You know it's been a tough day when...

you post a sign on your child's bottom.

A couple of weeks ago, Jim came home to this. It was just one of those days when the whining is endless, the sleep not happening, and the tears plentiful.

And no, I would never give my child away. Sell her maybe.... NEVER!

Happy Easter!

At our church, before the service













We had a wonderful Easter this year. It was cold, but sunny. Grandma H. and Aunt Vicki joined us for a ham dinner. I ended up having to go to Urgent Care for some 2nd degree burns on my hand from grabbing the roasting pan with my bare hand.



A few months ago, I found the perfect Easter dress for Maryam. It had short sleeves, though, so I was determined to knit a sweater for it. The first sweater I knit for her was too small, but the second one turned out perfectly. Maryam even seemed to like wearing it.



The boys got to find Easter eggs we hid throughout the house. Jim says there is still one unaccounted for. Lucky for us, they're the plastic sort, so in a month we won't be smelling something rotten.





Here's an action shot of Maryam dumping out the Easter eggs. We were trying to get her to sit down with her brothers!

Mommy and Maryam

Cooking, Maryam style

On a whim, I bought Maryam this little cook's outfit. Pretty cute! She kept the hat on for all of 2 minutes.

Snowbunny

We had a record snowfall in Central Ohio, and received over 20 inches in 24 hours. We kept Maryam busy, having her help to shovel the driveway. Her fingerless and thumbless mittens made it difficult for her to hold the shovel, though.

Maryam wasn't too fond of the snow, although she seemed to like watching Daddy shovel, and shovel, and shovel. All that snow is finally melting, with temps in the 40's this week.

Crazy baby hair

Ring around the Daddy

Jim was trying to show me how Maryam gives kisses. She's very particular about giving kisses, and mostly they go to daddy. This time, though, she put the dog's toy on his head, and had no intention of giving kisses when I had the camera out.

Playing dress-up

Maryam has this obsession with pulling things out of my dresser and putting them on. Her favorite piece of clothing? My bras. She'll put them over her head and parade around the room. Today she insisted on wearing them downstairs, which allowed me to pull out the camera.

It's been a bit since I've posted, so I'll update on her development. She sings "la la la", and sticks her tongue out of her mouth when she does it. When we ask her to sign "please", she signs "cheese" every time. At this point she signs more words than she talks, which is normal. She'll go to the fridge and sign "apple".

She likes to put things away. Yesterday I opened up the garbage can to discover:

a shoe

a clean cloth diaper

a phone extension

the remote to our new TV

We think she also threw away some cash we had pulled out to go out to dinner with. How much? Well, it was going to be a nice dinner out. We haven't found the money in a month.

Today she has already thrown away two pretend kitchen things. We've only been downstairs for an hour. Ugh.

It's been a little cold outside, so we haven't gotten out as much as we'd like. Here she is looking out at our backyard.

Trouble in the kitchen

Maryam got a new kitchen the other day - it's a small basic one that starts out low for toddlers and gets higher for bigger kids. She loves it, so much so that recently she got into the pantry and grabbed a box of croutons to play with in it. I was busy winding up some yarn and it kept her occupied.


She ended up dumping the box in her play kitchen, making a small mess and having quite a time.




I kept the camera handy as she went again to the open pantry.

This time she was exploring garlic. Crinkly, crunchy, smelly, tasty (!) garlic.



She did get one bite in there before she decided that perhaps eating raw garlic wasn't so fun.




Look closely in this picture, and you'll see that not only is Maryam playing in the kitchen, she's browsing mommy's cook books. This was not a staged picture!

Grocery Shopping

As noted earlier, I'm all about teaching my daughter the ways of life -- cleaning, cooking, and now grocery shopping.

Maryam likes to push her cart around and put things like Hot Wheels, blocks, and shoes in it. In fact, the other day I couldn't find one of her shoes. I showed her the shoe, and asked where the other one was. She led me to the grocery cart, and sure enough it was there, hidden among the toys. Such a bright little bugger.