Um...Happy Halloween?

 
We got about 3 inches of snow Saturday evening and overnight. It was very moist snow so it was about as heavy as 6 inches of regular snow. Since the trees still had most of their leaves and the snow was so moist, the snow clung to the leaves and caused a lot of fallen trees and tree branches. A lot of people are still without power (more than a day later). Fortunately, we never lost power. One of our neighbor's trees broke into our yard, but didn't hit the house so we're lucky. Adrian spent Sunday morning shaking as much of the snow off the leaves of tree limbs he could reach. A tree in our backyard was so heavy with snow that it was lying on the ground. Adrian shook the snow off and it slowly stood up. Happy Halloween everyone! Pics of Veronica in her Wonder Woman costume coming soon.

Daycare Photos: Outdoor Play

A couple of photos from daycare. In the first one she is sitting with her daycare friends getting ready to go outside (thus, the hats). In the second photo you can see how Veronica prefers to go down slides these days: feet first, tummy down. At least that's better than head first!

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Toddler 2
Date: Mon, Oct 17, 2011 at 10:41 AM
Subject: pictures of Veronica

Veronica loves being with her friends and interacting with them during circle. She also loves going down the slide on her belly but feet first instead of head first, when she comes to the bottom of the slide you can hear her saying, "Weeeee," as she is coming down.

Daycare Photo: Spilled Milk

I received this photo from daycare yesterday. Veronica loves to clean up! Sometimes she spills some of her milk/water on purpose just to clean it up!

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Toddler 2
Date: Tue, Oct 18, 2011 at 2:54 PM
Subject: picture of Veronica

Here is a picture of Veronica from this morning during breakfast. She spilt her milk and wanted to clean it up all by herself with a napkin. I love how she posed for the picture.

Mahoney's Fall Festival 09Oct2011

Our local garden center, Mahoney's, had a fall festival a couple of weeks ago. They had a few local vendors selling their wares, lots of free gardening classes, an alpaca for the kids to pet and feed, a hay and burlap maze, pumpkin bowling, and pumpkin painting. She loved the free balloons and popcorn. She's a popcorn addict just like Mama and Lola. Veronica had a great time at the festival. Here she is with Rhiannon, the alpaca. (Love that name!) (Remember you can click on all photos to enlarge.)

Rhiannon and Veronica

Rhiannon the alpaca mugging for the camera

The garden center is huge and offers many different varieties of plants. We get almost all of our yard plants here and we buy our tree here for Christmas. It's great that we have such a well-stocked garden center in our town. Here is Veronica posing with some roses.

Veronica and roses

Here are Adrian and Veronica posing with pumpkins. We bought a big one to put on our front stoop.

Daddy and Veronica with pumpkins

They had a small burlap and hay maze, perfectly sized for a toddler, though I think I was more excited about it than she was. By this point she had seen the pumpkin painting and was very determined to do it.

About to go into the burlap and hay maze

After the maze was the pumpkin bowling but she had absolutely no interest in that and made a beeline for the pumpkin painting tables. Check out the concentration on her face!

Future Michelangelo

Oops, I forgot to take a photo of the finished pumpkin. I was too busy trying to clean all of the paint off her! We went home with 2 pumpkins, some mums for Adrian to plant in the front yard, a jar of homemade pickles, some lobster bisque and clam chowder for lunch, and more popcorn!

Guess who peed in the potty tonight?

She was so proud of herself. We made a huge deal of it, and she got a special potty sticker.
That's one step closer to being potty trained!

Daycare Field Trip: Apple Picking 06Oct2011

Our daycare took a field trip to go apple picking and I decided to play hooky from work and chaperone. Veronica and I had a lot of fun. A big yellow school bus picked us all up at the daycare. The parents were responsible for installing the car seats onto the bus. Let me just say that the seat belts on the bus were not designed for car seats, and leave it at that. After a lot of huffing and puffing, I finally got her car seat in well enough for my own (very high) safety standards. Then were were off! I took this video just as we were leaving the daycare. Veronica was SO EXCITED to be on a school bus.

