Lazy Vegetarian: Day 11

Breakfast. The usual.

Someone turned down the toaster so all I got was warmed bread. I should have re-toasted it but I wasn't paying attention. The bread was kind of stale too, so I added extra jam to try to make up for that. Not the best breakfast.

Today's mug is one we got when we visited MN when we lived in MI. It says "Uff Da, Yah You Betcha" (Minnesota). I have tried to adopt the phrase "you betcha" since moving here. It makes me happy to say it.

Lunch: leftover risotto. I took a picture but I can't find it. But it looked the same as it did yesterday so here's the same picture.

After daycare Fiona had what she kept telling me was the "best day ever". We went to the aquarium store and looked at the fish and turtles, then we shared a donut...

Then we raked leaves into a big pile for her to jump into. Which she did. For hours. She loved it.

I took 168 pictures, so here's a few of them.

For dinner I had to make something fast because it was a book club night so I went with frozen veggie pizza from Trader Joe's. It was good. The girls ate it once I scraped the veggies off their pieces.

At book club there was homemade apple pie and ice cream. Yuuuuuuuuum.

A busy day, but lots of fun!

Photo Challenge Day 18

My bestest friends from Scotland Amanda and Michelle reminded me of this story the last time I visited. I was in my last year at university, studying for my last ever exams and I'd bought a beautiful new pair of shoes. Oh, they were so pretty. I kept looking at them and being happy that they were mine. Soon I was looking a them more than the (boring) psychology textbook and I had to put them away so I could concentrate. I love those shoes.

From a young age Fiona has also shown an interest in shoes... here she is at Christmas dinner at great grandma's nursing home in 2009 (around 18 months).

(The pictures look really grainy tonight, you can click them for a clearer (and larger) version).

You can tell from the next picture that she is taller, but not much else has changed! This is her official "check out my shoes, aren't they awesome?!" smile.

She still loves to put my shoes on and clomp around the house, and it seems Adele is taking after her. Given that she still gets around on all fours she just wears the shoes on her hands. The girl is obsessed with wearing shoes on her hands. It's hilarious.

(She's just getting ready here, once she has them on it's almost impossible to take her picture because despite the fact that she's crawling while wearing high heeled shoes on her hands, she's fast!)

Sadly I don't have many opportunities to wear all my fun high heeled shoes any more (or un-sadly in a way because my sensible sandals are MUCH more comfortable!) but luckily the girls pull all my shoes out on a fairly regular basis and wear them all.

30 Day Photo Challenge Day 18: Your Shoes

Photo Challenge Day 14

Adele is napping, Fiona is playing with Daddy and I'm meant to be doing laundry, so what better time to take a break and play with photoshop?

One of the things I am constantly working on when taking pictures is getting at least one, but preferably both eyes in focus. It's more tricky than it sounds because those girls move fast!

I told Fiona that I wanted to take her picture and this is the pose she did for me...

So I told her I needed to see her eyes and this is what she did next...

So helpful!

So I bribed her with a gummy worm and she cooperated, for the most part...

I did a little editing in photoshop to brighten it up a little and there is day 14.

30 Day Photo Challenge Day 14: Eyes

Fiona and the worms

Recently Fiona has been really interested in all things creepy and crawly. She gets super excited to find spiders in the house, and when we spot ants on the sidewalk she crouches down to watch them and says "ooohhhhh, cuuuuuute". I'm happy she likes bugs in general, and luckily she also has some sense and DOES NOT like centipedes. She doesn't freak out when she sees them (unless she's screaming on the inside and trying not to panic like I am) but she says they are yucky and gross. And they are.

Anyway, yesterday I was doing some dandelion eradicating (more on that later) and found some worms for her to see. She was very happy and excited about this and wanted to hold them. Here are some videos that I hope you enjoy as much as I do :-)

(Yes, I know they are sideways. Yes, it's possible I will NEVER remember that the camera needs to be horizontal.)

In the second video she's singing "sleeeeep in my hand, sleeeep in my hand". And later the worm did indeed sleep in her hand. If you're using "sleep" as a euphemism for "squished to death by an overenthusiastic toddler". Note to self: only let her hold big fat worms, they seem to be more resilient to her love. Poor little worm.

Girls and songs.

Fiona likes for me to sing "you are my sunshine" to her, except using "goofball" instead of "sunshine". Today she was singing it to me and I managed to catch it on video. She was in a videoing mood, normally she clams up when I point it at her.

