Fri, Dec 2, 20052:37 PMAviana has figured out how to undo snaps. This is not necessarily a good thing when I put her in overalls with snap straps and snap sides. She’s been helping to undress herself at bedtime and bathtime (and on the mornings when she doesn’t want to get dressed-sigh.), so perhaps she will be soon entering the stage when she will be able to undress herself and she’ll be running around naked all the time. Let’s hope she doesn’t hit that stage while it’s still 0 degrees out.
Speaking of 0 degrees, we have a fancy new fangled digital thermometer. It has an alarm which goes off when the outside temperature reaches 0 degrees. It’s nice to know that it’s 0 degrees but I don’t think I need an alarm to tell me that it’s 0 degrees, especially when it reaches 0 stinkin’ degrees at four blinkin’ thirty in the morning. Especially when your husband, who purchased, thoroughly read instructions and features and installed said thermometer, thinks you are crazy for getting out of bed three times in the middle of the night to search for the intermittent beeping that apparently only very gorgeous 30 year old women can hear. Especially when you finally decide that it must be the kitchen timer, so in the logic of sleepy brain, bring the timer to bed with you and you can STILL hear the beeping!! Thank goodness I’m married to a man, who, although he thinks I’m crazy, does get up to prove me looney, and thus discovers that it is the new fangled thermometer, the 0 degree alarm feature suddenly remembered.
Luckily for said husband, this alarm feature can be and promptly was disabled. (Though no apologies were made for the looney remarks)
Sat, Dec 3, 20052:33 PMCheap entertainment:
Put your baby in a basket. Spin her around several times. Take her out. Set her up. Watch her wobble and try to stand. Watch her fall over. Watch her ask to do it again once she regains her equalibrium. Laugh.
Variation: you can also spin around with her, but then you get dizzy too, and it’s not quite as funny watching her try to sit up when your world is spinning too.
Tue, Dec 6, 20051:15 PMAviana updates:
*She can say “knock-knock” as she knocks with her tiny little hand on whatever is nearby.
*She knows several body parts in Spanish and English-like nose/nariz, head/cabeza, belly/panza, belly button/umbligo, leg/pierna, hand/mano, boca/mouth, teeth/dientes, eye/ojo, ear/oreja, foot/pie, finger & toe/dedo, hair/pelo…
*She says “ho-ho-ho” whenever she sees a Santa effigy.
*She brings us her books and backs up into our laps to snuggle in for a read.
*She is putting two words together in sign, like “silly hat”, “pretty baby” or “where’s duck?”
*She loves “Find the Duck” so much, we bought the book, and play the game IRL (in real life) with her bathtub buddy.
*She also loves to play “go fetch” with any type of ball.
*She enjoys assisting around the house: unloading the dishwasher (whether you are loading it or unloading it) and closing the door (whether you are ready or not) and ‘turning’ the knob (luckily, she can’t really turn it)
*She has a little friend named “Gracie” and she said today several times, because we were going to see her: “Gay-gee”
*She loves to help rub in the lotion, and will bring the bottle to you to put some on her or me, or the wall– she isn’t picky.
*She’ll do “this little piggy” on herself, and loves to skip ahead to the “wee, wee, wee” part. She sort of grabs the same couple toes, says some syllables, and then rubs her chest really fast saying “ee-ee-ee-ee-eee”
*We’ll ask her, “are you dirty?”, and if she is, she’ll bring the wipes to us.
*She rarely naps for more than an hour at a time, but she is still, fortunately, taking two naps a day.
*She loves baths and will ask to take a bath several times a day (about every time we are in the bathroom) and will attempt to climb into the bathtub.
*She takes after her Tia and loves to dip her fries in ketchup & suck the ketchup off and dip the fry back in.
*She has 12 teeth in- all her front teeth and her molars, which is a good thing for chomping apples, but is a bit of a handicap for nursing.
*She has mastered both the sippy cup and the straw which is a bit weird that it took this long as she has been drinking out of a regular glass for months. I’m pleased though as now she can have a drink on the go and can do it herself
*She is tall enough to reach quite far onto the dining room table, as we discovered yesterday when she got Dada’s coffee down and spilled in three places on our cream carpet. (She’s fast too!)
