august, really?

Nobody knows what happened to July. It just vanished. Bye, summer! I know it is still 137 degrees in the Midwest, and we are supposed to get some sunshine again this week, but it was about 50 and rainy here for the past week and then I realized that school is starting again soon and my babysitter won't be available whenever I call her... and I just saw Halloween costumes [and Christmas ribbon] at Costco. Yikes!

We have spent a lot of time at the house lately. I have some things that I would like to get done before Winter. Considering that I just finished painting Zoe's door that I started painting in February I think it's fair to give myself 4 months to paint the office door. I also totally reorganized my art-room-space. It is clean and labeled. I recycled a metric ton of really bad drawings. Seriously, they are terrible. I also have a metric ton of terrible photographs but they are harder for me to part with. My darkroom [in the garage] is sort-of clean and restocked. Maybe I'll get to use it this year! In any case, I am ready to revive my card-making website business: www.truehandcards.com

Zoe is having more growing pains. She tells me that her knees hurt and her legs hurt. Sometimes her mouth hurts. She told me that her elbow hurt and then pointed at her wrist. I said "that's your wrist, this is your elbow" and then she got big, sad eyes and rubbed her elbow "my elbow hurts...waahhhh". She still gets horribly frustrated when she is unable to do something. We got her little shoes with shoelaces and when Pete puts them on her he tries to show her how to tie them and then it infuriates her when she can't do it herself.
All day long I hear her whining "I can't do it! I can't do it!" whenever something isn't going her way.
On the other hand, when she is cheerful she is a delight. She knows a few different songs now and she loves to sing them. When we go to the park she swings on a regular, big-kid swing now and sings "itsy-bitsy spider" over and over. She also notices all of the itsy-bitsy spiders in our house and just smiles and talks to them.
We are working on potty training. Some days there is a little success.
She seems to have a great imagination. She plays with toys and gives them voices and things to do. She likes to put things in perilous positions - like her bunny on the edge of the couch - and then she'll put her hands up to her face and say "Oh no, be careful bunny! Bunny, look out!" and then she'll rescue it. Sometimes she'll have me help her and we use "teamwork" to save the bunny.
Whenever something is missing we have to search for it and she goes from room to room saying "it's a mystery" and "nope, it's not here either!" Usually we are looking for the bunny or her blanket.
She still really, really loves her books. We sit on her bed and read them. I gave her a copy of Goodnight Moon and now we look at it a few times a day. She has a twin bed now with a real pillow and sheets & comforter. She is in her bed or jumping on her bed constantly. I put her little table and lamp next to the bed so she climbs in, turns her light *on* and says goodnight and then pretends to snore. And she always pats the narrow space next to her and says "sit down, mom". She pulls the sheets up to her nose and says "snug as a bug".
She plays with her kitchen quite a bit. If I sit on her bed she will make me a sandwich, put it in her lunchbox [she picked out a Wonder Woman metal lunchbox at a store a few months ago] with some yogurt and a watermelon slice [all fake foods] and then insists that I open it and eat it. Then we have a tea party. This morning she grilled all of her fake carrots and then when the grill was done she removed them one-by-one with her tongs and put them on a plate for her bunny. "Bunny's hungry. Here ya go, bunny!"
Due to my influence & the Disney/Nick Jr movies & shows we watch, she is very interested in dinosaurs, robots, snow & Santa, bunnies/turtles/fish [Dad, she still talks to Bob and enjoys feeding him and watching him swim], pirate treasure, the jungle, volcanoes, stars & the moon, buzzy bees, outer space, rocket ships, dandelions, birthday cake, seahorses, starfish, mice, anything heart-shaped...
She knows all of her shapes, even the difference between octagons & hexagons, and is really recognizing that everything is some kind of a shape, and that there are shapes & patterns & things to count no matter where we are.