Not to be outdone we discovered that when you sing the beginning of James Blunt's Stay the Night (badly) Adele gets crazy excited! It is also adorable :-)

Fiona loves this song She calls it "wahoo" and asks for it all the time. She likes to watch it on youtube and dance around.

Here's the video...

And here she is singing it. She's singing "wahoo, wahoo... stay the night"

Tomorrow we are heading off to the Wisconsin Dells for a week with my Aunt and Uncle and cousins. It is bound to be a really fin time, but right now I an 3% prepared, so I should go and do some laundry!

Fiona and nature

Sometimes we get some extra nature with our CSA food. The very first time we unloaded the food we found a tiny little caterpillar and Fiona was fascinated with it. Ever since then she has always asked (and looked for) the caterpillar. This week there was another tiny caterpillar! She was so excited. We put him in a box with some lettuce and watched over him throughout the day. We even skyped people to show him off.

After Fiona went to bed I found another caterpillar! A giant one! (Ok, he's really not that big, but compared to the other one he's enormous). I put him in the box with the other one and also put some corn leaves in there with him since the tiny one wasn't eating the lettuce.

The next morning they were both still there and had munched their way though a lot of corn leaf. Fiona was so happy to have caterpillars to love! She's pretty good at being gentle with them, and actually doesn't really like to hold them (the big one feels particularly weird walking on your skin) so at the moment they're just hanging out in a little container, eating corn leaf and pooping it back out at an incredible rate. Fiona of course finds the poop part completely fascinating.

I asked her what the big caterpillar's name was. She calls the smaller one "tiny teeny caterpillar" but was having trouble naming the big one. We talked about names, about how her name was Fiona and Mummy's name was Mummy, etc., and she decided to name the big one "eeeeooooeeeooootawaaaatawoootawaaata...". Every time I asked what his name was she gave me the same answer, so I guess that must really be his name!

So, nature fans, will either of them become a butterfly? We'll probably set them free soon, but they seem happy for now with their supply of corn leaves.

Fiona and her big brain

Fiona gets more clever every day. If she keeps learning at this rate I think she'll be ready for university by the time she's 8 or 9... She's developing all kinds of reasoning and deductive skills and makes connections and figures things out that surprise me all the time.

We were in the car last week and she told me she'd like to dance on the moon. Here's how that conversation went...

Fiona: Fiona want to dance on the moon

Me: You have to be an astronaut to dance on the moon. You need to work hard in school, go to university, study all kinds of physics, and get a job with NASA as an astronaut. Then you can dance on the moon.

F: Fiona dance on the moon Mummy!

M (sensing that my previous response was not adequate): The moon is too far away to dance on. It's up very high.

F: Plane goes up high in the sky! Fiona go on plane, dance on the moon!

I was very impressed with this! A moon-plane! Genius! She really could work for NASA!

She also learned how to ride a tricycle. She loves to look at bicycles and will count 'one, two wheels, handlebars, one, two pedals'. She really likes her tricycle and even gets excited to wear her helmet. Here's an adorable picture :-)

Another cute thing she does is want to sing happy birthday. She loves birthdays, and after people have birthdays she insists on singing happy birthday to them well past their actual birthday. We sing songs before she goes to sleep at night and she's adapted happy birthday to be kind of a review of what's particularly important or interesting to her at the moment. Here's an abbreviated rundown of the development of happy birthday, and some explanations...

(When we sing it, we sing it like "Happy Birthday to Fiona, Happy Birthday to Fiona, Happy Birthday dear Fiona, Happy Birthday to Fiona" since the name part is the most fun!)

We began with...

Happy Birthday to Fiona (she liked her own name, thought it was funny)

Happy Birthday to Audrey (her friend had a birthday party, she was very excited about "Audrey's Happy Day")

Happy Birthday to Daddy/Mummy/Dell/Brodie... etc. etc. (nice)

Happy Birthday to Thomas (really likes Thomas the Tank Engine)

Then more recently...

Happy Birthday to Monty's Big Owie (Monty had surgery and has a big owie)

Happy Birthday to Brodie's Poo (we're potty training and it's all about poo)

Happy Birthday to Emmy Catch a Fish (her cousin Emily was catching fish with her in the lake at Grandma and Grandpa's house)

Happy Birthday to Fish Bite You (Ben was bitten by the same fish)

(Here's a fish picture)

There have been others too, we sing something different almost every night, and it's always an entertaining window into what her little brain is thinking about at the moment :-)

However, she was unable to identify this week's Vegewhatable?! So it's up to you...here it is!

Any ideas? Please don't tell me it's a cucumber!

