Did you have one of these roly-poly chicken toys growing up? Everytime you pushed it down, it would right itself and a chime in its belly would make a pleasant ding-a-ling sound. I haven't seen mine in years. In fact, I'd completely forgotten I had one....until now.

See, my 4 month old has decided she wants to be a roly-poly toy. I can't talk her out of it! She is working on perfecting the self-righting mechanism whereby she will always end up on her tummy, arms smacking the ground and legs kicking in the air. No matter how many times we return her to her back, two seconds later - bloop! - she's on her tummy.

The problem is that she hasn't perfected the roll from tummy to back, so she gets very, very frustrated as soon as she finds herself on her tummy. "So, why put yourself in that position, Kayleigh?!" we ask her, but she just won't listen. Furthermore, she is subconsciously performing her roly-poly routines. At night, when she's just about to fall asleep, she starts rolling, which inevitably puts her in a wide awake state. Then throughout the night, every 90 minutes or so, she comes up to the light sleep phase and finds herself roly-polying again.

Unfortunately, instead of the pleasant chime, she makes cute-for-30-seconds-but-definitely-not-so-pleasant-at-3:00 AM baby grunts, crescendoing in volume until you help her flip over. Of course, as soon as she's on her back, she pushes to roll onto her tummy again.

I don't understand why this is happening. After all, she has been rolling over for over a month and a half now. I'm betting that she's persistently working on nailing down the tummy to back roll, though - something she has only done a couple of times and probably unintentionally. So, maybe the best way to help her out is to always put her down on her tummy during the day to play so she has as many opportunities to practice during the day as she wants, rather than having to practice at night. Once she's figured it out, maybe we'll be able to get more than 4 hours of sleep at night again!!

In the meantime, we are enduring the hardest nights we've had with Kayleigh since her birth.

I know once I start getting 6 hours of sleep this will all be very amusing to me.

Ding-a-ling. Ding-a-ling.

How could I forget the copious amounts of hair shedding that occurs about 4 months after baby is born?! Ack! So, obnoxious. I feel like I'm going to be bald if this continues for another week and I didn't have that much hair to begin with.

Well, now's as good a time to try Mane N Tail as ever. We heard about this shampoo awhile ago. Paul and I had a good laugh and then thought, why not give it a try. It was developed for horses, but when owners saw the shinier, stronger, healthier hair on the horses, it was believed that humans might benefit from the same formula. Many, many testimonials indicate that this product is worth a try, so while I'm going through this dramatic hair loss, we thought we would try Mane N Tail to see what we can salvage.

It's only been about a week and so far I have found that my hair is a lot more manageable. I was afraid we may smell like horses, for some reason, but thank goodness that's not true. The shampoo smells really nice and lathers great. The conditioner smells ok, but works very well. Both rinse out cleaner than any other shampoo I've ever used.

Time will tell if this has any effects on creating healthier, shinier, stronger hair, as advertised!

We are so fortunate that my dad is able to watch Kayleigh while I'm back at work one day a week. And it's quite obvious that he is having a great time playing with his youngest grand-daughter!

The greatest toddler entertainment invention in all of history is easily the ipod touch/iphone with countless available applications for kids.

When she gets bored, she always asks for our ipods and generally she'll start off playing something educational, generally a puzzle game, but towards the end, she always unwinds with DoodleBuddy, an application that allows you to use your fingers to paint, draw, and stamp. Numerous backgrounds to choose from and drawing techniques lead to fun and creative works of art.

Look! Below, Abby drew Paul (left) and me! I don't understand why Paul has a nose and ears, but mine are missing, though.



Although, I caught her laughing maniacally the other day and found her creating the disturbing image below. Drowning, blood-stained emoticons - yikes! As it turns out, though, she just likes the sounds that these stamps make when she plops them on the screen. She's really not losing her mind!



If you have a toddler, here are a few of Abby's favorite apps, which we really recommend.

LetsTans 10-in-1 - (free) A tangram application. You WILL be amazed at your toddler's spatial awareness!
FirstWords (Deluxe) - ($4.99) Awesome game! Learn to spell common words in various categories: around the house, colors, shapes, animals, etc. Teaches letter recognition, pronunciation, and letter order for spelling.
TrueLearning's Alphabet Air and Numbers - ($0.99 each) The former is a matching game that teaches upper and lower-case letters. The latter is a set of animated flashcards to teach numbers and counting.
Matches - (free) Test your memory by matching pairs of cards. Cute and simple illustrations with 3 levels of difficulty.
Scoops - (free) Various themes available, but the original is for stacking scoops of ice cream as they fall from the sky. Avoid the vegetables!
BubbleWrap - (free) Who doesn't love popping bubble wrap? This app recreates the experience decently well, but turns it into a timed game where the bubbles keep coming back! You definitely miss the feel of the real stuff, though.
Angry Birds - ($0.99) A really creative game! Fling angry birds via a sling shot at the green pigs who stole their eggs. These birds of various talents want to demolish the fortified lairs of the pigs and get to them, but should the birds fail, you'll be listening to the swines' smug chuckles.

Well done and cute. :)

Everyone in this family went to the dentist's today for a teeth cleaning. Even Belle and Tigger visited the vet for a cleaning!

The biggest surprise was that Abby LOVED the whole experience. Not tolerated - LOVED. Six months ago, she was frightened of the dentist's chair and would only sit in it as I held her. She let the hygienist count her teeth and that was it.

What a difference a few months made! Today, she allowed a measurement, count, clean, polish, floss, and fluoride application. All with a grin on her face.

Abby was fascinated when the hygienist cleaned Paul's teeth. With her face so close to Paul's mouth, she forced the hygienist to work around her head! Not even 'Beauty and the Beast' put on especially for her would distract her from watching the cleaning. It wasn't a surprise that she found dentistry interesting, considering how much Abby enjoys watching medical procedures.

Everyone (including the kitties) had good teeth!

In preschool, the kids create stories as part of their lesson plan. This is a story that Abby made up in class the other day. Her teacher wrote it down for us:

My mom makes cookie dough. I put sprinkles on it. I use sugar, salt and pepper. I put in 5 chocolate chips. Put it in the oven and it bakes for two minutes. Take them out of the oven and I eat it!

Not bad, eh?

I'm finding preschoolhood to be a really fun time. Abby is all of a sudden a lot more imaginative, silly, responsible, empathetic, head strong, and so much more grown up.

Oh, yes, those are high heels she is wearing in the picture above. Whenever we're home, she tries to be in her heels and necklace, despite the fact that the slippers make her feet hurt. A crown is on her head maybe 25% of the time because they just don't stay on very well. We're never at a loss for silliness.