Friday, September 23, 2011

Kids Say the Darndest Things {9}

(At Hampton Court Palace, sitting on the lawn-Amaia has been 'playing' with this poor girl for a while and comes back to tell us): I put grass in that girls hair but it's ok because it was so funny.

(After Amaia let one rip)
Justin: Amaia, girls don't fart.
Amaia: Honey...all peoples fart!

"If we don't get dressed, people say "aaahhh! you naked!" and I say "I so sorry""

"I didn't fart, I just made a dark noise"

Me: Solia, stop choking on your fingers!
Amaia: Yea, Solia, we only choke on food!

Justin: Amaia, you're a booger.
Amaia: I not a booger
Justin: Oh ya, what are you then?
Amaia: I a cute little girl

We're at a restaurant.
The waiter brings menus.
Amaia opens hers up, immediately says "I want noodles" and put the menu down.

"That was the cool thing I ever seen"

Me: Amaia, you look a little stuck
Amaia: I not a little stuck, I'm a big stuck!

Wednesday, September 21, 2011

June 2011 2nd Half w Video Link

Well, guess what? We got a new awesome camera!

I know, right? We weren't going to have one until November. BUT, Justin's boss from Houston was coming to London on a business trip. The Kearns (across the street buddies from our ward in Texas) bought the camera, somehow got Justin's boss to have it, and when his boss flew out to London for a meeting, he brought it with him. It was an awesome surprise. (Sorry if I totally botched that story, guys. I tried to get Justin to re-tell it to me so I could get it right, but he never got around it so I decided to make it up as best I knew).

Well, the pictures from this post are mostly still from my point and shoot camera. As awesome as I claim my memory is, I honestly don't know what exact date it was that I was surprised with a new camera. But, according to the "date taken" info for pictures I have, I can tell it was either the 27th or 28th. Meaning that there are like 4 pictures with the new camera. Well probably more, since I fire that thing off like a machine gun. But point being, most of this month is with the crappy camera.

Anyways, Amaia this month:

*As you will see in the video, Amaia likes to give "hard kisses". But she often gives super soft and sweet ones too, which just melt your heart. Check out the picture down there of her giving "hard kisses" to one of our friends from the ward :)

*So, since I try not to get into power struggles with Amaia, I've taken to giving her two choices, up front. Like, you can choose to clean up your toys, or you can let Mommy clean them up and they might not be available next time she wants to play. So I'll always make sure I say "Here are your two choices". Well, lately, she's started telling me what MY two choices are, like "You can give me some chocolate, OR, you can give me a piece of gum". And she always makes sure to tick off the choices on her fingers as she lists them

*When Amaia gets upset, she'll talk and yell at us through her teeth. It's pretty funny, because she also leans over quite dramatically. Too bad I don't have a picture....

*Amaia loves to dance around like crazy, mostly with out actualy music, but accompanied by her own singing-mostly made up jibberish with random phrases of 'real words' thrown in every once in a while

*If one of us does something she doesn't like, she'll get all huffy and say "How dare you?" just like Jasmine does in the movie 'Aladdin'

*When Amaia gets mad (I feel like I've said that a lot this post....) she does this really funny exasperated sigh+growl thing. You'll have to watch the video for a reenactment. She usually does this when she's upset with Solia for messing something up, or taking away something.

*I asked Amaia a few random questions about her favorite stuff. Here are the results:
-Favorite Color: Pink
-Favorite Fruit: Grapes
-Favorite Animal: Lion
-Favorite Movie: Emperor's New Groove
-Favorite Game: Soccer
-Favorite Toy: A brush
-Favorite Bug: Ladybug
-Favorite Drink: Apple Juice






So, one day, I'm laying on the floor, playing with the girls. I was by the couch, and Amaia was on the couch. Amaia jumps. Right. On. My. Face. No kidding. Look at these pictures. Just her bottom (she had soft stretchy pants on-nothing metal like on jeans) and it was her butt that hit my face. Yet after just a few minutes it was already bruising up (bottom right middle pic).



After an hour or so, you can see what it looked like in the top left. It was there for at least a week. Also in those pictures you can see the Sonic Flag and the Sega thing from Justin's office-He works in the Sega Building. If you look in the second 365 collage down there, you can see a picture of the girls in front of a huge Sonic mural on one of the floors of Justin's building.