52 minutes of chaos

Tonight I made dinner, and put it in the oven. It takes an hour to cook, and after 8 minutes I thought it could be entertaining to document as much of the remaining hour as possible. Fiona kind of gets crazy around 5pm, so it was bound to be an experience... in addition to that, today I started toilet training...

52 minutes to go... Fiona puts shoes on the dog. He's fine with it.

51 Minutes to go... Fiona feels cold, wears dish towel as skirt. Which reminds me... I need to wash this, not just pick it up off the floor, shake it off and hang it back up...

For the next 4 minutes... Fiona covers Brodie with towels...

Then Ben comes home. Parks. Exits the garage. Then... nothing. After a few minutes I realize he's just hanging out outside, talking on the phone, having a conversation which is missing the addition of a 2 year old yelling in the background.

Soon he is home. Yay!! Now to give him a baby to hold and a "to-do" list...

Fiona sits on the potty. Nothing happens.

Fiona was very excited when I put new batteries in the swing today for Adele. She had a tantrum, got up, saw that her rotten sister was still in the swing, had another tantrum, checked on whether Adele was done, had another tantrum... After Adele was finally done, she was ready to have a turn...

40 minutes to go... Fiona requests "Nemo DVD". I told her she had watched enough TV already today, so she tries asking Daddy...

38 minutes to go. She refuses to take no for an answer, and takes matters into her own hands.

36 minutes to go. Fiona sits on the potty. Nothing happens.

33 minutes to go. Fiona plays peek a boo with Adele. With my shirt. Both of them think it is hilarious.

31 minutes to go. Fiona sits on the potty. Nothing happens.

28 minutes to go. I make Fiona a diagram to remind her of the potty rewards system. Ben is concerned that the first two pictures do not adequately indicate that these have to happen in the potty.

26 minutes to go. Fiona draws a kitty and a fish on the diagram.

17 minutes to go. Fiona sits on the potty. MAKES A WEE!! The diagram worked! I will go down in history as a potty training genius. Fiona is rewarded with a chocolate button but ate it before I could get a picture of her triumphant face.

11 minutes to go. Elmo has a big owie. He's wearing Monty's big collar from the vet.

7 minutes to go. Adele is happy. She's just finishing a smile.

5 minutes to go. Elmo is having fun in the swing!

4 minutes to go. Fiona wees on the floor. ARE YOU KIDDING ME? How did you possibly need to go again only 10 minutes after the last time?! And how did you forget where you were meant to be doing it?! And why are you laughing and splashing in it? And is dinner really still not ready?

1 minute to go. Fiona has a time out for kicking/stomping on Brodie. Please, please let dinner be ready soon. Because after dinner comes bed time.

Dinner's ready!

Well, we all made it. And tomorrow we get to do it all over again!

Updates, excuses...

I'll begin with the excuses... Adele doesn't sleep!! If I'm lucky she'll sleep for a couple of hours in the morning (on mornings when Fiona is at daycare I use this to frantically catch up on work) and then if she does nap for more than 10 minutes in the afternoon Fiona puts a lot of effort into waking her up as efficiently as possible. Then in the evening I put her to bed and begin dinner. She wakes up. I put her back to bed and resume making dinner. She wakes up. Repeat until I manage to eat my dinner very fast, then put her back to bed again until around 10.30 when she finally gives up and goes to sleep. After this we go to bed and on a good night she only wakes up once, on a normal night it's 2 or 3 or 5 times. Anyway, the point is that she makes me very tired. And that's my excuse for not making more bloggings!

So the good news is that she doesn't seem to need sleep to grow, and at her weight check appointment yesterday weighed in at 12lb 10oz. She's still very tiny (somewhere in the 5th - 10th % compared to 5 month olds, nowhere near being on the charts compared to 7 month olds) but is growing steadily and is healthy, which is all the doctor wants to see.

Adele gets more cute and interactive every day. I have so many pictures of her being adorable and making cute faces...

She is fascinated with Fiona and they get along fairly well most of the time. They spent some time together in a boat...

And just hanging out...

She loves to lie on the floor and watch Fiona playing.

Fiona has a little dolls house with a Mummy, Daddy and Baby. She also has a garage with a random man and a mechanic. In addition to this she has a variety of duplo animals. She loves to play with them all together and when I was sorting through the photos I came across this gem...

Yes, there are three people in that bed, and a variety of farm animals are sharing the bedroom. The baby is also haphazardly thrown into bed upside down. I swear, this is not an accurate representation of life in our house...

Look how happy she is...

But that is not all! Doggie and Daddy get to rest...

