Circus day, part 2
After a well deserved nap we did a walk around the neighborhood. Grabbed the camera and got some cute pix of G in her circus outfit. I cannot even tell you how much she loved wearing this set. I think it might be her fav so far.

G encountered this super long worm and was fascinated. She really wanted to pick it up but got scared every time it wiggled.

This is her "scared" face

Second attempt but still too scared. In my effort to avoid G turning into a prissy girl, I played brave and picked up the worm... but then it wiggled A LOT and I dropped it. So much for that lesson in bravery :-)Again, the "ta-duhhh!!!" pose

Circus fun!
G was really stoked about going to the circus. We'd been talking about it for awhile so she had some idea of what to expect. Leading up to the big day I'd ask her "G, what are we going to see at the circus?" she'd answer "elephants and monkeys and lions and clowns." I have no idea where she came up with the monkeys and lions part. I looked at the website for Ringling Bros and it seemed pretty clear that there would be no monkeys or lions but that's what she was expecting.

I hadn't been to a Ringling Bros circus since I was a little kid. Overall I think it was a great show--awesome pre-show when the kids could interact with the clowns, wonderful costumes and the elephants were fantastic. The only disappointment was the tigers who other than standing on some little platforms didn't do too much although they were super pretty. There was an interesting assortment of animals including llamas, donkeys, ponies and exactly 1 dog. There was also a sphere of death thing with 7 motorcycles all driving in circles inside a giant metal ball. That was Bobby's favorite part for sure. Even without lions and monkeys though, G had a GREAT time dancing to the music and waving at the clowns. It was a fun day.

The only bummer was that my pix really suck. I had my flash turned off on my camera and for some reason didn't even notice it wasn't going off (insert me smacking myself on the forehead here). So, all the pix are blurry and a little dark. Again, bummer but whatcha gonna do??

These first few pix are at the preshow. We got there early so G would have time to hang out with the clowns a bit. Again, she was not afraid at all and totally LOVED the clowns.


They were giving away these little red clown noses bringng Bobby's inner clown to light!

The requisite man on stilts.

This is G's newest photo pose... its always accompanied with a "ta-duhhhh!!!!"

Cow Appreciation Day 2010
I've mentioned a few times that we are Chick Fil A fans. We can be seen there at least once per week and are on a first name basis with the owners of the local store. Yes a bit embarrassing but what evs! Being such fans we naturally had to get in on Cow Appreciation Day which was this past friday 7/9/10. Bobby, Brett, Casey and I all put some cow stickers and a cow mask on ourselves so we could get a free sandwich --oh the silly things people will do for some free food!! -- but I got G this little cow print dress cuz I thought it was super cute. She loved it and kept walking around saying "Moo!!" to anyone who was listening... and to quite a few who weren't :-)

My silly girl!

They had the costumed cow there and some other cute stuff but, unfortunately, I did not have my camera on me. Bummer. Oh well. Here are a couple pix of G in her dress. The last one is so Georgie. She's always picking things up from the ground to investigate and she LOVES flowers.

Georgie V. 2.5 and July 4th re-do
OK, first things first. We had our July Tutu pic redone because I just did not like the first ones much at all. We had a much better day today, G had lots more fun and it really showed. I love these new pix so much, they better represent the real Georgie. So cute! This one has just a hint of tutu under the skirt... still counts right?

Next, Georgiana was exactly 2 yrs, 6 mos old on 7/7/10! Georgiana Version 2.5 has all the same features as the earlier versions but with some significant improvements ;-)

I can't believe how she's grown. She is a happy, joyful little girl who --although smack dab in the middle of her Terrific Twos --seldom has a bad moment. I say moment because that's what they are. Every once in awhile she'll be exasperating or uncooperative but then, after some correction --sometimes a hug, sometimes a 2 min timeout--she's done. She sleeps well, eats like a trucker, runs and plays and loves to laugh. She's taken to random screeching lately which just cracks me up because it comes out of no where then she'll laugh like there's no tomorrow. What a goof!

