Playing with Carmen

Carmen's tons of fun to play with!!  I love the random things she does and the stuff she gets excited about.

I was sweeping the kitchen floor the other day, and she wanted to take the broom and help me sweep.  Luckily, my parents have approximately 193834 brooms, so we had one to spare.  As she ran around the house "sweeping" the carpet, I decided her name should be "CinderCarmen" because she reminds me of Cinderella.  And I can't call her "Carmenella" because it sounds too much like "salmonella" ... which is just wrong. ;)

The last of the autumn leaves have fallen from the trees, so at another point last week I went into the backyard and raked up all of the leaves.  When all of the leaves are raked up, we put them in the yard waste trash can and dump the leaves into the wildlife preserve on the other side of the fence.  While I was picking up the leaves and putting them in the trash can, Carmen would walk across the backyard to another pile of leaves and dump her own handful into the trash can.  It was so cute!!

We've started watching a little bit of TV together.  I happened to stop on the Disney Channel while Mickey Mouse's Clubhouse was on.  It was an episode about giving Pluto a bath, and when Carmen saw Pluto, she got really excited and said, "Doggie!  Doggie, doggie!!!"  Then there was an episode of Sesame Street where Elmo talked all about bananas.  It was pretty much a perfect day. :D

Another time, Logan and Torrey were watching an episode of The Office on Netflix.  They were interviewing Kevin (maybe this was the episode where he got Jim and Pam's credit card cancelled while they were on their honeymoon?) and there was a container of M&Ms on the desk.  Carmen looked up at Kevin and said, "More?  MORE?!?!" because she really really ridiculously likes M&Ms.  HAHAHAHA.  I think it's fabulous that she wanted the M&M's on TV.

I was at Costco a few weeks ago and found this awesome Dog book I thought Carmen would like.

You can pull on these little arrows and it makes a dog's tail wag, or there are some parts where you can pet a fuzzy dog, etc etc.  It's adorable!  You can get it used on Amazon for $4, including shipping!  It looks like they have a Cat book, too!  I'm totally buying another one of these for Carmen!  She loooooooves dogs and cats.  And she can say "puppy" too.  Whenever she sees one, it sounds like she says, "Ooh, issa doddie!"

Yep.  Definitely buying myself a zillion Matthew Van Fleet board books ... looks like they've got "Dog" "Cat" "Tails" "Heads" "Frogs" "Fuzzy Yellow Ducklings" "The Alphabet" ....  I can't tell you how much I LOOOOVE board books, especially one with fuzzy things in it.

Part of me is still 4 years old.  Does anybody remember the Rainbow Fish book?  I loved it because it had those pages with the sparkly scales.  I loved activity books (also called "quiet books").  I have friends who have made some ... I should go get some ideas from them.  I think Carmen's ready to play with 'em.  YAY.