day off Friday

Slept in late this morning .. we all did, after being out at the fireworks last night.  Esme didn't wake me up until after nine... that is very very late for her.  I began to work on a fifth dress for her closet....and should maybe add another pair of shorts to the several pairs of pants.  School starts on Monday.  Esme played with her playdough and made a 'restaurant' tea party where she was the chef and Mr.Frog, 'Cowa' and Lamba came to be the customers for smoothies, food and then Mr.Frog and Cowa decided to get married.... and Lamba turned into an Indian Princess with a turkey feather in her ear.

Mark and I noted to Grandma again yesterday that Esme has shot forward in her speaking again in the past few weeks... she talks all of the time now, on and on and on... that is how it should be.  And her form is getting better.  She told Mark 'we weren't out of chicken soup after all', which is just an example of how she is picking up on the kind of words she just didn't grasp before.  And she is more willing to discuss (Sometimes) why we didn't understand her (a comb in a cone, etc..)

I want this dress to be reminiscient of the navy dress with pockets (seen below) which was one of several 'day dresses' I made in early 2011.  This one in particular lasted her through 2011 and most of 2012 until it tore on the playground one day.  It's hard to believe it has become nearly iconic of a 'simple pretty dress' in my mind...

I have just enough for the bodice and the pockets with this one.. and navy sleeves like the skirt.  I didn't get her to put it on, although I finished it and put it in her closet. (no picture).  Esme carried a ten lb. log through the woods and named it 'Noah', took it to Grandma's house for a few hours and then deposited it on the side of the road on the way home - because Daddy would laugh at her again about it.. and she could get it tomorrow when the mud was still all fresh from the rain.  She was watching Camp Drama Island and Grojband up there, a step up agewise from the Johnny Test... but maybe that is showing in her language some, too..explains some of the new sentences and wisecracks I've been hearing now.   We watched Clue the movie, and Esme was trying to get into it near the end when they were all running around crazy...We tried to tell her what puns were.

So if I count the sundress and the elastic-neck/arms red flowered dress she is up to six wearable dresses for school and an assortment of other tshirts, jumper tops etc that she already had (not all of them in good condition though)... and at least four, maybe six pairs of pants that don't have a hole or tear somewhere, plus a few pairs of shorts that are passable.  I have a very early work tomorrow!

//notes// trends of the day(s): She is doing the announcer echo voice (friday friday friday - go go to to your your bed bed..) etc.   There's just one more problem, Mom... (snotty tone of voice) 'I'm just playing with playdough, like this, Mom.. can you see?'  She wrote a grocery list for Grandma which included cheese balls and mike & ikes.. getting her to eat healthy is difficult lately but she is ALL about the theories with food, what is healthy for kids, what is not, what to eat when and where and... she overthinks so much so it is getting in the way of getting her to actually eat sometimes (scared of the corn because there is butter on it and it will take such a long time to eat every one by one...).. of course, she wants ice cream and candy, but first thing this morning I offered cereal and she told me it was dessert, tasted like it, so she couldn't have it for breakfast.  So, I waited until lunchtime and she suggested soup...which turned into a bologna sandwich via cat knocking the soup bowl down into her lap.  other trends:  'do this, by myself?' (all by myself?) asked a lot... 'but I have to tell you - this is not working, Mom.'   songs : 'We're going to be famous'.. 'Flush and wash and be on your way'.. several others that I was surprised to hear her sing.  She said that her my little ponies were practicing their dance moves to the song at the end of the movie and we were bad to turn it off on them.  She said she wanted the tooth fairy to bring her 'kid pop 24' next month, because it is like a list, and all the kids are singing the songs, and they will have fun.  I told her she should pick something else...

language bits

I was asked how she was named today - I can't remember the exact words, but she said she was a baby, and we held her, and how was name Esme?  I told her I suggested 'Esmerelda' to her daddy, and we would call her Esme, and Daddy gave her the middle name, and then we would know what to call so she would look and know we were talking to her - her name.  She thought hard, then told me that she became not a baby, but a little girl, and she did not talk - just (baby squeal) and point... but then she grew some more and was a kid, and now she can talk and use words and have a play brain, not a busy brain - and she has ideas - and she wants to play, and she can talk.  *wow*...  Later she told me she is tiny in the earth, we are all tiny in the earth - and it is BIG, so big... she wants to live in outer space, in a rocket ship.  I told her there was no air out there, but people were working on making air in rocket ships, and when she was big they might have it all worked out and she could live out there.  She said Santa brothers were in their workshop, and they were making a rocket ship.  I said it would be a toy, and it would be a cool fun toy, but it would not go all the way to outer space.  She said she still thought that was cool, and she wanted to play with it.  She likes rocket ships.