And here's a photo of the two of us in the bus:

When we got to the farm, we boarded a trolley/shuttle bus that took us right to the apples that were at their ripest. Veronica and I sat with her old Toddler 1 teachers, Adrienne and Jessica. You can also see little Peter next to Jessica. Veronica was so excited about everything, check out that smile.

This is a photo I tried to take of the two of us. I cut my head off, but that smile on her face was worth it!

Picking apples: We picked Jonagold and Golden Delicious apples. They were so sweet.

Veronica in front of some Jonagolds

She could not wait to bite into her apple. This one was almost as big as her head. She managed to eat about a third of it before she dropped it.

Veronica showing an apple who's boss

I love the expression on her face and the cute little bites she was taking of the apple.

 This is Veronica with her friend Mia. They are so adorable together.

Heading back on the shuttle bus. A very happy little girl.

This is a photo showing more of her friends from daycare: Rosie, Zophia, and Peter.

On the bus on the way home, she tackled another apple and nearly polished the whole thing off by herself.

Just throwing in this last photo, which was taken the night before apple picking. Veronica was playing with Mrs. Potato Head's earrings. I figured out I could actually put them on her ears and she loved it.

Video Backlog Jan-July 2011

I went through some videos I've taken and found a few good ones that I haven't shared yet.
This video is from way back in January 2011 when Veronica was about 16 months old. You can see she was not having fun hiking in the lovely Middlesex Fells across from our house, no matter how much we tried to convince her. The way she says "snow", however, is so adorable.

Here's a video taken in Feb 2011 (17 months old) of her first sled ride. This was also taken in the Fells that we live next to. Not sure if you can tell from the video, but she totally wiped out at the end. That was totally Daddy's fault, but she took it like a trooper!

In this video from June 2011 (21 months old) she is singing Twinkle Twinkle for most of it, then Happy Talk (a song from the musical South Pacific that my mom taught her). She LOVES to sing, and she doesn't really like it when you try to sing with her, she is strictly a one-woman show. I love that she does the talking motions with her fingers when she sings the song.

This video was taken in July 2011 (22 months) in the car. (I take a lot of videos in the car. It's a lot easier to film her when she's strapped down!) She loves to sing the ABCs and she's got most of them in the song. Her facial expressions are just hilarious.

Families & Firetrucks Video

Here's a video to go along with the previous post. It's a video of Veronica holding the fire hose. Well, actually, it's a video of the fireman trying to convince her to hold the fire hose!

Families & Firetrucks

The last weekend in September we went to FAN's Families & Firetrucks event. FAN (Family Action Network) is a "Winchester-based non-profit organization which began in 1994. We offer a support network for families with infants and young children, serve as a resource to help unify Winchester's programs for families, offer parenting resources, promote inclusivity, and facilitate the exchange of ideas. We organize playgroups; children, parent and family events; educational programs; food and toy drives; playground cleanups; and more."
I decided to join a few months ago and have been happy with the decision. It's really nice to have an organization like this to help us get to know the other families in our town with kids the same age. Plus, the other parents are a great source of Winchester family-related information (like activities and schools). Families & Firetrucks is FAN's seasonal kick-off event. The local fire department brought Ladder 1 and Engine 2 and an ambulance for the kids to explore. They even turned on the fire hose and let the kids take turns holding it! It was great fun and Veronica really enjoyed it. Here are a few photos (click to enlarge):

Veronica sports her firefighter helmet

Driving Engine 2

On the passenger side of Engine 2

Ladder 1: They had the ladder completely extended into the sky

Firefighter Dave helped the kids hold the fire hose

Veronica getting the stretcher ready!

The event was held in the parking lot of Winchester High School. Afterwards, we checked out the garden that the high schoolers had planted over the summer:

Big sunflowers

To see all of the Families & Firetrucks photos, click here.

