Miss Wants-A-Lot

Tori has now decided that she wants another dollhouse, the Manor, so that she can separate her dollhouse families (one white, one black). The Easter bunny was going to bring her a handheld game, but now it looks like he will be bringing her another dollhouse. This one is two stories with a purple exterior—how lovely next to the pink and green, three-story Victorian dollhouse she already has. This smaller one is less expensive—a good thing for the Easter bunny’s wallet. Two dollhouses seem a little excessive, but at least now, Tori will be able to put all of that dollhouse furniture to use.

Of course, Tori has a jillion other things on her list, including all of the Monster High dolls she does not have. Those can wait until her birthday, and lucky for us, she will never remember everything she asked for this Easter. If she did, we would never hear the end of it!

On another note, we brought in drinks and cupcakes this morning for the latchkey kids. Nothing green about them—more springy that anything, but they will have to do. I couldn’t even find green plates—
just blue and yellow. And the cupcakes have confetti on them. Oh well, no one seems to care they have nothing to do with St. Patrick’s Day. They are just glad to have a cupcake and a drink. Usually all they get is a bag of crackers as a snack.

A Bed Full

Tori has so many stuffed animals we strung up clothesline around half of her room for her to hang them from. Last night, she decided to take all of them down and throw them into the floor. I was going to put them back up this morning, but then I decided to just pile them on her bed and leave it to her to do tonight. That should keep her busy for a while! She’s always looking for something to do, and tonight she will have plenty to do!

Last night did not go smoothly with Tori either. She has several goals she has to complete for kindergarten. We have been practicing and made it through much of them. Then she lost focus, and that was that. She just started guessing on her sight words, and words she had read just moments before became something else entirely. At this rate, she is never going to get those sight words down pat!

The More Girl

Christian has just a couple of collections, Legos and Bionicals, whereas his sister has many. Tori likes all kinds of things, and every time we go out, she tries to get a toy out of us. Like this weekend when we went to K-mart for a new microwave. They all looked at toys, and Tori decided she wanted another monster doll. She already has two, which she rarely plays with, so that wasn’t going to happen.

When she figured out that she wasn’t getting anything, she changed to the Easter tune. Can you put this on the list for the Easter bunny? (The kids usually get a couple of toys for Easter.) She has quite the list going, but lucky for us, she will forget most of it and be happy with whatever the Easter bunny brings her—the last two mini LaLaLoopsy dolls and a handheld game.

New Beds? Perhaps!

After a few trips to the local furniture stores, Christian and Tori have settled on the same loft bed, just in different colors. Tori would like white, but the bed comes only in natural and black, so she is opting for natural. We’re going to girlie it up with stick-ups, etc. She is getting drawers underneath and at the end of the steps, plus a bookshelf. If we move the bookshelf under the head of the bed, she will have some cubbyholes to crawl into and hide her stuff.

Furniture shopping with Tori is very interesting. At first, she was all wound up and excited about it, begging us for a bed that she would outgrow in a couple of years. Then she settled down a bit and zeroed in on the bed with steps yesterday—with some help from us. She is in the middle of this “I don’t know” stage, so we have to work hard to get her to focus and make a decision.

We’ve got some things to do on the house and then we may order a bed for her and one for Christian. It just depends upon how things go with the work on the back of our house (new door and some deck repairs). Wish us luck if we get them new beds. They will want Huts to have everything together in an hour!

Valentine's Day Girl

Tori had a ball yesterday. Not only was it her helper day, but it was Valentine's Day. She made some crafts, played some games and came home smiling with all of her loot. She glued lots of things together last night and made her own little box for her valentines. It was a cute box to begin with, but Tori has added her picture, stickers and lots more to it. She has also stuffed it with her valentines. She took it to school this morning to show off to the people at latchkey. Tomorrow is spring pictures, and she can't wait to dress out of uniform! Goodness knows what outfit she will come up with!

My Birthday Book

Tori is all about making books these days. She steals the computer paper and either staples the pages together or has her dad do it. Sometimes she tapes up the pages. Then she bugs us for hours on end how to spell certain words. She decided to make me a birthday book, nothing about birthdays persay, just a bunch of scribbles about whatever happened to be on her mind. A nice gift, but very much a Tori gift.

Ready To Go

While Christian was bellyaching about all of the writing he had to do, Tori was watching everything, looking forward to the report she will have to one day do. She loves doing homework. She’s my little eager beaver, and as her teacher says, we don’t worry about Tori because she tries so hard we just know she will get it. Yep, my little Tori is always ready to go to school and do whatever her beloved teachers tell her. She loved making her poster for the 100th day and can’t wait to do her homework each Monday. If she could have, she would have written Christian’s report for him! At least I know she won’t be bellyaching when she has to write about the man or woman she chooses for Black History Month.

What a Mess!

Tori has always been messy, but lately, she’s gotten worse, at least at school. Every day that we have picked her up this week, we have found her backpack empty and her stuff everywhere. We generally know what she takes to school so we usually manage to collect it all. Yesterday, we weren’t so lucky. Tori had gotten another shirt for school, but none of us knew it, and we ended up leaving it at school. Again, she had everything from her backpack scattered all over the place, and in a hurry to get to the book fair, we left the new shirt and Christian’s hat. Fortunately, it was all there this morning when Huts dropped off the kids. Tori changed into the shirt and was happy as a clam.

