Co-Sleeping

Evvy has been home a little over a year and just turned 2 last month. She is starting to get into baby dolls. She was given a stroller for her baby this week and loves it. She told me today, "baby tired" so I went to her room and showed her the Moses basket that I bougt in Guate 15+ years ago. I took out all of her stuffed animals and extra blankies and told her that her baby could sleep in the baby basket. She carefully put a blanket in the basket and laid the dolly down and put a blanket over the baby and carressed it's face. She then proceeded to climb into the basket with the dolly and pull the blanket over the baby and herself. It was so sweet. I told her to snuggle the baby like mommy snuggles her and she did. Of course, I didn't have my camera so I told her to sleep with her baby while I went to get the camera. I fully expected her to be "done" when I got back but she was just laying there bonding with her dolly.Here are 2 pictures. One of her cuddling up to the baby and one of her "sleeping" with the baby--she is totally faking the sleep here but it looks real.We mostly do not co-sleep but we went through a few months where we did a lot of co-sleeping. She is finally back in her crib and sleeping all night! YEAH!

PS As a side note when we were getting ready for bed tonight, her baby got put to bed again. Bella (the cat, see a couple of posts ago) climbed into the basket with the baby. Evvy got very upset with Bella and told her "no Bella" "out" She then tried to pickup Bella to get her out. Luckily mommy was there to save Bella from Evvy's wrath :) Evvy then had to get her baby resituated.

Stroller Dancing!

Last night we had a really fun night with our friends. Our city is having Thursday night music and movies on our town square. The local movie theater has an outside "screen" painted on the side of the building. From 6-8 we listened to some great music (50's type music--Elvis, Stray Cats, etc). W ate our picnic (Subway sandwich) while we jammed to the tunes. Then the kids all played in the dirt for a while before the movie started. The movie was Shrek 3 which I hadn't seen. It was Evvy's first non-DVD movie on the big screen. She loved it and stayed awake the whole time. We didn't get home until almost 11pm. My sweet girl sang herself to sleep on the way home (less than 10 minutes) singing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star along with our CD. She was doing the hand motions and everything and then all of a sudden she stopped as her eyes closed with her hands still in the air. Very cute.

Here is a video of my crazy stroller dancer. She LOVES music. A policeman on a bike came up to us after the music and before the movie and said, "who's little girl is that?" I thought, uh oh what is wrong, does he think she is kidnapped or something or that she wasn't being properly supervised (I did let her play in the dirt behind us with her friends). I said, "she's mine." He said, "well she is just the cutest and has the greatest dance moves." He said his little girl that is 2 also so I think he was just comparing their stages because he said that she loves to dance too.

We will probably go to the music again next week but not stay for the movie because it is Princess Bride and probably not as interesting for my 2 year old sweetie.

Susan

Here kitty kitty!.

OK. Don't fall over. Yes, another post. I must be getting caught up on life. Things have settled down now after getting a new roof, new fridge, car troubles, travels, etc.

Evvy LOVES her kitty Bella. Bella is an almost 4 year old black and white kitten. I think she will always be a kitten at heart. Bella is pretty playful. She "tolerates" Evvy but deep down really adores her too I think. She comes in for story time every night and sits on Evvy's or my lap. Evvy likes to sing rock-a-bye baby and rock Bella on the floor. Evvy likes to show her love for Bella by hugging her. I am really working on her to be a little more gentle. She puts her in a choke hold often. Bella likes to hang out on the back of the couch looking out the picture window. Evvy likes to pull Bella off the back of the couch into her lap and hug her and kiss her. Bella has been pretty tolerant so far. I think she has only nipped at Evvy a couple of times because Evvy has come to me and say Bella bite. But she never cries about it.

Here are a few of pictures of Evvy & Bella loving each other (OK Evvy loving Bella and Bella trying to escape).

Susan

Awesome!

Evvy's language continues to amaze me. Well she just amazes me in general. Last week after being a very good sport shopping for a new fridge, I rewarded her by taking her for a ride on the carousel at the mall. She had the biggest grin on her face and was just giggling going up and down on the horse. I was standing beside her and asked if she was having fun. She quietly answered "awesome!" Not fun but AWESOME! I did a double take and thought I had imagined it but then the next time we went swimming at the waterpark again she said "AWESOME." She really must like my reaction to it because now she is really experimenting with it. I say, "want to watch a movie?" She says, "Awesome" with a cute giggle.

I can't even begin to write down all of the words and phrases she says now but her vocabulary has exploded and she really gets the context. She is picking up some Spanish too although I have slacked off on the Spanish. I am trying to be better. We were looking at one of her picture books and she said a pretty hard Spanish word "espalda" which means "back" (body part). I was pretty impressed because I hadn't really pushed that one on her much. She knows most of her body parts and most impressively she counts almost to 20 in spanish spontaneously. She counts into the teens in English also. Love Sesame Street and Plaza Sesamo. She is just a big sponge.

