When Rachel is really moody, I've found that playing with these felt faces that I cut out help her calm down. She'll change the mouth from smiling to frowning and back saying "boo hoo" in a really sad voice, then "happy!!" If they're out and she's playing somewhere else and starts throwing a tantrum, I can just take her over to the faces and change the mouth to a frown and talk about being sad and she calms down pretty fast. I think she may be a budding Picasso, judging from her 4 noses and extra eyes and such.
When she gets done with the felt faces she'll say, "uh oh" then throw everything on the floor. After we clean the faces up, I'll take out the letters and shapes and she'll play with those for another little while. She actually knows almost all her letters, though some of them she'll say the sound instead of the name of the letter (like *cuh* for C)--this is entirely thanks to her dinner-time babysitter, Leap Frog Letter Factory, the DVD I throw in when I need her to be out of my hair to make dinner.
Our garden is starting to have some tasty produce. We've gotten a few cucumbers already, and lots of peas, some onions, and even the tomatoes are starting to ripen now. Rachel loves our garden, maybe a little too much. Every time we go outside she goes over to the strawberry plants and either picks one, or if she's being good, she'll stand there and say "Mommy, taw-bay pees" (strawberry please). She also loves her fresh peas from the garden, but who doesn't. They're so tasty. Here's the remaining pods from all the peas she ate for snack (she doesn't particularly like the pods, but loves picking the peas out of them to eat):
This girl loves her veggies!
