Christmas, Cars and Cousins

All the family waited until after naptime to come over for our Christmas get together this year, so it was already getting dark, but of course everyone still wanted a ride in Lily's new car!

Audrey, Lily, and Isaac

Auji and Audrey had the most adorable giggles every time Audrey pushed on the gas.

Auji and Evie

Evie was a little too big to feel comfortable riding for long, but I got a cute picture of her with her little sister!

Lily loving her Teddy Bear from Uncle Alex

Thank you to everyone for all the wonderful gifts and the warm thoughts behind them! We love you!

All the kids converging in our room after opening presents.
They were watching Strawberry Shortcake and playing with Strawberry shortcake figurines.

Evie and Lily by the tree

Aujinay

Lily

Evie and Isaac

Audrey

I'm so glad Lily is so close to so many of her cousins. They have so much fun together. We are very blessed to be able to live here right now. Feeling very grateful to our Heavenly Father for the wonderful family we belong to, and for all our many blessings! Sometimes I feel down about our situation, and that we aren't living on our own yet, but I know it could be much worse! We are so lucky to be in such a nice home with people who love us!

Preschool Freeze Dance

Lily and her little cousins Audrey and Aujinay rocking to the Freeze Dance at preschool this week.



Quite a change from Lily's first experience in preschool class last year! A clip - Lily is sitting on the sidelines holding a puppet. She refused to touch a pom pom or participate in the freeze dance for the longest time! Of course, she is older. Now she is just all particular about what color she gets.

I love when Audrey picks up her pom pom and assumes her freeze pose. So cute!

Cheap Thrills

Recently we went to a school carnival for my nephew Isaac's elementary school. It turned out to be so fun! We've been to a Carnival and a book fair for my niece Evie in the past too, and we've always had a blast! Lily has so much fun going round to the different jumpy houses and booths, and this last carnival actually had real rides for little kids. It's fun for us to see our little one enjoying herself so much, and fun talking and hanging out with family and friends in a different and much livelier setting than we usually get to...food, free live entertainment...  I have to give this advice to parents of young kids - if you get invited to a school carnival, Go! It's fun for the whole family, pretty inexpensive, and the money you do spend goes to help the school - what could be better!?

I think we probably spent around $10 at Isaac's carnival, which included a huge Hawaiian shaved ice and a bunch of rides for Lily, and even one for Mike - a very fat spinning one I opted out of. I was so nervous to send Lily on the first ride all by herself! Most of the rides there were designed for the kids, so we didn't meet the weight and height requirements. I thought Lily would freak out on the Frog Hopper and be stuck up there crying until it was over. She's only 3, and she freaks out if we ask her to walk down the hall to wash her hands in the bathroom by herself! I think having gone to Disneyland beforehand helped, and having her cousin Isaac riding beside her. The only thing she was upset about was not getting the pink frog seat at first, and she switched with Isaac so that was all good. I think she ended up enjoying the ride more than he did!

I almost cried watching her happy little face laughing and laughing as the ride went up and down. It was so hard to let her go up there on her own, but so worth it. I was so proud of my brave adventurous little girl, and glad she was having so much fun!



Lily, Isaac, and Audrey all three got to ride a miniature Ferris wheel. It was the one ride Audrey was big enough to go on. She wanted to go on all of them - she was so cute! She did the cutest little happy dance after getting off the ride.

I couldn't really get a good picture because the cars were all caged in to protect the kids, but it was so fun seeing Audrey's little feet sticking out off the seat and their mostly happy faces going round and round. The guy manning the controls spun it around for a really long time, and you could see Isaac anticipating it stopping and ready for it to several times, but it just kept going, and going.


They are in the blue car, you can kind of see the expressions on their faces at different points.


This is really just the tail end of the happy dance so you don't get the full effect - still cute though.

The swings were free, and a new adventure in the dark!

Lily's first ride all by herself - no parents or cousins riding along:

Waving to Dad! So so fun. :)

Close Cousins

Lily and her cousin Audrey who is almost exactly a year younger.

Audrey is just starting to sit up and they were so cute together!

At one point it looked like Lily was going to go in for a sweet hug, but then she got concerned about her shoes. Such is the life with a toddler. Everything is 'Mine!' and the littlest thing can disturb -or appease them. I just noticed Lily's shoes were a little extra colorful here due to Play-Doh stuck to the soles. Ha ha.

Audrey is seriously so happy almost all of the time. What a smile! She is so adorable.

  
"To Friends!"

  

 

  

Mind boggling babies and the beach

Children. It blows my mind how fast they grow, how quickly they absorb information and gain new skills. It is so cool for me to see my little niece Audrey and realize that almost exactly a year ago Lily was that age going through similar stages. It's crazy to think that in so short a time, just 3 or 4 months, Audrey will be a year old and walking! And Lily will be 2!!! It's also crazy that at times Lily's communication is limited to single words and gestures, and other times she busts out with: "Momma, would you please put my tiger balloon in the bag?" 

