Merry Christmas

To all my Liberal friends:

Please accept with no obligation, implied or implicit, my best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low-stress, non-addictive, gender-neutral celebration of the winter solstice holiday, practiced within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion of your choice, or secular practices of your choice, with respect for the religious/secular persuasion and/or traditions of others, or their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all. I also wish you a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling and medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally accepted calendar year 2008, but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures whose contributions to society have helped make America great. Not to imply that America is necessarily greater than any other country nor the only America in the Western Hemisphere. Also, this wish is made without regard to the race, creed, color, age, physical ability, religious faith or sexual preference of the wisher.

To all my Republican friends:

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

The weekend

His "horsie"

First time in the backpack:

A day hike at Torrey Pines:

The bird feeders we made out of pinecones, peanut butter and bird seed(I hope birdseed is not bad for kids, because Bear had a bite before I could stop him):

The little Bear that could...

The C-A-N-T word has worked it's way into Bear's vocabulary.
"Please clean up your toys"
"I can't."
"Please eat your chicken."
"I can't."
"Can you throw the ball to me?"
"I can't."
"Climb into the Jeep please."
"I can't."
It has been driving me nuts.

So I have been telling him about the little engine that could. And making him say, I think I can, I think I can, when he tells me that he can't do something.

We have also been working on using the pedals of his trike. He just has not gotten it. So today, we were outside and I decided to try again with the pedals. He got on and started chanting, I think I can, I think I can. And he got it! He was pedaling all over the patio saying, "I fink I can, I fink I can."

And on another note, I finally got Bug into the Dr for her 6 month. It was really nice, the Dr. was with us for almost an hour, way better than the Navy Dr's. She has dropped down to the 75% in height and weight. She is 17lbs 11oz and is 27.5 inches long. I am not worried though. She has finally started rolling over from back to front. She still can't figure out what to do with that arm though. And I have got to say, she gives the best hugs and kisses. I forgot how much I missed those infant loves. The open mouth kisses all over my face and when I pick her up, she wraps her arms around my neck and squeezes with all her might. I just love it.

Another California post.

Californians drive in the rain like Washingtonians drive in the snow. It has rained all day. I heard on the radio that this morning there were 136 weather related accidents in San Diego. I laughed-until I got on the road with them. Normally here I do nothing less than 70 on the freeway. And even then I am getting passed up by lunatics that make me feel as if I am in Park. Today though, no one went faster than 40mph. It was hilarious. But not really because when it rains here, it floods within 20 minutes. The streets are not built for rain. Walking through the parking lot of Walmart this morning made me feel like a settler on the Oregon trail trying to cross rivers. Poor Bear almost got swept away by one of those raging rivers. Ok that might be dramatisizing the moment a little bit, but the poor kid had to walk around Walmart with squishy feet. I heard that back home it is snowing. I am a little green with envy. I might have to take Bear up into the mountains this weekend so that we can see some snow. And so that I can show off my awesome Washingtonian snow driving skills...

Mama's taking us to the zoo tomorrow...

I have got that Raffi song stuck in my head because I have been singing it to the kids all day long. I took them to the zoo this morning and we had a good time. I got the butt work out of my life. That zoo has the worst hills I have ever seen. I made Bear get out and walk a few just so I had less poundage to push.

A little amusing

Not only do these people have scarves and hats on the shelves in their stores; they actually wear them too! In 65 degree weather! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.

This was just today

Daily, this child gives me something to laugh about. These are just a few examples.

This morning I was talking on the phone trying to make a Dr. appointment for Bug. I was on hold forever and Bear informed me that he needed his diaper changed. So I put the phone on speaker and started the job. She came on while I was in the middle of it, and she said, "how may I help you?" Before I could get a word out, Bear says, "Excuse me ma'am, I pooped!" She started laughing and I wanted to die.

This evening, I was going to the bathroom and he throws the door open and asks me, "You want me to turn some water on for you mommy? It will help you potty." Now I must interject here that when he is on the toilet I turn the sink water on to help him potty. I said, "No honey, I am fine on my own. But can I have some privacy please?" He said, and I am not kidding. "Yes mommy, you may have some privacy. Thank you for asking Babe!"

Santa

We went and sat on Santa's lap today. Bear was so shy. He could hardly utter out what he wanted for Christmas. He told me yesterday that he wanted a "cute outfit." :)

We had to wait in line almost an hour, but Bear ran around making friends and Bug sat nicely in her stroller.

