Amelia at Thanksgiving

Lots of people love Amelia!

Amelia and Aunt Becky at Harvest Fest!

Very serious.

Amelia takes her coloring very seriously. She wears her Aunt Becky's pearls and the present that she brought for Amelia back from Miami: those awesome shades - or "eyes" as Amelia calls them. We won't see a picture of what Aunt Becky bought Mommy because it is a t-shirt with some inappropriate words on it...hmmmmm.

Heyyyyyyyy I like to "rocky rocky rocky" (her word for anything that involves moving back and forth).

The most annoying toy ever. Purchased by Grammie at a yard sale. Toy does not include an off switch for the music and Amelia LOVES IT!!! Everyone else? Not so much. But she's still cute.

"Cheese!" (she's actually saying that here...)

Day of Naps

While watching her new favorite show Amelia fell asleep on my chest. I might have actually fallen asleep first but when I woke up there was a snorting, soft little pig asleep on top of me. Another milestone for Amelia is that she now can be moved while sleeping. So I gently slid out from under her and left her on the couch. She stayed cashed out for about 20 more minutes.

Oh and the new favorite show is Thomas and Friends, starring Thomas the tank engine. She calls for it by saying, "Thomas! Thomas! Thomas!" And she does a pretty good job of pronouncing the name.

One nap wasn't enough. In the afternoon she was screaming at crayons so I put her in the back pack so I could work on the soup I was making. Soup making turned to vacuuming and the next thing I knew she was asleep and snoring.

Here is a closeup of her after I took the backpack off. About 20 minutes later she finally woke up for dinner.

Sick Amelia

Here is a picture of Amelia, Yoda and Emma. If you think Emma looks a little sickly that is OK. She is a plastic doll.

Here is a picture of Amelia and Heidi from Tuesday evening. Amelia is normally running around like crazy at the point in the day. As you can she--she has been a little bit off.

This picture was taken 2 seconds after the first. This shows clear proof that she is sick. Normally she moves 5-10 times in a 2 second period. If you look closely you can discern a small amount of movement in her feet and eyes.

I think this counts as Amelia's first real illness. She has been a little sick for 1 or 2 day periods but nothing like this. She has a fever, she sometimes shakes with the chills and last night was up all night. And both of her ears are infected.

One fun thing that we have heard she inherited from her Aunt Becky is a dislike of medicine. Even the sickly sweet pink kind that they have for amoxycillin now. And now they have these little syringes that allow you to squirt the medicine right into the back of their throat. I tried this earlier in the day. The nurse on call told us to squirt it in and then hold her mouth shut. Like all medical suggestions for toddlers--good in theory--not so great in practice. I squirted in the medicine and held her mouth shut tight. After about 10 seconds I felt so bad for the little thing that I had to let her mouth go. Pink liquid spewed forth. Most of it got on my hand but some of it also dropped on Yoda. (When giving a child medicine it is sometimes helpful to place a 100 lb. dog underneath. ) I reached 5 feet away to get a towel to wipe the family down and when I turned around Amelia was scraping her tongue clean and shaking her hand out on the carpet. For the record, Yoda still has a pink spot on his nose.

We called back and the nurse suggested putting the medicine in chocolate syrup. Can you see where this is going? I one upped the nurse and bought both syrup and iced cream. If you want to stop over we now have a dish of chocolate syrup with amoxycillin and a bowl of iced cream with amoxycillin. You will leave free of parasites.

For any of the big time worriers out there--she seems to be in pretty good spirits and the nurses that we have called (4 times today) keep telling us that by the time we are on our 7th kid we won't even call about things like this. I hope so.

Late Breaking News: Amelia has "gone to the bathroom" 4 times in the last hour. This is not only fun for us but necessitated one more call to the nurse. Her response, "Yes, that can happen."

Heidi holds Amelia in this picture.

What I need you to focus on is the butter knife that Amelia has dipped into the peanut butter. Our human child LOVES peanut butter and when left with an open jar and any implement will ravenously and continuously eat it.



Heidi asleep with computer.

One of my favorites from Halloween. Amelia thinks that Yoda is her dog and she controls him. He normally acquiesces but he is 4 times her weight so occasionally he topples her over. All the same, she loves him and he loves her.

Amelia at school

A couple of pictures of Amelia at school. She was a bit under the weather so I brought her to my morning meeting on Thursday of last week.


She drew on chart paper for about 20 min. before everyone arrived and during the meeting was really quiet. After about 30 minutes she began to crumple up the paper that you see. That made a good bit of noise so I picked her up and held her for the rest of the meeting.

She was so good. After picking her up I had to speak for about 10 more minutes and she just sat on my leg sucking on her thumb. I really, really love her.

This pretty much sums up Yoda...

Amelia calls him Yoey... we just call him crazy...

A future gymnast?

Today I took Amelia to an open gym with her friend Michael. It was a BIG success. It didn't take her long to realize all her options - jumping on the trampoline, running down inclined mats, hanging from bars, walking on a low balance beam... you name it , she did it. She also capped the experience with a lie down and scream in the parking lot temper tantrum when we left. Lots of fun for everyone! :)

Clowning Around...

Amelia's teacher sent us these pictures of some fun with a wig on Halloween... Apparently she was NOT sure of this wig at first, but after examining herself in the mirror, she decided it was a-okay.

"I'm really not sure about this..."

"Do I have something on my face?"

"Wow... in addition to this awesome wig I also seem to have a rockin' belly!"

"Okay, I"m cool with this!"

"Guess I'll go hammer some golf tees into this pumpkin. I am a good concentrator...