Happy Halloween!

I hope you all had a very happy Halloween! We did! This year I was determined for Eliza to have a creative homemade costume that she would actually wear. With a little help from multiple costume pictures online, I made a Play-Doh costume for Eliza. She thought it was a good idea, and she decided that purple would be the perfect color.

I was also determined that I would make this costume budget-friendly in preparation for my child abandoning it after 30 minutes. So, I went to Wal-Mart and bought the supplies for very cheap! Much cheaper than your typical store costume. I was so proud of myself, and then I actually started making it. My confidence was completely shattered when I realized it was very difficult to perfectly cut off the bottom of a plastic bucket. Being a partial perfectionist, my poor cutting job drove me nuts. I frantically called my mom in hopes that she had an extra plastic bucket around her house. Thankfully she did, and I was able to start over and finish the project.

When Halloween finally came, Eliza was so excited. We got dressed, and she wore the costume long enough for a few pictures and a short walk to our church festival. She had a fun time playing the games at the festival, but she was a tad overwhelmed I think. I envisioned her excitement level to be much higher, but oh well!

After the festival was over, we went to a few houses for trick-or-treating. Eliza really didn't get this concept at first. I think she would have had much more fun handing out the candy to trick-or-treaters. When we got home, she was so looking forward to handing out candy, but mommy and daddy forgot that Halloween ended at 8 pm, and there were no trick-or-treaters left when we got home. Oh well! We asked our visitors the next day to replay Halloween :)

I hope you all had a nice Halloween (4 months ago...)!

Naptime.

Many of you may have seen this on my Facebook page, but I had to add it to the blog as well. Eliza's napping has been a little crazy lately. She will get in her crib around 1 or 1:30 and sing and talk to her babies (aka, Lucy, Maddie, Sarah, Sarah's bear, Bear, Cookie Monster, Big Bird, cow, and Dollie). After about an hour and a half or two hours, she will eventually fall asleep. It's really hilarious, and I am certainly thankful that she isn't bored out of her mind and screaming :)

By the way, here is Andrew with the collection of babies...

Welcome Back. Again.

Well, in my last post (um, 5 months ago), I vowed to be a better blogger so Eliza would not hate me later in life for not documenting her childhood. You can see how well that turned out. Maybe I will try this again. Maybe this time I really will keep up with my blogging. Maybe my blogger friends will finally inspire me to be a better blogger. Maybe.

We have had a lot of things going on since May. Here's just a short recap.

Our summer was a lot of fun. We took many trips to the mountains, and Eliza is really starting to enjoy her time there. She loves the mountain preparation as much as the actual trip. She gets so excited to pack, and she seems to have a good understanding of our typical packing items and what they are packed in.

We took a trip to Virginia for Andrew's cousin's wedding in October and had a wonderful time. We were able to visit with Andrew's mom's family, which we unfortunately don't see very often. She was very well behaved at the wedding, even though she wanted to be passed from parent to parent and grandparent to grandparent. For her though, the highlight was definitely the reception. That girl can party! She loves to dance and made friends on the dance floor very quickly :)

Eliza is also now "potty trained". I use those words with caution, as she still has frequent accidents. It's definitely not one of my favorite aspects of parenting, but it's unavoidable. I figure that she will get it down pat by the time she's 15, so no worries! I thought that it would be great if she was potty trained by the time she started school (in September). I was hoping that everything would click a little more once she saw the other kids going to the bathroom. Well, needless to say, it hasn't exactly clicked. Overall, she does alright with it, but I just don't think she is as focused on it as I would like.

Speaking of school, she loves it! On the first day, she didn't cry one bit. In fact, I don't think she even told me goodbye! She would go to school everyday if she could. She loves to sing, and she comes home everyday with a great craft. And sometimes, she comes home as the tattletale child, informing me of who cried and who hit and who didn't get a star. The drama of church school is quite entertaining!

Well, that's all I can think of for now. Hopefully I really will improve on my blogging :)

Welcome Back!

We're back! I know I have been absent from the blogging world for a long time, but my guilt started to set in. I feared the other day that I would never remember the sweet and funny moments that Eliza gives us. I don't have enough time or energy to back track, so I apologize to my daughter for the lapse in documentation!

The other day we went to Home Depot to return a few things, and as we were checking out in the line next to the self-checkout, Eliza started saying "Thank you for shopping at Home Depot". She thought it was absolutely hilarious, and she said it even more when I started laughing.

And speaking of shopping, she LOVES to sit in the buggies at stores. In fact, she pitches a small fit if we go to a store without buggies. She especially loves the ones at Publix that have the cars in front of the basket. The first time she rode in one, she was steering like crazy and singing "Wheels on the Bus". When we went to return the buggy, she refused to get out, and I was doing some serious coaxing.

She loves real cars just as much as the Publix ones. She asks to just sit in Daddy's car. She doesn't even want it on. She just wants to sit in her carseat and buckle herself in. She could sit for hours and be perfectly happy. Her mother, on the other hand, has little interest in just sitting in a car, so she doesn't get that luxury very often. Eliza has absolutely inherited her father's obsession with cars. Everytime we pass an Audi, she says "Daddy's car", and she can point out all of her friends and families' cars. She is always concerned with where our cars are at all times. One day, Andrew took my car to play golf. When Eliza got up from her nap, she asked about him. When I told her that he took my car to play golf, she completely freaked out. She stood at the garage door crying over mommy's car and her carseat.

Eliza also loves (as most two year olds do) to do everything that Andrew and I do. In the mornings, she wants to read the newspaper while eating her breakfast, which is extremely tricky and dangerous! The other day, I let her read the Scene portion of the paper during breakfast, and as she was flipping through, she saw a picture of three men without their shirts on (I know - a little weird for my daughter to be looking at). Anyways, she looked up a me and said "Mommy, where they shirts". I just about died laughing! The things she thinks of...