Solia (yay I have pictures!):

*Solia can walk! She usually gets between 4-6 steps before flopping down on her butt.

*Solia loves playing peek a boo, wether with her blanket, the curtains, or even her own shirt lifted up over her face.

*Solia loves to talk on the phone, using anything from a real phone, a TV remote, an ipod, etc. She'll pick it up, put it up to her ear, and grunt at me until I find something (or use my hands) as a phone and talk to her on my 'phone'

*When Solia says Mom, Dad, or Amaia it all sounds the same-Dada. Nice.

*Solia can roll her tongue, and she'll just walk around rolling it while she plays. It sounds just like the low purr of a large cat.

*Solia is terrified of balloons. In particular, latex gloves that have been blown up into balloons.



Some 365 Pics (with the rest of Spirit Week! I really liked how those turned out....we still have the spirit week sign on our wall heehee)



More 365 Pics







Here is the link to the video for this month (on YouTube):



Monday, September 19, 2011

Kids Say the Darndest Things {8}

Yay I'm so excited about the reinstallment of Kids Say the Darndest Things. I of course was able to restart my running list after my last one got deleted, so I' have plenty of super 'darn' cute stuff to share!

One day I was complaining how Solia has no teeth yet.
Amaia: I took my teeth out Mommy (holding her hands out to show me her teeth)
Me: Oh No! Hurry, put them back in!
Amaia: (putting her hands on Solia's face) I giving them to Solia so she can bite her cereal!


Ok, so call me a bad mother, but I was sooo sick of watching the same Disney movies every 3 days, so I put on Shrek for Amaia. Well after like a week straight of watching that every day, I tried to put on the 2nd, 3rd and 4th ones for some change in scenery. One day Amaia decided she wanted to watch the 4th one when I wanted to go make banana bread...
Amaia: I wanna watch the new Shrek with the lots of angry ogres
Me: Ok, let's go make the bread and we'll watch it while it's cooking
Amaia: OK! That sounds faaaan-tas-kik to me!

We try to get her to pray, but it usually ends up pretty short. Why? Because "I did a short prayer because I'm short"

After I told her that it wasn't OK for her to color on herself with her markers, she says to me "We really don't color on people and we really don't kill people and we only kill bad guys and we really eat food and we really don't need to hit Solia..."

Um, Ok? :) love that kid

Thursday, September 8, 2011

June 2011-1st Half

Well, since we still have no camera (Justin will probably get one in November when he goes out to TX-it's like a 1000 bucks cheaper to buy it there than to buy it here) all the pictures are few and crappy.


Well, all those have captions. Hope you can figure it out :)

As for Amaia:


Here she is glueing fabric, painting, and shaking up chicken for dinner :) What a cutie pie.

*Amaia likes to exclaim "Whoa Holey Moley" and "Holy Nelly"

*When Amaia is 'in trouble' or I catch her doing something she's not supposed to, she'll start going "Sorry, sorry, I'm sorry, sorry sorry sorry" like over and over again. Even sometimes if it's something as minor as dropping her spoon on the floor.

*Amaia's started running around the house saying things from the Disney movies she watches. Lately, it's been Emperor's New Groove, so I"ve been hearing a lot of "I snatched you right out of the air!"

*When Amaia gets mad, she say "Dosh Dangit!"

*Amaia's started turning into a little mommy: she'll find her little stuffed animals and toy baby dolls, she'll nurse them, change thier diapers, burp them, and even put them in 'time out' for hitting her.

*When Amaia puts on her shoes, she'll say she can wear sandals if she has 'regular feet'-as opposed to feet with socks on.

365 Pics



More 365 Pics (with the first half of Spirit Week! Didn't plan that very well did I...?)





Some not-365 pictures...mostly outtakes :)




And once again I didn't get any good pictures of just Solia. I know, I know, I'm a terrible person. But this darn point-and-shoot camera does not take pictures of moving babies-at least Amaia will pose for me every once and a while.




Solia:


*Solia can sign Daddy and say Dada at the same time. Still no mama (signs or words) unless she's super sad and needs me to hold her.


