A few of my favorite things. . .

A lot has been happening at the Black household, so I thought we'd share a few of Chloe's favorite things. Topping off the list, is of course, Zack, and we are very happy to see that Chloe is already getting interested in helping take care of him. She didn't actually brush him, but picking up the brush is farther than I have ever gotten!


We bought Chloe some sidewalk chalk and she found it more fun to draw on the house. Next stop, Ikea. I had been to Ikea a couple of times before, but never really saw the huge draw. Now that Chloe is getting older, it's like I'm seeing it for the first time! We bought her this chalkboard, which she really likes, and it has a dry erase board on the other side which we will not even show her until she is 19. Just kidding. You can also put a big roll of butcher block paper on this so when she starts painting she'll have a place to do it. For now, however, she is enjoying the chalk, especially the yellow chalk, as yellow is her favorite color.


One of my new favorite things is my new bike with this cool bobike seat. I saw someone riding with their child on their bike like this and thought it was perfect. Chloe likes it because she can see everything and we can talk and sing songs as we ride. And I think Craig likes it too. We're planning on biking as much as we can around town this summer, not only to help avoid the high gas prices, but to start living the type of lifestyle we want to teach Chloe. I still need to get a couple of saddle bags for the back and then we'll be ready for grocery shopping too.


So the big excitement here is that we are making a bedroom upstairs for Ms. Chloe. We dormered out the upstairs and finished the project just as I found out I was pregnant. We had only put one bedroom upstairs, along with a master bath and a walk in closet and decided to put our TV room and computer up there. Bye, bye TV room and computer, Chloe's movin' on up! Here's a few shots of what the space looks like (sans furniture) before our contractor starting building walls.


The plasma TV (Craig's engagement gift) used to be on the brown wall to the right of the window. Now I'm thinking we'll use magnetic paint on this wall and create a bulletin board of sorts for Chloe.




Here's the start of the walls. It's going to be a pretty cool L shaped room. We decided to leave the closet very open in the nook on the short end of the "L". That way, when Chloe gets older if she wants to put her bed in there or do something else with the space we can just move the closet. We've been talking with Chloe a lot about her new room and asking her if she wants to move upstairs. I had painted some paint samples on the wall -- 3 different shades of yellow her favorite color (I originally wanted some bold pinks but after hearing Chloe talk about yellow all the time, Craig convinced me that she would probably love a yellow room). So now when we ask Chloe about her new room she says "yellow" and "dogs" and that is what she will get. A yellow room with dogs. Perhaps these.


It's a little hard to see, but the back wall on the right is where her closet will be. They are starting on the drywall tomorrow so we'll have some more interesting pictures soon.


One interesting thing is the only way we could fit the room was to have one of the walls go directly under the skylight .. so this wall will not go all the way to the ceiling. It will be interesting when we go to paint as to how we'll make a distinction between the 2 rooms on the ceiling. . I'm hoping I'll have a good idea on that soon.



So as this post is titled "A few of my favorite things" we had to end it with the last of Chloe's favorite things. She loves the color yellow, dogs and "balls". Her favorite blanket is a purple polka dot blanket that she calls the blankee with balls. She has been having a lot of fun lately with stickers, so I bought her these smiley face stickers, which she of course called balls and proceeded to take all the yellow ones of the sheet first. While most landed on her shirt:



A couple landed here:


Here's a shot of the 20 1/2 month old showing off her best features -- big blue eyes and a wonderful head of curly thick hair.



Finally, Craig and I had plans to go see the Cowboy Junkies and the Indigo girls at the zoo last night. Last time we tried to see them we got literally rained out waiting for the show to start. Well, yesterday was so so hot and by 5 PM it was probably 97 or 100 out so we decided sitting out in the sun in a crowd on the hottest day of the year so far might not be our favorite thing to do. Instead we went to Ken's Artisan Pizza for an awesome dinner and then to see Iron Man. I didn't think I would like Iron Man, as I"m not usually a super hero type of gal, but this movie was awesome. Robert Downey Jr is such an amazing actor and I loved this one from start to finish. I know, I didn't believe those words when I heard them from our friend Rich, but seriously, this is a not to be missed movie.

Say what?

I was at the grocery store with Chloe today and they were sampling cantelope and our little savory queen actually ate some. . so I had to snap a picture to send to Craig. Who would believe it?

Showing off the ponys

Chloe is really into having her hair in pony tails -- today she sported 3 at Omsi. Check it out . .

Happy Fathers Day!

It was a beautiful day here today so Craig got to have a sunny Father's day. Chloe and I went to Ella's 5th birthday party while Craig enjoyed a little father time by himself. He used the time to sand our patio furniture - go figure. Then we went to the park and then to Maya, Rich & Bea's for a BBQ.

Here are some pictures of Chloe and Bea when Bea came over by herself for a babysitting/play date. Hopefully we'll get some video up soon of how the play date ended -- with both of the girls splashing in the tub. Chloe absolutely adores Bea and the only way we can get her to brush her teeth at night is to ask her if she wants to brush like Bea. This, of course, is quite humorous to Bea's mom Maya, as Bea will hardly ever let them brush her teeth!


And another shot of the little bean with her favorite 4 legged friend. Note the leg warmers. . the girl like to accesorize. She still asks for her mittens sometimes at school, and in spite of having a sun hat, is often spotted in her warm fleece hat during her walks at school too.

The theme of the party was polka dots so Chloe was lucky. She not only loves polka dots (which she calls 'balls') but dogs -- so she was able to wear her PJ top with both "balls" and a dog. Now only if it were yellow (her favorite color), she would have been in heaven.


Chloe has recently become very interested in barettes, and now has the longest hair in the house so she had her first pony tail, which she really liked.

Words, words, words

Chloe turned 20 months this week and she also started stringing together words in a more obvious way. She has said things like "mama walk" and other directions to us but this week it seemed to take a leap forward.

One of Chloe's favorite songs is "The Wheels on the Bus". We sing it many, many times a day. When I got tired of singing it in the car recently, I looked on one of our children's songs CDs and found it. Now we listen to it continually whenever we are in the car. The fun part is when the verse about the driver saying "Move on Back". Until this week, Chloe just said "Moomoo" for move. Now she is saying "Moomoo" big pause "on back". So cute.

As our little bean is a carb lover like no other, we've started giving her more fruit at the beginning of her meals in the hope she'll widen her variety. This morning Craig served her waffles and apples. She picked up the apple and said "Dada eat it".

It's interesting too that she has started transitioning from saying "Mama" and "Dada" to "Mommy" and "Daddy". I had wanted to her call me "Mommy", but now I'm started to miss the "Mama"