No Boogers

Travis was reading Sheinah one of her older baby books called "Who Says Woof." On each page, the book asks which animal says a certain sound and then the child gets to say which animal makes that sound. Travis always makes the sounds rather than saying the words. For example, the book says that a horse says NEIGH and Travis actually makes a semi-authentic horsey sound. Then, we always ask Sheinah to make the animal sound. Tonight, when he got to the OINK of a pig, he made a snorting sound with his nose. When he asked Sheinah to do it, she told him "I can't make that sound because I don't have boogers in my nose...I just say oink." How cute is that.

Sheinah's Haircut

Sheinah's hair has gotten really long, but it is still all different lengths from when we grew her bangs out. This isn't a big deal except when Melissa braids her hair....when she gets to the end, lots of little pieces stick out. The other issue is that Sheinah often doesn't want to have her hair done so it ends up getting in her eyes. With the extreme cold weather in Duluth comes static electricity which also makes Sheinah's hair go all over the place. Thus, we decided it was time for her to get her hair cut such that the back was more even. We had meant to have her Opa cut her hair and then we forgot all about it...bummer!

Anyway, we took her to a little tiny shop by her dance studio thinking that it would be more fun for her to get personalized attention. She did enjoy herself immensely. The only problem is that the stylist did a HORRIBLE job!! Sheinah's hair basically looks like one of us cut it...it's all uneven and very choppy (check out the picture of her in the purple shirt).

We ended up taking her into another place the next day to get it fixed. The stylist there said that he thought the first stylist cut it so uneven because she was lazy...she pulled the hair down instead of cutting it while it was hanging free. He had to take off another inch or so to get it even so it is now a little shorter than we expected. In any case, the second stylist cut her hair with it parted so now it actually stays out of her face a little better.

Sheinah's Beauty Shop

With Melissa often occupied feeding Amaris, Travis has had the opportunity to play a little more with Sheinah. Those of you who know her know that she is a very "girly" girl. Today, she decided to do Daddy's hair. Travis had to help her with the blue clips, but she put all the rest in herself. She took her time too...they must have spent a good 30 minutes at the "salon."

Otto

Allen has always loved the name Otto. He's tried to convince all of his kids to name one of the grandbabies, Otto (yes, even the girl babies). In fact, Eliya's nickname is Otto. Imagine how delighted we were when we discovered that the Dr. Seuss book "A Fish Out of Water" starred a fish named Otto. We asked Allen to read it to Sheinah and enjoyed the look of surprise on his face when he read the fish's name.

Is hotdog a Vegetable?

Travis has been talking about shooting a deer for a few weeks now because we have so many in our backyard. With his parents coming to town, he actually got a deer tag. Coincidentally, Travis bought some straw last week to cover our septic area since we hadn't had enough snow to keep it from freezing. Who'd have thought that deer would want to eat the straw! Now, deer baiting is illegal in Minnesota (but legal in Wisconsin, and thus, quite controversial). At one point we had 9 deer in the yard. So, Travis and Allen got out the bow and Travis shot a deer on his first try. They waited overnight, went out on our property, and found the deer just a few yards past the edge of our yard. Allen took care of skinning the deer and all that stuff. We were very open with Sheinah and talked about the whole process with her so she wouldn't be freaked out. Luckily, she hasn't seen Bambi :)



Anyway, Lori took this video this morning while Allen was cutting the deer up into steaks. Here is a transcript for those of you who can't understand Sheinah-ese:



Travis: What is this?

Sheinah: A deer that doesn't walk anymore

Travis: A deer that doesn't walk anymore? Do you like deer?

Sheinah: NO

Travis: How come?

Sheinah: Cuz they walk.

Travis: Cuz they walk? Where do they walk at?

Sheinah: Grass

Travis: In the grass? What are you gonna eat if you are not gonna eat deer?

Sheinah: Vegetables

Travis: Vegetables? What kind of vegetables?

Sheinah: Broccoli...

Travis: Broccoli!

Sheinah: and, uh...hotdogs

Travis: and hotdogs!

Sheinah: and carrots

Travis: Broccoli and hotdogs and carrots. I don't know if hotdogs are vegetables. You don't know, but you're not going to eat deer?

Sheinah: no

Travis: no, because they walk, huh? You want to touch it.

Sheinah: no

Travis: Look it, Opa has some, you want to touch it?

Sheinah: no

Travis: OK

Dance Class

Now that "baby sister" has arrived, we were looking for a way for Melissa and Sheinah to have special time together...enter Mommy and Me dance class. Melissa saw an ad for the class in the local paper and decided to sign up. Melissa and Sheinah go to class for 30 minutes on Saturday mornings. As Sheinah likes to say, "no daddys can come." In addition to Mommy and Me, Sheinah's best buddy from her old daycare, Gabrielle, also goes to the class so it's doubley fun for Sheinah.

This Saturday, her Nama was in town so we all went together to class. We decided to get some pictures and video to capture this momentous ocassion. It should be noted that Melissa managed to leave the camera there (she has a long history of losing cameras, just ask her Aunt Jo-Ann). Luckily, someone turned it in!

The little girl in the green shirt is Sheinah's friend, Gabrielle. You'll see that they are the only two little girls who are not wearing fancy dance clothes. Maybe Auntie Shannon can make Sheinah a little dance skirt for Christmas? HINT, HINT, HINT :)

In this week's class, the girls learned first position. In the video below, you'll see Gabrielle and Sheinah practicing first position and doing a Plié and then doing a dance at the end. The teacher uses some neat terms to help the girls learn the positions. To get them into first position, she talks about zipping and unzipping the feet. To do the Plié, the girls "open a window." Sheinah really doesn't like first position at all (she won't unzip her feet in the video). I guess we'll be doing tap dance class instead of ballet in the future! Enjoy the video!

Abi or Amaris

Now that Amaris is a little bit bigger, she is starting to look a bit like other family members. Melissa thinks that in this picture she looks just like her cousin Abigail (Abi is the baby on the right).