August 2011 2nd Half-With Video Link

Ok, so where did we leave off? The Kaisers were here. I'm a little fuzzy on the details, but one day we went to Bath:

And got to blow glass bubbles. Which was awesome.

One day Solia and I stayed home while every one else went on a bus tour of London. Here are some pictures:

That afternoon, Justin and Amaia came home and left the Kaisers touring around. We had a babysitter come and watch the girls, while Justin and I went and met the Kaisers to see the musical Les Miserables. It was awesome-it was the first time I'd ever seen the musical version of this story (we have the DVD with Liam Neeson, but it's just not the same).

The one day, the most rainy freezing day ever, we drove all the way to Windsor Castle. It was so cold and wet, that here are the only pictures we took of the entire place:

The worst part was it was freezing and raining outside, but drafty inside, and we weren't really prepared with coats and stuff wise, so we were all freezing, so we just kind of blew through it as fast as we could. It was a lot of fun though and we're glad they were able to come and hang out with us.

Here's my Solia. Being a stinker, as always.

* Every time Justin comes to kiss me, or pick me up, Solia literally freaks out-like has a full on panic attack

*Every time Solia eats in her chair, she offers me a spoonful for me to blow on before she will eat it (even if it's cold)

*Solia is getting better at kisses, she gives open mouth almost-making-outs, and she also tries to actually kiss by making a popping sound.

*Solia has certainly warmed up to Justin now, and she will actually let him hold her and play with her, and she even gives him hugs and kisses.

*Solia's starting to say the beginning of words, like she'll say "buh" for ball or bug, "duh" is for duck

*Solia has a hard time letting me get stuff done. Every time we do into the kitchen, I'll put her down to make dinner or do dishes or laundry, and she'll freak out and grab onto my legs or try and push me away from the counter so I'll pick her up.

*Solia can sign: banana, food (points in her mouth), all done, hat, and more (thumb into the other palm)

*When Solia is finished eating, and I offer her more food, she'll act like she wants it, and then just smack the spoon/food onto the floor when I offer it to her

*When someone leaves she'll say "buh buh" and wave goodbye

*She's getting really good at following basic instructions, like 'bring me that' or 'give that to mommy' or 'get down' or 'can i have kisses' or 'go get amaia'

*Solia will hand me a book, stand right by me and wait for me to open it up and read it, and as soon as I start, she'll turn around and go get another book before I can even finish the first page.

*If Solia is not 100% happy, any time I move it's a fit. It doesn't matter where I"m going, if I'm sitting or standing, on the computer or xbox or at the mirror, it's like a total meltdown unless I'm laying on the ground with her or holding her.

Amaia: Likes to make soup (bottom right pic) with water and dirt and grass out in our yard

*I've finally given Amaia scissors, and she loves sitting in the office cutting up paper-I usually give her past art projects that have already had their time on the wall

*Amaia says prayers exactly like this every time: "Heavenly Father, thankful for this day, thankful for the rest of our days, in the name of Jesus, Amen!"

*Amaia's always saying "You gotta see this, Mommy"

*She is the bad word police. As soon as we tell her not to say something, she makes sure we don't say it either. On the list so far are: stupid, idiot, freaking, and shut up.

*Amaia likes to say "that was the craziest thing I ever seen" or "that was the funniest thing I ever seen"

Fun little photo shoot with my girls:

Gotta love the 'tank crossing' sign-on the side of the road by a huge field.

And some of Amaia's crafts-leaf paintings, a monogram, and she traced and colored her own hand (top center, including fingernails)

And here is the link to YouTube for the video this month:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_ahSFqrspU

Kids Say the Darndest Things {12}

*Me: You're so big, Amaia!

Amaia: Am I big?

Me: Yeah-you're getting big just like Mommy!

Amaia: And like Daddy! I'm getting to be a boy!

*Amaia was super sad, so this was my attempt to cheer her up:

Me (very dramatically): Why didn't you tell me I looked scary (i.e. no make up on)?

Amaia: I didn't tell you because I was screaming and crying and whining!

*Amaia was yelling out the back window at all the ducks swimming behind our house.

Amaia says: I'm scaring the duckies. Hold still-I don't want anybody to move. No talking, no farting, and no talking-I'm going to yell!

*Amaia was nursing her stuffed horse and she says: He's drinking from my booby! He's zoo thirsty. He's drinking milk-or apple juice, or orange juice, or water melon, or lemonade.

