Rosi dictionary

In case all of you are unfamiliar with some of her favorite terms:

Mud shirt - a shirt that corey's mom, Mud, gave to Rosalyn.

Iffycycle - the tricycle my parents got Rosalyn for her birthday.

Papa juice - Cran-raspberry juice that my dad drinks. This is a special treat because Rosalyn doesn't get juice at home.

Binoculars

Corey's gift this year was binoculars, so I put the cheap binoculars we got at Yellowstone this summer in Rosalyn's stocking. She felt so cool having her own pair "just like daddy's". They looked out the front window and spied on the neighbors to test them out (not really, the house across the street is currently empty).

Food face

One of Rosalyn's Christmas gifts was this plate that has a lady's bare face on it. You use food to give her hair, earrings, etc. Here she has scrambled eggs for hair and grape earrings. This morning she had orange slices for earrings and her mouth. Bacon hair makes her look kind of like Medusa.

Ravioli 2

Ravioli

We made ravioli tonight for dinner. Rosalyn was a great help, as long as you define 'help' loosely. :)
We made gluten free ravioli dough, and the filling had pumpkin, spinach and Parmesan.
Corey and I thought they were yummy but Rosalyn refused to eat them.

Music videos

Iffy introduced Rosalyn to music videos on the computer - luckily they were songs like 'twinkle twinkle' and 'monkeys jumping on the bed' so Papa didn't have to disapprove the way he did when I learned to watch music videos.
(and another shot of the pretty Christmas dress)

Cutie

Christmas dress

I never could get a good shot of her cute little Christmas dress, but here she us sitting high like a big girl while eating lunch with Granny and Iffy at Carlyle and getting oogled by all of the old people there. ;)

Decorating the tree

I think Rosalyn was beginning to believe that we don't decorate Christmas trees in our house (kind of like how she learned "no apple juice at home"). We had our tree up for a week and a half before it was properly decorated - part of that is due to being busy and not getting the decorations out for a couple of days, then we didn't have enough lights and most if the stores around here were sold out.
But it's finally done - here is a photo of rosalyn hanging a special ornament on the tree. She only broke one ornament while we were decorating. Instead of making all of the breakable ornaments out of reach like I did last year, we are working hard to teach her to be very careful (but the *really* breakable and expensive ones are still up at the top).
Hopefully we'll get some good photos of her next to the tree this afternoon after the Christmas program at daycare - pictures sure to follow!

Baby, it's cold outside!

We've put in a lot of effort to keep warm these last few days. I taught Rosalyn to say "baby, it's cooold outside" while wiggling her cute little body. She really loves trying on different hats too.

First haircut 5

Rosalyn had her first haircut this weekend. She had just woken up from a nap and was a little dazed throughout the whole thing. :)

First haircut 4

First haircut 3

First haircut 2

First haircut 1

Silly

Hohoho

Santa Rosi is coming!

Bedtime books

Just a couple of book before bedtime, please mama...?

Dishes 2

Dishes 1

Rosalyn washes and dries dishes at her sink.

Grumpy

Rosi tries to give me the grumpy face while we wait for the doctor earlier this week. She didn't get truly grumpy until the dr started examining her.

Uncle Clint

We went to visit Uncle Clint's new home this weekend. Nice place!

Rocking chair 2

Rosalyn likes the rocking chair.

Rocking chair

Rosalyn checking out the rocking chair at uncle Clint's new place.

Bouncy fun 2

More photos on the actual camera, but who knows when I'll load those.

Bouncy fun

Rosalyn loved the bouncy stuff, and it was so fun watching her run around uninhibited because anything she ran into would be soft and bouncy.

Birthday party fun

Rosalyn went to a birthday party this weekend at Monkey Joes, a place with lots of jumpy things for the kids to play in. They had little costumes for the kids to wear, though they sent stay on well while jumping.

Red tape, red marker

As most of you know, I've been working on a grant proposal for the last few weeks that, if funded, will cover my dissertation research. Unfortunately it has kind of taken over our lives. The NIH (national institutes of health) is where it is being submitted, and if you have ever looked for an example of government red tape, I would suggest the application process for a federal research grant as a lovely one.

