ABC

This post is belated, but I wanted to say that Sasha can finally sing her ABC's from beginning to end with no errors as of about a week ago.
The problem with the ABC song is that it is sung to the same tune as Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, so for the longest time her attempts at singing the ABC song went like this: "ABCDEFG, How I wonder what you are". Lately I've made a more conscious effort to never sing the two songs close together to avoid confusion.

As a ni-nite routine at 10pm, Sasha climbs into bed and has a cup of chocolate milk. She hugs me and her dad and usually protests going to sleep. Finally my husband turns off the light and I lay down with her. She cries in protest a little and I comfort her. I ask her what song she would like me to sing and I give her a few choices. The usual selection is among the following: 5 Little Monkeys, Itsy Bitsy Spider, Rain Rain Go Away, ABC's, or Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. She calms down and tells me what song she wants and I sing it to her. I sing her a few of her choices and then it is quiet time. I stay very quiet and still, and she tries a few times to get my attention. I fake a few yawns (they're contagious you know) and she yawns back. She wiggles around for about 2-3 minutes, trying to find a comfortable position. Next thing I know in a matter of seconds, she is zonked out cold and I can get ready for work.

We've been having fun working with her letters and today she is able to identify a few of her favorite letters on a computer keyboard. Her favorite letters today were P, W, and M. So if I ask her to press P, she'll hunt and search the keyboard until she finds it and presses it. I can actually see her scanning the letters searching for the requested letter and that makes me really happy!
I had Sasha sitting on my lap and we pulled up a fun website that helps with teaching letters. http://www.fisher-price.com/us/fun/games/abczoo/default.asp and it either displays the letters to the tune of the abc song, or you can press a letter and it'll display that letter. Between the game, and mommy & daddy playing with her, she's doing well.

I know I probably shouldn't, but sometimes I catch myself comparing Sasha to my older daughter Cassie. They're very very different personalities, but by this age, Cassie was already able to identify every letter of the alphabet, and right before Cassie turned three I had her starting to actually write letters and her name (I have it on video somewhere, she wasn't even 3 yet and she was writing her name correctly). I was a young mother. I didn't know what stuff to teach toddlers so I just taught Cassie everything, and she soaked it up like a sponge. I worked much more with Cassie on teaching stuff than I do with Sasha, and I play more with Sasha than I did with Cassie. So I guess I'm trying to catch up on teaching Sasha some stuff. I probably won't drill Sasha as hard as I did with Cassie (I was downright drill-sergeant like at times with Cassie), but I should probably do a little better with teaching Sasha stuff.

RANT: Fake food

My daughter Sasha is a chocolate milk addict. Forget trying to put her to bed without her nightly chocolate milk fix. Usually we buy a gallon of whole milk and put some chocolate syrup in it. But when we ran out the other day, we ran to the grocery and grabbed a whole gallon of chocolate milk.
Then the last three nights, Sasha has been night waking WAY more than usual. My poor husband has been very sleep deprived. She's been crabby and on average waking up hourly so that's what? 8-10 times a night? She usually does wake up during the night but not that much.

Then as I was getting her bedtime cup of chocolate milk last night, I caught a glimpse of something that bothered me. The gallon of chocolate milk said "chocolate drink" on it. Warning bells went off. "Drink" is the secret codeword that they put on fake stuff, aka Orange Drink instead of Orange juice. I didn't have time to grab the container and read as Sasha was screaming for me but I meant to look it up later.
So check this out. The stuff was Dean's Choco-riffic. It was placed in the dairy section right there with all the other gallons of milk. It even said "Homogenized, Pasteurized" on it like a gallon of milk does. But where is the milk in this ingredients list?
Water, High Fructose Corn Syrup, Whey, Partially Hydrogenated Soybean Oil, Corn Syrup, Cocoa (Processed with Alkali), Corn Starch, Salt, Sodium Caseinate (a Milk Derivative), Carrageenan, Dipotassium Phosphate, Sugar, Mono and Diglycerides, Sodium Stearoyl Lactylate, Lecithin, Natural and Artificial Flavors, Artificial Color.

So let me get this straight, instead of giving my daughter her nightly sleep-inducing glass of milk, for the past three nights I've been jacking her up on thickened, chocolate flavored high fructose corn syrup and water? I see partially hydrogenated soybean oil in there, along with some emulsifiers to make the oils play nice with the water (Lecithin). Thickeners to make the texture feel like milk: corn starch, carrageenan. Some artifical flavors and colors. Some preservatives. Oh and some mysterious stuff called Sodium Caseinate and whey powder. Is that supposed to be milk? Because last time I saw whey powder, I didn't think "OH MILK!".
It's not milk. When I buy chocolate milk, I expect it to contain the same milk as in the other gallons of milk, except with some chocolate flavoring. Sure some sugar can be added. But I didn't consider the milk part optional.
I feel really ripped off and cheated by this. Buyer beware. I am personally never buying Dean's products ever again.

