Baby dolly goes night-night

Jasmine has entered the dolly stage.  And I have to say, it has been adorable to watch!  We have a stash of dolls and clothes from when Kaitlyn was that age, but sadly, only the stroller has survived the years.  The baby bed that came in the set broke a long time ago.  So when I saw Jasmine carefully tucking her babies into her bed with her one night, I figured I better get to work on a baby dolly bed.

I started with some tutorials that I found online, but still improvised a bit.  (I think I have a problem following instructions exactly . . . it doesn't feel like my own unless I change half of it, sadly.)  The good news was that all of the fabric came from my stash.  Total cost was 95 cents for the plastic canvas to make the bottom stiff!  My kind of project.

Plenty of room for this little dolly, or her bigger friends.  One change I made was attaching the blanket to the bed at the bottom.  If I am making a matching blanket, I'd rather not track it down every day!

I also quilted a heart onto the bottom.  Because I could.

In theory this was intended to be a birthday present for Jasmine.  But that's a few weeks away!  I figured that since she doesn't know what a birthday is yet anyway, a gift today was just as good.  And she has spent a lot of time today carrying her baby around and putting it "night-night".

I always laugh when I get to see bits of how they view life in their pretend play.  Jasmine loves tucking the blanket around the baby the most, but she also occasionally kisses it on the forehead before walking away.  And then tonight, she brought the doll into my lap with a book she found so I could read them both a bedtime story.  Just when I was thinking that she was the most adorable thing ever, she tucked the baby carefully into bed . . . and yelled at it to "go seep!" very authoritatively before tromping off!  Apparently she has noticed that the first time I put them to bed each night is very loving . . . and when I find them still awake and playing an hour later, I'm a little more commanding.  What a funny girl.

The Wizard of Oz- gymnastics style

This year, Kaitlyn's gymnastics teacher turned their show into the Wizard of Oz.  It was really cute!  Kaitlyn and her class were the munchkins.

Kaitlyn had been counting down the days all week.  It's also the only time I put makeup on her cute little face, and she just loves it.  (Seriously, I never wore makeup until my Senior year of High school.  Such a girly girl!)

Kaitlyn and her class were the munchkins.  She liked the "Lollipop Guild" dance a lot.

I really have seen improvement in her skills over the last year!

We might not have straight legs on her handstand yet, but at least she doesn't fall on her head anymore :).

Jasmine was pretty sure she could do it too.

And Tyler was just happy to huddle down with his Kindle.  I have to pry that thing out of his hands sometimes, sadly.

It was a fun night!

Frozen

A while ago, I showed the girls the youtube video of "Let it Go", the main song in Frozen (the latest Disney movie).  And they were in love almost instantly.  So we watched it a few times when I needed to calm them down right before bed.  I didn't think much of it until I heard Jasmine singing from the backseat one day.  "Ab-a-shu GOooo, ba-ga -deee GOOOooo. . . ." The rest was nonsense to her, but she was trying to sing GO with all her tiny, one-year old heart.  So I downloaded the song on iTunes for her.

And before I knew it, any screen (iPod, phone, tablet or computer) that wasn't currently playing "GO" was labeled "boke" (broken).  And she will continue to point at it and tell you "boke!  GO" until you make it play "Let it Go".  We don't always cave to those demands, but I can tell you we have listened to that song more times than I can count.

And then she discovered that on my computer, there are other videos that youtube suggests once you are done watching "Let it Go".  Now, every time I am working on my computer, she comes along and sits next to me.  I have a browser open off to the side with youtube so that we can hover over them all and pick which one we will watch next.  "This one?" "No."  "This one?" "No." "This one?" "No." "This one?" "Yup."

We have now watched every Frozen trailer and clip online at least a dozen times.

Thankfully, it looks like it will be a really cute and fun show.  And thank you, Disney, for finally making true love not about marrying someone two days later, but about loving your family that you have known your whole life!  We haven't seen it yet (movie tickets are ridiculous), but Grandma already has it on pre-order for Jasmine's birthday.

So, I figured I could contribute to the obsession the way I always do.  Make costumes.  My mom offered to buy the girls the flimsy things at Target, but where would the fun be in that?

Kaitlyn has already decreed that as the older sister, she gets to be the big sister Elsa, and Jasmine gets to be her younger sister Anna.

Anna's costume is going to take some work, and possibly an embroidery machine.  But I figured I would start with the cape, since that is easy enough.

 And then you can see the picture of how she really feels about it.  

Lessons learned:

*No matter how cute the trim would look on the cape, trim doesn't actually like turning around a circle while it lays down.  That was $3 wasted.  So much for mimicking the scalloped trim on the cape.

*Measure your child's head before cutting.  (The first one I made is gigantic on even Kaitlyn, despite going off what the internet said would fit.)  

And above all:

*Make sure Jasmine will actually like wearing that type of garment before making it.  It turns out she hates the feel of capes, for some reason.  I don't think she has figured out that she looks like Anna yet, she just know she hates it.

Given that, I skipped the collar and the second layer of the cape.  If she doesn't like the feel of it, I better not make it climb up on her neck more or give it more weight.  Hopefully I'll talk her into this one eventually . . .

In the meantime, Kaitlyn is getting a bit impatient for her costume.  All in good time, girlfriend.