You Call Him Dr. Jones Doll!

Kasia got a dollhouse for Christmas and she absolutely loves it. In fact, I think her favorite phrase of all time is, "We play dollhouse, Daddy?" And while I enjoy spending time with my daughter, playing with a daddy doll who has to pick up a crying baby doll... it gets a little boring. That is until Indy came to town.

"You call him Dr. Jones, doll." - Short Round

Actually, Short Round, he's not a doll... he's an action figure. And he has come to the "Loving Family" dollhouse to find his treasure and kick a little Nazi butt while he's there. As it turns out, there's a very rare Mayan face carving hidden under the baby's crip, and only Indy can find it and get it to a museum before the Nazis steal it. He has suddenly made the dollhouse a lot more fun.

Now I'm the one who says, "We play dollhouse Kasia?" Because Indy is here, and he's ready for action, adventure, and... hey. Whose that coming in through the window? Boba Fett?? Oh, this just got really cool.

Is That Rusty?

Another strange Kasia Kwirk.

For some reason, and only Kara knows the reason why, every horse that Kasia sees is named Rusty. Her toy horse is named Rusty. Her rocking horse is named Rusty. The horse sticker on the wall, that's Rusty too. The weird thing is that it's not only isolated to horses. Anything that resembles a horse is also named Rusty. So all zebras are Rusty as are donkeys.

Of course she might be saying "horsie" but it's just coming out all wrong. Nope, she's definitely saying Rusty. Yep, I'm sure of it.

No Sing Daddy

They say that a child enjoys the singing of their parent.  “It doesn’t matter if you can sing,” I’ve heard, “what matters is that your child just wants to hear your voice.”

Apparently Kasia did not get this memo.  I don’t know why or for what reason, but as of late, I am no longer aloud to sing.  Not at all.  If a song enters my head, and I start to sing it while she’s around, she immediately shouts, “NO SING DADDY!”  Or, sometimes she’ll vary it up and shout “NO DADDY SING!”  She’s still working on which one she wants to use full time.

I never thought this would bother me, but now that I’m not allowed to sing, I find myself doing it all the time.  In the car.  In the kitchen.  Everywhere.  I feel like Kevin Bacon in Footloose and Kasia is the uptight minister who forbids dancing and rock n’ roll music.  Well, I’ve got news for her.  I’m going to sing!  And maybe like Kevin Bacon, I’ll do some weird dance routine in an abandoned warehouse.  

That Whole Crib Thing

So if you remember back before the holidays, Kasia had learned to climb out of her crib.  Well, since her bedroom is right at the top of the stairs, this worried us a lot.  She climbed out of her crib consistently for about a week.  And then all of a sudden, she stopped.  For reasons unknown to all of us, she won't do it anymore.  Now, when she wants to get up, she calls for us just like she used to.  We're a little perplexed by this, but not that worried.  Once we get the potty training thing done, we're going to move her from her crib to a real bed.  The countdown has begun.

UPDATE:  I guess I spoke too soon.  Just a day after I posted this, she spooked me by climbing out of her bed.  I thought I heard a sound coming from the kitchen, and to my surprise.. there was Kasia.  I guess she's back at it again.  What gets me is her absolute ninja-like stealth when she does this.  

Realism in Her Play

I think that it's extremely amusing to watch Kasia as she plays with her new doll house.  She seems to love to reenact all the things that go on here at our house, and she does them all very accurately.

For example, she'll pretend the everyone is waking up and that the family is going to go to Birdie's for the day to play.  Before they go however, Daddy has to take a shower and get everything in the van.  

But the funniest thing for me is when she puts the baby to bed.  She'll have the parents tell the little baby it's time to go night night, and then put the baby in her crib.  Then Kasia will start to cry as the baby because she doesn't want to go to sleep.  She does the fake cry so well, and then the parents have to come in and console the baby and change her diaper, and finally she'll go to bed.  It's the fake cry though that just amazes me.  She'll even have the baby stand up in the crib and shout "UP! UP! UP!!"  

She does the same thing with her stuffed animals and her read bed.  It's funny for me because it shows me that she knows exactly what it is that she does, and she knows exactly how we react to it.  It's very accurate.

Potty Training: Again

Now that we've started off a new year, we've decided that it's time to dig our heels in and get our daughter potty trained.  Surprisingly, it's going extremely well.  We've just insisted that she wears underwear while we're at home, and that when she needs to use the potty she needs to tell us.  The shocking thing is that she actually has been doing it.  There have been very few accidents, and so long as she gets her little treats for using the potty, she's all about doing it.  

Now going out in public is a different matter.  I'm sure that will come soon, but for now we're thrilled with the progress that we've made.

Happy New Year!

I think that it's official in that we are getting old.  Here were are plans for New Year's Eve:  

• Drop Kasia off at Granny and Poppy's house for the night.  
  
• Go home and fix a few drinks.
• Watch a movie.
• Fall asleep.
• Wake up before midnight.
• Watch the ball drop, kiss each other, and wish each other a Happy New Year.
• Go to bed.

That's kind of how we did it last year, and it sounded so good to us that we thought we'd do it again.  But then... then Steve and Angie had to change everything.  They wanted to know if we wanted to all get together.  Now how are we supposed to fall asleep on the couch when we have company over?  Anyway, we all got together and discovered that we weren't as old as we thought.

Steve, Angie and the kids came over in the evening and Kasia and Riley started playing right away like they were long time friends.  There was no hesitation, which was really cool.  Peyton had fun playing Nintendo for most of the evening, and I played with him as long as I could without appearing to be unsocial with the adults.  

Then Kathy and Jeff stopped by.  They brought over pizza, and we all ate and had some drinks until late into the night.  Then around 11:30pm, everyone decided to brave the cold and wind and went home.  We turned on the TV, and waited for the ball to drop.  Kasia tried her hardest to stay up until midnight, but she fell asleep on the couch about fifteen minutes later.  She played hard most of the night and just couldn't make it to the end.

Kara and I then counted down to the New Year and had our New Year's Kiss.  We watched some of Dick Clark, as we heard this was going to be his last year doing the New Year's Eve special... and that's probably a good idea.  He may be the guy who never aged, but having a stroke can definitely take its toll.  He had a good run, but it's probably time for him to move on.

We hope that everyone else had a wonderful New Year's and hope that everything is starting off on the right foot.