*This one's more of a 'kids do', but have you seen the part in the July video where I cry for a doctor and Amaia 'pumps' medicine out of that little piece on that stool? Well, one time I cried for a doctor, and Amaia said NO. So Solia runs to the stool, flips the little piece a couple times, and then comes and 'gives' me the medicine by full on smacking me on the face over and over.

*One day I was throwing a fit about something, so Amaia says to me: You need to chill out! Do you even hear yourself?? We do not yell in this house!! (It was quite an eyeopener, and I was immediately over whatever it was I was yelling about because it was just so funny!)

*I usually take my ring off when I type on the computer, because it slides over and the diamond rests in between my fingers and it's annoying. Amaia came up and grabbed it off the keyboard and asked if I wanted my ring. After I put it back on, Amaia says : Now you love daddy again, because you have your ring on!

*Amaia: I need to get in my bed and take a biiig breath so I can get all the tired out. I'm so tired and I need to get all the tired out of my mouth!

August 2011-1st Half

I know it's been almost a month since I updated this blog. I've been trying to catch up, but ever since Justin got home from Texas and brought back the Elder Scrolls: Skyrim game, I've been doing nothing but playing after the girls go to bed.....yikes. So it's December, and I'm just now doing the first August post. Maybe I'll get caught up one day and then I'll be able to stay caught up? One can hope, anyways.

Solia:

*She can point to what she wants now or where she wants to go, and grunts as she points

*Solia can sign: wash hands

*She's actually gotten attached to her Roosky (her Kanga doll that we are NOT going to call Kanga) and Blankey-one day for her nap, I laid her in her bed and placed her Roosky and Blankey next to her, but a couple inches away. She sat up and grabbed them and then laid down hugging them.

*She tries to say food but isn't quite there yet

*She says Yes by grunting

*When Justin and Solia do the whole 'neeeerom bonk' thing that Justin used to do with Amaia, Solia will lean her head in and go "aaaaah ba!"

*Solia loves combing/brushing her hair, and brushes it from the back of her head up over the top

*Solia gets really excited when Justin comes home from work, or when he comes back from another room-she giggles and squeals but still won't let him hold her

*Solia LOVES birds. Have I mentioned that? Every time we go to the harbor, she loves to chase the flock of pigeons around, but as soon as she sees someone who is not Mom, she freaks out and runs away.

*She likes to help clean up if she sees you putting something away

*Solia can make a fish kiss face

*She'll always try to call you on the phone and starts grunting like crazy if you don't start talking back to her

Here are some photos of the girls together-really not as many now that we aren't doing the 365 project. I'm glad it's over though-it was a lot of work.


So right at the end of this 'post' (fortnight? haha) we had some visitors, Frederic and Estelle Kaiser. They came to visit us from Switzerland. Justin met him when they were assistants to the Mission President on their missions in Buenos Aires. You can see them in a goofy self photo in the bottom right below (sorry! That's the best pic I have of you guys....if you ever read this...):

I had to post that cool guard pic twice for Justin. He spent a lot of time taking this photo at Buckingham Palace and then post processing that photo to make it awesome. And it is awesome. But I digress.

Ok, I guess here is another photo of Kaiser (as we all called him), but we were really using him as a 'cover' to sneak this photo of the cops in the background while we had a picnic at Greens Park

Here are some photos of Amaia:

Amaia:

*Whenever Amaia runs around humming or singing random sounds, it's always to the tune of "Book of Mormon Stories"

*Amaia likes to have Justin crank the music up loud when they drive in the car

*Amaia is officially no longer napping. For now it's been pretty bad, since she's still waking up early and going to bed at the same time. Hopefully she'll adjust.

*So, it turns out that Amaia really likes Salmon Sashimi (raw sushi). Justin and Amaia went to the mall for their second Daddy Amaia night and had some and I guess she really likes it....

*Whenever Amaia sees a picture of anything, she always points and goes "That's where we went!"....it all started with a picture of the Eiffle Tower (that we really did visit with Justin's parents) and it just kind of evolved

*If Amaia is talking about yesterday, or sometime previous, she always says "a long weeks ago"

*Apparently, Justin is Eugene and all 3 of us girls are Rapunzel. And Amaia calls us all by 'name' all the time

*Amaia's started telling us that "that's really annoying".

*Amaia apologizes for everything "sorry sorry I'm so sorry sorry"

*She likes to take the toy shopping cart and goes to "moo" the lawn.

*The different scenes in a movie are called "pages" to Amaia, but the title page of a book is called the "menu"

*Solia still calls every one dada, and it makes Amaia mad. When Solia calls her dada Amaia will yell "it's UH MY UH!"

