Happy Valentine's Day

Hi Sidra,

I wish I could say that this Valentine's Day was a happy one. But that would be far from the truth. I think I managed to ruin the whole weekend. You got a nasty burn on your hand and I can say that it is my fault.
You are used to watching me make our grilled cheese sandwiches from your perch on one of the 'barstools' we sit on when eating in the kitchen. I pulled the chair up to the counter as I usually do and you climbed up to your usual vantage point. As I stepped over to the fridge to get out the cheese you bent over and put your hands on the stove as you usually do. My mistake was not connecting the hazard to the fact that your mom had just taken the teapot off that burner. You let us know right away and I rushed over to get your hand under the cold water faucet. My second mistake was misreading your body language and thinking that it was your right hand that was burned. Your mom figured that out after a minute or two and we got on the right track.
After some more cold water and tylenol you finally collapsed for a nap lasting over two hours. After you woke up we looked over the damage and decided to get a professional medical opinion on the next step in your treatment since you had blisters. We took you to the urgent care clinic and they put the bandage on with a burn ointment under it to help prevent infection.
During the visit to the clinic you impressed us as a total trooper. You barely protested and actually observed the bandaging process with considerable interest. In fact you showed off a little for the first nurse to come in to see you by saying she had a stethoscope on her neck(we prompted you to say it, you have recently got a toy doctor's kit so you know some medical vocabulary). In your first half hour with the bandage in place you did display a little frustration but quickly got over that. During the wait between the doctor's diagnosis and the nurse's treatment we told you that you were going to be seeing 'Doctor Dan, the Band Aid Man' who is a character in one of your books. Lo and behold, when the nurse came in it was a man named Dan! So our prophecy came true. When we got home your mom got that book out and read it to you.
Anyway, boy I am I sorry about this. You seem to be handling it well, but I wish I could reverse time so you didn't have to.
Love, Aba

Puzzle Queen Loves her Daddy

Hi Sidra,
Wow, it always amazes me when I finally get around to doing a new post and find out that it has been a month since the last post. But it's a lot easier to keep up with it when I'm on vacation. According to the title of the post there must be something about puzzles here. You have become quite a puzzle master. You have a set of zigsaw puzzles that has four puzzles that each have 4 pieces. They are the following mother/baby pairs of animals: Lions, Penguins, Giraffes, and alligators (or crocodiles as I don't know the difference). Those puzzles you can do by yourself in about 2 minutes. They don't even challenge you at all.
You also have some other 24 piece puzzles of Dora the explorer, Pooh, Eyeore, and Tigger. When working those, if we get the perimeter in place you can pretty much finish the rest on your own. I', always amazed because as soon as we dump the peices out you immediately have a couple pieces together before I can get them all turned face up. Your mom just bought you a about 8 more puzzles of about the same difficulty so you can keep trying new ones. They are all either Pooh family or Mickey mouse puzzles.
The other big development for you is speaking complete sentences. You are constantly suprising us with your speech, not so much with the fact that you can use a sentence, but what you are saying. For instance, in the middle of the night recently you said 'Mom, don't be sad.' Which kind of threw us because we were pretty much asleep and not showing any emotion, sad or otherwise. We figured you probably picked up the phrase in a story or video that you'd seen. You've also said more obviously motivated things like "Dad, I want another cookie" and "Sidra sleep in this bed."

Without question the best line you've ever spoken (to me) came last night. We were in the kitchen waiting for the cookies to get done. You'd had a pretty tough day, I guess, you had had a short fuse emotionally all day. So you had asked me to 'hold you and rock' and I was trying to comply with that request while standing and gently swaying. You put your head on my shoulder and then said "She loves her daddy" and of course that just made me melt. You have ways of grabbing us right by the heart and that was one of them.

By the way, while writing that last paragraph I had to stop in the middle and rock you to sleep. You had asked earlier to sleep in our bed tonight and we had turned you down. I put you in the crib and except for a couple minutes of silence you had wailed "daddy, daddy......." interupted by an occasional 'mommy' for about 10-15 minutes. I gave up and went in and got you from the crib. But, I didn't let you go in our bed because we had already said no to that I wanted to keep my word. But I put you on the twin bed right behind where I am sitting now. You were quiet and tried to sleep for about 10-15 minutes, but then asked for rocking. Now you are asleep behind me.

She Loves Her Daddy. Well, her Daddy Loves Her.
Love, aba