A Dogs Best Friend

Lately every night our house is filled with Allyson's screaming and Butters barking. Butters does not love all the attention of hugs and kisses, though he will sometimes initiate playing with Allyson. Sometimes they play together with dog toys. He will bring the toy to her and drop it near by her reach and as they play Allyson giggles and screams with excitement. Lately however they have been playing chase. You see Allyson whips out her stroller and follows him around with it. He barks. She screams. This could easily go on for twenty minutes if not longer. She loves playing this game and often is played two or three times a day and often right before bed time. At the end of the day when we go through our night time rituals we wave night-night to daddy and then butters. Sometimes if we forget butters, she is looking around in the hallway for him if he hasn't followed us to her room, to make sure he doesn't feel left out of the game.

odds and ends with an update

Allyson keeps us on our toes and is into everything and that includes starting to be a little bit naughty. She has mastered how to travel up the stairs. She will stand at our kitchen gate and whine because she wants to play on the stairs. She has even thrown a tantrum or two on the floor by the gate because she didn't get her way of going where she wants to. When she does this she throws her head on the ground quite hard and currently is sporting a tantrum bruise on her forehead. She is becoming quite testy in what we ask her not to do . We are figuring out the world of discipline with her. I'm trying to find my Love and Logic voice but its not always on my mind when something happens, I am sure she will let me get my practice in though.

She is quite the climber as of late. She will climb from one piece of furniture to another, climb up and and stand on top of her chairs, the couch, her recliner and daddy's recliner as well..oh did i mention we are trying to figure out the coffee table as well and how to climb on it when she thinks no one is watching her. This Saturday we took her early in the morning to our mall's play area thinking wonderful we can take her somewhere where its okay to climb on top of things...She didn't climb a thing....she crawled all over the place, walked around the toys, played chase with another older child but she didn't climb a thing. She wasn't interested in their stairs nor the slide.

Allyson is quite the star at church. Every Sunday when we walk in Michael and I are suddenly surrounded by young children as they are all very interested in Allyson and they love that she can play with them and that she will "talk" to them. Several of them will often ask if they can hold her, which Allyson very kindly allows them to do.

Allyson current list of words are
buh = butters , Yes, Daddy, wazit = whats that, numma-numma = food, or hungry
la-la=elmos world song, ahhh=awe for when she gives you hug, momma (but only if shes mad does she say it) ee=peek

She will play peek-a-boo or peek a couple of different ways, and hide and go seek, she will hide butters toys from him by laying on top of them and teasing him by showing it really quick and then hiding it. She now gives you love pats when you hold her at night time by gently patting your shoulder and when she gets up in the morning. We rarely get head buts anymore :( If you ask her where her big toes is she will find it for you. She knows what "sit on your bottom", "go bye-bye" and when we say lets go put on your coat, she will sometimes run to the closet door to get her coat, she also knows that when we come home to go stand by the closet door to wait to take off her coat. She helps get dressed by putting her arms in her shirts.

Sorry for the delay in pictures that I promised in the last entry. After being back from Kansas within two days our household manged to get sick for over a week and then we passed it on to both my side and Michel's side of the family. It was miserable. Allyson woke up sick as we were getting ready to leave for daycare on monday. An hour after she had gone to bed both Michael and I were sick. The following day he and I both felt awful and Melissa came up to take care of Allyson for us who was still sick as well. Michael and i still felt ill so we let Melissa take Allyson to Kalamazoo for the night to be with Grandma Martha and the next day Melissa watched her my mom brought her home. Not long after my mom and Allyson arrived did we get a call from Melissa saying that she was now on her way home from work and that she was sick! Thursday Allyson will still ill and I didn't work as I had that day off and it was pretty clear Allyson wasn't over the hump so we made plans for her to go to Kalamazoo on Friday. She was originally going to be with my mom (we figured that she must have been a safe bet as she hadnt gotten this bug yet and we didnt want to infect both sides at all if possible) however she called at 5:30 am to tell us she had been ill all night, so off to Grandma Tammy's she went for the day. Allyson was a lot better however she passed on those nasty germs to Grandpa Tanksley who became sick over that weekend.

I'm still waiting on pictures of Allyson with her third cousins taken by others so hopefully they will email them soon, so until then these shall do.

Allyson talking to Great-Grandpa Kenny and Steph.

At the hotel with Grandpa. She loved playing on the bed and rough housing.

I'm fake sleeping trying to get Allyson interested in napping...she didn't want to nap on the way back to Michigan at all. A Long 12 hour road trip back to MI.


Hi Grandma!