Back to the grind, and happy about it

We're back in a groove, for now :) I'm enjoying it and I hope the girls are too. Marea is back in school, and we get our Tuesdays there together, which is still wonderful. I have watched her change a lot at school. She's been a bit more assertive in her play, getting what SHE wants instead of just going along. And she's a bit more social at school now. She mostly plays with Mia, but she also talks about Talia, and a few others. I hope she expands those horizons a bit more in the future.

We also got out with the Mom's group lately. I planned a park playdate at Canyon park and so many moms came...new and old. It brought back some of that goodness of the lazy park days that I seem to be missing so much right now. Just a big group of like-minded women, hanging out, chasing our kids, chatting, playing...heaven. Marea had fun playing Peter Pan with Jack and Bella and Madison. Evie ate sand and bumped her head multiple times. It was perfect!

Today we went on a fun outing to Pretend City. Very cool. We spent about three hours there before Marea kind of wanted to leave. But I bet she could of stayed. She really liked playing in the house, grocery store, stage and farm. Evie liked the balance boards, the house and the farm. They both got to pet baby chicks. We had fun just being together, the 3 of us.

And now an edition of Fave's, since I don't know if I've done any of these for Evie yet...

Evie's favorite foods...definitely beans (bean soups, black beans, etc) soups (the kid goes crazy on vegetable soups!), blueberries, and CHEESE! She is a dairy freak, although I try to limit it a bit.

Evie's words...Cheese when I take a picture (so funny!), kit-tie, taci (paci), nack (snack), BA-BA, and I love how she can finish the sentences in a book when you leave out a keyword that she knows, and how she says 'mo' and signs it like crazy the minute we step into any grocery store. Which reminds me of another funny thing (well not really), she loves to stand up in the seat in shopping carts!! No label reading for me!

Frosty Season is Over!

Wow! That happened fast. As it always does these days, since i'm busy chasing my two little ones. So much has happened.

We had a wonderful holiday with a few bumps. Homer got sick and that made busy even more busy. But we managed to enjoy a lot of holiday goodness anyways. In fact, maybe it slowed me down just enough to get me to enjoy the big picture just a little bit more. We went to the Costa Mesa Snoopy house one night to see the decorations. We went down the street to the light show at the house on Meredith St., where the lights are set to music. We went to see the neighborhood light display at the brookhurst/heil sts. And best of all, we went to the Newport Beach Boat Parade and got the very best spot in the house for checking out the boat parade. The kids absolutely loved that. Decorating our house happened slowly and steadily, something I've really come to enjoy and savor. We had the family holiday party at our house one week before Christmas, and that stretched the holiday out a bit more too. We had a lot of Christmas. The big day came, Santa came, and Marea enjoyed it more than ever. She got her own computer, a big toy horse, a lite brite, princess nightgowns, tinkerbell toys, a few games, lots of new books...a huge success and one happy little girl who has played her heart out all day today with all her new stuff. It's fun to spoil the kids on Christmas. That's the best present for any parent!

Another fun thing we did recently was go to Marea's first movie theater movie...The Princess and the Frog! We went with Kate and Madison to an afternoon show. We got popcorn and candy and we watched the whole movie. She got a little restless, and thankfully the theater was empty so Marea and Madison got to jump around a bit. Afterwards we went and got the music CD and she loves it. We're listening in the car all the time! I'm glad to have some new kid music, finally!

Evie has been her crazy baby old self. She is a CLIMBER! I thought Marea climbed a lot, and I was wrong. Evie climbs on everything. She can climb up onto Marea's bed...up and over the railing. She'll climb up the rocker in her room and onto the bed in there. And she loves to climb and stand on every stool, box, crate, anything-she-can-possibly-stand-on thing in the house. She absolutely loves to be outside. And she knows the shoes/jacket routine before going out. She gets so excited she runs and pounds on the door when she knows we're going outside. Sometimes she runs straight for the garage and climbs up on Marea's tricycle, or she'll take off down the sidewalk. Her run is so darn cute...and FAST. She is so physical. She loves to dance and move! Her favorite show is still Yo Gabba Gabba. I don't know what it is about that show, but she is enthralled by it. She has a pretty awful cold right now and it's very hard to see her feeling yucky. She doesn't seem to bounce back from colds as well as Marea used to. Thankfully it's just a cold though, and not the awful stomach flu that rocked me two days before Christmas!

It's Frosty Season!

It started the day before Thanksgiving. I swore I wouldn't do it. Maybe it was because I was so sick of the CD's that we have in the car, and I was longing for something different. Or maybe it was Marea's excitement about Christmas (I think it was that). But the "Frosty Loop" has made it's way back into our lives, for the third year in a row. It's time to find a new Christmas CD, before I start to despise the poor old snowman.