New foods

I love introducing new foods. Just because of the endless faces that a baby can make that let you know exactly what they think even if they cannot verbalize it.
The first look when you put something new in her mouth is shock. You get her head to jerk back and her eyes to open wide. The next look is the look I would imagine she would make if I put poop in her mouth. Disgust. What did you put in my mouth? She starts to chew on it. She rolls it around her mouth. The facial expressions never stopping. The next look is the look of being betrayed. She looks at me like I just slapped her in the face. She narrows her eyes at me and cocks her head to the side. How could I put something new in her mouth? Following that is acceptance. Okay maybe not so bad. She can handle it. And then comes the grab for the bowl. Give me more!

Six

Bananas for the first time:

Oh my baby girl. Half a year old. You have grown so much. Changed so much. You are such a good girl, so calm, so serious. It takes an act of God to make you laugh. Only your brother seems to have that ability. And when I sing and dance to the "move it, move it" song. You love that.

We tried solid foods a couple weeks ago. Bananas at first. You hated them. Still do. The only bite that is you have swallowed is the spoonful your brother gave you. And that was only because he shoved it so far back, I think he deposited it right into your stomach. You love rice cereal. And carrots. You still breast feed like I am going somewhere and you are stocking up. Every couple of hours still. We are down to only one nightly feeding now, although a few times you have gone all night.

You hate naps. You are anti-napper. 20 minutes max. 3 times a day. That is all you need. Sometimes I wish that you needed more.

You have been sitting up on your own now for a couple weeks. You seem to be so happy with that. I have been trying to get you to roll over from back to front forever now. You refuse. As soon as I lay you down, you start to fuss. Sit you up and you are fine. You have started to lean forward on your hands and you rock back and forth like you are just going to take off crawling any day. I hope not.

You love to read books with us. I cuddle you up with us when we read and you sit there so engrossed with what is in the book. Even books with no pictures. You just love the story.

I love how you look at me. You look up at me with a little grin on your face and that twinkle in your eye like I am the sun and the moon and the stars. I just hope that I can live up to what you think I am.

You love it when I sing, you try to sing along. You have the most adorable husky voice. Maybe it is from all of the growling that you do. :) You are still my little growler. You love to growl at strangers walking by. You can sit and watch your surroundings forever.

I love you. I can't remember what it was like before you were here and you have only been here 6 months. I look forward to the person you are going to be. I am so curious to see who that is.

Today we celebrated Bug's half a birthday. I made a half a cake and topped it with a half a candle. I forgot her half a birthday hat though. Bear jumped in on one of the shots. "Mommy, say cheese to me!" Unfortionatly she didn't get any of her birthday cake.

2.5

You are now 2 and one half years old. It seems like just yesterday you were learning how to walk. Now you don't stop running and jumping. You are such a little dare devil. You love to push youself to the limit on the heights you can jump from. We haven't had to visit the ER for a broken bone yet though. (knock on wood...)

You have been speaking sentances for almost a year but these last few months have shown what a blabber mouth you really are. After we had been living with Daddy again for a few days, he asked me if you ever stopped talking. I laughed and told him no. You comment on everything you see. Even the big "boo-boos" you saw at the pool shower. And you love to sing. If you hear a song for the first time, you try to sing a long even if you don't know the words. Your favorite song right now is Jingle Bells. Last week it was You are my sunshine.

After watching another friends blog and her 23 month old reciting the books of the New Testiment, I realized that I was slacking on that part of your education. So we started learning them. The first day it came out like this, "Maffwew, Mark, Wook, and Clara." Luke and Clara are friends of yours in Washington. I explained to you that Clara is not a book in the bible. You were adamant that it was. Finally the next day you got it. You can get through the Corinthians before you are stumped. But it has only been a week.

Your favorite food right now and has been for the last 2 years is noodles. And cheese and bananas. You will eat 5 bananas a day if I let you. But I usually stop you at 3. You hate most vegetables. You will eat peas though. And this last couple weeks you have started to eat salads. You love romaine lettuce and tomatoes and finally carrots. I haven't introduced you to salad dressing yet though. I can't give you any sort of dipping sauce either. You will just dip whatever it is and suck the sauce off until the food is almost falling apart, discard it and move on for a new dipping intrument.

You love to read. You have Brown Bear memorized and "read" it to Bug every night. And the book with the animals rolling out of bed, you love to "read" that one too. I just got you a book about George Washington, Ben Franklin and John Hancock and you love it. You are also pretty good at picking out presidents. You can name George Washington, Abe Lincoln, Ronald Reagan, George Bush and now Barack Obama. You also know who Mike Rowe, Reba, Dr. Phil and Judge Judy are(thanks Dad.) You love Michael Buble. And you like to listen to Dr. Laura on the radio.

