One year later...

It's so hard to believe that Jane is already a year old! I think she had a nice birthday today. It started out pretty normal with hurrying to get ready for church and then taking a long afternoon nap. But she really started to get excited when we broke out the presents and cake!

 Trying a bite of cake...

 "Hey! This is amazing!"

 Just about done, and looking extremely gluttonous

 Too tired to use her hands anymore. Pretty sure that means we're done.

Here's a long clip of the cake eating experience

And a slideshow I made of her first year. I made one of these when Livia turned one, and she still asks to watch it all the time. Poor Jane gets the shaft in so many ways, I figured the least I could do was make one for her, as well!

At 12 months old Jane

• has four teeth
• hasn't taken any steps yet, but cruises all over the place and is a master crawler
• sleeps from about 7:00-7:00, waking up once around 4 or 5 a.m. to nurse, and takes two solid naps a day.
• Eats like a champ. She eats about twice as much as Livia does now at every meal, and has the thighs to prove it.
• Says five words: Dada/Da, Hi, Boo, Mom, and Ya-ya (Livia). She often says "Hi-Da" when Chase walks into a room. 
• Is very even-tempered and happy, and puts up with a lot of Livia's antics. 
• Immediately crawls into the bathroom every time we forget and leave the door open. It is by far her favorite room in the house. 
• Does not mind getting dirty. She loves to crawl around parks and the beach, and puts anything she can find into her mouth. She complains whenever I try to clean her up. This is very different from Livia, who would get upset whenever her hands got messy, loved to get clean, and still has issues with sand being "too sandy."
• Her favorite games are hide-and-go-seek, chase, and peek-a-boo. She plays well independently and doesn't have too much patience for sitting in our laps.
• Loves to dance and starts bopping around anytime she hears music. 
• Does pretty well in the car, unless she thinks I've left her there (like when I drop Livia off at a friend's house and leave her there for a minute and a half. Then she's always crying when I get back in the car. You'd think I'd just take her with me to the door, but no, I don't).

My favorite stage for babies is between 6 and 12 months, so I'm a little sad to see it ending. But it'll be fun to see Jane learning so many new things every day! We sure love our little Janie!

Happy Birthday!

Hard to believe my Little One is four years old today! 

Things I want to remember about Livia at 4 years old:

• Loves to play games (Uno, Candy Land, Old Maid, Zingo, etc.), and especially LOVES to win. I usually go easy on her so that she can win, but the other day we were playing Chutes and Ladders and even though she was ahead of me I happened to spin the exact number I needed to get to a ladder that would take me to the winning square. The funny thing was I didn't even have to move my piece--she took one look at the spinner and burst into tears, claiming she never wanted to play any games ever again! Obviously, we need to work on the whole "sore loser" thing. 
• Stashes things all over the house. I am constantly finding napkins, bags, pennies, paper clips, post-it notes, paper plates, mail, or other items in little piles under her bed, in her play kitchen, or in her back-pack. She will also often climb up onto the counter to retrieve her candy bag from the cupboard  and then take a few pieces and hide them in her toy dishes to eat later when she thinks I'm not looking. We are working on her squirrel-like tendencies as well. 
• Can write her name and most letters of the alphabet very well. Pretends to write notes in which the words are all variations of the letters in her name. 
• Goes to bed like an angel and can sleep through anything. Trust me, Jane's tried.
• Loves joy school, primary, and playing with friends. Liv is super social. 
• Most bizarre eater on the face of the planet. We've talked about this before. 
• Always dresses herself, but will thankfully listen to me if I tell her it's too cold for shorts, or if something really doesn't match. Wears headbands nearly every day.
• Livia is really into nicknames. Nicknames for people and nicknames for things. 

We love our smart, silly, spunky girl and can't wait to see all she learns and accomplishes over the next year!

Easter

On Easter morning Jane woke up first and crawled around the living room for some time, totally unaware of all the eggs hidden there. Livia, on the other hand, burst out of her room wearing bunny ears exclaiming, "It's Easter!"

She was excited 

 (excuse the terrible picture. It was honestly the best one I got of her that morning.)

Jane never really caught on, but did enjoy dumping the eggs out of her basket afterwards.

 We went to church as usual, and enjoyed all the messages about the Resurrection. After letting Jane catch a quick nap and frosting my carrot cake, we headed over to have dinner with Tyler and Joelle, and our friends Jeff and Sarah.

 The kids went on a little Easter Egg hunt while dinner finished cooking. We forgot Livia's Easter basket at home. All the cool kids use grocery bags, anyway.