Her physical development is pretty amazing also. She climbs, jumps and gallops. I went into her bedroom a couple of weekends again and she was sitting on her changing table petting her kitty cat (with a big grin on her face). She had climbed up the shelves of the table. She is also becoming a pretty good little swimmer. I have started putting her in a life jacket at the water park and we spend the first 30-60 minutes in the "big pool." She is off and swimming before me often. She jumps in from the edge and just takes off paddling and kicking. She flips from front to back and back to front and isn't afraid to get her face in the water. She really likes it when mommy goes under the water. She will push on my head and say "under!" and giggle when I go under and blow a bunch of bubbles. Maybe next year she will be old enough for real swimming lessons because she is way beyond the mommy & me classes. She wants to do the real thing.

Here are a few pictures from tonight at the water park. Unfortunately, there are none of her swimming but she is enjoying her treat after swimming. The girl LOVES ice so I bought her a snow cone. She ate it all and has the red mouth to prove it!

Susan

Mommy's Little Helper

Photo Sharing - Video Sharing - Photo Printing - Photo Books

Mommy's Little Helper

I just had to chuckle at my little (big) girl tonight. I was making dinner and she found a way to entertain herself while waiting. She is all about opening drawers in the kitchen now and she will stand on her tippy toes and reach in and get whatever she can (doesn't matter what). Then she will walk around with whatever it is for a while and then go put it back and get something else. It is like a grab bag to her I guess--never know what you might draw out.

Well tonight she pulled her stool to the silverware drawer and opened it up. She often hands me the silverware from the dishwasher and I put it away in the drawer. Well tonight she decided to take all the silverware out of the drawer and stack it on the counter. Then she proceeded to put it all back in one piece at a time. She was so serious about her task. Then she would take it all back out and start over again. This went on for a good 30 minutes. She got to the point where she was just shoveling it into the drawer. If anyone looks at my drawers they will think I am super sloppy!


Here are a few pictures and a video of her working so hard in the kitchen.(I couldn't get the video to upload so I will try again later).

Pictures still to come

OK. I am too tired to post pictures tonight plus I am trying some new software. But if you are dyingn to see pictures, please feel free to visit our photo albums http://guatemom.shutterfly.com/action/

I will try to get some posted on the blog this week.

Where does the time go?

Another month (or more) has passed since my last post. We have been on the go. We took a trip to TX to celebrate my parents' 50th anniversary. While we were in TX, my parents took all of us around to where they grew up and told us more of their stories that we hadn't heard before. My parents were married when they were 17 and 18 years old. My mother was still in High School and finished her last year of high school as a married woman (she had to go to another school because she was married). My parents lived on totally opposite sides of town and my dad had to drive quite a ways to pick my mom up for dates. My dad had a paper route. It was a pretty long "car route." That is how he was able to buy gas to take mom on dates. Anyway 50 years later, they have 7 children (5 living) and 13 grandchildren. Four out of five kids are married (I am the only one still single). Starting this fall, they will have 3 grandsons in college. It was nice to get everyone together since we don't do it very often. Evvy was a little overwhelmed by everyone. She got to the point where she would cry (scream) if I left the room unless grandpa was there. She was pretty much glued to me by the end of the week.

Here is a brief (maybe) synopsis of our trip.

Day 1: drove to Ft Worth, TX (left 6am, arrived 3:30ish pm). Watched lots of Baby Einstein and Disney movies. Had dinner at my aunt Helen's house with my parents, sister and 2 of 3 of my aunt's kids (my cousins) along with some of their kids. Was really nice to visit and see people that I hadn't seen in a long time. Seems like the only times we have gotten together in the past was at funerals.

Day 2: breakfast at the hotel; short swim; even shorter nap for Evvy; off to the botanical gardens for family pictures. It was SO HOT and HUMID. I think we got some good shots though. This was our gift to our parents. We are having one of the whole family blown up and printed on canvas so they can have us nice and big to look at when they can't be with us. We then went to the restaurant where we had the dinner party to setup decorations. I think it all turned out very nicely. Evvy had fun dressing up in a party dress and running around with her cousins and grandpa. She really liked the beans and guacomole and tortillas for dinner.

Day 3 we toured mom & dad's old neighborhoods (mostly Mexican now). It was fun to see where they grew up. We then went for hamburgers and ice-cream. Evvy had her first ice-cream from a ice-cream parlour. She thoroughly enjoyed it and ate the whole scoop.

Day 4 we got up and swam with everyone. Then we packed up and headed from Ft Worth to San Antonio. We actually stayed in San Marcos. We swam again and ordered pizza for dinner. Then we all crashed.