*Solia has sworn off baby food-I pretty much don't even bother anymore and just give her what we eat for dinner.
*Solia is trying to sign 'more' but isn't very 'fluent' at it yet. She signs it by stabbing one thumb into the palm of the other hand. (What's interesting is when Amaia was learning signs, she signed 'more' by stabbing her forefinger into the palm of the other hand)


*Solia is getting to the point where she gets pretty darn upset when you either take toys away from her, or don't share what you are playing with. Before, she'd just go find something else, but not anymore....


*Every day before her 2nd nap (since I don't nurse her before that one) I read the Hand, Hand, Fingers, Thumb book. Every day as I turn the last page, she starts crying before I even get anywhere near her bed


*Solia's 'calming' song this month-Scooping Up My Baby Bumble Bee


*Solia took her first steps! Not quite walking by any means but she has officially taken steps! So Exciting!


May 2011-2nd Half w Video Link

Well, to finish off the story from last month:

We had been paying for the insurance with our cell phone plan, just in case something happened. Like the phone getting stolen. You know. Routine stuff, right.

They won't cover it.

Why? Because Justin took out the carrier's sim card and replaced it with his work one. LAME. I can see how it makes sense, but still.

On a better note, we got reimbursed by our car insurance company. We got a check for more than we paid for the car in the first place. In that was 150 pounds reimbursement for personal items stolen in the car. We also got two 100 pound vouchers to replace the carseats, but still ended up paying like 30 pounds out of pocket for those. What's nice is we pretty much have the same ones we got before. The only bummer, is that in the UK the Graco brand seats only hook into the car via the seatbelt-they don't come with any of the anchor systems. We didn't figure that out until it was too late though.

We are going to wait to replace our camera until Justin goes to the states in November-it will save us almost a thousand bucks as opposed to buying (the exact same thing) over here. So for now, all our 365 pics (and others of course) are taken with our point and shoot. Which is sad, but oh well.

Solia this month:

*Solia is into games lately-she'll cover her face with her blanket for Peek a Boo and she likes to play tug of war with her blanket (she thinks it's hilarious when I let her win)

*Solia is NOT ticklish. I'm not sure if we mentioned this before, but she will NOT laugh when tickled. Unless it's Amaia tickling her. I'm not sure how that makes her laugh, seeing as Amaia goes in like the kalima-heart-ripper-out-guy from Indiana Jones, but she does. She also laughs if I chew on her ribs.

*Holy-Solia FINALLY sleeps through the night. I thought Amaia was bad, not sleeping through the night until like 5 or 6 months. But this was ridiculous. I would try the sleep training, but then things just kept getting in the way and I kept having to start over. But we did it!

*Solia is obsessed with trash cans and toilets. The two grossest things in the house, and if she can, she'll play with them. All of our trash cans are up high and we have to keep the bathroom doors shut.

*Solia LOVES the bath and playing in the bath, but she HATES getting rinsed off after I wash her.

*Solia says Dada and can sign Daddy

*When Solia wants to give hugs, she lays her head on your chest. If she is giving kisses, she'll lay her face on yours.

*She likes to stright up drop food onto the floor from her high chair. Apparently, it's totally funny.

*She can't sign food yet or say it, so when she's hungry she'll just scream. Then I'll ask her if she wants food, and she immediately stops screaming and just stares at me until I take her to get food.

*Solia waves good by and says 'ba ba' while waving

*Solia can roll her Rs and likes to go "ah! ah! ah!"

*Solia has hit the "I don't like baby food" stage. She refuses to eat unless she's putting it in her own mouth.

*Solia can go backwards down the stairs now

*Solia is very possesive of Mommy-if I go pick up Amaia for anything, Solia will come running and screaming from all the way across the room.



Solia had her first little trim (not a hair cut).

365 Pics



More 365 Pics




Amaia this month:

*We've discovered that Amaia doesn't like jam or honey on her toast or on PB sandwiches.

*When Amaia gets mad she likes to say "I'm so pissed off" (yikes!)

*Amaia calls everything 'stupid' (yikes again!)

*When she prays, she closes the prayer like this "In the name of Jesus-Amen!"

*When she's surprised, or whatever, she likes to exclaim random things, like "WHAT the HECK!", or "WHAT on EARTH!" (with the caps words super emphasized)

*Amaia has turned sort of bossy. She'll always call us out for talking with food in our mouths, or for yelling in the house, etc

*Amaia always helps me with everything, but especially with cooking dinner. She loves to sit up on the counter and help me dump the ingredients in the bowl or pan, and help me stir it up. She gets really upset if I say she can't help or if I do it without her.

