The Mallard Family

Thursday, November 3, 2011

Halloween 2011

Evie's school had a Halloween Party. Here she is with some of her friends in her classroom.

Our little girl can ride tricycles all by herself. She can really scoot on these things!

Baby Lucas and Darcy got to ride in the wagon while the adults were trick or treating.

The above video is of Evie trick or treating one of the local houses. They had a very scary garage. You can't see the man in the mask in there, but Evie did and promptly leaves when she spots him.

We had two milestones this week. First was Evie's first stitches. She took a bad bounce off the couch and cracked her head open on the corner of the coffee table. It was bleeding really badly and required three stitches to get sealed up. She had them off in a week, but it scared her mom and dad something fierce. Also, while playing outside she got a mosquito bite to the right eyeball which caused her to look like Rocky for a few days. You can see her scar from the stitches in the center of her forehead.

Secondly, and more happily, Evie had her first haircut. Below are the before and afters. Her mom could only stand to have the back trimmed by an inch, but on her little head its very noticeable. She was really good at the salon. Didn't squirm or nothing!

Fall Festival 2011

We went to the fall harvest festival in Bradenton several weeks ago. By far Evie's favorite thing was the pony rides.

This was Evie's reaction to the fire juggler.

Playing carnival games for prizes and candy!

Sunday, October 9, 2011

The Big Girl Initiative

Since her birthday in July we have been moving Evie away from baby mode and into big girl mode. Kiley and I believe this happens in three steps...

STEP 1: Dress yourself.

Evie has learned to pick out her clothes and dress herself. This is good and bad news as she now takes FOREVER to get dressed. She has learned that the "taggies go in the back" when she puts on her pants and to put your head through the hole first (a very important life lesson). An unfortunate side effect to all this is Evie will now pitch a tantrum if you try to dress her ("I want to do it!"), which makes life difficult when we are in a hurry.

STEP 2: Poop in the potty.

Potty training has been an interesting journey. Evie got peeing in the potty pretty quickly after seeing all her friends do it. However, she still has occasional accidents. Pooping has been a little more difficult. She would poop in her pants and then say "I've got poops in there!" (which is what we used to ask her when she had a dirt diaper). We were getting frustrated because most of her friends and kids her age were already potty trained. Lately it seems as though our persistence has paid off. It has been two weeks since Evie has used a pull up and is in big girl underwear 100 percent of the time. And while she does still have poopy accidents at school she does go regularly at home (mostly because she has discovered the joy of reading on the pot).

STEP 3: Eat what we eat at dinner.

In all honesty, unless she's eating spaghetti or ice cream there's not a whole lot she'll eat readily on her own. It takes some prodding to get her to pick up the fork and even then we find ourselves having to put the food in her mouth at times. She'll eat her veggies and meats, but it takes a lot of work. So we count the small blessings.

Overall two out of three isn't bad. The hardest part is knowing that in three years, we'll be going through this all over again with Fussbucket (aka Darcy)!

Halloween Costumes

Evie and Darcy have chosen their costumes for Halloween. Evie will be going as a bumble bee and Darcy will be the flower. Evie loves her honeypot candy bag and Darcy is very snug in her flower bud (literally, they only make this costume in 0-6 months and she barely fits in it). The preciousness is almost too much to bear!