Beading, playing in the park with friends

Alexa was so thrilled with her beading skills. She has had a set of large beads and tygon tubing that she has been using for a long time now. I thought this would be a good small motor skill activity, so I got a little beading kit from Michael's for $1.00, and she sat and put beads on this string for at least 45 minutes without pausing!Alexa got a haircut again. She had begun pulling her rubber bands out and chewing on her hair all the time, and I couldn't stand the food and spit in her hair all the time.

We had a playdate at the park with Reese and Tayler and Carleen last week. We had a lot of fun.

Avery Park is one of our really cool parks, it has a full size train locomotive (is that redundant). The kids love it.

A really cool big tree.

daVinci Days

We had a fun annual event in Corvallis last weekend called daVinci Days. It is a really cool three day fair type things, but the focus seems to be on renewable and alternative energy. They have a cool parade and mud bog races. I participated in a children's activity where you could make your own crown. Theoretically this is Alexa's crown, but she did not really love the whole thing as much as I did.

Here are Daddy and Alexa waiting for the Kinetic Parade to start.

One of the pedaled vehicles. (I think the human powered vehicles are the ones that do the mud race thing..but if someone knows the details, please explain to me.)

Alexa loved this parade so much, she clapped a "talked" about it for 10 minutes after it was over.

In other fun news, we paid a plumber 115$ to get a plastic bath toy out of the toilet yesterday. And later in the day she got the refrigerator open to get some milk..which she is not allowed to do by herself, and knocked my half gallon pitcher full of hand squeezed lemonade out and spilled it all. I had not yet had a single drink of it. A half gallon of lemonade takes a long time to mop up, and then several moppings to get the residual stickiness off the floor.

Today she is just being wierd. She went to bed at her usual time yesterday evening (9:00) and slept in until I woke her up at 10:00 am this morning for therapy. She usually wakes up between 7:00 and 8:00. Now it is 5:00 and she is starting to show signs of waking up from a 2.5 hour nap. She doesn't have a fever, and she ate both breakfast and lunch and drank some water today, so I don't think there is anything wrong warranting a doctor visit.. but if this keeps up I may call them tomorrow, it is a little odd!

More Little Gym Pictures

This is what we do every Friday at 11:00 am. Mommy and Alexa get lots of exercise together. She loves this stuff and learns so much from it.

She is really good at forward rolls, and does them spontaneously at home all time. She doesn't always carefully consider where she will end up, but fortunately hasn't hurt herself yet.

It is hard to get pictures of this side of the gym because of the bright window behind us, but we try anyway.

She isn't sure about some of this stuff, so I have to be a major cheerleader.

If you have a little gym in your area you should try it, they always offer a free class to try it.

Another fun playday with Deneice's family!

We went to Avery Park last Tuesday for a playdate with Alexa's friend from school Deneice. After a while I was able to get some pictures of them, but they are always quick action shots, so you'll have to forgive the quality. Deneice was very thirsty that day, and she loves the huge water bottle that we keep in the van all the time, so she was in posession of it most of the time. I usually share things with Alexa, so it doesn't bother me at all to have a second little girl using the same bottle.

Deneice's siblings America and Christopher were there too, and America is so good at climbing. She could run around the top of the "bones" so fast. I took a video of it, and it is pretty cool, you should watch!

Cherries, laundry, fancy clothes

Just a random picture. Alexa is learning how to do laundry by watching me, so she takes things out, and gives them a good shake, and then piles them on top of the dryer. (I fold them in the middle of this procedure, but she hasn't quite got that figured out yet.)

I found this silky poncho thing that I bought a long time ago and have never had the panache to wear, but it sure is fun to play in!

I continue to buy sour cherries and make jam from them. Its like I just can't stop myself, they are so pretty and shiny red and they beg to come home with me, and I just can't say no. Also some mint..good for mint lemonade. I have discovered that if I put any herb into the lemonade, David doesn't like it and I can have it all to myself. Kind of evil of me!

I have been spinning and knitting a lot lately, my work is going to be displayed at the local yarn shop for the next two weeks, so I wanted to get some stuff done for that. I post my knitting pics on the other blog so as not to bore those of you who really just want to see pictures of Alexa..totally understandable!

More summer business

Yet another picture of Alexa, Babe, and Lynn. I am not sure why I keep taking them, they all look the same, and it is hard to take good pictures into the dark arena from a distance...but Alexa is doing so well, she gets to trot a little bit and she holds her hands out to the side while she does it, she doesn't even use the "handle" thing anymore, just a blanket. No fear at all.
I finally opened an etsy shop to destash some of my handspun yarn, and this took quite a bit of computer time and camera time, and weighing and calculating yarn amounts, and I only got three items listed, but one of them sold. I was pretty excited that someone paid money for my handspun yarn! I linked my shop in the sidebar if you want to look at yarn, but here is one of them.

We had one playdate with Deneice and her brother Christopher. They are both adorable and bright. Alexa and Deneice are so cute together, every once in a while, they stop and hug the other person, for no discernable reason other than that they like each other.

Deneice was a little camera shy, so I didn't get very close pictures.

I am hoping to do this again soon, it is so nice for Alexa to have a friend so much like her.

I continue to make jam like a maniac, but it is so good, especially the sour cherry. Unfortunately that one is the most work too. I have about 20 pints of jam now, and I am trying to stop soon, I am pretty sure that will get us through the winter! Now if the peaches would hurry up and ripen.

We had Alexa's 5 year check-up, and she is officially underweight, so we are being sent to OHSU to a dietician to figure out how to fatten her up. We also have to take her off all the red foods with little seeds that she loves so much. She pretty much has constant diarrhea, and this is contributing to the problem. We also can't potty train her until she is regular.. the doctor said to me "you are doing all the right things, so let's get you some help." So nice to hear!