We took Lily to the beach Saturday and then went to Ruby's on the pier afterward - one of our favorite places to eat out in San Diego. Mike spontaneously got her a balloon animal while we waited for our food. She looked at it kind of askance at first, and Mike thought he had wasted his money getting this Tigger balloon for himself, but as we walked back up the pier it grew on her (Even if it doesn't look that way in the picture.). It was so cute to see it waving out of her stroller clutched in her tiny hand with the setting sun making it glow brighter orange as the sky in front of us darkened. 

  

Lily's been sort of sick for a few weeks now and Mike's been extra busy with work so we hadn't gotten out of the house much. It had been so long since we've been to the beach I would think Lily had forgotten what the beach was, but she asks to go there regularly. She loves it!!! Since it's still kind of cold we just planned to play in the sand, but Oh no! - Lily had to go in the water! There wasn't a lot we could do to keep her out of it, so our trip to the beach was cut kind of short. We let her play a little and then got her cleaned up and in dry clothes in the sun warmed car and headed out to Ruby's. It was a really nice day, and I don't think her little jaunt in the waves made her sicker. We were up most of Saturday night with her cough, but she napped really well Sunday, checked out ok with her doctor Monday, and she seems to be improving each day.

 

Lily's long nap on Sunday gave me some time to write down some of the things she's been saying lately to remember. Lily is 20 months old for the record. She talks really well. I guess my ear is in tune to her - so maybe people who aren't around her all the time don't always understand, but I understand almost everything she says and she's getting into clearer and more complex sentences now. Sometimes she doesn't fully say a complete sentence, but she leaves a little pause in there for the conjunction so it sounds like it was there. She understands so much, she is teaching me not to underestimate what I can teach her even though she's so small. Lately her big questions are:

"What's that noise?" (wuz dat noise) Usually the answer is a subtle sound around the house like an airplane overhead, water rushing through the pipes, or someone walking on a creaky floor board overhead. And -

"What's wrong?" Sometimes nothing is wrong, sometimes we are tired or stressed out parents. Earlier last week I was talking to Mike about Lily being sick and what to do about something related to that. Lily pipes up in the dark from the pillow beside me where I thought she was sleeping..."What's wrong?" I told her nothing was wrong, but she knew something was troubling me. She said, "Don't worry, Momma!" She is seriously the sweetest kid. I love her "big hugs." She'll say "Momma, Big hug?" and wrap her little arms around my neck. She has the cutest voice for saying I love you. 

And I never thought OK could sound so cute or have so many syllables. She can be so sweetly obedient and agreeable, but she is definitely testing her boundaries, and asserting her independence these days, too! A week or so ago she threw a tantrum for me about wanting to take her clothes off. I tried to turn it into a lesson about how she should talk if she wants me to pay attention. We made some progress. She told me very clearly that she wanted to take off her skirt! She rarely wears a skirt, but she knew what it was! She did it again for Mike later on. I'm sure it will take some time for the lesson to sink in and for us to know exactly how to handle it. It's extra hard when she sick because crying makes her nose and throat worse, and she's more disagreeable because she feels so lousy, but you don't want to just give in to get her to stop crying because that just teaches her to cry more for what she wants. I try to not give in, but give extra love. It's hard.

Lily has come up with a new way to say No! "Octopus, Octopus!" Not really sure where she made that connection, but that's something she yells when she wants us to stop doing something. I wonder if the bulb syringe makes her think of an octopus with one leg because she hates getting her boogers sucked - and maybe she's passed it on to any time she doesn't want us to do something to her... Just a guess...She used to call 'rainbow' when she wanted us to open the arched zipper on her crib tent. So funny to wonder how she comes up with this stuff.

She's been singing 'Rock-A-Bye-Baby' to herself - skipping when the wind blows and jumping straight to the bough breaking, cradle falling verse. She sounded like she was trying to sing herself back to sleep during her nap the other day. I still sing her to sleep most nights - it helps relax her and keep her from chatting when it's time to sleep. Sometimes I have to remind her it's time to sleep and it's so funny to see her turn away and close her eyes tight really fast like she's thinking: Oops, I forgot - I'm sleeping, mom! I swear! When she wants me to sing 'My Favorite Things' she asks for "Dog Bites" I got tired of that one for awhile because I sang it so much when she was first born, but it's back by request. She also loves Popcorn Popping, and can do a decent Hoky Poky. I love to see her dancing - it seems like she's taken forever to get a real interest in it - probably because I looked forward to seeing her do it so much :) She gets in the mood to copy what you do or say at times and it's so fun to run with it. It's a lot of work raising kids, but it can sure be a lot of fun!