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I was so proud of my daughter over the weekend. She was helping (she loves to help cook) me make french toast for breakfast and I needed some nutmeg(we use the seeds) and I opened the spice drawer and jokingly said to LiLi, after being unable to find the nutmeg, where is the nutmeg and she after looking for a few seconds she pulled out the nutmeg jar. Well, Thom did not believe me when I told him about it. So I opened the drawer and asked LiLi where the nutmeg was and she again pulled it out. Thom was flabbergasted and I was so proud.

LiLi enjoyed dyeing Easter eggs with Nana and Mommy. She was so determined to do it all herself and very methodical in how she put the eggs in the dye. She also enjoyed peeling and eating them on Easter morning. It seemed that she liked only a couple of colors but she did think it was great when I showed her how to make purple(that is her favorite color).

We went to Florida over Easter and had quite a nice time. It was so nice to get away from the cold weather and be able to wear shorts. LiLi has recently started to wear leggings as the weather has gotten warmer because she has figured out that she can pull them up to her knees and she seems to really enjoy having nothing on her legs so she really loves the freedom of summer wear.
In the few weeks before we went on vacation, LiLi would say something about wearing a dress to a party in Florida. She seemed to believe she would be going from one party to another because I had mentioned wearing a dress for Easter and for visiting at Aunt Anne, Gom and Capt E’s condo. Well in the end, she did get to go to a couple of parties including a birthday party for her the night we arrived since Nana and Poppie had been in Florida on her birthday.

Two days later, we went to our second party at the condo as mentioned above. LiLi, Nana and I went early in quest of alligators which is one of LiLi’s goals since last year at the condo, we spent about an hour watching an alligator. Also, we had gone on a airboat ride the day before and we had seen any alligators much to LiLi’s disappointment. So, Gom had promised us a mommy alligator and some babies and she delivered. We saw a mother alligator and 5 babies hanging out in the water. LiLi, Anne and I left the scene before the attempt by the alligator on a bird lirking nearby. Since that episode, LiLi and I have been watching some alligator videos on the National Geographic site and I think the alligator may have attacked the bird to protect her babies or maybe she was hungry. Anyhow, after seeing the alligator, we went to dinner on the beach and had a wonderful time.

Dinner on the beach wearing a necklace borrowed from Aunt Anne

Playing with her glow sticks

Sunset

Sunset

As I mentioned before, LiLi’s imagination is flourishing and with that came some monsters. For the most part, although she has expressed fear of those monster, it has been without much fear in her voice or her actions but over the last couple of weeks, it has begun to play a more prominent and fearful role. A week or two ago, she became very upset about a half hour after going to bed and actually appeared to be frightened. While I was calming her down and talking about all the animals in her room and how they would protect her from all the monsters and ghosts she pointed towards the door and said “What ’bout that?” Looking up at the ceiling, I noticed that her nightlight was reflecting the lamp shade in such a way to make it appear like a ghostly version of Darth Vader. If the shade tilts slightly(which it does quite often), this shape is repeated and we have found that not turning on the night light helps prevent any ghostly nights. Two nights ago, she had a bad time with ghosts, monsters and then added a dragon(we had been to the children’s museum which has a dragon on top which she loves) and a band of “evil?” penguins who she had a good dream about 4 nights ago but now they appear to be on some sort of rampage. So last night, I tried the monster light. We have a big flashlight downstairs and LiLi used that to scare away the monsters. After being tucked into bed, the monsters, dragons, ghosts and penguins started staring in the window, so I went downstairs and found a little flashlight that I have had in my work bag for about 2 years for no reason and brought it upstairs. I showed LiLi how to use it and she flashed it around the room a couple of times and then she put it next to her in the bed and said “I keep it right here.” She fell asleep without any incidents and slept well. We’ll see if it works tonight.

Here are a couple of random photos