*She’s just about the cutest, sweetest thing that God ever created which is a good thing to remember when you are waiting for what seems like eternity but is really only 15 minutes for her to get done screaming, crying, kicking and flailing about on the floor of the McDonald’s Playland—
Fri, Dec 9, 200512:51 PMWhat a Christmas calamity!
We finally got our tree up last night, three days after we got it from the Christmas tree farm, after we froze it in a bucket of water in the garage and it got snowed on on the front steps. We got it into the house with much ado and bother, needles everywhere, sap everywhere else and snow dripping off and melting in between. We got it decorated with all of both of our ornaments and a lovely mixture of lights, some of which flash, some are solid, some are white and some are colored. We ran out of lights before we got to the top of the tree, so we had to take some off the window. We then discovered an unopened box of lights hiding in plain sight. Our ornaments are a conglomeration of the ornaments that we both made in elementary school that our mothers didn’t want anymore and pawned off on us, to annual Hallmark ornaments our families have given us over the years, to five (yes FIVE) Baby’s First Christmas ornaments (first child syndrome anyone?). Martha Stewart we are not, but we were quite pleased with our efforts. We even managed to get the boxes almost all back upstairs and put away AND got the wonderful Thomas Kincaide Christmas village that I bought when I was still working for pay, out and lit up.
But that is not the calamity.
This morning whilst peacefully sipping our coffee and checking our email CRASH! The Christmas tree that we had so carefully erected, decided to commit a gory suicide by crashing to the floor, once again spreading needles, sap, ornaments, and this time the water from the tree stand everywhere. The stand broke for no apparent reason.
It’s a good thing Kevin’s parents never throw anything away, so we had an extra stand in the basement. It’s a good thing Aviana was no where near the tree. It’s a good thing we hadn’t put any presents under the tree yet. It’s a good thing we were both home, as I would never have been able to fix it by myself. It’s a good thing we were both in the room so we didn’t blame the cat. It’s a good thing that no lights or ornaments broke (well one did, but that was because I stepped on it). It’s a good thing that the tree fell into the room instead of through the window.
So a scant hour later, we had the tree back up, ornaments back on, water in the ‘new’ stand, needles vacuumed back up, and the living room back into some semblance of order (as much order as can be expected from two ‘messies’ and a toddler). I only had to change my sweater that got all sappy, but I already got that laundry done- which had been piling up from the four days our pipes were frozen- and it came out.
It’s a good thing!
Mon, Dec 12, 20057:21 AMWhat a busy day we had yesterday. Aviana just played and played! She graduated to the walking nursery at church, so that was a new experience. At one point she escaped into the hallway and no one noticed (least of all me!) until someone brought her back by the hand, asking, “does she belong with you?” Sheesh!
After dining in the car on delicious Checkers, we went to pickup 10 huge ficus trees for my MOPS Christmas brunch decorations. After much waiting and annoyance by the millions of people who are shopping on the weekend (WHY DOES ANYONE SHOP ON THE WEEKEND??), and the fact that no one at the store knew what was going on, we finally got the trees all loaded into the back of the pickup. It was the first time in my life I drove the speed limit, I think 🙂
After a workout of tree lifting, we then went over to our friends Tina and Keith. Aviana fell asleep in the truck and didn’t even stir as I took her up to sleep in Addie’s room. We had a nice visit and Aviana and Addie played together and took a leisurely bath. Addie, who is a year older, kept telling Aviana, “Come here, Ana” “Do this, Ana”.
Kevin got home from Creative Christmas practice at the same time that I got home. I got the truck stuck in the driveway, so it was a good thing he got home when he did, as I couldn’t remember how to put it in four-wheel drive! We popped Little Miss A right into bed and then I went out to meet the new cat that appeared on the farm. She was extreeeeeemely friendly and is very pretty, but as I went to put her down, she got scared and mauled me! Right on the chin- Bloody mess! You can see how pathetic I am in the pic in the photo album.
Today is much calmer. We have done a couple of loads of laundry, with which Aviana loves to help. She turns the knobs and pushes the buttons and the basket and takes all the socks off the drying rack more times than I’d care to count.
quote for the day: We could take a lesson from the weather- it pays no attention to criticism.