Greta Style

Wearing a net on her head with her favorite friend of all: Tigger.

Greta loves Tigger...this actually seems like an understatement. Maybe she's actually the slightest bit obsessed with Tigger. She snuggles him while sleeping, carries him around much of the day, talks to him, shows him things, dresses him up, and reads many books about him. Sometimes she even refers to Papa as Tigger (he really should take this as a compliment!)
Besides Tigger, her bed is usually filled with a wide array of stuffies and dolls. We wonder where she has room to sleep! Here is a list of all the things she keeps in her bed: panda, dragon, Spot the Dog, a Madeline doll, another doll, Elmo, Pooh, Eeyore, sometimes a huge penguin, and sometimes even one, two, three or four baby dolls! We have tried in vain to shorten this list a bit, but she makes herself clear by throwing her friends back into her bed. She loves her bed, and loves to be surrounded by her imaginary friends. When we come in to look at her at night after she's fallen asleep we see that she always puts all her friends to sleep by laying them face down--but Tigger she keeps in her arms :-)
Playing dress up. Do you see the headband she's wearing as a necklace?
Greta walked around the house like this for quite awhile several days ago, her feet going clippety-clop down the hallway and to the door--and then she would say "Work" and "Bye Bye!"
I'm not sure she's wearing any in this photo, but Greta loves to put on jewelry. She has a little bag of bracelets, a necklace, some rings and some clip on earrings. She says "jewelry!" much to Matthew's dismay :-)
Greta is quite the gymnast. She loves to climb back and forth from this footstool to the couch.
Strong girl! Such concentration.
Here's a bit of yoga too!

January

Oh January. The blah-iest month of the year. Good thing there are some new toys to go along with it! Here Greta is playing with the new train set she got from Grandpa Paul. She says "Chugga Choo-Choo!"
And she can say "train" too ("tain")...her language skills are really developing! She has so many words and is quite a chatter-box.

Lately she's taken to saying "Help Yelp" when she wants help with something. I mentioned it to Matthew and he said it's because in one of her favorite Dr. Seuss books (she LOVES Dr. Seuss, and Matthew especially loves to read Dr. Seuss to her, using a quite animated, entertaining and varied set of voices). In Hop on Pop there's a section that says "Help, yelp, we yelp for help!"

Greta is also very interested in counting. She often counts "One, two, three, ten" while pointing to things and using a very official counting voice :-)

She knows the name of her baby sister too--and the other day carried around her little baby doll and called her by her sister's name! Then later Matthew asked her what her baby doll's name was and she said "Ida" (her cousin). She sometimes spends a lot of time taking care of her baby dolls, wrapping them in blankets over and over and putting them to bed. Come April she'll be ready to be such a big helper of a sister!
A cake I made to liven up the grey days of January. Greta added the sprinkles.
Eating cake! And holding one of the new head bands Papa got her.
Satisfied indeed.
Greta has a stamp on her head--she loves getting these stamps. We have a community center down the street that has special programs for her age on weekdays as well as weekends. On weekdays there's a Gym and Sing, and on weekends there's a Mini Play Palace. The Gym and Sing is for children 3 and under. The gym is open and full of cars and bikes and bouncy things and balls and slides and other children! At the end everyone cleans up and sits in a circle to sing songs together. Then after that everyone gets the much anticipated stamp! The Mini Play Palace is similar, but smaller and doesn't involve the singing at the end. But the lucky children do get a stamp :-)

We continue to be rather lonely here in Vancouver. We've had trouble making friends, and the friends we do make just end up leaving all the time (that's what happens, people finish at Regent and go somewhere else...) But at least we live in such a wonderful neighborhood. I'm looking forward to my next maternity leave and am hoping to connect with some more moms in the area. We are also hoping that this last year at Regent proves to be a little less lonely than recent times have been...
Cake face...and she's trying to make the fish face Mama can make! She often demands that I do it "MORE! MORE!"
Watching Pooh with Mama. I'm embarrassed to admit that our child has watched far too much video the last few days...we've all been hit hard with the stomach flu. Greta was sick with it from Wednesday to Saturday, and Matthew and I have felt pretty bad since Thursday night.

Oh January!!! Get better please!!!