My Little Artist

Kendra's new favorite pastime is drawing and painting. In toddler class she gets to use a big easel and paint (or eat the paint) until her heart's content. At home, she has to content herself with an art table. She has lots of construction paper, toddler markers (which are harder to use on walls and carpet), and toddler paint (self-contained and very washable).

She will sit for quite a long time while I'm working, working on her drawings. She's gotten better about not eating the paint too.

For Valentine's Day she even made her Grandma and Grandpa a "Kendra original" to send them.

Because she is prolific, and not overly selective, I take pictures of her art, and throw out the originals. I get to keep a memoir of her talent, and I'm not cluttering up the house with dozens of pieces of paper. It's a win for everyone. :)

That's Not a Bellybutton

We've been diligently teaching Kendra the various parts of the body. She's got all the basics down, although her favorites are noses and bellybuttons. Tongues and teeth run close behind.

To see if she really understands what we're teaching her, we've had her point to things on stuffed animals, in books and on our pets.

Tonight Dan was telling her to point to the cat's ears...which she did. Next was the cat's nose - again success! (We have a very patient cat.) When Dan asked her to point to the cat's belly button, well, she did pick something that was a hole. The cat was less than amused at having a tiny finger poke it in the butt hole.

Memo to us - don't ask about bellybuttons on anything other than people.

Home Improvement 101

Knowing Dan and I, you knew our first (indoor) home renovation wouldn't be too far off. We have decided to re-do our upstairs bathroom with a new floor, new cabinets and fresh paint. We bought the cabinets today! I'm actually pretty excited about this. Our current bathroom doesn't have much in the way of storage, and it's rather bland and boring looking. The cabinets we bought will actually go floor to ceiling. Dan will pick up the tile tomorrow (plain white porcelain), and we've already decided to paint it a pale blue. That just leaves find a new sink, faucet and countertop.

We bought the cabinets from Ikea, and figure the bathroom will be a great test run of how easy they are install and how much we like/dislike them before spending a small fortune on re-doing the kitchen. (We are looking at using the same style of cabinets in the kitchen.) We don't plan on starting the actual demolition of the bathroom until we have the rest of the stuff bought and in the house. We're not in a rush, and this will let us find what we want at the price we want to pay.

Otherwise, things have been quiet. I've had a boute with the flu or something similar. I started feeling bad Friday afternoon, and by that night had a nice fever and felt like I'd been run over by a truck. I'm feeling better, although not quite up to snuff yet.