Shelf Reliance

Well,
I just wanted every one to know about this Food Storage system and company (I guess that's the right word). I know my mom made herself a giant one of these for the basement, but they sell this thing called the Cansolidator where it's just a basic rolling can shelf system. You can buy them in tons of sizes (I have a smaller one that holds 60 cans and fits on my shelf in my pantry) including the large stand up ones if you have more space (i think so anyways). But you should all check it out, since stuff like that is always nice to have when you have 3 months of food storage laying around your house!

I can...

Here is a list of some fun (old and new) things that Amaia can do-things Amaia can Say and things she can Sign are somewhere over on the right hand side of the blog. Amaia Can:

*Snap (or at least try)
*knock on the door with a fist (so cute)
*'answer' the telephone with 'hello'
*Loves to try and out her own clothes on
*Helps cleaning by handing me toys to put away after the bath; hands me clean laundry to fold out of the dryer; pulls weeds out front and puts them in the 'weed bucket'; and picks up trash off the floor and puts it in the trash.
*Loves to read books-they have become part of the wake up and bedtime routines
*Play 'Peek-a-Boo" and even say "boo!" at the end
*If some one is sad, she will walk up to them and become sad herself, and then try to give them a hug
*Likes to help mommy pay at the store
*every time she wakes up she grabs her teddy and give it a big bear hug (while grunting)
*folds her arms and sits down when she wants to watch Baby Signing Time
*High Five
*likes to wash herself with tissues, wipes, or anything like that (before she shreds them, of course)
*somersault (with help)-bends over and tucks her head under so we can push her over
*Throw a ball
*wash herself with the soap
*put on powder foundation and blush (not always in the right places)
*brushes her hair (from the back over the top to the front) :)
*likes to stuff the ball pit balls down her (and my) shirt
*is obsessed with taking baths, washing her hands, and going outside
*loves to 'play' xbox with us-holds the controls and pushes buttons
*outside, she'll walk across the street to our friends house and knock on the door for Andrew to come out and play
*will share her food (i.e. stuff it into your mouth whether you want it or not)
*comes and tells me when she has a dirty diaper, and then will run to her room to get it changed
*sign 'ow' and then point to where the owie is

and I'm sure there are more, but I've been thinking too hard about it and can't think of any more. But she's no longer our little baby anymore, that's for sure. She's way too fun for that!

Sidewalk Paint Fun

Amaia had tons of fun playing with the sidewalk paint that we bought. I figured it would be better than chalk, since I didn't think she'd be able to actually draw with the chalk (that and she'd just eat it). I've had it for a while but waited to do this until I could have Justin standby as an official photographer. He was a brat about it though-he took over 400 pictures, and I only ended up keeping about 20 of them. I kept bugging him to "take pictures, justy" so he put the camera on continuous shot and took like a million pictures of the same thing. oh well.

she seemed to think it was soap, and started washing herself in it. It started with her arms...


and then her belly...

and you can see she's completely covered in it-it even got in her hair! silly kid...

even with all the paint out, she still wanted more

I kept trying to get her to look at the camera and smile-but no love there

The colors were blue and pink, but we ended up with a lovely purple color (I'm glad I didn't get out the yellow-it would have made it an ugly color)

The final damage. The best part (for us at least) was taking the hose and cleaning her off! No way was that paint coming in our house. Although now that I think about it, she probably had just as much fun (if not more) playing in the water and with the hose as she did with the paint.

Donuts

Thanks to Jason, we now have a very small (and quickly decreasing) supply of Hostess Raspberry Filled donuts-Justin's favorite. I can almost guarantee, if these things weren't so hard to get ahold of, he would learn to get over them. Enjoy :)

Help!

The first person to correctly identify the MOVIE that this track comes from wins 1 Million Dollars! (Not really, but I really really really have got to know what movie this is from!)

Ok, the video in this video is just there so that I could get Movie Maker to save the stupid thing as a .wmv file instead of a .wma file, so enjoy it, but it's not supposed to be anything special.

I've got three more of these ready to go when we get this first one figured out!

7 Acre Woods

This last Friday we went on a field trip to the 7 Acre Woods with a whole bunch of other ladies and their kiddos. There was a petting zoo, playground, pumpkin patch, golf course, and other things I didn't visit. Her are the photos:

Amaia running from the goat

right after this shot she stuck her finger right into it's pooper ;)

Oh ya. There was this little driving track with play houses all around and a yellow line down the middle with all these cars to drive. Amaia could't drive herself, so I pushed her as her feet drug along underneath the car.

There's got to be some trick to get this kid to at least look at me while I'm taking a photo...

still no smiles :(

September 09

Ok, it's the beginning of a new month. For all of you that means you get to look at a whole month's worth of photos and videos. I've already written a couple posts this month, which will take some of the bulk off the amount of media on here, but I think there's been a lot more. I have also recently discovered how lame this stupid Blogger thing is. So i type up all this stuff I want to write, place my cursor where I want the pictures to go, upload pictures, and then find out that they all just end up at the top of the post no matter what, and all video goes directly to the bottom. Next time I'll add media first and then type, but for now I apologize that everything is super out of order (at least for how I wanted it) so you get all the random pictures first.

our first attempt at photographing lightening-it's hard to see but this is the only shot we got all night with an actual lightening bolt in it-it's super blurry though because it's hard to tell on the little screen if it's focused or not...maybe next time :(

she hated the grass and was trying to lift her leg off of it

slapping her forehead in a very exasperated manner (is that the word i'm looking for?)

Amaia is signing away (something I never would have had her do except we got a DVD for her birthday and I'm glad we watched it!-Thanks Mandy!)

She can sign (in no particular order): food/eat; milk; banana; cat; dog; horse; fish; more; mom; dad; (justin says she can do grandparents too, but I've never seen her); shoes; hat; please; wash hands; bath; brush teeth; wind; outside; cold; baby; all done; ball; again; bug; yes; telephone

Most of them are not exactly what they are supposed to look like, but she gets better every day. And those signs are ones that she's actually used in context (today she found a bug in our kitchen and squatted to look at it while signing bug). I don't count it if she happens to do it.

Food (she can do it for real, but for some reason this is the only picture I have of her doing it).

Washing her Hands (sign)

Shoes

milk

please

cold

daddy (look at that belly!)

She's also learned to say quite a few words: hi; bye bye; mommy; daddy; teddy; kitty; more; all done; no; ya; baby; (justin claims she said 'oh crap', but I can't verify that); uh oh; again; don't; she ruffs when she signs dog and can also moo like a cow, and she says 'mmmmmmmmmmmmmm' when something tastes yummy :)

signing more (and starting to say it also)

singing kitty





signing bath

signign her version of 'outside'





her saying 'all done'





big bear hugs (she gives her teddy one every mornign when she wakes up, at least)





we were watching the veggie tales movie Jonah, and I looked over to her dancing to the music





lifting the weights