Cha-ching!

The Grovers hosted our first garage sale this morning! Of course, we would choose the coldest morning in the past several weeks to spend three hours outdoors. When I placed our ad on craigslist last week, the weather forecasters were predicting mid-50s for the low. Instead, we started out the morning in the blustery 30s! We feared no one would see our lone sign at the end of the street. We were trying to obey the strict permit laws! Our fears were alleviated when, in the first hour, we had cleared out most of our inventory and made about $140 (thanks especially to a few very effective shoppers)! After a total of three hours, we had reduced EVERYTHING to five cents and were left with just enough to fit into a couple of boxes to donate to the neighborhood garage sale in March. All in all, we made about $190 and have much less clutter in Groverland! What more could we ask for? Plus, we met lots of nice neighbors and die-hard garage salers!

Da-duh

Amity has been saying "da-da" for months now and "ma-ma" for the past few weeks. However, we sadly came to the realization that she had no idea of the magnitude of those words. Well, all of that changed tonight...at least for one of us! Amity started saying "Dad" with a heavy emphasis on the final consonant! Of course, this happened after hearing her Daduh say the word only about 100 times tonight between dinner and bath and a bottle. As you can see, he is just a little bit thrilled! Let's see what Momuh can accomplish tomorrow!

Puppy Love

Is there anything sweeter than a girl and her puppy? Probably not...unless the puppy has to make a visit to the laundry room or accidentally goes MIA! If this attachment lasts much longer, we made need to look into getting a puppy #2!

Valentine's Day 2009

Ten months old!

The 7th is here again and Miss Amity is ten months old! We can't believe that she will turn ONE in just two months!

This past month has been full of lots of changes as Amity has become fully mobile. This clip of our little pink gangster does not do justice showing the extent that this girl is on the move but it does capture her curiosity.

Amity continues to be advanced in her eating habits! :) She has had the pincer grasp down pat for several months now. While she still eats some homemade baby food on occasion when our food is a little too grown-up, we are sharing our table food with her more and more. Below she is enjoying her first waffle made from the Belgian waffle-maker that her daddy bought her mommy for Valentine's Day. Believe it or not, it WAS a romantic gift!

Reading is always a happy time with Amity and usually merits lots of smiles, clapping, and kicking. Lately, we have really loved our little Dr. Seuss books (thanks to the Greenes!) and our collection of Eric Carle books (thank you, Emily!).

We also have a new appreciation for cloth books. The other day, Amity was holding on to one of her board books as I put her in her pack and play for independent play time. I let her keep the book along with the other toys already in the pack and play. When her thirty minutes of playtime was over, I found her happily playing and didn't happen to notice the little balls of paper laying all around her pack and play. Later that day, I was changing the sheet and couldn't figure out where those SPITBALLS came from. Had her brief moments visiting daddy's school already begun to have an impact? I then discovered that the corner was missing from our beloved Numbers book. Thank you, Kellermans! It is obviously a well-loved book but, for its own protection, it won't be accompanying Amity to her pack and play anymore!

Amity's mobility has been accompanied with a lot more personality. We predict she is going to be rather independent and a bit daring. There is not much that will scare, surprise, or startle this little girl (except for pulling a shirt over her head...she is just not a big fan). She is quite the adventurer...

as well as a ham! I wonder where she gets that from! Maybe from the one whose shoes are pictured here? I should admit that she did not put these shoes on herself. She prefers to put shoes in her mouth and seems to have a special radar for finding our shoes. I have been working on showing her that it is much more fun to put shoes on our feet than in our mouth.

As April gets closer, I often think about where we were a year ago this time. We had no idea the fun and joy that was in store! Happy 10 months, sweet girl!

Who's Your Daddy?

Can you see what the arrow is pointing to?

Do you know who is wrapped around that little finger?

That's right! Amity is officially a daddy's girl! We were thankful to have Dennis home for a school holiday today. He took care of Amity while I did my weekly grocery shopping. When I got back, he prepared to head out to get a haircut and do some dissertation work at the library. Guess who crawled after him and waited at the door crying? Do you think that made him feel just a tad bit special? I didn't get to capture a picture of the moment but I have a feeling it won't be the last time.
I am not jealous, though! I am thrilled that two of my most favorite people think so highly of each other!

If you're happy and you know it, clap your hands!

Amity finally has a party trick! And, apparently, so does her father!

You see, I seem to have a mental block to remembering the words to "Patty Cake". All of the developmental milestone lists (and people in the grocery store) tell me that I am supposed to be teaching her this rhyme. Well, I have tried printing out the words from the Internet and have even asked different people to tutor me but I can still get no further than "Patty cake, patty cake, baker's man, bake me a cake as fast as you can. Roll it and..."
So, I decided to go with a simpler option sung to the tune of "Skip to My Lou"::
Clap, clap, clap your hands
Clap, clap, clap your hands
Clap, clap, clap your hands
Clap your hands together

It is amazing that I used to be able to memorize "Jabberwocky" in the fifth grade. What good has that done me?

We are finding that having a child is providing for some great examples to use in our roles as a counselor and facilitator. Here is what Dennis typed in an e-mail to his staff last week (please read the sarcasm in his comment about my voice!):

Candis and I were sitting down to breakfast this morning and had kind of a “common sense” epiphany. Candis has been singing a little song to Amity with the words “clap your hands” (I tried to sing it to her this morning and she just looked at me like…well, like who taught me how to sing!)…of course, there is a visual demonstration to go along with my wife’s melodious voice. Well, as of yesterday, Amity started clapping her hands when Candis would sing the song. It spurred the discussion this morning that we often times as teachers say that we have taught kids something without seeing any demonstration of learning…as parents we hadn’t considered that Amity had learned the “clapping” until she actually started doing it on her own. I know this is so simple and common “sensish”, but I just wanted to share it with each of you.

Unfortunately our current system doesn’t always allow us the necessary time to witness actual learning taking place (the clapping thing definitely didn’t happen over night), but rather forces us to move forward in an effort to cover all of the required material. As professionals, it is important that we work together to develop strategies that help our students experience success within the required timelines. We welcome any suggestions you have.

Well said! Maybe I should allow myself some more time to learn to "Patty Cake"!

Driving in my car

We love hand-me-downs at the Grover house and are so thankful for all of the friends and family that have been generous enough to pass along some of their beloved toys and clothes. This little car came from my cousin DeAnn's family. She had told me it was cute but I just didn't understand how cute it would be until I saw Amity driving it yesterday afternoon.

Here she has her tongue out as she concentrates on all of the accesories of her "new" car.

Driving is SO much fun!

Remembering to look both ways before crossing the patio.

Sunny Day