*Justin will ask "Who do I need to spank?" Amaia will say "ME!" so Justin will give a few 'spanks' (pats) on the bum. Then he'll say "Why did I need to spank you?" and she'll say "Just in case I do stuffin' bad" (see the video for a reenactment)

*Amaia says thank you for every single little thing I do for her (and she says it super sweet like it was the most important thing in the entire world that I got her a tissue for her boogers, or whatever it was), but she still demands things from us without using a pleasant voice or saying 'please'

*Since I didn't have a "Kids Say" installment lately, here are some things I have written down that were 'the darndest things':

-I want to drink apple juice cuz I need to have lots of en-der-gy

-Mommy: I'm cold!
Amaia (with her arms out for a hug): I know it's cold Mommy, come 'ere Mommy, come 'ere....



Here is Amaia doing some crafts: shaving cream marbling, and the rubber band snap painting. The crazy picture bottom left is her 'earrings'-these little koosh type worms we got at a souvenier shop with these loops on the end. Don't worry, they are attached around her whole ear, not the earring itself. Or at least, that's where I put them. It may have slipped while I was trying to take a photo with my crappy camera.



Here are some pictures of the girls that didn't quite make the cut, but are still cute.



Amaia's art, clockwise from top left: rubber band painting, shaving cream, potato stamping, shaving cream again, and pipe cleaner & bead catterpillars.


Lastly, the link to YouTube for the video. Like I've mentioned, the quality is just terrible when I upload them to the actual blog, hence the link.




Enjoy!




Tuesday, September 6, 2011

May 2011 1st Half

Ok, so nothing super exciting happened this month....well, I turned 24. But I'm pretty sure I made my own brownies that night, so not super exciting.

HA! Just kidding.

Our car got stolen!

Yea, I'm sure every one has heard all about it by now, but here goes the grand final journey of our BMW.

It was a 'holiday' (read: 3 day weekend) and we went over to the Leisure Center-or a Recreation center, as you yankees call it. It's right down the street and around the corner from our house, which is in Brentford, which is *apparently* not the nicest area, if you know what I mean.

Anyways, the Leisure Center has a super small parking lot, and because it was a 'holiday', everyone was there and the lot was full.

So, we park here at the red arrow. Note how flippin' far away this is from the circled leisure center-and follow the yellow line to see how long of a trip it would be to get from said center, to said parking spot.




So, Justin drops us girls off at the door, and drives all the way down there to park and then comes back. By the time he got there, we had all changed and had all of our clothes and stuff in one locker. Justin comes in, and he puts his phone, the CAMERA (yea I don't know what we were thinking with that one), the car keys, his shoes and sweater (it was cold out) and the key to our first locker inside. Thay way we only have one key to hold onto.

Fast forward to when we get out-about an hour later. We go hang out in one of the family changing stall things while Justin goes to the locker to get our stuff-he comes busting in-says something about the car, tosses me the key to my locker, and takes off.

Um, what?

After like 5 minutes of just standing there waiting for him to come back, I go out to our locker-and saw his locker right across from ours. It had been busted open with a crowbar or something. The pieces of the locking mechanism were all over the floor and inside the locker.

Did I already mention that this place was PACKED and that there is NO WAY that nobody saw this person breaking in? Jerks.

So I grabbed our towels, and went back to the stall with the girls and shivered. When Justin comes back, he tosses us the rest of our stuff, says "cars gone-I'm going home-take a cab home" and takes off. WHAT. Really? I have no phone (left mine at home), no wallet (left it at home), no phone numbers of anyone in the ward (which are all on my phone), and two wet babies.

After a slight meltdown in the (thankfully very loud) changing room, I managed to get us all dressed. Then we went upstairs and stood around like idiots in the reception area of the rec center. Like I said-I have no way to call or pay for a cab. It's close enough to walk, if we had the stroller or we werent' all soaking, or if it was just a nice summer day (ha!). After like 5 minutes of me crying my face off some lady actually comes and asks if I'm ok (remember Justin is on his way home 'just in case' the car theifs decided to go raid our house with the address in the glove box and house key/garage door opener in the car too)-of course I"m not ok.

