Mommie’s Little Cupcake

Dear La La,

I thought you’d like to know a little about your 17 month old self.  You love yogurt.  Now that you are no longer allergic to dairy, you have been enjoying "yay-yoa-t" almost every day.    You usually start the day with a banana and a strawberry fruit bar, or some blueberries, which are your favorite berries.  You also like raspberries and blackberries, just not as much as blueberries.  You also love watermelon.  You once bit into a valentine’s cake that you must have thought was watermelon because you spit it right out, before reconsidering and taking another bite. 

We had pierogies and spinach for dinner the other night, and I thought you’d like the pierogies because they are doughy and you love pasta, but you actually liked the spinach more, and ate all of it and didn’t eat the pierogies.  You are such a funny little bug. 

For the past week or so, you seemed to be on a milk strike.  You would not drink your milk, or you would take a sip and spit it out.  I think you wanted apple juice, but we don’t have juice in the house, so you went on strike.  Your teacher said you were drinking milk at school, but you sure weren’t drinking enough and none at home.  I’m glad you changed your mind, because mummy and daddy were worried about you.  We want you to be big and strong, and you have to drink milk for that. 

Today, we went out for sushi and you had beef yaki soba and a California roll and fruit cocktail and lots of milk.  You enjoyed the noodles for a little while, but were distracted by the fruit and the dragon on your cup. 

Right now, you have a big mark on your forehead.  Do you know how it got there?  You were sitting in the shopping cart that YiaYia got you for Christmas.  Even though mummy told you not to climb into it, you didn’t listen.  You tipped it over not once, but twice, landing on your face both times.  You have climbed in again since then, so I don’t think you remember that you hurt yourself already. 

We love you so much and don’t want to stifle your desire to explore every thing you can get your hands on, but at the same time, we don’t want you to hurt yourself.  You love climbing and being "up", even when we tell you to get down. You also love being upside-down, or flying in the air when your daddy throws you.   You are so independent that sometimes we have to keep ourselves from laughing as you try to do something and get so frustrated when you have trouble.  I love that you keep trying, and that you accept when you are offered help. 

You love purple.  You always pick out purple clothes to wear, you always pick the purple crayon, and you love to point out the purple cars on the drive home from work each day.  You point and say "purplecar" very matter-of-fact-ly as we pass the same cars each day and you spot ones you like.  You also like to point out white trucks which you see lots of each day.

You like to go in mummy’s purse or up on the table to grab our iPhones.  You put them to your ear and say "hello."  We want you to put the phone down gently, but we also want to laugh because your are so funny when you say "hello.", you sound so serious.   

Your vocabulary grows by the day.  Recent words are "no" and "mine".  I guess we knew those two words would show up, but we were hoping for a little more time without them.  You are also stringing words together in a way that makes sense, which is pretty cool.  Like "purplecar" or "white socks" or "my daddy" or "no more".  But you still say things that make us ponder… "applebapplehappyapple" and "mummadaddy" and the newest one, "daddamummy".  Daddy has been known as "papa", "dada", "daddy", and now "mummadaddy".  Or lately, "my daddy".  But suddenly, mumma has become "daddamummy"!  We are hopeful that you will become less confused as time goes on, and will settle down to a single name for each of us. 

We love you so much, and love seeing what each new day will bring.

Love,

Mummy and Daddy

We went to the beach for a few hours and La La had the whole beach to herself. 

Then Daddy joined her for some flying.

It was a beautiful day, we could see all the way to Catalina and L.A. which is pretty rare lately with the way it gets smoggy at the port of Long Beach.  But it was about 70 degrees, so we enjoyed ourselves. 

Now it’s two weeks later and we are gearing up for a big storm.  The last storm that was as bad as what they are predicting was in 1998, when La La’s Daddy and I were still dating, and we were living in San Diego.  We were meeting friends at Disneyland and we had planned it for a few months, and they were driving out from AZ.  When we got to Orange County, we found a major road was closed, the 5 at the El Toro Y!  We had to make our way in a place we’d never been on surface streets.  Luckily, I had a Thomas Guide that was only 10 years out of date.  We did end up making it, and there were no lines for most of the rides, and we had a great time with our friends. 

Maybe it will be that bad again, and our commute will be nice and light since no one can make it north of the Y?

We decided to stay home Christmas day, then spend the next day in San Diego with Yia Yia and the cousins, so we decided to get a tree.  We got a small table-top tree that fit on top of the table that Yia Yia gave us a few years ago.