Yes, her excitement is catchy. She started talking about Christmas a few days before thanksgiving, probably because we went to the mall and it's all decorated already. She got it in her head that Christmas is coming and we must start the preparations immediately! So it started with the music, but I held off on everything else until now. And I now declare us officially ready to start the season. I'm ready! This is going to be great! With the exception of keeping Evie and Little Ick away from the tree. That should be interesting. Marea has been talking almost every day about daddy bringing home the decorations, and getting a tree. We watched The Grinch last night. We made our gingerbread house. I think this is the first year that she'll get the idea of Santa. So this year stands to be super fun! Time to bust out the old 'be good or i'm calling santa!' trick :)! Of course I wouldn't do that! Or will I? We'll see where desperation leads me in the next 25 days.

It will be fun to see what Evie thinks about all the Christmas stuff. Of course she'll be insanely curious, and have to touch everything over and over and over. And carry things around the house and dump them. She is the queen of that. I'm sure she'll find all the decorations and preparations interesting. Maybe we'll be able to teach her a few new 'holiday' words. She's getting pretty good with her vocabulary these days. "Kit-tay" is a super popular one. And "eh juice'. We have no idea where they is the 'eh' in front of it but it's funny. And she loves singing the 'Do Do Do, Da Da Da' song, and the Elmo song.

So we got a new kitten, Little Ick. That's what Marea has named her for now. I'm not too excited about the name so we'll see if anything else sticks. Sticks to Ick. Ha ha. For now, it's working, because she's got super stinky poo and farts. She's kind of icky right now! Marea just adores her. But part of me is wondering why I brought this chaos into the house. As if I needed another thing to worry about! I am trying to teach her how to pick her up correctly and when she needs to let her run away. I hope this kitty ends up liking her and isn't scared of her. Little Ick, who lives in the bathroom, as Marea says.

Tonight we are going to Great Grandma Irene's 98th birthday dinner at Acapulco. Happy Birthday Grandma! Hope to share many more :)

Breakfast in bed!

One day, while waiting for Evie to wake up and trying to stay out of the way of the housekeepers, Marea and I ate an apple on my bed.  She thought that was pretty cool.  And then I told her about 'breakfast in bed'.  And that we should get daddy to make it for us!  So the following Saturday, he did.  And now, every morning, little lovely crawls into my bed nice and early, and waits...hoping....and finally suggesting, another breakfast in bed!  Unfortunately, it's just too hard for me to pull off with both kids during the week, and not the same anyways, so we haven't done it again.  But I think we'll plant the seed with Gary and see if we can get ourselves another relaxing morning in bed!  Oh, and the menu was, pumpkin pancakes and sliced kiwi.  (It was on halloween, after all!)

And, Evie has a new song around here.  "A do do do, a da da da, is all I want to say to you, A do do do, a da da da, the meaningless that's always true".  She loves it when we sing that to her.  And Marea thinks it's hilarious.    Evies favorite foods right now...beans, beans, the musical fruit!  She just loves any kind of beans.  Black beans, canellini beans, kidney beans, pinto beans...beans!  And she like avocado now, and will gobble up half an avocado.  She loves cheese, my homemade minestrone soup, zucchini, broccoli, berries,  chicken, and the fresh fish we've been enjoying since Gary's fishing trip.  

Marea stayed home from school this week, she had a cold.  We had a great day at home though.  Complete with a giant fort, in which we set up the DVD player so she could watch peter pan, and glow sticks.  She really liked the glow sticks.  And we even made a cut out flower garden for the fort.  Sometimes just being at home, and dropping everything else to just play, all day, is the best remedy.  For all of us. 

Another fun thing we did this week was go to Jump N Jammin.  Marea REALLY liked that place.  It was fun!  A jumpie, a ball shooting pit, and lots of climbing obstacles.  She was telling Gary all about it last night, and everything that they are going to do when they go there!  

Because it's Halloween, it's Halloween....nananananana!

Oh Yo Gabba Gabba, how did you make your way into my house?  And why was your Halloween special so good, we had to watch it over and over again?  Well, I guess it's partially because Evie lights up when she hears the music for that show.  It doesn't hold her attention for very long, but she's definitely interested.  Marea always claims not to like that show, but the Halloween one was just too fun, we all got sucked in. 