While Mummy does the laundry and baths the baby...

She also commentates the goings on in the house, which can sometimes involve the Mummy shouting angrily at the Daddy... usually telling him to get out of bed... um... nope, never happens in real life. Eeek!!

Along with the playing, she's now able to pretend something that isn't really happening... like pretending to be cold. What's even funnier is that when she really is cold, like after a bath, this is exactly what she does to show that she's cold. When I watched this I laughed so hard that it hurt...

I was going to also talk about guacamole and croutons because I know I've been neglecting to share my recent culinary adventures but Adele just woke up for the 7th time this evening so I'm going to save those for another time... it's fascinating stuff though, so look forward to it!

Flying Penguin

Fiona has been interested in animals for some time. She loves to watch animal videos on youtube. I came in last week to catch a snippet of this one... make sure you watch it before reading on...

Isn't that incredible? I thought it was the most wonderful video. I didn't think too hard about how feasible it was that they'd discovered a new species of flying penguin, never mind how likely it would be for them to land in South America. And Fiona LOVES this video. When we watch it she gets so excited and jumps around yelling "pehguings... fwy! fwy!". It's really fun.

So you can imagine my disappointment to find that the video was a BBC April Fool's joke! I feel a bit dopey for not realising it, but most of all I'm just worried that Fiona is going to grow up thinking Penguins can fly ;-)

If you're interested, there's a video about how they made it.

Later this evening Ben, in fake frustration, jokingly stomped his foot and exclaimed "dang it!". Fiona laughed so hard I thought she was going to wet herself. Maybe she did, she does wear diapers, I'd never know... For the rest of the evening Ben, Me, or Fiona would say "dang it!" and Fiona would crack up all over again. I haven't laughed so hard in a long long time. And yes, we really have to watch what we say around her now!

She's so funny :-)

A collection of things...

We've been busy since last time. There was Easter. Spring cleaning. Work. Sickness. Health. Tantrums. Cuddles. A brief stroke of genius. Growing. Learning. Laughing. Here's a sampling of what we've been up to...

We had a wonderful time colouring easter eggs at Cathy's house. On Easter morning instead of an egg hunt, I hid* chocolate buttons for Fiona to find. These are Fiona's all time favourite things and we have to have them specially imported from Britain via visiting Grannies... Fiona was overjoyed to find each one. She'll do pretty much anything for a chocolate button.

*"Hid" = "Placed in plain sight in obvious locations"

We were seriously considering selling out house and moving, and were making preparations such as cleaning, repainting, de-cluttering, etc. For a variety of reasons we decided in the end to hold off for a couple of years, but Fiona was very helpful and really excited to help clean! I don't know where this comes from because Ben and I are far from neat freaks, but she really wanted to help.

Adele has been very smiley and happy recently, despite Fiona realizing that this small creature may pose a threat to her house dominance. Fiona has started to be quite possessive of her toys, and "mine!" has become her catchphrase. Adele doesn't mind that Fiona has an aversion to sharing, and has been frequently making happy faces.

In other Adele news, we had her 4 month checkup. She's doing really well! She weighs 9lbs 10oz now, and when you compare her to other 2 month olds she's in the 25th percentile for height, weight, and head circumference. We thought she had an oversized noggin, but she's perfectly in proportion. Fiona was 11lbs 2oz at 2 months, so Adele's still a little smaller, but perfect :-). She also doesn't need the apnea monitor any more as of today, so that's great news! No more wires! I'm not sure how much sleep I'll get tonight, but hopefully she won't wake up when I poke at her every 15 minutes.

I had a brief, but useful stroke of genius. Ben and I (being the classy, highly cultured wine lovers that we are) drink a lot of "wine in a box". The trouble is that it's really hard to hold Adele with one arm and hold a glass and twist the tap and aim the wine with the other. And putting Adele down is not an option. Trust me. Hence, the stroke of genius...

Nice, huh? And yes, that's Franzia. It's The world's most popular wine (TM)

Other than that we've been doing the usual. Fiona loves playing outside, and it's been warm enough to take a lot of walks and play in the garden.

When we suggest going out she gets really excited and puts her shoes on and asks for Brodie's "weesh" (leash). She loves Brodie so much!

Adele is sleeping well and sometimes will even sleep 6 or 7 hour stretches. Those nights are wonderful! Fiona has started saying things are "funny"... usually things that are really not funny, like when she tries to sit on Adele or balances on the arm of the couch... And she has also cultivated an evil laugh for these situations...

There's not much else to say to that, really!