On another note, they are having a pajama party in after care today. School let out at noon, and the Y decided they would let the kids bring their pjs and watch a movie in them. Christian and Tori are in their pjs right now having fun. If they want to go to the toy store, they are going to have to change.

Miss Writes-A-Lot

Tori is learning how to read and write, and she shows off her budding skills by taping and stapling together computer paper and writing words on them to create little books. After using up much of the tape and staples, she likes to follow her dad around, asking him how to spell this and that. Sometimes she asks me too. We deal with it fine for the first hour or so. Then it starts to get tiring as Tori loses focus and we have to repeat letters. Eventually, we shoo her off to find something else to do for a while. Right now, she has two books—one of which she took to school and got a sticker for it. She also has a “diary” notebook she has filled with scribbles and is down to one coloring book. That girl loves to scribble, paint, color and do arts and crafts of all types!

Up and Ready To Go!

Tori got a last-minute birthday party invitation to one of the babysitting kids’ party. She was all excited and couldn’t wait for 4 o’clock on Saturday. We got the little girl a gift and told Tori that the party wasn’t going to start until late on Saturday afternoon. She picked out her outfit on Friday night, got all of her stuff ready and drove us crazy until we wrapped the gift. Then she flew out of bed and got dressed early on Saturday morning. She was all a-dazzle in her pink sequined shirt and pants…at 7 a.m. She drove us nuts the rest of the day wanting to know if it was time to leave.

Because she got up so early, she was tired, so I tried to persuade her to take a nap, but she was having none of that. We distracted her as much as we could until the magic hour arrived. She came home all happy and slept in the next morning. All of that waiting and partying wore Miss Tori out! She was all ready to go this morning, though, for her last day off school at the sitter’s.

Fashionista

Tori is still the little fashionista. This morning she insisted on wearing a shirt under her school shirt (for looks of course). Then she had to wear her scarf that her Aunt Lucy made her last year tied in an extravagant way (her way)! She's been sleeping with her sleep eye cover nightly since she got it at Christmas. She also wore the headband that her Aunt gave her yesterday. I don't know how much it actually was worn, but I'm sure it was in and out of her hair all day. At least she's stopped styling her hair like she was a character from Star Wars. On weekends she'll change clothes several times a day for the fun of it, just like she changes her doll clothes. She has fun doing it, even though she comes up with some crazy combinations in our eyes. She wants to pose and prance around for all the pictures and people around. She's her own fashion show and our house has become the runway!

Sickly Christmas Again

Tori's Christmas started off rotten again! She seemed to have gotten the bug that Christian had earlier in the week, except she got sicker than he did. Christmas morning she felt miserable and laid on the floor with a blanket and pillow. She had some milk before we opened presents and a few minutes later barfed it up. After getting a quick bath she rallied to open presents, but spent most of Christmas day in bed cuddling her lalaloopsy doll and watching movies. She felt better on the 26th, but still wasn't very hungry.

On the 27th we all headed to Grandma's for their Christmas and Tori seemed to be back to normal. As with her brother she got to go to Monkey Business, but since she was asleep when we left and needed her 2.5 hr nap, she only got to go the 2nd time. Of course she had to wear her Christmas dress to play in and she got hot, so that slowed her down a bit. For Christmas from Grandma, she got dolls, clothes and doll clothes. I'm sure there was other stuff in there, but it was mostly clothes and dolls. The trip back wasn't bad and she had fun at the last holiday gathering, but it exhausted her. She was in bed by 6 pm on Thursday and slept almost 14 hours. She missed dinner, so she was starving for PANCAKES...her favorite breakfast. She attempted to stay up on on New Years, but didn't make it either. She was just too exhausted and made it to 11 for the New York ball drop.

The rest of the weekend was spent relaxing and playing with her dolls and brothers. We ran a few errands and got soaked when we went to the grocery store, so Tori warmed up with a bath on Saturday after we got home and dry. She lazed around yesterday, but seemed to be ready and excited to get back to school. We'll see how tired it makes her when we pick her up today.

Please Don't Sell Them!

Tori has a small room, which she fills up fast. This Christmas, she decided she was done with Dora and all of that stuff went into the yard sale pile. Yesterday, I mentioned to her that she had lots of new dolls that she has yet to play with. I was just wondering what her thinking was behind that. She got upset and pleaded with me not to sell her new dolls. Poor girl. There’s no way I would sell them. I just wanted to know why she was waiting to play with them. Guess I better leave that subject alone for a while. She’ll play with her dolls when she is ready I guess.

Crazy Girl

Something got into Tori yesterday and she was wild according to Huts. She seemed a bit crazy when I saw her later that night and spend much of the night running around the living room chasing Eli and making him scream. She got into trouble a few times, and the waterworks started. Huts even made her sit on the couch once until she could get herself under control. Poor girl. She wore herself out and didn't want to get up this morning.