When kids learn to speak...

they say the funniest things. Here are a few examples from Isabelle:

We went to the Frank Buck Zoo in Gainesville a few weeks ago. They pipe in music over speakers for some reason and they were playing some sort of Spanish lullaby sounding song. We were looking at the giraffes who were chewing their food (opening and closing their mouths). The food was situated high up a pole next to the loudspeakers (poor deaf giraffes). I asked Isabelle; "Look! See the giraffes?" "yeah" "What are they doing? Are they eating?" to which she replies, "no, it's singing!" I laugh and ask; "the giraffe is singing?" and she grins and says "Yeah!". I look again and see that the giraffe does seem to be moving his lips along to the words...in spanish. It was pretty funny.In the morning we watch lots of cartoons on PBS. One of her favorites is Word World. At our house there is a door from the kitchen opening into our bedroom. I often open this so she can eat her cereal and watch her show at the same time. So the other day she was doing this and I was putting my clothes on in the bedroom. Apparently I was in the way. She said: "Mmmove Mommy! Watching Word World! Move your bum!" I thought that was pretty funny...although apparently my bum is big enough to block out entire television shows. ;)

Last night Patrick was helping Isabelle say our family prayer. He told her to say; "thank you for our house" to which she replied; "thank you for slides". I thought this was hilarious and started laughing, so of course she repeats it several times trying to get me to laugh. It was really, really hard to keep a stern face so she'd move on. But I guess slides are a good thing to be grateful for too.

Growing up, it was not that big of a deal in my house to pass gas. Mom thought it was rude, but most of us would do it anyway. Consequently I am comfortable doing this in front of them. Ironically I am not at all comfortable doing it in front of Patrick and have yet to consciously break wind in his hearing. This is not the same with Isabelle, I feel totally fine doing this in front of her. So the other day I went several times and Isabelle finally looks up at me with an exasperated expression on her face and says; "Stop pooping mommy!" I guess she's inherited her father's sensibilities.

Some not so funny things:

A few weeks ago we finally took down Isabelle's crib and set up her 'big girl bed'. She loves her bed. Every night (and day for that matter) she runs into her room, throws herself on the bed and says; "I love my big girl bed!" What's not so funny is that now she can get out of her bed. I didn't think it would be an issue since she still couldn't open her door. She figured that out the first day. So I started locking it...she figured the lock out the next day. So now she's been coming into our bedroom between 7:30 and 8am everyday. I know you mothers out there with kids that get up at 6am will feel no sympathy, but that is way too freaking early for me. We've since discovered that when mommy gets no sleep she is very short tempered and grumpy and that a grumpy mommy isn't a very nice mommy to be around. I feel bad that I seem to get mad at Isabelle alot more now, but I'm used to getting way more sleep than that. For the past two years we've been getting up at like 11:30, so 7:30 is a big difference.

Isabelle likes to take her diaper off when we put her to bed. I check on her before I got to bed and most nights I find her like this (censored for public viewing):

Which means I have to turn the light on to find her diaper and discarded pj's if I don't want to clean up a big mess in the morning. ..sometimes I'm already too late.

Anther side effect of the big girl bed is naptime. Isabelle has always been really good and consistent about nap time. She went down at the same time every day and slept for nearly three hours. Now I'm not sure when to put her down. For a few days she was getting hysterical crying about 2pm, so I tried putting her down then. It worked once or twice, though she'd only sleep for about an hour and a half rather than three. But the past few days she has refused to go down for a nap, coming out of her room repeatedly for a couple of hours until I give up. She usually passes out on the couch about 6:30 at night on these days. Not a good nap time. Once she was crying, I was feeding the baby and she said; "I'm tired!' to which I replied," then go to bed!" She said; "okay!" and went into her room. After I finished with James I realized I hadn't heard her in awhile so went in to check. This is what I found: Not only had she climbed into bed, but had managed to pull up all the blankets and get her kitty and doggy and fall asleep all by herself. I thought it was awesome she put herself to bed. This has only happened once though. So right now we're still at the no nap stage. Hopefully she'll get over it and this won't be a permanent feature to our day, which is already so much longer with her getting up so early....

And those are the sometimes funny updates from our household. ;)