Stella's Progression in Writing & Drawing

Stella has started writing letters of the alphabet and numbers all by herself lately . We have seen her write the following letters and numbers but we think she can write others as well: a, b, c, d, e, f, h, i , l, s, t, 1, 2, 3. If she thinks for whatever reason she can't write a letter or number perfectly, then she won't, no matter how much we ask and encourage her to...she is a little perfectionist at heart like her Mama.

She has also been putting letters together and writing actual words all by herself (she doesn't even ask us how to spell these words):

Lately, she is also been really into eyelashes and drawing them on the faces she draws. When she is watching a cartoon or reading a book, she will point out all of the girl characters based on if they have eyelashes or not. And she doesn't understand why some girls (i.e. Dora) don't have eyelashes. In Stella's mind, if you are a girl, then you must have eyelashes =:) Too funny!

"Help Me"

That's what the Gup said on Sun night when he lost his matchbox car underneath the door to the closet. He came to Mama and said "help me" and mama said , what do you need help with and he said "car" pointing to the closet door. Sure enough, when Mama opened the closet door, there was Desmond's little car.

We are so impressed with his language skills and his use of multiple word phrases these days. Some of the other phrases in his repertoire are as follows:

• There it is, I found it. (He often says this when he finds a book or a toy he is looking for)
• Mama, where ayoo? (when he comes looking for Mama)
  
• Look, found it.
  
• Uh oh, dropped it.
• Uh oh, broke it, fix it. (often said when he breaks something, which he does quite a lot liking ripping pages out of books, breaking crayons, etc)
  
• Eat it.
• I did it (with a proud look on his face when he has done something challenging)
  
• Look, spinnin'. (When he is spinning around in circles)

Desmond's got other phrases, but we just can't remember them all right now. Having a chatterbox of a big sister is helping Des with his budding language skills =;)

He is getting to be such a big boy!

Razorfest 2009

We went to Razorfest today, an annual family friendly event to support the University of Arkansas football team. The weather could have been better (it rained on and off) but the kids had a lot of fun.
Stella and Des were thrilled to get Mickey Mouse balloons and lollipops from the Disney booth as well as some pink bunny ears from the Energizer booth.

There were lots of other booths giving out free stuff like candy and luau necklaces, but Stella's most favorite thing were the gigantic inflatable slides they had set up outside.

We didn't take a stroller so the kids did a lot of walking. We love this pic of Des walking with such purpose!

Des was so exhausted with all of the walking he did that he fell asleep within minutes of getting in the car.

Desmo Is Here

Des wanted to get in on the Elmo action (since Stella seemed to be having so much fun with it) and brought the costume over to Mama and said "put it on me" because he has heard Stella repeat this phrase to Mama when asking for help with getting the Elmo costume on.
But once we got the costume on him, Des didn't think it was so fun anymore and cried until we got the Elmo costume off.

Climbing

Des is officially a climber now. Last Fri, Des climbed up on top of the play table all by himself. When Mama saw him on top of the table, she immediately picked him up and put him down on the floor and went into the kitchen for a second and lo and behold, Des was back on top of the table again. So she took some pics. He first climbs onto the chair and then from the chair to the table...he does this in a matter of seconds. He has been enjoying climbing on to the couch all by himself for a few weeks now, but I guess the couch was not challenging enough =;).
His main motivation for climbing on top of the table is to get at the PlayDoh and other things that he is not allowed to play with like Stella's paints and scissors. So now all of those things have been removed from the table hoping that it will deter our little table climber.

Easter Egg Hunt

Easter Sunday brought lots and lots of rain for us so we had to improvise and do our Easter egg hunt inside the house rather than outside. While the kids were napping, Mama filled Easter eggs with goodies like M&M's, goldfish crackers, or mini peanut butter cups. Then Dada hid the eggs in our living room. Armed with their buckets, Stella and Des set out to find their eggs.

Stella was all about the hunt and would find an egg, put it in her basket and then look for more eggs. Des, on the other hand, was all about the treats inside the eggs! He would find an egg, then plop down to open the egg, and eat the treat inside before looking for more eggs.

So he didn't get very far in accumulating a lot of eggs, but Stella was nice enough to give him all of the blue, yellow, orange, and green eggs she found, because she only wanted the pink and purple eggs (her favorite colors) =:)

We love this next series of shots that capture Des in the very serious business of getting at the treats inside the egg.

Step 1: Open the egg. ....................................Step 2: Eat the treat.

Step 3: Get another egg and repeat steps 1 & 2.

When Des was going through his eggs, he would take an egg out and shake it. If it didn't rattle, he would toss it aside and move onto another egg and shake it, until he found an egg that rattled, and then he would open it. No one taught him this...it's just sheer instinct!

Rainbow Easter Eggs

After breakfast Easter morning, Stella dyed eggs with some help from Mama and Dada. Since Stella loves rainbows, she had told Mama that she wanted to make rainbow eggs, and Mama was able to find a recipe for rainbow eggs!

The Gup, surprisingly, sat quietly on the kitchen counter top by Ommy's side watching Stella dye the eggs without ever really reaching for the egg dye containers.

It took some trial and error, but we eventually perfected our methods to yield these beautiful rainbow mottled eggs.

These two were Mama and Stella's favorite ones.