More adventures with Gem

Things are never dull in a house with a 3 year old, especially when her dad is not exactly competent either (this is Tyler typing so I can say things like that).

The other day Tara went to a baby shower that the ladies in the ward hosted for her. She was gone for most of the evening and that left me to entertain Gem until bedtime. I think everything went fine that evening. Gem and I played some games and had a good time. About 20 minutes before I put her in bed she asked if she could wear her "big girl under-air" which roughly translates into "panties". Whenever Gem even brings up the subject of pretending to be potty-trained we generally consider it a success, so naturally I let her wear her new "under-air" for a while. After that we played some more games and then she went to bed.

Well, it turns out that anytime you entrust an incontinent person with anything other than a water-tight protective barrier wrapped around their bottom half you're supposed to remember to relieve them from this added responsibility before your leave them for an 8 hour period.

Tara came home and we went to bed. The next morning was Saturday so we woke up lazily until Gem came in. She climbed into our bed and played with our faces as she lovingly does each morning as though we were two life-size, interactive Mr. Potato Heads. After about a half-hour I got out of bed and noticed that there was an extremely large dark spot in the sheet emanating from around Gem. Everything hit me fast. I actually thought for a second that there must be a way to fix this before Tara discovered anything. Needless to say nothing came to mind and I got the privilege of assisting with laundry that day to clean up the big wet spot on our bed and the twin wet spot we soon found on Gem's bed.

In other news, I thought I'd share some more "Gemisms" from her ever-expanding repetoire of words and phrases. Lately she's picked up lines that help her express her self-delusional sense of "coolness". Almost anytime now that Tara and I are having a conversation, Gem will break in and ask, "Whatchu talkin' 'bout?" This favorite little catch phrase of hers pops up at home, in the car, and even during an occasional dinner prayer.

She's picked up a couple lines from one of her videos that teaches her to search and solve puzzles. Anytime she knows we're going somewhere she'll prod us along with, "Hurry, hurry, follow me!" This is always interesting coming from someone who has no idea where to go. When she realizes this small detail she'll wait till Tara leads the way and then she declares, "Follow dat mama!" I'm not really sure which episode of Blue's Clues taught her that one.

Lastly, she's always improving on her manners. About 500 times a day she'll yell throughout the house "I WANT...(insert anything imaginable)!" She'll repeat this incessantly until you respond. We've been trying to respond with patience, "Gem, how do you ask nicely?" To this she'll give a flowery, "May I please, I WANT...(insert previous request)!" Oh well, I guess it's progress.

Gem's big day

Gem hosted her first birthday party this weekend. Everyone who is anyone was there (well, basically just little girls from our ward). First the girl's made candy necklaces that they could eat durring the rest of the festivities. Gem immediately decided that there was no point to putting candy on a stupid little string when you could just as easily shove it in your mouth to begin with. We're all for efficiency in the Ross house. Oh well, all the other girls looked cute with their necklaces.

Next was what turned out to be the main event. We found big bubble wands at Target that we thought the really little girls would like. We filled up some small plates with bubble soap and let 5 girls go crazy with it. It actually turned out really cool. There were hundreds of bubbles. They played with it for about a half hour.

After the bubbles we went inside for a ring-toss game. The party was for Gem and our 2 year old neighbor Rachel so we had to come up with simple stuff. I think they liked the game.

Next it was time to decorate cupcakes and then sing Happy Birthday to the two girls. I was suprised at how much Gem like blowing out the candles and how happy she was when she got it right.

The last thing was presents..... always a hit. Overall I think it was the event of the season. We're already thinking of how to top it next year.

Daddy's Little Non Helper

The other day daddy was fixing his flat tire, and he got some help. You can tell from these pictures she really knows what she is doing.

I have had an excess of liquids today. While she was in the tub today, I think she poured half of the tub out onto the floor. The rug was literally dripping when I picked it up. Then when I went downstairs to check on her just now, her sippee cup had opened up and a cup of milk was just puddled on the tv stand. The speakers were just sitting in a puddle of milk. Apparently this didn't warrant letting mom know. I guess I really need to pay more attention to her. Why can't three-year-olds be smarter??