I can easily sum up the day in two words: sugar high.

Recent happenings

In reverse order:

We flew to Phoenix to visit Chase's parents and catch some Spring Training:

We threw our annual St. Patrick's day party:

 Jane began standing and cruising all around. I should do a separate post all about her, but I'm feeling lazy (hence the lack of commentary on all of these pictures). Let me just say that she's saying a handful of real words now and loves to clap, wave, and give high-fives.

 We spent a lovely Saturday afternoon with my grandparents.

Things have been great, and now we're looking forward to General Conference, Easter, and both of the girl's birthdays!

Conversations with Livia

We've had some gems lately.

Livia: When I grow up, I don't want to be a mommy.
Me: Why not?
Livia: I don't want to have babies.
Me: How come?
Livia: Because I'm not hungry anymore.

---

While playing doctor and checking my pulse:
Liv: Yep, you are...distracting.
(When I started giggling she changed her mind and said I had a stomachache instead)

---

Liv: If you put people in batter it will taste like bum-bums and skin, right Mom?

---

Livia: Mommy, my nipples are growing.
Me: I beg your pardon?
Livia: You know, the brown spots on my arms...
Me: Oh, your freckles. Your freckles are growing. (Phew!)

---

Background: Livia had been asking me for things about every 15 seconds while I was trying to cook dinner, and I finally lost my patience.

Me: Livia! I have a lot of other things to do too, you know! The whole world is not about you!!
Livia: It's about love?

(Way to take the wind out of my sails, Liv)

---

Livia: When I grow up I want to be an Emily!

---

And this last one is quite long. I was having a really entertaining conversation with Livia while she was drawing me some pictures, and halfway through decided to record it on my i-pod. I only wish I'd gotten the first half, because it was really, really good. A lot of the parts that sound particularly random referenced earlier parts of our conversation. But she does have a rich imagination!

It’s a brave stingray, the blowfish puffed it up, as a balloon.

Oh my goodness.

She put him, the stingray in a balloon and it made air.

Oh really?

Stingrays do turn into air.

They do?

Mm-hmm, every day.

Everyday?

Mm-hmm, in the sea. And every night in this kind of sea on the moon.

There’s a sea on the moon? I didn’t know that.

Mm-hmm. And there’s a moon that’s really sharp and sleeping that stinged the stingray. And the stingray flew up into the yucky mud. And it got really muddy and it didn’t have a bath!

Oh dear.

Cuz it was trapped forever.

Oh my.

By the shark. The shark was free! It got alive again!

Oh no!

Do you want to see the shark?

I do want to see the shark.

It’s really big.

Are you drawing me a picture right now?

That big!

Woah.

This kind of shark is not skinny.

What does it eat?

Fish. But the brave fish is the puffer fish. It’s a baby puffer fish that the Wonderpets saved. The same one in the Wonderpets show.  It’s the same kind and the same one.

Oh really?

I don’t know how to make a pufferfish. Oh, fish goes like this. It’s on the really bottom of the sea and goes right here, in the corner. And the baby blowfish is really hard to see it, so none sharks can eat it. And she pops up! Pops up into spiky bones. It’s a big blowfish with bubbles, when she pops up it has spiky bones. And she spikes everyone with her spiky things. She’s like a cactus fish.

She is like a cactus fish.

Oh, I found it! She was killing every fish and everything that stinged her.

That’s a brave fish!

She even escaped from everything, she escaped into a plant and didn’t come out til she was bigger.

Hey, can I ask you a question? Which is worse, a shark or a wolf?

Both of them. They would both win, by a witch. A witch stole the plant.

What plant?

The plant in the sea. And the baby blowfish thought she was going to cook, but she popped out. She was big. She was a grown up. And she popped up into a daddy. Uh, she popped up into a mommy cuz she was a girl, but her brothers popped up into a daddy cuz her brother and sisters and mother and daddy were in a plant. Cuz they were really little, and when they popped out they were big and had sharp teeth just like the sharks and the wolves!

Oh my goodness!

Crazy blowfishes. Do you see the sharp teeth?

I do.

They’re really sharp. Those ones have needles in them.

They do?!

Needles AND thread. And sharp more things. And lots of sharp things!

Like what else?

I don’t know, I haven’t seen them before. I saw a shark, but I don’t remember.

Oh.

They sticked out by tiny teeth. They’re really tiny sharp teeth. Do you want to see the things on the teeth and the really sharp teeth?

Yeah, draw me a picture.

First you have to draw a face and then the other thing. The baby blowfish is round. It has a big family. One was a baby.

That’s the baby? The little circle?