Earlier in the week, Grampy came by with a couple of boxes of Christmas
ornaments that he had been saving for years. Since we had such a small
tree, we just used the kiddie looking ornaments along with a paper
chain that La La and I made the week before. I think next year we can
do a theme color with the colored glass ornaments, some of which are
really pretty. When La La is older, we can really go all out.
 

I started making her stocking last year but finally finished it on Christmas Eve.  On Christmas morning, she reached in a pulled out a couple of books, some bubbles, an apple and an orange.  She LOVED the apple and wouldn’t put it down, even to open presents.  It was pretty funny, like she hadn’t eaten in days or something!

She got a collection of Yo Gabba Gabba dolls, some Little People, a Sesame Street remote control and a doll that I made for her.  Grammy sent some clothes and a cool fridge farm, which we put next to her french letters on the magnet board.  She also got a toy telephone, which she loves to play with and say “hello?”. 

Grampy and J came to spend the day and brought La La some great presents, including a toybox that Grampy made.  He brought a giant doll that speaks French so La La can learn the days of the week and colors and a few other words.
   

Later in the day, La La was too excited to take a nap and got a little cranky.  All she wanted to do was get in her old book-toybox. 

We spent Thanksgving at Kim & Adam’s and it was an incredible feast.  I brought some fruit; apples, pears, figs, grapes and pomegranate arils. I also made a tarte a l’ognion.  We started with the fruit and a ton of cheese, and Jess made her famous Deviled Eggs which disappeared instantly along with the onion tart.  

In the middle of everything, there was a bit of an accident with the potato chopping when David sliced a finger.  But he got bandaged up and was doing fine by dinner time. 

Then we had shrimp and scallops wrapped in prosciutto.  Then split pea soup.  There was butternut squash soup too, I think, but it showed up too late so we didn’t have that.  Then the main course was a deep-fried turkey, and smoked lamb.  I never would have thought that smoked lamb would be good, but it was really good.  We had three kinds of mashed potatoes; blue cheese, garlic and regular.  We had some greens that I forgot the name of.  We had candied yams.  Cranberry sauce.  I’m sure there was more, but I forget.

Then we had MiMi’s birthday cake.  She turned 1. For her gift, her parents requested donations to Feeding America, which we did.  

La La had a great time playing with her cousins, playing ball with daddy in the backyard, and trying lots of new foods.  She really liked the split pea soup.  And the fruit and the crackers, which are her favorite foods. 

It was really the best Thanksgiving I can remember, with all of us together and all contributing to the meal.  There was a little tension over the plans for Christmas, but we all rose above.  I think this year, between Facebook and the trips down to San Diego, we’ve really connected in a way that we haven’t been able to do since we all moved away from Rancho Bernardo.  It’s a pretty good thing!

I have moved to a new web host for a lot of reasons – one of which is that I’ve been trying to update this blog since thanksgiving with no luck! 

Anyway, before I get to thanksgivng, here’s halloween. 

La La the Lion

At La La’s daycare, they had a costume parade where all the kids dressed up and the parents could come and watch the parade in the play yard. 

They parade by age, starting with the youngest who come out in cribs and in the arms of their caregivers.  Then the next group the toddlers, and they either walk holding a rope or are in a wagon.  La La gets so excited that she lets go of the rope and wanders off all the time, so she was in the wagon. 

As soon as she saw me, she started crying.  She wanted to be with mama!  So after she did a circuit in her wagon, I went and got her and we watched the rest of the kids parade around the playground, then visited with her friend who was still in the infant room at the time. 

On halloween night, we opened our door so the trick or treaters could come, and La La had a lot of fun watching the kids come to the door.  She was very excited and loved the costumes.  Between kids, she would look out the door, to see if anyone was coming. 

I think next year, she will be very interested in trick or treating, even if it’s just for a ride in her wagon all dressed up!

What we bought to help La La learn to walk on her own:

What La La actually uses to get around the living room:

That’s right, she has been pushing the coffee table around the living room instead of the girly stroller that we bought for her. She gets especially annoyed when she throws the placemats on the floor first, because when she stands on them, she can’t move the way she wants; they are very slippery. Last night she ended up doing a split with one foot on the floor and the other on a placemat. I would have grabbed the camera, but she was crying, so I grabbed her instead.
So that’s the walking. She’s doing great when supported, even walking with one hand holding Mum or Dad’s hand, and even one handed with the doll stroller, but no attempts yet by herself.

She is doing well standing on her own too, even dancing!  She’s got a new dance, instead of the up and down dance, she holds her hands together in front of her chest and twists left and right.  They had a music-man come to her day-care last week.  When I picked her up that afternoon, several of the staff mentioned how much fun La La had and how much she danced.  They thought she’d fall asleep easily that night.  Ha!  

