Gabriella's Newest Phrases

Gabriella has three new phrases that she has been using frequently and, amusingly, in appropriate situations! The first is "Ready, Set!" as in "Ready, Set, Go!. I don't know if she learned this at Early Intervention speech class or while watching a television show. The next is "Ta-Dah!" I have no idea where she learned this one. And the final new phrase, that I am really not proud of, is "Oh, God!" Sadly, she got this one from me. I am very careful about cursing around her, but this is one inappropriate phrase that I use a lot and haven't been successful at stopping. She is a little sponge that takes everything in and soaks it up phenomenally.

"Welcome"

We are still working on proper pronunciation, but Gabriella has mastered the use of "Thank You." She is rather polite and often surprises me with thanking me and others at appropriate times. Within the past couple of weeks, though, she has learned to reply to a "Thank You" with "Welcome." It is very, very cute!

My Beatboxing Diva!

My daughter has me in stitches! Gabriella loves music. She has a Dora guitar (thanks Grammy and Grampy) and an echo microphone (suggested by Early Intervention) and we sing together alternating using the guitar and microphone. Usually we sing a song that she made up that goes like this, "Sing, Song, Sing a Song" and repeat. Well, that is, until tonight! There is a new commercial on Nick Jr. that has a rapper, whose name I cannot remember right now, and he is beatboxing in the commercial! So, Gabriella hands me the microphone and says, "sing song" so I start in on her little diddy and she says "No" to stop me. I look at her and she made beatboxing-like sounds with her mouth! I cracked up! She wanted me to beatbox! So I obliged! Who would have thought that I would have ever been beatboxing! I then handed the microphone to her to allow her her turn to beatbox on the mic! It is so funny how perceptive she is and how she picks things up. Gabriella never ceases to amazes me and is constantly amusing me!

Gabriella's First Movie

Gabriella saw her first movie today. She saw Disney's, "The Princess and the Frog" with me and Grammy and cousins Andrew and Isabella. The fact that her first movie was the one in which Disney introduced it's first black princess was very momentous to me. Gabriella was immediately engaged once the previews started rolling and this continued for the beginning portion of the movie, but then her attention span rapidly depleted which I was not unprepared for. She spent a bit of time fooling around with Isabella and playing in the empty row of seats behind us. I let her expend a bit of her energy and then reeled her back in to watch the rest of the movie. She did well through the remainder of the movie. The large container of popcorn was a very welcome added bonus for her!

Double Ear Infection

One of the factors that may have played into Gabriella not enjoying the snow yesterday is that she has a double ear infection. Poor baby. She had been up off and on throughout the night the night before last. She said, "Teeth" when I asked her what was wrong. I believe she is cutting her molars and attributed the fussiness to this. She was up again last night, though, so I had to take her in to the doctor to get her checked out. The poor baby was in a lot of pain. So much so that on the way to the doctor's office, she vomited all over herself in the car. She is on antibiotics now and hopefully she is well quickly and hopefully certainly before Christmas. We DO NOT want a repeat of last year's Christmas in which she was hospitalized.

Snow

We had our first significant snowfall of the season today. I asked Gabriella several times throughout the day if she wanted to go out and play in it, but she was not interested in doing so. That is, until Grampy came over and she saw him outside shoveling. It took me longer to bundle her up than she actually stayed outside! She spent ten minutes, at most, outside before she wanted to head back in!

Helping Grampy:

NOT enjoying herself!:

My little snow bunny!:

Enchanted Village

Grammy and I took Gabriella and Isabella to see the Enchanted Village at Jordan's Furniture in Avon, MA and we loved it! It was very cute and is definitely a Christmastime activity that I hope we will do every year.
Enchanted Village is a holiday display with 28 holiday scenes and 250 animated figures. It was originally created in 1958 for the Jordan Marsh Company. The display was originally displayed in Jordan Marsh's Downtown Crossing store in Boston until 1972. It remained closed from 1972 until 1990. Then, in 1998, when Macy’s purchased Jordan Marsh, the display was sold to the City of Boston for a City Hall Plaza display. In 2003, the display was moved to the Hynes Convention Center and by 2006, Boston stopped displaying The Enchanted Village altogether. In 2009, the Village was put up for auction and Jordan’s Furniture purchased and restored it. The display now includes 18 holiday scenes and 59 animated figurines.
We even saw Elliott of Jordan's Furniture and I felt like we saw a celebrity! Of course, I had to take a picture!

After seeing the beautiful holiday scenes, we saw a laser light show set to Christmas music that was pretty cool as well. We are already looking forward to doing this again next year!