*Amaia is officially in her first full fledged Disney Princess Craze. Something I swore I was never going to do was let my girls get into all the princess crap. Oops. She's got the DVD, a whole set of Tangled character figurines that Justin bought at the mall for her, which came with a huge Tangled poster (currently hanging on the wall, along with the 3-D card from the DVD box) and she calls us all by our "Tangled" names all the time...

Here are some crafts that Amaia made-bubble printing, leaf printing, and her hand that she traced all by herself.

Kids Say the Darndest Things {11}

*I LOVE Daddy-he think he so funny!

*We had some friends over and while we were eating, we were discussing which Disney Princess/Prince was the 'hottest'. Amaia all of a sudden gets all mad and says "Hey! Why are you talking about my movies?"

*I'm so sick of you talking to me about that!

*How.Many.Times.Do.I.Have.To.Tell.You.Don't.Talk.With.Food.In.Your.Mouth? (to Justin during dinner)

*So one day, I was ironing some of Justin's work shirts, and Amaia asked why I had to iron them. So I started explaining about laundry, and how things get wrinkled in the basket and I have to iron them to make them look nice for when Justin goes to work. I asked if she'd like to watch me iron one to watch the wrinkles disappear and she says:
Amaia: NO! I'm really pissed off!
Me: Why are you pissed off?
Amaia: Because I just sat here and listened to you talk for a long time about the iron thing, and NOW I'm pissed off!
Me: (laughing my head off, running to go write down what she said)
Amaia: What are you doing?
Me: I'm writing what you said because it was hilarious
So, she went and pretended to be pissed off, and we acted out that entire conversation again (for pretend). When we finished, she ran and grabbed the pen and paper so I could write it all down again.

*Amaia takes some chapstick, and smears it all over her mouth.
Amaia: Now I need to look in the mirror to see my chapstick. To see how cute I am. I'm so cute and precious.....Am I cute Mommy?

i heart faces-Let Them Be Little

It's been a while since I did one of these, but the theme was so perfect-I have like the two cutest kids ever.

Ok, well Blogger won't let me add a hyper link to the 'button' (or my IE) so, HERE is the link to iheart faces.

July 2011-2nd Half w Video

So, this post is a little late. Darn movie held me up. Anyways.
Amaia turned 3 on th 19th. We got the kitchen all decorated, I made a cake from a box mix with not-enough-butter-buttercream-frosting (looked gross, didn't taste too bad). Definitely the worst cake so far I've made for her, but since it was just the 4 of us it's not like I had to impress to many people. (except you are all seeing it now..hmmm.....) I made her shirt and turned a 2 pound dry erase board into a chalkboard thing (you can see it on the wall there).
Amaia was super excited for her birthday and cake. I don't know what it is about her and cake. It's not like she eats tons of it.

So we sing happy birthday, and she's like biting right into the side of the cake. It was awesome. Check out the video for some candle lighting fun :)

The weekend after her birthday we drove down to Brighton. It wasn't too far away, but we didn't really plan this trip well. We ended up spending a lot of our time on the Brighton Pier, which has a little amusement park/carnival thing on it (that we hadn't even known about when we left). We went to the aquarium:



And, like I said, spent most of the time at the pier. The top right pic is one I took from our hotel room window a half hour or so after sunset. You see that one ride on the right that's like super tall? Yea, I went on that. Justin and I each went on one ride, while the other watched the girls. That was the ride I picked. I don't know why. We all know I'm afraid of heights. I was a nervous wreck sitting waiting for every one to get loaded up (after about a 45 minute wait in line while justin had the girls, poor thing). After we got going though, it was fun. I would have totally gone again but the line was insane. And it was getting cold.


These bottom right pics are me before (left) and after (right) the ride. Not sure if you can tell the difference between my I'm-going-to-die-holy-crap-I'm-nervous-but-still-laughing-at-justin-taking-pics or my holy-crap-that-was-awesome! faces :)

We had another birthday-Solia! duh.

She turned 1! This was also with just the 4 of us (a stark difference between the huge pool side bonanza we threw for Amaia's first in Houston. The downside of having no friends).

Anyways, I wanted to do a cute moster theme. So my monster dude didn't turn out so bad (nevermind the oreo eyes and chocolate chip nose. The antennaes? Fruit snack strings). The little monster cupcakes were just awful. My poor frosting had huge chunks of butter in it. So I was either pouring liquid frosting on, or it was coming out super uneven because I would really have to squeeze through the chunks of butter. Marshmallows halved with a sliver of chocolate chips for eyes, same antennae as the big dude. Tasted good though :)



At first, Solia was totally freaked by the cake dude. Then she warmed up to it, and eventually had him smashed all over. Oh yea, and my little monster shirt I made her (bottom right). That was the best pic we could get (post cake smashing, btw) of it. Sorry.