You are such a happy little boy. I love when you bounce out of bed, telling me how you slept well, asking for your "good morning" juice and "opemeal." You run around all day long, it is all I can do to keep up with you. You still love your nap in the afternoon(thank goodness) and often put yourself in bed and to sleep. At night, it is my favorite time, you take a bath usually with your sister and get your jammies on. I cuddle you close because I love to smell the Burts Bees in your hair. We read book after book and that is never enough, "One more mommy" is often the plead. So we read just one more. And then you cuddle up in bed with "doe and might" who are your buddies that I fear will go to college with you. And you get to pick out one car to sleep with. Usually McQueen is your choice. You now say your prayers all by yourself now. You pray for Daddy and Mommy and your sister and Pop pop and Nana Sue and Uncle "Dan the Man" and Kimmy and Jeremy and Aunt Donna every night. Sometimes you pray for random things, like your cars or the trees.

I love you. You are my Bear. Your smile melts my heart. You fat little fingers on my face telling me how beautiful I am makes me swoon. I love you. I am so blessed to have you.

The pad

This is for my friend H and everyone else who wanted to see the new "house." I took the mattress off of the bottom bunk and put both of their beds down there. It has been okay having them in the same room. Bear will come and wake me up when she wakes up. "Mommy come feed her please."
And then when I put them down at night, he likes to go to bed when she does and I hear this every night. "Go to bed baby girl, it is time to sleep, see you tomorrow, hush baby girl, I love you."

He can do the quarter magic trick

Bear found a quarter today on the floor. I remember memories of being little and the astonishment that I had of my father being able to pull a nickle from behind my ear. I thought that now was the time to share the magic with my son. He thought it was so cool. "Mommy! Pull another quarter from my ear!" We played that game for awhile and then it became old, or so I thought. About 30 minutes later, I heard a burst of laughter coming from his room. "Mommy! I have a quarter and a penny in my ear!" Followed by more laughter. I went in to "pull" some money from his ear. And low and behold, he really had money in his ear. This is what I found:

Now if only he could blow $100 bills from his nose...

"Mommy, I am dirty laundry!"

It took me forever to get this picture. You know, when you have one kid, it is fairly easy to get a picture with said child looking at the camera. With two of them now, it takes a miracle to get them both looking at the same time. And I am at the point where I don't care that he is making this cheesy face. As long he is looking in my direction, I am good.

She is going to kill me someday

I was taking pictures of her and she burped and then sneezed at the same time just as I was taking the picture. Ha ha ha ha ha.

Fun in the sun

Well not really sun, it was a cool 70 degrees today and overcast. I can live with that.

His new "cheese" face:

She did not like the feel of the grass. This was her growling her feelings. (Daddy taught her how to growl. So instead of crying now when she is upset, she growls. Kind of cute.)

My dog

I finally got my mom up on Skype. We were talking and I called out for Tela who is living with my parents right now. She came running and was so excited to see us on the computer. She was a little confused though. She kept looking behind the computer to see where we were coming from. I got a few good shots up her nose too.

California kids...

Can I just tell you that it was 88 degrees here today. This is nuts!

Here's your sign...

I was in the YMCA the other day signing up for a membership and I had to write down Daddys birth date. I wrote down 80 and I kid you not, she looked at it and asked me, "is that 1980?" In my head I had so many smart ass comments running around, no that is 1880, I am married to a 127 year old man. But I looked at her and nicely said, "yes."

Sweet baby

I just had the sweetest bedtime with the Bear. Usually when we say our prayers, he repeats what I say after every phrase. Lately he has added in extra things he wants me to pray about that I forgot. But tonight when I finished, he kept praying. "Jesus, I pray for mommy and daddy. Daddy goes underway tomorrow. I pray for my friends and my toys. Thank you Jesus."


My heart just melted.

Disobedience

Since our bathroom is so small that when sitting on the toilet you can move about half an inch each way and touch wall, I have no problem peeing with the door open when it is just me and the kids here. Today Bear and I were playing on the computer and I told him I had to go to the bathroom. I said, "I am going potty now, do not touch anything while I am gone."

As I was in there, I heard a funny noise coming from his direction. I leaned out and caught him by surprise. He jumped about 5 feet in the air and said, "Mommy please close the door." I asked him why, and he said and I quote, "I would like to be disobedient right now."

Bear

"I am feeling so upset mommy."


"I need to go to my room and cry, excuse me."


"Mommy, I want to hit the road now."


"I am soooo thirsty for a coffee at Starbucks."


"I driving you nuts mommy?"


This kid keeps me cracking up daily. He is always coming up with something new to say.

