Saturday, December 18, 2010

The 23 month old reference dictionary

If you hear these words from Gale this holiday season, here is a reference guide:

hee haw, hee haw--- horse, horse!

wow wow, woggie--- dog

ki ki--------kitty, or hello kitty

nana--------grandma esperanza

ga nana-------great grandma maria

mama!!-------I need something now!!

uppy--------I want up

Uppy!!!!!! ----- I want up, down, or out now!

twee wit bowls (tree with balls)-------Christmas tree

hi-eee------- hi!

baby guy--------Baby Gale

rye----------rice

weee!-------slide or swings

Tuesday, December 14, 2010

She's Been Spotted!


If she was in your shoes...

Color fun


From Duluth, with love

Every week Gale gets a new letter from grammy and Grampy in Minnesota, usually with a surprise inside. Here's a couple..

new 'do


Balamar's buddy

Some oddly serene moments between Gale and Balamar.

Still, Balah (sounds like "voila") remains one of Gale's favorite topics of conversation.

Monday, December 6, 2010

Halloween wrap-up


Before we become totally entrenched in yuletide festivities, we thought it worth noting that Gale's Halloween cupcake ensemble was a sweet success. In fact, at a costume contest she attended with her grandma she won 2nd place out of approximately 90 participants.

She enjoyed trick-or-treating, I think she felt a little more brave with new Halloween baby in hand.


Actually consuming candy will have to wait for another year, but she did celebrate by eating a real cupcake, and sporting a ridiculous chocolate bandito-style mustache.

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

The Curious Case of a Spinning Octopus


Not that I mind, but it is interesting that we still do not know who put this spinning octopus toy in our yard. It suddenly appeared one rainy day under the oak tree. The next outside play day Gale owned it. And poor mom's arms have been tired spinning her around endlessly ever since. Times two with little neighbor boy tacked on as seen in this picture. However maybe watching her dizzily walk off bumping into everything isn't so good for her little bustling brain. And is that little brain bustling! She indeed is honing in on phrases and understanding just about everything we say. Just today, we dropped off Mr. Balamar for grooming at Petco and Gale found a child sized grocery cart and proceeded to do some shopping. She went to the toy aisle and started putting all the christmas plush toys in the cart. I leaned over and mentioned that all these toys were for dogs so that means these toys would be for Balamar. Without hesitation, she started putting each toy back. It was hard not to laugh. The last one was quite tempting I guess, she held it for a while, staring at it, just a little too hard to let go of this little christmas tree with a face and arms and legs until I whispered, "that one also would be for Balamar." She promptly puts it back. In general, she does love her dog. She can push him around, try to sit on him, bat him with halloween masks and even pour dirt on his back but he continues to lick her. And being without him for just one afternoon while he's getting groomed, she is quite worried, chanting "Balah!!!!!" all day. As for the mysterious octopus, I suppose I should ask some neighbors soon. Or maybe I should just leave a note under the oak for our yard santa that says "Gale likes swings too."

Thursday, October 28, 2010

Gale becomes a cupcake!

For Halloween, I decide to make Gale into a cupcake. I bought some fabric at the craft store and started putting it together without any real plan, I just knew it would be chocolate since she loves chocolate, and it would have white frosting. First, with metallic looking fabric, I made a pleated skirt with stich witchery.



With brown felt, I made a long pillow and stuffed it and glued it to the pleated skirt and made little straps on top to put her arms through.
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The white fur was my frosting. I just decided to make a hole in it and stick her head through and see how it was looking on her the next day. Here she is in the first fitting. It is way too huge. Everything had to be shortened quite a bit but at least I had something working here. She liked being in it which I felt was a success. I think the fur felt like a cozy shrug and she also liked seeing that I stuck her strawberry toy on a headband and she could wear it. At 20 months, she is fond of accesorizing.


Tacking on some sprinkles, and shortening it all up,



Fitting number 2! Much better! She is fascinated by the sprinkles.


And here she is as a cupcake pretending to eat a knitted cupcake from her aunt Wednesday. With all these cupcakes, I think we'll go out for one this afternoon. I'm hungry!(:

Sunday, October 10, 2010

Monday, October 4, 2010

Time for a cupcake break

Last week aunt Wednesday was kind enough to send Gale a box of crocheted cupcakes, they've been favorites ever since. Here she reluctantly shares them with a friend.

Saturday, October 2, 2010

A couple of chicks hanging out

Gale can still barely contain the joyous excitement her singing chicken brings her.

Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Phrases Begin!




Last night, Gale announced "watch me momma!" And this morning I woke up hearing from the monitor, "show momma!" And then after my shower, Gale pointed to the shampoo and said, "thats momma!" Wow, phrases all of the sudden. What happened! Its as if she'd been storing them up! And I'm quite flattered that she thinks I look like a shampoo model. Thanks Gale. She also did a drawing this morning and we asked her what it was and she said clearly, "pee pee." Yep, a great way to start my day.

Tuesday, August 3, 2010

storytime

18 month old Gale loves books. I mean LOVES books. She has a real attention span for a story, even if its boring, and she really enjoys reading them aloud afterwards and making up her own stories. Never mind that she doesn't really talk, or know letters yet.





Sunday, July 11, 2010

Uh-oh blueberries!

Gale's current favorite phrase is "uh-oh!" which she uses quite a lot when things fall on the ground (and it seems as though most of the day is spent with things tumbling to the floor.) She even says it in the middle of the night in her sleep and I keep wondering what is falling down in her dreams. She has become a blueberry fiend also. I hope she doesn't turn into a blueberry like Veruca. Her fruit crazes last about two weeks and the first love was strawberries, then grapes, and then it was raisins. I'm just happy that my little tyke finally sees that sometimes its nice to eat things.

Two New Discoveries


This week Gale finally discovered Play-Doh and dad finally discovered the Hipstamatic. It turns out that they're two great tastes that taste great together (seriously though Gale, you shouldn't taste the Play-doh).





She could spend hours doing this.




A collaboration.

Presenting: Mr. Meowsic


Okay, so I've vowed not to spoil this kid, but dang if I aint a total sucker for a well designed toy. Besides, this guy is going to come in real handy in our family jam sessions (to be posted later).

Friday, July 2, 2010

Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Mickey



I think she grew 3 inches before I hit record.

Did I say everything is a phone?

Gale sure loves talking on her pretend phones. Her favorite being remote controls. In fact, she lost the entire 3rd quarter of a NBA finals game paused in tivo while we were at a game get-together because she needed to make that long distance call. She chose the remote on the coffee table over the iphones sitting next to it. Tv remotes do look like nice phones, I'll agree....maybe in the eighties Gale!! Anyway, here is her curl brush phone in full effect.



Maybe I should have used that brush to comb her hair. Her cloudy hair tufts are certainly baffling, my mother is instructing me to curl them around my finger. I will try this.

Thursday, June 24, 2010

Father's Day and Besos




What a weekend full of parties. Gale spent monday sleeping in! I also got my first puckered up kiss from little Ms, it was so sweet it just about brought a tear to my eye. She had sneaked a peak of her parents kissing much earlier that day and thought she would kiss her mommy right before she went to sleep and right after mommy had finished changing a terrible stinky diaper. My goodness mommy deserved a kiss for dealing with that! Anyhow, I thought the day she would give me besos would never come.

Tuesday, June 8, 2010

Zooming around the zoo

Over the memorial day weekend we took the opportunity to bring Gale on her premiere visit to the L.A. zoo.
There was some of this:
And some of this:

But mostly there was a lot of this:


At this stage exotic animals are not quite as exciting as wide open spaces to run in.

Trying to decide if flamingos can be trusted.