obvious reasons, the teachers at Violet's school (probably most schools) like parents to make themselves scarce pretty quickly after getting a kid into their space. It was a little strange to leave shy-of-strangers Violet hesitating and silent in the doorway to a room full of new kids and a few grown-ups, but we did, and she was fine. When I picked her up at the end of her day, her teacher told me that she'd done well for her first day - no sadness, just quiet reservation. The first thing Violet wanted to tell me was that she hadn't painted. Guess she's looking forward to that activity :)  She liked playing outside on the playground and she liked the "singing thing" but she did not herself feel like singing, according to her. I think she's looking forward to going back tomorrow. Hopefully they'll get to paint sometime soon!

Preschool: First Day

Getting ready:

Big girl. Though the sign isn't totally accurate  - Violet's one week away from 3.

Climbing near Rivermarket

Jason and Violet both love to climb. Fortunately for us, there's some great climbing to be had near the Saturday morning farmer's market on the river here.

Just feet in that one, but you get the idea.

Triumph(ing).

Moving

Click here to see a few pictures of our moving process. A lot of them are dim and hard to make out but they give you some sense of where we are for the time being:  Picasa Moving Album

Feeding ducks

A duck-feeding excursion with Nana and Dziadzi (Dziadzi not pictured) one or two days after our arrival (August 13, to be exact):

Berkeley was in the backyard when we started our walk and, not terribly surprisingly to anyone who knows her, quickly escaped, caught up and dove into the lake to chase some ducks.

We weren't thrilled, but we also couldn't blame her. Little Rock's recent heat wave hasn't been kind to our dog whose coat is best suited for something closer to Arctic tundra. Tomorrow though, she gets shaved.

Violet has a school!

They have an opening in her age group and she and I went to check it out today and both liked it. She'll be in half days Monday through Friday and, amazingly enough, will start this coming Monday! Given that I anticipated a long wait or at least a long search, I'm pretty thrilled that this has worked out. Hopefully it will prove to be a as good fit for us as it seemed today.

Cookies!

Sunday afternoon activity (pictures from August 22, 2010).

Violet really wanted to make cookies with shapes. 

We had stars and hearts and moons and flowers. And then it was taking too long to roll out the dough and cut new shapes with the remaining scraps so we had a few sheets of just squares :)

Here she is enjoying the finished product...

And explaining her dunking process. I don't remember the details but it was something along the lines of liking to dunk her cookies into milk but not liking to drink the milk once it had all those crumbs in it. 

There's an aphorism in here, right?

On a walk around the lake behind our house, while navigating some tricky terrain:

Jason: Violet, watch your step, there are a bunch of tree roots up ahead, you've got to keep an eye on your feet.
Violet: But I don't wanna. I wanna look at the pretty stuff outside!