Once again, we've been away from the blog for so long....
It's been and interesting, busy and wonderful few months with renovations, vacations, lots of work and a lot of fun watching Violet blossom into a little girl.To catch you up, here are photos and videos from July, August and September with a special album for our PEI trip.
We have been under renovations since the end of May and the end is in sight. We now have a new bedroom, bathroom, office, laundry, deck, storage area and improved guest accommodations with a proper room and bathroom - no more raised throne for those of you who have stayed with us before! The finishing process has started so we are very excited and hope to move in soon! Jon has been working closely with our friend and contractor, Mike, to make most of the decisions and come up with solutions to things along the way. We are very much looking forward to having our living room back (currently its our bedroom...) and doing a REALLY thorough clean of the house when it all comes back together.
Violet and I spent about a week and a half in PEI. It was wonderful to have some family time with everyone but we really missed Grampy. A lot of people went out of their way to spend time with us and we really appreciated getting to have some great visits at the cottage. Baby Haylee is one of Violet's favourite people she fed her a bottle on a couple of occasions which was incredibly cute, especially when Haylee started grabbing her nose. Now every time she sees a baby she asks me if she can feed it.
We also spent a week in Vancouver after going to our friends Lisa and Mark's wedding. We had a lot of beach time and walked many many miles exploring the city.
Its hard to describe the number of changes that Violet has made over the past couple of months. Here are the ones that really stand out to us:
- potty training - we are getting there! We have not pushed the issues, though we have been VERY tempted, and happily Violet decided that she is ready and uses the potty every day now. She is still in pull ups but once this reno is behind us we are going to try and take the next step and go big girl pants most of the time! What we find truly incredible is that when she uses the potty, she now wipes her own bum, pulls up her own pants, pours the pee into the toilet, washes and dries her own hands and of course makes an announcement to anyone and everyone available of her accomplishments.
- language - she just wants to use every word possible. V's sentences (I mean paragraphs- the girl is a little long-winded :) have become complex, inflected and almost always end in a question or a simple -why? She has uttered the odd swear word unfortunately. The strange thing is that she seems to get that they are bad words and only asks..."why did you say f--- mommy?" but make no mistake, she wants a good answer to that question. We don't think of ourselves as potty mouths but let's just say we have learned out lesson, I think!
- play - she is pretending and using her imagination so much. Its often embellishing adventures that she has read or watched on shows like Dora (oh yeah and she has watched sooooo much tv due to the reno - we are currently deprogramming her with great success :)
- girlyness - ok its nature. There is no question in my mind! Violet looks at things and calls them boys or girls depending on what colour they are. Good luck getting a blue item of clothing on her these days )unless of course its a girly blue - that's ok) When they didn't have the fleece sweater we wanted to buy her in in her size in pink, we eventually decided on 'chocolate' colour instead. It's still a battle everytime we want her to wear it. A pink vest helps. Oh yeah and there's the shoe thing - she is an addict. Her current favourites are sparkly gold mary janes ( I thought they would be just for dress up...)
- general independence - we are building more time into the day for Violet to do thing by herself. She likes to choose her own clothes (wow we've had some interesting combos!) but will usually settle for choosing one of 2 things that mommy or daddy offer her. She dresses and undresses herself, usually without mishap. She also wants to try things like buttering her own bread, making a sandwich and pouring her drink.
- favourite things - dancing (more than ever), playing with other kids, all things princess, chocolate (I don't want that treat daddy - I want chocolate!), babies (real and play), books, swimming, cooking and the beach.
Its a rainy saturday morning in Victoria. We had had a spectacular summer and fall and it appears we now have to pay our dues for the rainy season - we're ok with it I guess. This weekend we are getting Violet an orange cat costume, visiting the pumpkin patch and getting her some new rubber boots (her feet have bloomed to size 9!) and getting the house in order - sort of.
We've moved the blog in hopes of making it faster and easier to do updates... wish us luck :)
