Arielle has been counting the days down to Christmas on her My Little Pony Advent Calendar {which was a last minute decision since I didn't have enough time to sew one up myself which I intend to do for next year}. She has done well in understanding the countdown and when another day has passed us by so if nothing else it has taught her that but I think it has also taught her some patience too! 
~Momma to Bug~
I am tHaNkFuL that we safely drove nearly 2,000 miles last week and it was rather uneventful! The first part of the trip, we decided to leave in the afternoon so that Arielle could {not that I really thought she would} "sleep through the night." We made our first and ONLY stop to eat dinner after being in the car for nearly six hours. Arielle fell asleep after watching her fourth movie of the day. That was around nine o'clock. At 2 o'clock in the morning, we had to stop for gas and Arielle woke up. She didn't go back to sleep. We made it to our desitnation, Cape Girardeau, MiSSoUrI at about 4:30 am. At least Daddy was able to get her to go to bed for another five hours that morning.
The best part about the trip was that Arielle and I got to meet GrAnDmOtHeR. Grandmother is 93 years old and is the only living Great Grandmother that Arielle has. I couldn't help but tearing up as we walked into her room at the Lutheran Home and I saw her reaction to meeting us and seeing Gaby, her youngest daughter. Grandmother asked if she had died and gone to heaven. Arielle asked to sit next to her at the table on Thanksgiving. She had a great time chatting with Grandmother and all the other kids at the table. It was a nice sight to see!
We set out for our journey home on Saturday morning. This time we made several stops along the way and I think Arielle set a new record for number of movies watched in one day (I lost count after four). In addition to movie watching, we colored several pictures and she did lots of playing with her little toys that she brought. She needed something to occupy her time because wouldn't you know it, that kid did not get one wink of sleep during that entire car ride. FoUrTeeN hOuRs and not even a doze or a nod out of her but like I said, it was pretty uneventful which is a good thing. Arielle kept saying, "This is a really long drive, huh?" It was a loooooong drive but well worth it.
Which leads me to another topic. Talking. Another day last week when I picked her up one of her teachers asked me, "Does she talk in her sleep?" I had to think about this because it seemed natural to me that the answer should be yes, but the more I thought about it I decided that is about THE ONLY TIME that she Arielle does not talk. Arielle really does love to talk. In fact, Zak and I can barely get a word in edgewise when we come home from work because inevitably we WILL be interrupted by Arielle. Like every parent does, we taught her to say the words "Excuse me" when she needs to talk while someone else is speaking so she does remember her manners some of the time. Lately, not only does Arielle have a lot to say when she is awake all day long but she has to repeat herself to everyone in the room until they have each acknowledged her statements. Do you see where this is going?
In conclusion, I really do miss naps.
~Momma to Bug~
R.I.P. Elmo & Mermaid 11/13/2008
DrAmA. This pretty much describes our lives over the past week or so. Arielle is no exception. Lately she has started to act so much like a GirL with hormones and all! For example, last night (and every night before that) she was playing with the Monster that we call Lexi while we were eating dinner. Now I have told her over and over again not to do this because it just makes Lexi beg us for food more and more. The ironic thing about this is that she hardly ever pays attention to Lexi except when we are eating! Go figure. So after repeated attempts to get her not to touch or speak to Lexi while we were eating I finally had enough and I said something very bluntly and loudly along the lines of "Arielle, just IGNORE her and she will go away!"
I am contemplating putting a BIG BaRn StAr on the back wall of the mantel. Although a lot of stuff in my house has a beach or tropical theme and a barn star is not that, I have always loved the look of them and feel like I can make it blend in somehow. I chose black because that is the color of my fireplace surround. 
As we set out for trick or treating through our NeIgHbOrHoOd we met up with another little girl that was a little older than Arielle. Her name is Evelyn and she lives across the strett from us! The two of them joined forces and had such a fun time going from house to house each trying to beat one another to the doorbell and to the next house. I don't think either one of them forgot to say "THANK YOU" for the entire night, nor did they fail to tell us {their mom's and grandma's} that they remembered to say it! In fact, I think the entire neighborhood probably heard everything they said the whole night that is how loud and proud they were! At one point someone told them that they were little Thank You Monsters so Arielle decided to add Monster to the end of every Thank You. It was really cute!
We made it up and down every stretch of our our neighborhood and Arielle's pumpkin was filled to the brim with treats! After Zak examined every piece, she immediately poured it all out on the floor to see what she could find. We let her have a couple of pieces before bed and a few pieces after meals this weekend but she hasn't really been hounding us to eat that much candy which surprises me.
What I will remember the most about this Halloween is Arielle's reactions to the SpOOkY masks and decorations that we encountered. First, there was a kid with a white "Jason" mask on and he was wearing all black. The second he turned around as the girls were walking up to the house he was leaving, they ScReAmEd and RaN back to us and who can blame them, really? Then there was a person handing out candy in a similar costume that didn't talk and they had haunted house sounds playing on their porch. Arielle was hesitant to approach this house and even though I walked up hand-in-hand with her she turned and ran back to Zak as we got close to the person. Evelyn braved it though as she took the candy then ran! As scared as Arielle was as I was walking back to her {with candy in hand} she asked, "Mom, can you get me a piece of candy from them?" There were a few more scary masks along the way that sent the girls screaming back to us but then there was the last house of the night. It was a house on our street and they had a Halloween arch over their doorway that played HaUnTeD HoUsE SoUnDs the second that you walked through it. Arielle did not like that whatsoever but we talked her into going up the door with us. I thought for sure she was going to have nightmares that night and wake up screaming or crying. Thankfully that did not happen!
~Momma to Bug~
2007 (2 years old)
"The Little Mermaid" This was the first year that Arielle picked out her own Halloween costume and who else would she pick but her favorite princess that shares the same name as her? Arielle really enjoyed every aspect of Halloween last year because she was old enough to understand what was going on. I remember so much about this year and will probably tell these stories over and over for years to come.
First, we took Arielle to a trick-or-treating event at a local event center and she had completely forgotten that people were going to hand out candy to her. The first few booths we visited the people reached out to put candy in Arielle's bag but she kept pulling it away and putting her hand out. I kept telling her to give them her bag so they could drop the candy in it but she wasn't doing it. I figured out that she thought they were going to put their hands in it to take candy OUT, not put it IN!!!
Then on the actual night of Halloween while we were trick-or-treating around the neighborhood IT happened. Somebody answered the door in a {very exquisite} WiZaRd costume. This was not a scary costume by any means but through the eyes of a two year old that was not expecting to see anything other than a regular person opening the door it freightened her. For the entire rest of the night before she walked up to a house to ring the doorbell she would tell ask, "There's not going to be a scary person at this house, right?" I'm not kidding, every house she said this and every time we had to convince her that it would not happen again, knowing full well that it could happen again. And it would have happened again if my maternal instincts had not kicked in. As we rang the doorbell of a very dark house I heard some rustling behind the door and could see scary decorations inside the hall so I knew immediately something BAD was going to happen. I stepped in front of Arielle and just as I made sure she couldn't see what was in front of her a person opened the door wearing a WereWolf mask. Of course I asked them to remove it before Arielle could know what was going on and they did so the crisis was averted! Phew.
~Momma to Bug~
We couldn't believe how GIGANTIC the houses were and most of them had little BeAcH CaBaNaS across the street literally a few footsteps away from their own private beach. 
~Momma to Bug~