As Rosalyn was taking a bath recently, I was sitting in the bathroom and reviewing the 200+ page instruction manual for how to properly fill out and format a grant application. Luckily there were several pages of the instruction manual that didn't apply to be, so I had a marker (which happened to be red$ to scratch through them with a big 'X' as I reviewed everything.
Rosalyn seemed to be playing happily with her bath toys and ignoring me while I read about the margin requirements and number of lines per inch allowed in the application materials. The next day I realized how perceptive she was when we sat down to color and she demand a red marker and nothing else. Once the was obtained to her satisfaction, she flipped through an entire coloring book, marking nothing but an 'X' on each page.

I guess I am preparing her well for a life of grading papers or sorting through government documents to find the little bit of info you need.

I too much

I've been slacking on the blog lately, particularly with the stories. Now that my grant is pretty much done, I'll try to catch up. Unless anyone other than our families and a few close friends read this, many of you have already head these stories, but I'll post anyways for posterity-sake.

For months now, I have been say "you're too much" when Rosalyn was being silly or exceptionally cute. A few weeks before her second birthday, we started talking about her age and tried to teach her to say, "I'm two" when someone asked how old she is. However, every time I asked her, she said "I'm too much" with a huge, proud grin on her face.

She really is just enough and too much all at the same time.

Does it get any cuter than this?

Hobo chic

When I picked Rosalyn up from daycare yesterday, this is what I encountered. She was pushing a stroller while wearing a funky hat, mismatched socks on each hand and a silly-looking smock thing.
It was one if the most ridiculous and adorable things, and it made my day!

Papa stuff

The other night Rosalyn was pitching a fit for "papa stuff" and pointing at the kitchen counter, but we couldn't figure out what she wanted. We offered her bananas, cookies, crayons and my phone - all of which were laying in the same general vicinity on the counter. Finally, this container of hand cream like my dad uses when he gets dry skin was identified as the reason for her convulsions. She dug her finger in to get a small blob of hand cream and was happy as can be.

Cousins

Rosalyn played outside on the hammock with her cousins on Thanksgiving.
Luckily they weren't playing outside the following day when our tree fell!
She had so much fun with her cousins - we hope they can come visit again soon.

Our thanksgiving tree

Well, we were planning to cut down a tree this weekend, though a Christmas tree would have been preferable. Instead, the tree decided to fall down for us in our own backyard.
As we were just sitting at the kitchen table eating lunch a few minutes ago, we heard a terrible crashing noise and looked out the sunroom windows to see this tree falling in our yard. Luckily it seems to have only damaged the deck and some potted plants, but it certainly gave us a scare!

Tree

Sewing and football

Rosalyn and daddy sew while they watch football. :)

Party time

Here are the photos from Rosalyn's party - finally! Bubbles were a big hit, as they always are with Rosalyn. The big wands we bought at the beach this summer were lots of fun.

Rosalyn looked absolutely adorable in the skirt my mom got for her - it was very appropriate for the farm theme.

Mom had fun entertaining the kids with wand-fighting.

Rosalyn blows out the TWO candles on her birthday cupcake. I made pumpkin apple cupcakes without frosting so we wouldn't have too much of a sugar-high. They were tasty, especially with a light dusting of "organic fertilizer" (powdered sugar).

The barn Corey and I made, and one of the balloon decorations my friend made. We also had some wheel-barrows for the kids to push around.

It was a gorgeous day to be outside!

In addition to the bubbles and barn, we had some farm stamps and markers for the kids to color with. Those didn't get used that much at the party because it was so beautiful outside, but we've had fun playing with them at home too.

Rosalyn shows off some of her other balloon decorations after the party.

Luckily she didn't float away holding all of those balloons!

Rosalyn takes "her baby" (our neighbor Ansley) for a wheelbarrow ride. Don't worry - there were many spotters all around. Isn't Miss Ansley's little bow adorable!

Rosalyn wants a turn in the wheelbarrow for herself. She won't be able to fit much longer.

Ansley is mesmerized by Rosalyn's bracelets.

Rosalyn gives Ansley a dental inspection.

Rosalyn poses with Uncle Clint and Mary Alston. Clint let her draw all over his face with marker.