Yeah.

Those are some good blowfish. Are you going to draw some spiky things?

They’re inside. They’re not going to pop out until there are sharks and bad things coming. When there’s wolves, there’s sea wolves. I know a kind of sea wolf. AND it’s really crazy and kills every shark, and doesn’t kill the fish because the fish has spiky bones on it. Every fish, because every fish wasn’t one of those fishes. They were really spiky, they had stingray stuff on them. And it didn’t come off, cuz it has glue on it, that sticks to it forever. And let me show you something on it. Let me see if I can do it…

Suggestions welcome

It occurred to me the other day that there is just over one year left in which I have unimpeded influence over my child. Before I know it she'll be in kindergarten, then 1st grade, and the majority of her day will be spent away from me, being taught by someone I don't know at all. Now, part of me thinks about this and wants to break out in the hallelujah chorus. I love my daughter, but she is quite demanding on my time and patience. Honestly, we always like each other more when we have little breaks from each other. But the other part of me is thinking "Wait! Not yet! There's so much I need to teach her before I send her out in the world! There's so much I still want her to experience when our lives are still calm and unstructured."

This year Livia has gone to joy school two days a week, and it's been a good experience for us. I like that it focuses less on learning numbers and letters (though those are important, too) and more on experience and discovery--finding joy in so many aspects of life. She will learn the bookish things, I have no doubt of that. In fact, I can hardly restrain myself from trying to teach her to read at her rather young age, and just yesterday she figured out how to spell yak all on her own. But this will be her last year with LOTS of play time, and LOTS of one-on-one time with me, and I want to make it count. A big part of that will still be just playing, both on her own, with friends, and with me, because I believe that play is one of the most essential aspects of childhood. But I also want to provide her with enriching experiences. I want her to be out in nature--real nature, not our manicured parks, love them as I do--to start discovering music, and art, and sports. To go apple picking, or visit a farm, or just dig in the dirt! I've also been working hard to take advantage of teaching moments: to not dismiss things as unimportant, but to use what happens to us and around us to teach politeness, kindness, faith, honesty, etc. (So far I haven't noticed much of a difference in her behavior, but I think it'll sink in at some point, right?...Right?)

And so I've been brainstorming and searching online for some supplemental classes/programs/experiences to have with her. I've found some, but I thought I'd also open it up to you for suggestions. Do you know of any good (inexpensive) programs? Free activities? Cool and simple science experiments/activities you can do at home? Nearby farms or ranches? And does anyone want to join me in some of these things? We are 99% sure we're going to do joy school again next year, and since that's only 6 hours a week we'll still have quite a bit of free time to fill.

Let me know!

Recent Favorites

Websites:

Power of Moms--a fabulous resource that always leaves me with a new parenting idea, fresh energy to put my all into mothering, and all while feeling "yes, parenting can be hard, but it's so amazing, too!"
http://powerofmoms.com/

LiveSV--The other day I was wishing there was some website that would list all the events going on in the bay area. Guess what? There is.
http://www.livesv.com/

Word of Wisdom Living--All about logical, healthy, nutritious living.
http://www.wordofwisdomliving.com/

Recipes:

Rustic Crusty bread--Okay, so not whole grain bread (which I've been trying harder to always eat, thanks to the website listed above), but ridiculously easy to make, and so delicious.Not much beats some fresh, warm bread at dinner!
http://www.melskitchencafe.com/2012/02/rustic-crusty-bread-a-simple-how-to.html

Split Pea Soup--
I've been making this one for awhile now, but I still love how easy and chock full of vegetables this soup is.
http://www.melskitchencafe.com/2011/02/split-pea-soup-with-barley-and-ham-slow-cooker.html

Caprese Skewers--Again, so easy to make (I'm all about simple, yet delicious food, can you tell?) and so, so yummy. They make a fabulous appetizer, especially since you can prepare them in advance, then just sprinkle the balsamic vinegar on right before serving.
http://www.melskitchencafe.com/2011/02/caprese-skewers.html

Lemon Crinkles--I feel like I always make the same cookies over and over, so when I saw these I had to give them a try. I love that the only extra thing I need to have is a lemon, otherwise all the other ingredients are pantry staples. http://www.melskitchencafe.com/2012/01/lemon-crinkles.html

P.S. http://www.melskitchencafe.com/ is obviously a new favorite cooking website of mine. Not everything I've made off of here has worked out for me, but overall I've had a pretty good success rate!

Authors:


I'm reading David Copperfield right now for a book group I'm in, and I had forgotten how much I love love love Dickens. He is genius.