Alex is learning a few new tricks to manipulate us with. We've been working hard on having her say please, and she has finally figured out that please is the magic word that gets her -almost- everything. Her favorite new phrase, mostly spoken to Daddy, is, "Pick up please." Well, ok, peez, if you want to pick nits, but close enough. She tries other things like, "Brownies please." to no avail. It's a shame that she has to learn an easy lesson and a hard lesson together, but hopefully she'll someday understand that, though magical, please doesn't always get you what you want.

Thanks to Grammy, we have to keep at least one cardboard box around the house, because she's a bit addicted to choo-chooing around all over the place. My back isn't happy, but Alex certainly is.

She can now climb with ease onto my office chair in order to type on the keyboard, pluck water glasses (sounds like "water bowl" when she says it, but we know what she really means) and anything else of interest off my desk. She's also decided that climbing bookshelves seems like a really swell idea, so I am so happy that Jeff decided to bolt them all to the walls. I love it when a plan comes together. =D

We haven't been outside much lately, as the weather's been less than ideal. (Alex has, all day today, been requesting sunshine. Seriously. No idea where she came up with that...) But has responded well to the "I'm watching you." therapy I tried with the whole eating pebbles problem. If I tell her I'm watching her, in my stern Mommy voice of course, she puts the pebble down. Very exciting, and sure not to last. But it's nice while it does.