Up and running

Well we made it here. And we now have internet. I had to install it myself. I was kind of surprised at first? No outlandish installation fees? No strange man in my house bending over showing me where the good Lord split him? No waiting 2 weeks for someone to come and plug a couple of cords in? Cool.
So here I am. California baby. The weather has been okay. In the mid to upper 60's. I can handle that. The people here are crazy. And mean too. I have had to start driving like them just to survive. Everyone seems to be in there own little world. I miss my island. I miss walking through a store and smiling at someone and have them smile back. Here if you smile at someone, they look at you like you just picked your nose and wiped it one them.
My bathroom here is the size of my old bathroom that I thought was so unmanagably small that I never used it. Ha ha. What I would do for that "small" bathroom now. I can't keep my shampoo and stuff in the shower with me here. There is a tiny self that you can balance things on if you are good and as long as no one is actually in the shower. Daddy got in there the first night and I heard a "thud, thud, thud. thud. ****!" Followed by, "you have got to find some place else for these things!" I thought he was being a little dramatic. Until I got in there. And the same thing happened. So they are now on the counter next to the shower.
The toilet is kind of cool. You step on a little lever and a hole opens up and whatever you deposited in there falls down. Lord help me if I ever drop anything valuable in there. I am not reaching my hand into a hole filled with poo. It sounds like it would really smell in here, but it doesn't at all. I am pleased.
Bear seems to be doing okay with the move. He keeps asking for his friends and his house though. And to go back to Washington. But other than that he is fine. :) I just get him a Starbucks and he shuts up. :)
Starbucks down here are not as plentiful as I would like. And I have yet to find a drive thru. That sucks.
I am not ecstatic about being here but I am trying. I try and look at the sunny side of things. That saying, "bloom where you are planted," keeps going through my mind. There is nothing I can do about being here so I just have to make it good. I know that if I am negative, that will rub off on Bear and Daddy. And we are together again and that is what matters. And there is one awesome thing about this place. There is more than just a Wal-Mart and an Applebees here. I love my island but it is really nice to have an option of where to go and what to do. I put "food" into my new GPS and a list of about 40 places pop up that are with in 3 miles of here. Nice.
And Disneyland. That is here too. I have not been able to go yet, but we have only been here for 4 days so give me time.
I will post pictures later of my home. It is nice here. And the people here are nice too. Bug and Bear are sharing a bottom bunk right now. I took the mattress off and put here new crib on one side and his crib mattress on the other. It works out really nicely. He likes it. And she has slept through the night now for the last two nights. It has been beautiful. My room is interesting. They call it a walk-around queen bed. But it is more of a scoot around queen bed. And the bed lifts up so we can store all of our clothes down there. I Daddy that his only job is to get the clothes out the night before. I am not going to be tossed backwards and upside down at the butt crack of dawn so that he can look for some underwear. He agreed. Smart man.
I am having a tough time with the no friend thing. I haven't called any of you on purpose. I don't want to cry. I miss you girls like crazy but it seems to hurt less if I don't think about you. I know that is crazy and I promise it won't be forever. Maybe just the for the next year. :) I am getting a little misty right now thinking about it. So onto differant topics.
Bear took a nap yesterday for 3 hours and Bug and I for 2. I guess we were tired.
Okay, off to feed the kids.

Sucks

I hate birthdays. I hate getting older and I hate the attention that birthdays bring. Just leave me alone and let me turn one year older and throw my own pity party by myself. This year just tops them all though. Here is why:
Obama is the President elect. Even though technically he got voted in a day before my birthday, I am still counting it as part of the sucky day.
Today we moved from WA state and are headed to California to live forever. I left all of my friends and family. I hate making new friends. After a very tearful good bye last night my friend H said that I would meet new people. I DON'T NEED NEW PEOPLE!!! I have enough people in my life. I am good. Thanks. I have the friends I need and they just need to realize that they should all follow me and move to California.
And to top off this morning of crap, Aunt Flo decided to bless me with her presence on this 2 day car ride I am now on. Over sharing? Yes; most likely, but I don't care.
But on a happy note, we are a whole family together again. And that is what is keeping me going on this day of gloom that is my birthday.

Here is to you Obama

AND PROUD OF IT!

Taking a break

I have been go go go for the last 3 weeks. So tonight I thought I would sit down and put up some pictures to recap those weeks. I have been busy packing, but always keep the camera handy. And on Saturday we went to the O-club for the Halloween party. Bear got to run around and play with his friends. He could of cared less about the candy. He was there for social hour. He made a Happy Halloween sign and decorated a cookie and got one bite out of it. As you can see, this year he is a cowboy. These are his Uncle D's clothes from when he was a young'in.

This is the only picture I have of Bug in her costume. She is a pumpkin ballerina:
Ready for the sun of California!

A budding photographer...

I wonder...

As the season changes and the leaves fall, I wake up to frost on every roof because the temperature is dropping, and I wonder, why the heck hasn't anyone invented a heated toilet seat yet? There is nothing that makes my butt pucker more or wakes me up quicker than sitting my nice warm toosh on a cold toilet seat!

Ha ha ha ha ha