So here's the first half of 365 pictures:



And the second. I wish I could have put these in better order. The beachy one down there is from Brighton one day and the caracature is from the second day in Brighton. Then the rest of them are 'replicas' of Dr. Suess's The Foot Book. Justin would like me to tell you to open this image up large (or follow the link in my sidebar to the Facebook album for the 365 Project day 201-365) and really look at the details in these suckers. I took all the pictures, but Justin edited them all the put them all together. We took a final 366th picture on Solia's birthday again just to sort of come full circle with the 1st day when she was born last year.

And now some random pics of the girls we took:

Solia:

*Solia can wave good-bye

*She's started to clap her hands together when she's happy (as opposed to just for pat-a-cake)

*When we say that it's time for prayer, Solia will clasp her little hands together in front of her chest

*If I tell her that her food is hot, she'll 'blow' on her food by buzzing her lips at it.

*Her entire vocabulary consists of 'dada'. We are all dada, unless she's crying, then I'm actually mama.

*She's started pointing to where she wants to go

*If I ask "Solia, what are you eating?" she'll spit whatever it is right out and hand it to me

Amaia:

See her here at Brighton, and with her new "Rapunzel hair" (that she salvaged from a bed skirt after I chopped it off the flat part of the sheet).

*Amaia likes to say 'realize': I didn't realize that (fill in the blank)

*She likes to clear her throat and say 'heh hem' before saying things

*Amaia's become the bad word police. I'm no longer allowed to say stupid, shut up, and freakin'. I mean, she's got a point, I shouldn't say those things, but it's like every time I slip she'll get all up on me "we don't say freakin'!"

*When Solia starts screaming, she'll dramatically clamp her hands over her ears or plug them up.

*She likes to assign our family to movies. For example, Finding Nemo. Justin is Marlin, I am Coral (who gets eaten by a shark, but she doesn't seem to care), she is Dory, and Solia is Nemo. She does this to all sorts of things-movies, pictures, stuff she sees outside.

*She likes to have Justin blare the music in the car

*If I ask Amaia to please stop (whatever), she'll say "I'm sorry, but I have to (hit Solia)". But she says it in the same tone that a parent would say "I'm sorry, but it's time to go home now". Like she doesn't care what I have to say, she's gunna do it anyways

*Justin took Amaia on her first "Daddy Amaia Night". They went to the mall, Amaia had sushi for the first time and loved it (yuck) and they got ice cream.

Here is the link to YouTube for this month's (somewhat longer) movie:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oq1y6nG6A-g

Kids Say the Darndest Things {10}

Amaia: You not a good Mommy
Me: WHAT?!
Amaia: You dropped some lotion on the floor. That means you not a good Mommy

"You need to get out of this chair because I don't know. who. you think. you are!"

"I'm sorry I'm being a mean person today Mommy"

So this is more of a short story. One day, I woke Amaia up from a deep sleep after naptime. She threw a fit because she was not ready to be awake. She was a terror for like the next 2 hours just throwing a fit. I tried everything: juice, chocolate milk, cookies, her new Rapunzel toys (that she just got), everything. We go to eat dinner, she is still freaking out. (Side note-we watch Family Guy. We used to let Amaia watch it with us, you know, because she was too young to understand the inappropriate-ness of it all, etc. We had to cut her off when she started repeating stuff from it, and she kept asking to watch it. We say no, every time). So Justin leans over to her, and says "Amaia, do you want to watch Family Guy after dinner?" And she goes "OKAY!" and immediately is happy, and eats her entire dinner happy and nice.

Justin is getting ready to leave one day for work. Justin asks: Amaia, can I have a kiss goobye?
Amaia: No, you can leave now Daddy.

(Another side note-'crap' is significantly stronger here than it is in the US). So we're at the grocery store, and I"m looking for some PJs for Solia (ok, it's more like a small Wal Mart than a 'grocery store') and I can't find the right size, so I say out loud "whyyyy?" in a very whiny voice. Amaia says "You're not supposed to say 'why' you are supposed to say 'oooooooooh CRAP!'"

"I'm sorry I'm yelling about these buttons. I'm screaming like I"m trying to talk crazy."

"I don't love you, because I'm sad and little girls don't love people"

We were reading about elephants, and it was talking about their tusks.
Amaia: What are tusks for?
Me: They're for....You know? I dont' really know what tusks are for.
Amaia: They so they don't fall over when they walking with their babies.