Little Ladybug

The ladybug raincoat, boots and umbrella were supposed to go in Isabelle's Easter basket, but I couldn't resist giving them to her early! She loves pretending it's raining inside and doing her new ladybug jig. She is also still very focused on Anika's birthday.
Isabelle helps us cook all the time, but we've never made cookies together. I decided Easter cookies would be a good place to start. But I realized pretty quickly how unprepared I was to even make a simpe sugar cookie: no butter, no mixer, no rolling pin, no cookie cutters, no cookie sheets. And what about the frosting and sprinkles? I found most of what I needed at Williams Sonoma - including a precious little pink rolling pin and monkey spatula for Isabelle. The rest came from Super Stop & Shop (including--sorry, Briana--the ready-made sugar cookie mix.) Isabelle enjoyed patting, rolling and tasting the dough, but found her greatest joy in shaking and eating the multi-colored sprinkles. We made bunnies and baby chicks -- all unrecognizable shapes by the time they came out of the oven because I'd placed them too close together on the pan and they all melded into one another, creating one massive cookie by the time they were done cooking. Other happenings: When Dennis picked Isbabelle up from Little Kids the other day, he bumped into a mother he'd never met before. "Isabelle. The infamous Isabelle," she said to Dennis. Her new favorite sentences are "That's awesome" and "Here you go" (which sounds remarkably like "tinkle," and, therefore, is cause for some funny misinterpretations). Isabelle insisted on wearing underwear the other night. "No diaper! Underwear!" She loves her Elmo underpants and is totally ready to wear them full time. When she's naked it's amazing - she'll disappear from a room, and we find her sitting on the potty. She just takes herself right into the bathroom. Poops are never an issue - always on the potty - and tinkle is about a 50-75% success rate. We're starting to feel guilty that we're the one who are holding up the underwear process. We started her in them for a couple days a week before we left for Turkey -but stopped because we didn't think it'd be a good idea to have extended travel so soon after. We're pretty committed to officially making the switch when we're back from Easter. We've started playing the Brain Quest games. So much of it is intuitive (the kinds of questions we ask when we're reading), but I still really like them--and the size is great for travel. Some new favorite books: "Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes" (an amazing out-loud read); "Poetry Speaks to Children" accompanying CD has some of the poets reading their own work--including Robert Frost and Langston Hughes); "Do You Do a Didgeridoo?" (rhymes will blow you away); "Where is the Green Sheep." And we are so happy to have a new copy of "My Favorite Things" (Thanks, Grami for replacing our lost one!) Isabelle's right-hand ring fingernail is still healing from getting stuck in the basement closet door two months ago. She is constantly inspecting the nail asking, "What happened here? What happened?" We recieved our first tantrum report from daycare this week. Two in one day! The incidents that caused them: (1) After going potty, Isabelle chose a non-Elmo stamp for her hand. When it was applied, she flipped out that it was not Elmo. (2) She asked for a drink of water, immediately poured it into the trash and was then refused a second.