Baby Stuff

To see my last tidbit, on being pregnant, on my friends blog. Click Here.

One Last Hurrah!

Well we wanted to use our season passes one more time, while Gem is still free, and before the baby comes. By the way I am posting the below picture to show everyone how portly I have become. This new baby cannot come soon enough.

When we got there we had a good omen as we entered the parking lot. I handed the parking attendant our credit card to pay for parking and she handed it back to me and said "the system is down, free parking today". What a glorious start to the day! For those of you who don't know, that is fourteen dollars we saved.

It is summer time so the park was much busier than when we normally go, but that was ok because we don't really do much of anything that you have to wait in line for.

We walked past the princess pavilion and we saw that they were doing princess storytimes, which they hadn't been doing during the off season, so we decided to check it out. We sat down on one of the benches thinking we had about twenty minutes to relax until the show started. When to our surprise, three princess just walked out from behind the stage. We got to go say hi to the princesses without waiting forever in line. We couldn't believe our eyes.

All in all it was a really fun day.

Wasting Time

Sometimes time goes by so slowly. Like when Gem and I are waiting for Tyler to get home from work. I think minutes turn into hours between 3:30 and 4:00.

Well today Gem and I decided we were not going to be bored. (She didn't know she was part of this decision). So we went on an outing. First we had to stop by the bank. Unfortunately they don't have a drive up window so I had to wake Gem up and actually walk inside to cash my twenty four dollar check. Sometimes I am not sure that it is worth it. Well Gem wanted to look at all the fishes in the aquarium at the bank. So I spent like five minutes holding her up and when I couldn't hold her up any more I said it was time to go. She then proceeded to cry and say she wanted to "see the fishes some morn." Then we went to Target. To make sure to expend lots and lots of time there we went up and down every aisle. We were looking for a toy for our neighbor who will be turning two very soon. I didn't really see anything super cool :( So all she got was a buzz lightyear. Gem spent the whole time I was looking at the toys saying "I want a princess dress!!" over and over. Because she could see all the dress-ups no matter what aisle we were in. Finally we needed to go to Costco, again we were trying to take as much time as possible, so we had a piece of pizza and a frozen yogurt out front before we went inside. This means that all Gem had for dinner was frozen yogurt, oh well, there are worse things right? Then we had to get our groceries from Costco, and take them back out to the car. Finally it was time to go home, I contented myself in the slow lanes the whole way home to take a few extra minutes.

This outing took a couple hours! Hooray! A few less hours at home looking at each other.

A Three Year Old

So today while Gem was having one of her dozens of daily tantrums, she threw her head back and I could see up her nose, or more importantly I couldn't see up her nose.

"What is in your nose?" I said. She immediately stopped crying and said "One green pea in I nose."

I guess I am officially a mom now, every mom I know has told me about when one of their kids had stuff stuck up their nose, ranging from barbie shoes to tin foil. What is going through these little kids minds? They are just sitting there playing, or in Gem's case eating peas, and they think "this would probably fit in my nose, I had better try and see." Then they just go about their business not in the least concerned that they have a foreign object in one of their orifices.

Don't worry, I got the pea out, and hopefully I scared Gem enough that she won't be putting other things in her nose. At least until tomorrow.

Camping

We went "camping" over the weekend at Lake Casitas. By camping I mean we slept in a tent.

Here we have Gem throwing rocks into the lake. She really enjoyed it, though it was weird that we had to show her what to do. I thought throwing things into water was a skill everyone was born with. She cried and cried when we told her we were all done.

The following two videos are from our picnic dinner. We were surrounded by more squirrels than I had ever seen. Also a couple a bunnies. Gem kept trying to touch the squirrels, and we had to save her a couple of times when the squirrels got to close when they thought she was feeding them.