Tuesday, May 1, 2012

An exciting month!

After celebrating Easter & Layla's 4th birthday we had a pretty exciting month of colouring Disney characters, jumping in rain puddles, and Layla learning to do more chores.

Before now she's only ever helped me out with little tasks, but never really had specific tasks assigned to her. She'd throw the lint and dryer sheets away for me while I fold laundry, she'd help sort socks, help me with little things in the kitchen, or "help" clean her room (put a toy away, get another one out while I cleaned the rest of the room!)

Now that she is 4 Layla gets a couple of tasks a day. She is learning to clean her room on her own, but with her attention span it's been a bit difficult. I have to stand in the doorway and give directions the whole way through. She helps put her own laundry away (mainly pajamas & pants because those are the only drawers she can reach!) Layla puts her dirty clothes into her hamper every day. Every night before bed time she takes all the toys she's brought down into the living room back up to her bedroom & puts them where they go. She also still does the little tasks she's been doing since she was little. Layla LOVES helping in the kitchen! She also likes hanging on to my back while I vacuum, what a work out!!

Her sense of humour has grown as she has. Layla is the funniest person I know, always coming up with silly jokes or saying the funniest things.

Funny things Layla has done or said:

  • The other morning I went in to wake her up. She was sleeping on her stomach and a bit of her lower back was exposed so I tickled it. She squirmed and said "Mommy, don't kiss me butt...Lips." Then went right back to snoring. 
  • She's been obsessed with the movie Mulan for at least a month now. We watch it almost everyday, and I've downloaded the songs from the movie. Layla enjoys singing "Be a Man" & "Reflection" (she calls that the sad Mulan song) at the top of her lungs! 
  • One night before bed she told me that I'm a genius & it made me want to buy her a pony. Or some candy.
  • I told her to bring her empty cup downstairs and put it in the kitchen. She saluted me from her nose and said "yes mommy!" I have no idea where she got that from!
  • She handed me some lint out from in between her toes, handed it to me, then proudly stated that she took it out of her "booty crack"
  • I've had to say "Layla, put your panties back on!!!!" too many times to count. Luckily all of these instances have occurred at home.
One weekend a Mayfair Bazaar rolled into town for 3 days. There were a few rides and games, but mostly craft & antique booths. I of course enjoyed myself, Layla & Jer were bored while I was shopping, but we ended up going all 3 days and Layla loved playing on the bouncy castles the Air Force Sergeant's Association had set up in one of the hangars. They had a bouncy house & a bouncy slide. She had fun running around with all of the other little kids.

I signed her up for Gymnastics in March, but classes weren't supposed to start until April. Each week the class was cancelled due to lack of students. We're keeping our fingers crossed for class to start tomorrow. The lady at the youth center was a bit cryptic about it, she seemed optimistic that the class would be starting, but said it would be cancelled if there weren't enough people. If they didn't have enough people yesterday, I don't know how they plan on getting more kids to sign up between yesterday and tomorrow? Keep your fingers crossed!

Layla's been learning a little bit of writing. We don't work on it every day, but we have lessons every week. She sits with her workbook & works on one letter at a time. She's more interested in learning to write words and names, she's especially great at writing her own name! The other day she was colouring with Jer & he taught her to write mine and his names!



My friend, Alex, flew in from Italy for a little weekend visit. She's in Italy doing a semester abroad and it was her last few weeks before heading home to the states. So she popped up for the weekend & we thoroughly enjoyed her company! Layla especially! She had someone new to play with! 



We spent all day Friday in London. We took the train in and spent most of the day touring the Tower of London! It was pretty cool! Layla's favourite part of the Tower was all the pigeons in the court-yard. 
We travelled around the city using the Underground system, Layla loved riding trains around in the dark! We walked to Buckingham Palace & walked through the little park across the street. Her favourite part of the entire trip was meeting two random dogs that were running from their owner straight to her stroller! They came right over and gave her kisses and ran around her. Layla LOVES doggies and was delighted to have them paying attention to her!



It was quite a busy month, but we also had a few lazy days with not much to do, but listen to the rain beat down on the house & try to get creative finding new things to entertain ourselves.

The sun made a rare appearance for most of the day yesterday, but the weather changes so often! When Jer got home we decided to take advantage of Mr. Sunshine and head to the park on base. We were there maybe 2 minutes before the wind blew some clouds our way. It got a little chilly, but we wanted Layla to get some energy out &  it wasn't raining so we stayed to play. Layla's favourite thing to do was push Jer & I on the little spinny thing. She's so strong! She'd get us going to fast, then jump on with us!


We've had quite a fun month. Layla is growing into such a funny, intelligent little lady. I still can't believe my baby is 4 years old!

x

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