Anyways, turned out Justin got a cab for me, so we got home (the cab driver actually had the gall to hang around and wait for me to pay him or something even though it was like a 5 minute ride and he knew I had nothing).

We get to the office at the neighborhood and have to hang out (it's now past lunchtime for the girls, and we're still all wet) waiting for the locksmith to come let us in the house. After hearing it was going to take at least an hour, Justin decides to try another tactic.

He goes to the next door neighbors house and we crash there for a while. The girl there (about my age) was super sweet-made lunch for Amaia and let us use her phone and computer to cancel credit cards and stuff.

Anyways, we got bored of waiting around, so Justin goes to the top floor of the house, out onto the balcony, and climbs over the roof to our balcony (which we thankfully had left open). Before anyone freaks out, these houses are all connected so it's not like he jumped or anything insane, but it was 4 stories high. I wanted to do it, but Justin said no :(

We had the locksmiths come, the cops came and did a whole report thing, and then nothing. We never got it back, or heard from them.

The weirdest part of the whole story though? They didn't even both to look in our locker or take our clothes/towels-it was still locked- and they left Justin's shoes for him.

Things that were stolen (along with the car): our super nice camera(with the camera bag and charger for the small video camera); Justin's iPhone; keys to house and garage door opener; both carseats; Amaia's Teddy & Blankey and Solia's blanket; some random toys that we'd left in the car; and the GPS.

Moving on.

Some things about Amaia:

*She has a new awkward move, where she just puts her hands up and shrugs her shoulders. It's pretty much like an "I dunno" shrug, but more quarky and she does it when she feels embarassed.

*Before I put Amaia down for a nap, or to bed at night, I tell her a story. Then we'll do 'letters'. I ask her what letter is for "Penguin" and she says P-then she picks a word and I have to guess. Usually the words she picks are from the story we just told, so it's good to hear she's actually understanding my storytelling :)

*When Amaia is talking about different times, she says tomorrow as "teh-morning", "teh-later" "teh-night"

*If Amaia holds her hand out to you, or you to her, she'll say " I trust you!" or "Mommy's trusting me!"-ever since she watched Aladdin and he holds his hands out to ask Jasmine "Do you trust me?"

*Amaia has hit the WHYs. Ack!

*If I call Justin 'Justy', Amaia will yell "It's CAPTAIN, not Justy!"

*Apparently (as you'll see in the video next post) its "Blankey and Teddy" NOT "Teddy and Blankey"

*If I go to call her out on doing something bad, she'll always go "Why you yellin at me?" no matter the tone of voice I'm using


Here are some photos of Amaia using my bikini bottom as a baby carrier. She's carrying around her Timmy toy and at one point pretends to nurse him. The little thing in the bottom left and right photos is a little ride at the mall, that actually has a tv screen built into it in front of the child so they can 'watch' where they are going (shown better in the bottom right photo).

365 Photos-set 1:




365 Photos-set 2:



Some random photos of the girls together, including a photo of Amaia's first "signature" on the top right:







Sadly, I didn't get any pictures of Solia alone this month. It has a lot to do with the fact that our camera got stolen so we had to use our point and shoot camera for all the 365 pictures. Because of that, I pretty much only got the camera out for the 365 pictures.



Anyways, Solia this month:





*The song this month that calms her is "Pat a Cake"



*She can drink from a sippy cup now



*Solia can finally back herself off of the furniture now instead of falling off or being stuck :)

Monday, September 5, 2011

Spot the Difference {8}

At the grocery stores here, eggs aren't sold in the refrigerated section-instead they are sold on the shelf, just like this:



There are roundabouts everywhere! Forget those beautifully square grid roads growing up in CO, where you can find your way home as long as you know the order the streets go in :)

These roundabouts get so crazy, they sometimes have lights just to let you into the roundabout.

This photo shows an example of the sign coming up to a roundabout-telling you which fork you need to take to get to certain areas:



Here, anything without sleeves is called a 'vest'-even things like this tank top, for example:



And lastly, these are called 'zebra crossings' instead of cross walks. The little striped poles are at most of them, and if the ligth on top is flashing, you HAVE to stop if there is a person there waiting to cross. Keep in mind though, it's pronounced 'zeh-bruh' crossing here, so it sounds even funnier :)