Just Beachy

What a nice break we've had in San Diego from the cold of Utah!

The girls and I went to the beach yesterday afternoon.

Cailyn was a little unsure at first, but quickly decided that she liked the view from her little rock.

(But when you're Cailyn, you still have to squawk even when you ARE enjoying yourself!)

{This is what she kept pointing at: "Wa!" (water) and "Teet!" (tweet or bird)}

This goofy little grin makes me smile.

Here's a little self-portrait taken with the timer on my camera.

Rylee played and played, of course. In these first ones, she was a mermaid (on the rock like Ariel)

We wrote names in the sand.

Then it was time to get in the water...even though it was about 5:30 and not exactly warm (:

Once I realized that the cold wasn't going to deter Rylee from getting in the water, the coverups came off! (I think I should blow this one up and frame in next to the one from 2 years ago when she was crawling into the water in just her diaper in the middle of December...)

Yes, we love the beach.

ellemenopee

Well, I guess it's really just "N-O-P" since I've already included "L" and "M" in previous posts. But "ellemenopee" has a better ring to it. (:

Here are Rylee's most recent letter projects:

N is for Newt

O is for Owl
Cailyn got to join in on the action for this one! (Sort of.)

While Rylee painted,Cailyn colored. (Notice the pigtails. Her mother is delusional and thinks she has long hair.)

And ate crayons.

Rylee put on the finishing touches...

And voila! (Can you find the three places where she lined up three stars of the same color? She was very proud of this.)

P is for Peacock

"Look! Two orange feathers!"

We used googly eyes to make the peacock spots on the feathers...I haven't decided yet whether it looks like peacock feathers or like a bunch of eyes looking out from behind masquerade masks.

After she finished, she had fun putting feathers in her hair!

Stay tuned for more letter projects...sometime, I'm not sure when

Gymnastics

Rylee went to Gymnastics yesterday for the first time, and loved it! None of my pictures are very good because they were taken with my little camera zoomed all the way in from across the gym, but oh well.

Here she is stretching...this was her attempt at doing a bridge. The kids wore these cool capes when they ran around doing their little circuit.
Rylee was very excited about the bars!

I love little leotard bums!

Here's her beam walk:




Here she is in the car on the way to the gym telling me what she was going to do at gymnastics (her expectations are the result, once again, of watching Sesame Street!) I tried to put this first thing on th post, but don't seem to be able to control where the videos show up.

She really was very excited about doing the rings! She kept talking about them all day after we left saying that she wanted to do them...unfortuantely, I don't think the rings will be part of her gymnastics experience any time in the near future!

The video of her running around doing the circuit was too big to upload here, but it did involve a springboard and a "horse" made out of mats, so she actually did everything on her wish list minus the rings.

Terribly Happy

The TV is on too much at our house. I sometimes blame it on the cold weather, me trying to get things done, or any other number of things. It doesn't really matter what my excuse is, the bottom line is I am responsible for the fact that my three year old has just about every episode of Sesame Street, Word World and other such shows memorized.
The last couple days, Rylee's been sick and I've been extra tired...which is the perfect equation for even MORE brainless watching of the boob tube.
As I was putting The Emperor's New Groove in the DVD player today (after watching back to back episodes of Sesame Street, Clifford the Big Red Dog, Word World and who knows what else), I said aloud, "I'm such a terrible mother!"
Rylee exclaimed, "You a terrible mudder?! Don't be terrible! We are happy!" And then she came over and gave me a hug and kiss.
I guess as long as they are happy and know that I love them, I can't be doing that terrible of a job, right? At least, that's what I'll keep telling myself...

The Real Thing

This is Rylee's actual tongue (as opposed to the picture from Google in my last post)

Geographic Tongue

I took Rylee to the doctor today because her tongue looked like the skin had peeled off on half of it, and also because she has a really bad cough and is sneezing like crazy.
Dr. Mumford took one look at her tongue and asked me if I knew what it was. I said I didn't and asked if he did. He said he did and commented that Rylee gives him lots of interesting things to look at (referring to her mystery case of mites or perhaps granuloma annulare on her hand last summer.) He told me that she has what's called "geographic tongue," so named for the splotchy shapes that resemble continents on a globe. Apparently it's a common pediatric diagnosis whose cause is unknown and for which there is no treatment. If you have it you have it for life, but the symptoms come and go. I'll have to take a picture of Rylee's tongue, but she's sleeping right now, so I pulled this image off of google images...this is the closest picture I saw there to what her tongue looks like:
You can google or wikipedia (or whatever else you like) geographic tongue and get all kinds of info on it. I read on wikipedia that geographic tongue is associated with several different genes and that it is more commonly found in people who have asthma, allergies or eczema...I'm pretty sure Rylee has allergies and gets eczema sometimes, so I guess we'll have to keep an eye on her and hope she doesn't get asthma! Poor baby. (I also read that it tends to flair up more often during ovulation, pregnancy, or while taking birth control...pretty sure none of those are the cause!)

Separately, remember my post about 1 1/2 weeks ago with Rylee's growth stats that I thought were way off? Well, I was right. Eleven days ago, Rylee weighed 29.76 lbs; today she weighed 28.44 lbs. I did ask the nurse to print off her growth chart for me again today just to satisfy my curiosity, and that not-quite-pound-and-a-half difference brought her down from the 41st percentile to the 26th percentile for weight. She was still wearing clothes when her weight was taken today, just not a full coat and everything! At any rate, 26th percentile sounds a lot more accurate to me.