And on the "fake food" front, I never fell for this one but it cracks me up in a sad way. They have these bottles of soy sauce all over the place at work. Ingredients: water, salt, carmel color, sugar, sodium benzoate (preservative), Monosodium Glutamate.. What the heck? It's colored salt water with msg and preservatives in it! Where's the soy sauce? Where are the fermented soybeans?
I get so tired of getting ripped off by fake foods. I feel really defensive because they're everywhere and it gets so hard to feed my family a legitimate meal.

Family Art

1. Little artist, 2. Colors, 3. Splash, 4. Water.
Photo mosaic created with fd's Flickr Toys.

Today we played with some water, some food coloring, some cloth, some lighting and made a little photographic art. It was fun and everyone got involved.

Cassie and I did most of it. We set it up and bounced our ideas back and forth. She chose the food coloring colors and made tons of suggestions. She held the lights and positioned things around. Then when we wanted to try to take pictures of drops of water hitting the surface of the colored water, it was Cassie who used the dropper to drop the water for me. We had to synchronize ourselves together to try to catch the shot.
Sasha, well she just liked playing with the colored waters and the water dropper. I had my husband hold a reflector light for me, which blocked the bad reflections from the sunlight coming in from outside, and gave me some better lighting to work with.

Playful Morning

1. Thinky face, 2. It's broken?!, 3. All better, 4. How does this work?
Trying to learn manual focusing on an energetic toddler.

I really like some of these. The bottom right one where she's trying to figure out my tripod is my favorite.
These were taken right after Sasha woke up. She is a happy little ball of energy immediately after waking up in the morning. I'm learning a little about how to actually take her picture when she's bouncing around all over the place.
When she first woke up, she was watching tv and dazed out a little. That deep thinky face made me want to get out my camera, since she was sitting still. But once the camera came out, she livened up because she wanted to play with the camera herself. I found the tripod too cumbersome so I took the camera off it, and that shocked her. She thought my camera was broken and tried to fix it. (2nd pic she's saying "IT'S BROKEN!" and the 3rd, she says "ALL BETTER" as if she fixed it.) Eventually she pretended that the tripod was the camera and took pretend pictures with it.

Oh yeah, and she's wearing her Clifford the dog backpack. Somehow during the middle of the night she woke up and requested to wear it, then went back to sleep wearing it. I came home from work and found her asleep with it on, and she didn't let me take it off her for a while.

Dad says NO

Sasha wakes up often in the middle of the night. Now that I think of it, she's two-and-a-half and still has never slept through the night. Anyways, during one of her many night wakings, she and my husband had an amusing conversation tonight:
Sasha: I'm DADA!
Jon: So, what does dada say?
Sasha: "Sasha, no!"
Jon: And what else does dada say?
Sasha: "It's okay! Much better?"
Jon: And what else does dada say?
Sasha: Much better? I love you.
She was wide awake for a while, meowing like a kitty-cat and just being generally cute and cuddly. My husband was very tired and wanted sleep, but it's hard to be mad so he just grins and endures it. It is hard for him to return back to sleep after a night waking session as he has some sort of chronic insomnia. After a little more playtime and some chocolate milk, she finally returned back to sleep for a while.
My dear husband always lets me get a full 8 hours of sleep during the day, regardless of how much sleep he got at night with Sasha. He's a great dad and husband and I really appreciate all he does.

Teething again?

It's been a long time since a teething post! But interestingly I think Sasha's getting a new tooth. My clues:
One day while we were riding in the car, Sasha started whining. I asked her if she was hurting and she said yes. I asked her where, and she pointed to the molar area of her right cheek.
Also, she's been gnawing on her finger like crazy lately. All day and night, she's got a finger in her mouth and it's all pruned up.

I haven't stuck any of my fingers in her mouth to feel for any bumps. It would feel weird to do that now that she's like 2 and a half. She's got a lot of chompers in there now so that sounds dangerous!

Monster

Sasha has this thing lately that's been escalating.
At first it started out that she points somewhere, yells "MONSTER!", and runs up to one of her parents. She pretends she's scared of some invisible monster. It was cute at first, and playful. She has this cute mock-scared warbly voice that she uses. I think she learned it from watching Wow Wow Wubbzy.

But it's escalated into interesting territory. At the mall the other day, she was playing around in one of the hallways while we were waiting for my husband to put a bag in the car and come back. She wandered away from me, and a man walked down the hall. She saw the man approaching, pointed directly at him, yelled "OH NO! MONSTER!" and ran back to me at full speed. The expression on the guy's face was priceless. I didn't know whether to laugh, scold her, apologize, make some explanation, or what. I sort of did a little of each. But she did it again to some Hindu woman in the hallway by the laundry room at our apartment. And to some other woman in the lobby of our apartment. And to some other guy on the elevator.
It's getting a bit ackward. I do find it funny but I need to break her of this habit.

