Like Father, Like Daughter

We had a great weekend! I absolutely love my weekends with Josh and Alex!

Saturday afternoon we helped Axel celebrate his first birthday. The funny face glasses were one of the favorite favors!

Techie

Alex's favorite toy is my phone. I have a few apps that she plays with, but her favorite is ShapeBuilder. She will lay on my bed and do puzzles while I get ready. It's great! She threw a few fits when it was time to put the phone down so now I tell her we will stop playing when...I'm done getting ready, when I get out of the shower, or whatever. That has seemed to work so far! She also loves watching videos on my phone. My mom sends me short little clips of Bo, Annie and Stoney and Alex will watch them over and over and over again!

I am looking forward to our weekend. We are doing a little shopping Saturday then we have a birthday party. Sunday will be our day to relax (and there is a very big possibility all the Christmas stuff will be coming down because I just can't wait!) This is actually our only weekend with little to no plans until 2011.

Sleeping Beauty

Last Monday, Alex decided to stop napping all together. Since then she has taken 1 nap. It was on Saturday and only because Abby was here and she took a nap. I've been keeping our afternoons super busy so we don't go crazy at home. Today my windshield was being replaced (finally!) so we were at home from about 12:30 on. Alex actually cried because she wanted to leave the house. She gave me suggestions of Chickfila, Barnes and Noble, Target and HEB. She asked for a snack around 4:20 so I gave her a bowl of pretzels. A few minutes later I looked at her and saw...

It was hilarious! I grabbed my phone, took these pics and sent them to Josh. I then realized she still had food in her mouth so I woke her up so she could finish eating. I tried taking her bowl away and she cried so I took most of the pretzels out and let her keep it. She finished them and has been snuggled on the couch since. I know she's tired, but she won't go back to sleep. Actually, at this point, I don't want her to sleep since she'll be going to bed in a few hours!

Alex and Abby

Alex and her bestie reunited for a sleepover this weekend! We picked Abby up Saturday morning after breakfast and she spent the night with us. The girls play sooo well together and have had a blast. It was soo much fun having both of them together again!

Alex and Abby (October 2008)

Alex and Abby today!

ignore that Alex has on Halloween shirt! We had baked ziti

for dinner so I put this old shirt on her in case she spilled!

Toy Story time!

Bedtime Fun!

Bedtime is becoming one of my favorite times of the day. Not because the tinks is going to sleep, but because we have so much fun! After dinner, Alex gets a bath and we play in her room until it's time to go to bed. Alex loves playing rocket and pays for her rocket rides in kisses. Cooper usually gets banned from the room at some point, only to have Alex let him back in a few minutes later. Alex loves to dance around her room, do forward rolls and just be silly. Some nights we read books, some nights we don't, it just depends on her mood. When it's time to go to sleep, she crawls in bed and we sing songs. It started out with just sweet bedtime songs, now it's Itsy Bitsy Spider, Row Row Row Your Boat, The Wheels on the Bus and our song we have to sing and hum to her. For awhile, I'd tell her I was going to go let Cooper out, clean the kitchen, use the bathroom, just whatever so I could leave the room for a few minutes then come back to check on her. Now when I tell her I'm leaving, she tells me not to check on her, then she tells me to go potty and wipe. The first time she told me this, I almost fell on the floor, it was when we were starting potty training, now it's a nightly thing and makes me smile!

Color Blind?

Josh and I are almost positive Alex is color blind. There are different variations of color blindness and we think she is red-green color blind. Alex has known all of her colors for some time now and can easily identify all colors...except red. For a while, she would just guess random colors and lately, red is always green. At Alex's next doctors appointment, we will discuss it with him. We are still a little baffled because we do not know of any color blind people in our family (it's hereditary) and it is very uncommon for a female to be color blind. Only about 0.4% of women in the US are color blind, where 7% of males are. Apparently for a female to be color blind, both mother and father have to have the same defect on their X chromosome.

We did a little research to try and figure out what a red-green color blind person sees and here is what we found.

A Braeburn apple and a Granny Smith.

The second row shows how a color blind person would view the same apples.

If we tell Alex something is red, she will tell us red next time we ask her, but I think that is just because she remembers it. If we introduce new red items, she always identifies them as green.

If she is in fact color blind, I already told Josh we are completely redoing our Christmas tree. We have all red ornaments. Alex is already showing a pure love for all things Christmas and I want her to be able to enjoy and appreciate our tree as much as we do!

Happy Halloween!

This was Alex's first year to go trick or treating! The last 2 years, she just seemed too young to really realize what was going on. She LOVED it! She was not afraid to go to the doors and knock.

We started off by going to a neighborhood party with our friends, the Mikitaroffs. Josh has been sick since Friday evening so he had to sit out on the activities, but my parents came in town so they went with us.
After the party, Alex and Kate went trick or treating together. They were sooo cute!

Alex LOVED having her Popi and Nomi there. Popi even held the little ballerina when she got too tired to keep walking!