Georgie loves to do crafts and will happily sit and draw or color for an hour or so. She loves it! Give her some markers, stickers and scissors and maybe some glue and she's a happy camper. She's really not that great at using scissors --no matter how many types we try she just can't get them open without using both hands --but she loves them just the same.

Her vocabulary continues to amaze me. She's become quite adept at expressing herself. We recently began talking about opposites ie up/down, on/off and within a week or two she came up with some completely on her own "open/closed, that's opposite mama" or the other day when she was putting some frozen french toast sticks on her plate she said it was "coooollld" and gave a little fake shiver. I said "its cold? what's the opposite of cold?" she thought for just a second and proclaimed "cold, hot, opposites!" uh, yeah, that's right. We gets me is that's not one we've ever talked about, she's just picked up on the concept.

This kid amazes me at least once every day. Yesterday, she was sitting on my lap facing me as I chatted with her babysitter. I looked down and noticed that she was buttoning my blouse... regular small shirt buttons and she was doing a pretty quick job of it too! Tonight she was in the bath tub with some kind of tub crayon, as I read a book she was happily drawing around the side of the tub when she said "C, cuh." When I looked inside the tub, sure enough, she'd drawn a C. Then she proceeded to do a few more letters. I was super surprised. We talk about her letters regularly and she knows them by sight but we've never written them. She truly amazes me.

She loves to sing and does so with gusto. She rarely uses the correct lyrics and often smushes the words of several songs together to create her own song. She likes to do puzzles, which she's so bad at it makes me laugh, although I'm sure someday she'll get the hang of it. She loves for me to paint her nails (we use a pink so light its almost imperceptible to anyone else), curl her hair, and choose earrings and bracelets that match each day's clothing. She's very girly but doesn't seem at all prissy which is good because I find prissy kind of annoying.

I know I say it all the time but she's just awesome!!

The pix
G's in bed so I have a chance to post our pix from today.

This was G first thing in the morning giving me her standard "cheese" smile

G as The Thinker


G's supposed to be squirting the duck to make it move. Daddy had to lend a hand

They had this thing set up based on the Minute to Win It tv show. First you had to bounce ping pong balls into water glasses to form a tic tac toe, then there was a shoe kick (mommy did that one), a skittle sorting game...

and at last a pull the paper without knocking the bottle over game. Bobby finally got the hang of it.

The rope bridge...step

by step...

by step...

by step...

by step...

by step...until she finally made it to the end!

family pic (minus casey, he was sleeping)


G loved the little playground there


Time to go home!

That night, sparklers in the backyard. Casey, his normal photogenic self

G loved the fireworks... she danced around and sang songs. So cute!

Kaboom!!
We've had a nice and relaxing day so far. Got up this morning and went to breakfast then off to Claremont to enjoy their festivities. Its a small thing, a few carnival type booths, some activities. One thing that's kind of neat is that there are lots of political groups that have booths and hand out literature. There's also a speaking corner where people can sign up and then talk about whatever they want for 15-20 mins. I must admit that I've never sat and listened to any of them --lots of people do --but its still pretty neat that citizens are being encouraged to participate in the process.

Anyway, G got to touch a tortoise, toss ping pong balls in water glasses and walk a rope bridge... which she was great at by the way. The guying manning the thing was completely shocked that she could do it on her own and hardly believed me when I said she was only 2-1/2 yrs old. Truthfully I wasn't completely sure she'd be able to do it but encouraged her to try.

She was exhausted by the time we came home so it was time for a nap. Then we did a few crafts, hung out, and BBQ'd some hot dogs. Its now 8pm and we're waiting for dark so that G can do her sparklers. She's really excited about them although she has absolutely no idea what they are :-) We decided to pass on a big fireworks show again this year. I think by next year she'll be ready to enjoy it.

The pic below is July's monthly installment of The Tutu Two Year Old. Not actually my favorite and I was thinking about having them redone but you get the idea. I'll post more pix later. Until then, Happy 4th of July to all from the Crowell Gang!!!