Samples

Sasha and I have a little tradition together. It's sort of silly and it's a guilty pleasure of ours.
It's Costco free samples.
I swear, you can make a meal out of it. We skipped breakfast this morning and went to Costco and gorged ourselves on free samples. And sometimes Sasha surprises me with what she'll actually eat.
First sample was chicken burritos with guacamole. Sasha tried one tiny bite of the burrito and rejected it. Too hot. The guacamole, however, she chowed down on it. I remarked to the free sample lady that I was surprised Sasha actually ate the guacamole, and sample lady replied that her kids all loved it too when they were little. Sasha asked for more, so the kind lady volunteered to give seconds, usually a no-no. She gave us a HUGE scoop of guacamole, and Sasha ate all of it except the final bite.
Also on sample today was some breakfast sausage (Sasha ate it then spit it out), mango juice (she wouldn't touch the stuff), carrot juice (she wouldn't drink it).
They had some bourbon chicken. Sasha LOVES chicken, and a chicken chunk on a toothpick is totally up her alley. She scarfed her sample down whole, and the sample ladies giggled at her. They made sure I took a sample for myself too. I didn't eat mine immediately, and didn't notice Sasha staring my sample down. When I finally popped the chicken bit into my mouth, Sasha deeply scowled at me and sighed. I think she was hoping I'd give her my chicken sample, poor thing.
Finally, they had free sample of her most favorite thing in the world: chocolate milk. Sasha is made of the stuff. It is a catastrophe in our household if we run out of the stuff.

Sasha always smiles and says "Hi!", and "Thank you" to the free sample servers. The sample servers normally swoon over her cuteness. I get to see what sort of foods Sasha will eat that I didn't know she liked. It's great fun all around.
And of course, I love shopping at Costco.

A nice afternoon nap

(click to enlarge)
Sasha and her daddy fell asleep on the living room couch while watching television. With the sunlight from the balcony falling over them, I wanted to try a nice no-flash picture of them.
It makes my heart melt a little whenever I look at it. Those two have a special bond. Sasha absolutely and unconditionally loves her dad, and vice versa too. This little girl is so beloved and so very loving.

Knitted sweater

I finished knitting this sweater for Sasha about a month ago but apparently it has the magic ability to transform my toddler into a rocket. Every time I try to photograph her in it, she runs around like I lit her fuse and I just can not get her on film.
So after about 2342837423974238974 unsuccessful shots of this darned sweater, we have a few semi-workable pictures (click to enlarge). Here we go:



Never mind the chocolate ice cream on her face. And she has her beloved toy wrench in her hand and uses it as an occasional pretend telephone.
As for the sweater, the pattern I used was Helena from Knitty.com. I had a lot of fun making the body part of it. (The sleeves were a chore. I hate sleeves.) I added some extra length to the body by adding an extra lace repeat, since my little girl tends to the long and skinny side. I made it a bit big so it will last a while, relatively speaking since she's growing like a weed lately.

I just learned that the designer of the Helena sweater came out with an adult sized pattern too. Oh oh!

Little Sous Chef

Fresh from a nap and going right for the camera
Sasha made her own sandwiches today. And she was pretty good at it too. She took her little butter knife from her tea set and used it to spread mayo on her bread. In this, she was very careful. Then she put her cheese on it, folded it up, and ate it. She ate two of them!

Her favorite drink in the whole world is chocolate milk. She knows that routine too. Milk goes in her special cup. Then chocolate syrup. Then it gets stirred. When she wants chocolate milk, she opens the refrigerator, gets out the milk and the chocolate syrup, and hands it to us.

She's always been a good helper in the kitchen.
Today she also washed dishes. She has a red plastic ikea chair that she drags up to the kitchen sink. It's the perfect height for her to stand on and reach into the sink. We have to be careful because she does this on her own now and we often find her in the kitchen sink lately. Anyways my husband let her wash dishes on her own today. If the dish was still dirty, my husband put it back in the dirty dishes pile and she eventually rewashed it. She has the whole routine down.
She knows how to make coffee and tea but her parents won't let her do that by herself. If I'm in the kitchen, she's always there with me, standing on her little red chair, supervising and watching my every move.

Silly Faces of Sasha

Some silly faces. Alternately, I could title this, "Mom playing with the camera and using her poor defenseless toddler as a practice target". Hehe!
Posing for her picture
Saying Cheese!
Home Alone!
Sad Face-

Deep in thought