But for the lack of trying to walk on her own, I blame her friend S from day care. S (that’s her on the right) has transitioned up to the next level at day care, leaving La La as the oldest in her class. Now she has no one to catch up to, and has stagnated a bit.

I just love this picture, it really makes me smile.  Anyway, La La is now the queen of all she surveys, and climbs up to the top of the foam structure in the room and directs the younger babies.  I wonder where she gets that from???

I’ve been trying to read more to La La before bed, but she’s really not very interested.  We usually end up making shadows on the wall across from the bed. She likes waving both her hands in the light even though only one makes a shadow because she is sitting on my chest with the light behind her left hand.  I make animals and she giggles and tries to look at the light instead of the wall. 

The other thing she’s been doing lately is what I like to call Mummy-flopping time.  We go to bed to try and get her to sleep.  She nurses a bit, then she starts flopping all over me.  Across my body, over my arms, by my side, then across me again, and over to my other side, and sometimes across my face or my neck.  I have no idea what she’s doing, but it seems to relax her because she eventually goes to sleep, usually with her head by my knees and her feet in my armpit.

I am so glad to say that I no longer have to wash bottles every night! La La has been using her sippy cup and doing well with it.  Over the weekend, I let her take sips from my drink using a straw and after a few surprises, she’s got the hang of it, so I’m going to get her a new sippy cup this weekend with a straw instead of the one she has now that’s almost like an off-center bottle nipple.  I think that makes the most sense anyway, since even as grown-ups, we use straws all the time. 

I’ve been making lists and trying not to overpack for our trip back east next month.  It’s going to be a mess bringing a stroller, a roller bag, and backpacks, etc on the plane, so I want to pack as light as possible.  I am planning to just bring enough for the first two days, then go shopping in NH for the rest of the trip.  Tax free!  I don’t mind checking my bag for the trip home, I just hate it on the way out since you always want your own stuff when you get to your destination.  Plus, if I buy too much, I’ll ship it home with the yarn I’m planning to buy.  We don’t have much wool in SoCal, so I’m hoping to find good stock in NH. 

I spy

Originally uploaded by adnohrg

look ma, no hands!

Ok, wow that worked really well, so I’m going to keep going. Here’s a
photo from my first Mother’s Day, when we went out for pancakes.

She really liked the pancakes and has been quite fearless with food,
which is mostly wonderful. I say mostly, because she’s a bit of a
snack-bandit at day care, helping herself to eveyone else’s food!

But it alo means I can give her anything and she’ll try it. She still
doesn’t really like avocado and gets bored with the same food over and
over, but she can really surprise me.

She seems to really like garlic. I made her a garlicky chicken stew a
few weeks back and she was smacking her lips and saying “mmmm” a lot
and ate it all up. Just this week I made pesto with walnuts, basil,
garlic and parmasean. I was a little nervous about the cheese, but
decided to give her a little and just watch to see if she broke out.
No hives, and she ate all the noodles I gave her, plus a few more. She
had the lefovers for lunch yesterday with some chicken, and day care
mentioned that she loved her lunch! Go La La, go La La.

We spent Independence Day down in San Diego with the cousins for a
birthday bash. We celebrated Bean’s first from May, the Princess’s
fourth from June, Y’s fourth from July, and La La’s first from
August. We won’t get together until after the summer, so we just had
a big party at Yia Yia’s house.

We got superhero pj’s for the four year oldsters and they were a big
hit. In fact, Y took his shirt right off to don the batman shirt with
utility belt and cape. The Princess soon followed with her Supergirl
shirt and cape.

La La got a great bead puzzle (is that what you call them?) but she
hasn’t figured out how to use it yet. She just sort of lifts it up and
bangs it on the floor for now. Thank you floor mats for saving my
hardwood floors! She also got a puzzle with big wooden pieces, some
bathtime paint, and a polka-dot dress. Auntie J made La La a busy book
with lots of ideas of fun and crafty play for a one year old which
will be so much fun. La La loves her crafts! She’ll be painting today
at day-care, and I’m sure she’ll love it like always.

We have taken La La on two small trips in the past few weeks, trying
to get her ready for the big trip in August when we will be going back
east. She’s done very well on both trips, and was well behaved on the
plane and in the airport. Phew!!

I have to admit, I was worried, because when she’s unhappy, she can be
a handfull.

I’m trying a new way of posting via Flikr. If it works, I’ll be able
to do this more often.