August 2011 Trip to NYC

I realized that I had a bunch of photos from August that I never posted, so here they are. In August we took a lovely trip down to New York City to visit Jose and Erik and meet with my mom and stepdad. We had a great time. Unfortunately, I had forgotten my camera but Mom and UI took some great photos of the long weekend. (Click on any of the photos to enlarge.)
Veronica LOVES edamame and my mom taught her how to open up the shells to get to the little soybeans inside (fine motor skills!). What I love about the following photo is how she has put the empty shells ALL IN A ROW. This has Adrian shaking his head, but I love it. That's my girl.

One of Veronica's favorite books is "R. Robot Saves Lunch" by R. Nicholas Kuszyk. This book is full of great illustrations of robots in a robot world. The author happens to live in my brother's neighborhood and has painted several murals there. This is just one of them. Great, isn't it? Veronica loved seeing R. Robot!

 This next photo is one my mother took of Veronica trying on a pair of my earrings. I love it and I think the composition is great. I love the orange Croc in the background.

 

My brother's building has a great pool and Veronica really enjoyed it. Every time we got into the water, she was more brave than the last time. On this particular day she was hurling herself into the water from a seated position at the edge of the pool, going way underwater over her head. I love the family photo in the center of the following photo montage (care of UI!).

If you'd like to see more photos from August 2011, click here.

Daycare Photo: Relaxing & reading book

Last week's photo from daycare. Jessica is one of her teachers.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Toddler 2
Date: Thu, Sep 29, 2011 at 7:15 PM
Subject: Relaxing & reading book
To: Veronica's mom Patricia, Veronica's dad Adrian

Veronica enjoyed reading a book this afternoon. She called it "Jessica's special book".

Veronica's 2nd Birthday Party

We celebrated Veronica's 2nd birthday with a party at our house. Even though we are still in the middle of fairly ambitious renovations, we managed to spruce the house up a bit for the party. It's amazing what a few balloons and lots of helping hands can do. Adrian managed to get the new cork flooring down on the most pertinent parts of the kitchen a mere few days before the party. Having the new back door that my dad and Adrian installed last Mother's Day made a big difference. After several days of solid rain, the weather finally cleared up for the party and, thanks to Kathy, John and Adrian, the front and back yards looked great. Adrian grilled up on the big green egg and made his yummy Asian slaw, and my mom prepared a Filipino feast of pancit, 2 kinds of adobo, shrimp curry, and lumpia. Here are just a few of the hundreds of photos (not an exaggeration) taken that day (you can click on each one to enlarge):

Ready to greet her guests

Jose, Patricia, and Regee

Veronica enjoying the new back door

So demure

Mommy and Veronica

The Spread: pancit, lumpia, coconut chicken adobo, pork belly adobo, beef bbq, shrimp curry, rice, asian slaw, crudite and hummus, fruit salad, hot dogs & buns, and Hello Kitty cake & cupcakes!

Veronica greeted her BFF from daycare, Lana, with a squeal and a hug.

Veronica realizing everyone is singing TO HER, and Mommy enjoying the look on Veronica's face

Trying to get her to blow out her candles

We lit the candles twice to give her another chance

Veronica and Daddy

Enjoying her new Rody (check out her hair!)

It's my party and I can change dresses if I want to (Regee to the left of Veronica, and John, Kathy, and Vince to the right).

Having a laugh with Lola

Three LeBuffes

Almost bedtime and still on a cupcake high

The next morning: Opening gifts!

Hello Kitty Overload

Thank you to everyone who traveled and helped out with the party (Mom, UI, Jose, Erik, Elyse, Kathy, and John). And thanks to everyone who came to the party. Veronica thanks you, too!
To see more photos, click here to see the photos that Jose took (thanks for taking photos with our camera, Jose!), and click here to see the photos that UI took with his fancy new camera (thanks, UI!)