So this year I swore off Tanaka Farms pumpkin patch trip, but then I got sucked into the season and decided to take the girls.  And, I won't do it again!!! NO NO NO!!!!  The few days of fall weather tricked me.  But of course on the day we went, it was HOT and DUSTY and STINKY (that petting zoo is so disgusting) !!!!  I wanted to like it, but didn't.  Enough about that. I am breaking it off with T.F.P.P.  Which is easy to do because we discovered the Irvine Park Railroad Pumpkin Patch!  It was super fun. Lots of great stuff for the kids, including a bounce house (which M loved of course), and a haunted house (which M did not love, of course) and a train ride.  It was shady and festive and nice.  

Those pre-halloween, fall-type activities were fun, but the best pumpkin patch night was when we went the Friday night before Halloween to pick out our pumpkins.  It was dark out, and we all went, and had fun running around checking out and choosing pumpkins.  Marea even picked her own. And Evie rolled them around, sat on them, and danced around them.  It was too cute.

Visiting Grandma Irene was fun, too.  I took the girls in their costumes, and Marea decorated a pumpkin for her, with stickers and gluey stuff.  

Marea was a fairy, and Evie was the recycled pig.  Trick or Treating was fun.  We discovered a street in our neighborhood that goes all out with decorating and scaring the kids!  Marea was hesitant at some of the houses, but I helped her, and explained how it was just normal people trying to scare the kids, and that it's okay to feel scared for just a second.  It was hard for her to resist the candy, even though she hasn't eaten much of it.  She just likes the process, I think.  

Holidays are just way more fun with kids!!! 

Things to remember.....

Marea:

-Our conversations in the car.  I loved the recent one about her getting big and having her own house, right next to mommy and daddy's house, and Evie could live with her and she will take good care of Evie.  And maybe mommy and daddy can live there too.  

-The big slide in Utah.   So much fun.  And making fairy houses. 

-'playing' halloween.  She's gonna be a fairy this year. 

-her green bikini is her 'zu-kini'.  Or, zucchini.  And cupcakes are still pu-cakes.  

-Marea's current favorite song..."strike the bell", on the sailor songs CD.  

Evie:

-the Evie spin.  

-da da da da da da.  Baby.  Still.  

-she loves beans!  black beans, kidney beans, canellini beans.  But nooooo citrus. It gives her fire butt!

-latest words...shoe, sock, rock, juice.... i gotta get it on video.  

-she LOVES her bath.  Everytime she walks in the bathroom, she does the sign for bath.  

-all done with the milkies.  so sad!

Getting into our groove

Sometimes it seems like we're getting into a groove.  Especially since Marea started school, and now there is a bit more structure to our life.  Or maybe it's just MY life that feels a bit more structured, now that I have a little more free time?  Well, free, meaning, one less kid for a few hours a week :)  I guess I *am* finally tackling a lot of little projects that i've been meaning to do for a long time.  It feels good.  Sometimes I feel a little bit guilty about sending Marea off to school, because I love it so much.  I really dig that free time right now.  And it makes me a better mom.  I am more energized, and more organized.  But something that really keeps me in check, and feeling a little more balanced, is that I get to work at the school!  We call them 'special mommy and Marea days at school'.  I love being there!  I get to see everything that she gets to do, I get to watch her play and interact with other kids, and I get to interact with her friends, their parents, and her teachers on a much more personal level than I think I would of at other schools.  All around, I think this school is a perfect fit for us.  It is going to be so much fun to watch her grow in this environment.  It's a new, exciting facet of our lives.  Evie loves it too.  When I tell her it's time to go pick up Marea, she goes running for the door.  "ray a, ray a".  And she loves running across the playground on our walk to the school.   And when I open the gate, she know right where to go, and right now, she goes straight for the baby basket.  'da da da  da da' is currently how she says 'baby'.  I have no idea why, but of course I think it's absolutely adorable.  Someday, Evie will love Hilltop too. 

On the home front...Marea insists on wearing dresses that spin, or twirl.  And it must do so JUST RIGHT or there may be tears.   I went out over the weekend and got her a few warm dresses and tights and leggings, since it's officially fall now.  But she's not completely satisfied with any of them.  She's excited that they are a dress, not so impressed with how they twirl.  Oh well.  I better get used to this.

Evie is on fire, as usual.  She will climb just about anything, fearlessly, and then scream out and dance with joy as she stands in a not so safe spot.  She loves running across the room then falling into the green bag chair.  And she's learning words!  She can say 'shoe', 'juice', 'ray-a' and a few others....but ball is still 'cawl' or something like that.  She's taken an interest in coloring and painting.  She's sleeping until about 5:30 most days, and then sometimes goes back to sleep for another hour.  It's been a long time coming, but she's FINALLY sleeping almost all the way thru.  If only she could make it till 6:30 every day......