Day 5 we went and visited Grandma Flora Mae (dad's step-mom) who is Evvy's great grandma. She is 94 years old and was very happy to have her grandchildren and great-grandchildren visiting her. Everyone but Allan's family was able to visit. Allan's kids were still in school and Anna is teaching so they had to be back at school. We had a nice visit and took some nice pictures. We then headed to San Antonio and went to the Alamo and then walked on the river walk and ate Mexican Food. Evvy tried to take a swim a couple of times. She LOVES water. We then got in the car again and drove to east TX (through Houston rush hour) and then 1 1/2 hours east to my parents' house.

Day 6 we got up and drove 1 1/2 hours to Galveston to go to the beach. Evvy took her first ferry ride and had beautiful wind-blown hair. Evvy LOVED the beach. The minute she was our of the car, she plopped down in the sand and would have been content to sit next to the car and let sand go through her fingers all day I think. I did convince her to move to the actual beach and introduced her to the waves. I wasn't sure what she would think but again, she LOVES the water and LOVED being in the waves. She wanted to do it all on her own though which was a little frightening cause she thought she could keep walking out in the water by herself. I got a good workout lifting her over waves. Finally we just went back to the beach and let the waves break over us. She had a great time digging in the sand and building with her cousins, uncle and grandpa. Needless to say, she slept very well that night.

Day 7 we pretty much just hung out at my mom & dad's house and did laundry. We also had a yummy dinner that night with birthday cake for all of the summer birthdays. The summer birthdays also got presents from Grandma & Grandpa. Evvy got a great v-tech laptop computer so now she leaves my computer alone. She also got a swing that we hung up in the back yard. She was very upset to get a swing though because she wanted to swing in it right then and there. So I let her sit in it and I held her up. That seemed to appease her somewhat. She swings almost every day now that we are home.

Day 8 we packed up and drove over to Louisianna to drop off aunt Aimee and cousins Ethan & Elise. We also went and visited the grave sight for cousin Ella Grace who passed away last year right after she was born. After having lunch with Grandma, Evvy and I started our long trip home. We drove until dinner time and then stopped in Paris, TX for the night. We swam after eating and then cuddled up in a huge king size bed and watched a movie on TV during which Evvy fell asleep.

Day 9 we got up, ate waffels at the hotel and then hit the road again. This was probably the hardest day of all. We both just wanted to be home. Evvy didn't want to be in the car seat anymore and was tired of watching movies I think. We made a couple of extra stops. My favorite stop was at an Amish cheese-shop and bakery. We ate lunch and bought some yummy cookies and cheese to bring home with us.

We were very happy to be home. We had a great time but home is always best I think. It took Evvy a couple of weeks to stop asking for movies in the car.

I am going to try to do a picture show. If that doesn't work, then I will post some pictures later.

There is more to come in my catch up posts!

Susan

Evvy's puppy

No, we didn't buy a dog. Several months ago I bought Evvy a pull toy dog. Lately, her imagination has started to really bloom. She plays with her toy farm and dollhouse and the people. But the funniest thing lately is that she really has developed a bond with this fisher price plastic puppy dog. She cuddles it, she walks it. The other day while I was cleaning the house, I came out and she had a q-tip. I didn't say anything, just watched to see what she was doing. She lifted the puppy's floppy ear and put the q-tip behind it to clean it. The only time I use q-tips for Evvy is to clean around her earrings with alcohol.


Then yesterday when we were playing outside, she wanted her puppy to come outside with her. She then decided that the puppy would like to slide down her slide. She carried the puppy carefully up the steps of the slide and then let the puppy slide down all by itself. She just giggled so gleefully. She would then slide down and pickup the puppy and they would go up again.


Here are a few pictures of Evvy and her puppy.

She is growing up too fast!

OK. I have been horrible about posting on the blog. Keeping up with an almost 2 year old just doesn't allow it. We are loving the nice weather that seems to be finally here.


Here are a couple of new things for my big girl...


You have heard of children starting to climb out of bed about Evvy's age but what about climbing INTO bed. It was the funniest thing to watch. Bella (her favorite cat) had jumped into the crib and she wanted to get in with her. She absolutely adores this cat and calls for her all the time. She won't do story time before bed without Bella being in the room to hear the stories. The funny thing is that Bella actually sits on my lap and listens to the stories (probably more about having her head scratched than the actual stories). Anyway, Evvy did not succeed in climbing into the crib.




I have to share this second picture too. Evvy is still working on potty training. I decided tonight to start bribing her with left over jelly beans from Easter and some star stickers we picked out at Wal Mart last night. It worked twice tonight! Usually she tells me an emphatic "NO" when I ask her if she needs to go potty (followed by her slamming down the potty chair lid). Tonight I got her to potty twice for jelly beans and stickers! But the girl does like her privacy. She has taken to wrapping the shower curtain around her when she is on the potty. I finally caught it on camera tonight.