Singer Heavy Duty and garden update

Heavy Duty Singer machine

We traveled yesterday to Murray and picked up a new Singer Heavy Duty sewing machine. It would have cost a third of the amount just to have the old one looked at, which was nearly what I had paid for it in the first place. It had lasted over four years - so... it was time for a new one. We did get some money for it in trade-in, and the lady showed me how to use this machine before we left. It does not shake like the Advance did when I am sewing - which was something I had grown accustomed to. It does collect a lot more static and dust, but it has more metal than plastic in it. Take the good part of that with the bad etc...

Esme asleep in her bed.
She was quite tired after all of the running around yesterday.

One of the things she said while we were in town was that we were feeding the truck 'banana gas' - because the station we stopped at had yellow pumps and red ones and green ones. We chose a yellow tank. I had to listen closely to get what she meant about that one. She was very talkative yesterday. At the sewing shop she told me that Daddy was 'getting to me he is anoising at me' - because Daddy wanted her to slow down and not run around. She said she was 'mad face' at him and he was 'laugh face' at her so it was annoying. Hearing this new 'spurt' stage she is going through is very funny for us right now! This morning when she did wake up I told her to put on her shoes because downstairs was cold. She said she would go on the porch because it was warm out there. Then she came back inside after a moment and put on her shoes and said she would go downstairs because she had to use the bathroom - and then go back outside because it was warm out there. And I just nodded along and said 'uh huh....' then she went into a whole description of everywhere we went yesterday and all that we did - and on to her plans for today 'take ride to walmart' and 'paint castle'. The castle is what she did with the box and styrofoam from the sewing machine packaging. I told her I was not painting styrofoam - and she is pretty mad and sulking at me about that. She wants to paint the castle with the new pink paint we bought (for paper) last week. This morning when I was getting her cereal ready she told me 'Mom, I think that is not enough. It needs to be here and up and up.' That was different for me -but I did give her another cup and she was happy. She did call the rice crispies 'peanuts' though - said she had eaten them yesterday and wanted to eat them again today.

prototype dress
I didn't finish all of the inside because it was so late last night - but it should do well this summer.

volunteeers

Here are the updated pictures of the garden. The west field has corn about 4 inches high and the fenced garden has monstrous plants! The bed here by the cabbages was planted with carrots. I did NOT plant tomatoes in it. All of those are volunteers from last year's yellow tomatoes.

fenced garden

west field

I intend to plant one more time down here in the west field - and that should be the last succession. There are squash plants doing well beyond this corn and two successions of corn here, three rows each.

fabric buy and pretty heavy storms

I splurged the other day and sent away for some 'Lunch Box' yellow plaid fabric from Michael Miller, for a new jumper for Esme. Then, I added on a half yard of an organic cotton with yellow and black sheep on it - for a camp shirt :) That is my budget for a couple of months *yeep*. Now, we are also under tornado watch for the night, with some pretty heavy thunderstorm cells coming in all night. So, we are watching the radar. Mark will probably be sitting up for a little while after Esme and I are asleep. He says it looks like loud scary storms on the weather radar, a long diagonal 'red' line of severe activity that is near Memphis. I have to work very early again tomorrow... way too early for sanity.

Since the first evaluation I am convinced Esme knows what we were doing there - she has been listening to more new combinations and trying to take corrections. My main hope for this Wednesday evaluation is to find out where to direct her better and what we need to practice more on. Last night when I was tucking her in she noted I said 'We need to tuck Cookie Rabbit in so she'll be warm. Let's tuck her in.' And she said 'Cookie Rabbit, she, her?' That made me stop in my tracks... she's right. I sometimes call Cookie Rabbit a 'him' and sometimes a 'her'. I never mix my genders in the same sentence/thought, but I do not call her consistently one gender or another. It can't be easy at all for her when Mama changes things up like that without really thinking about it myself! So, I'm trying to watch my own language a bit more too.