A trip to the airport

If you know Amelia, you know she loves airplanes. More than that, she loves traveling. So when we found out that a local airfield was holding an open house, we got the family together and took off for the airfield.

Once Amelia caught wind that we were going to the airport she was filled with excitement. She couldn't wait to get out of the car when we arrived. Unfortunately, her greatest ambition was to ride on an airplane. She wasn't particularly picky about what plane she would ride in, but she wanted to go somewhere in a plane.

A group at the airfield was allowing children to take rides in the aircraft at the show, but you had to be at least eight years old to ride. Still, I told Amelia that it was okay for her to ask if she could ride in a plane. The worst thing that could happen is the pilot could say, "No."

As those of you who have visited YouTube know, Amelia did ask to ride in a helicopter while we were at the airport. She didn't get to ride in the helicopter, but she did get to sit in it and see it from the pilot's chair.

Amelia's favorite planes at the show were the "stripy" jet and the baby planes. A group of hobbyists had a collection of remote-controlled aircraft at the show which Amelia referred to as the "baby planes." I asked her if these small planes would one day grow up to be full sized aircraft and she said, "Yes."

In addition to the many aircraft present there were also a few pieces of large farm equipment to be seen. Amelia really enjoyed sitting on a giant Scooper, partly because this made her taller than everyone else. Diana just loved being able to walk. After she spent a lot of time in her stroller, she was itching to get out. Once we sat her down, she was off. She's at the age where walking is so terrific that she just chooses a direction and keeps going until she either hits something or is scooped up by a parent.

Diana must have worn herself out. For the first time in weeks she went to bed without so much as a whimper.

When we left the airport and got back in the car Amelia complained again about not being able to ride in a plane. I told her that she was too young to go for a ride right now and she told me, "I'm eight years old!" I thought this was very funny and suggested that she try to tell the airshow staff that she was eight, but after some reflection she said quietly that she was, in fact, just three years old.

I'm not sure she would have fooled anyone.

Lisa

Big day for Diana

Mommy took Diana out for her very first haircut yesterday. I must say, she did great. She flinched when sprayed with water mist and jumped at the sound of the hairdryer, but all-in-all she was a terrific little girl. She never cried or whined a bit.

I realize that some of you may be saying that she didn't need a haircut. For the most part, you would be right - except for those bangs of hers that hung down past the tip of her nose.

After the haircut we went to our usual "post cheep-o haircut" hangout and got a mocha and a giant cookie for two. The girls were well behaved, though it wasn't easy to keep Diana from grabbing mommy's hot drink.

Amelia is sometimes bossy with Diana, and she doesn't always share like she should, but Diana can't stand to be without her. Tonight I tried to get Diana into bed while her sister watched "Boo" with daddy (I had managed to keep the TV off all day until dad came home - yea for me!). She refused to get into the bath without her sister. Instead she walked to the top of the stairs, grabbed at the gate, shook it violently and cried. Finally, she slumped down in a corner in despair. She looked so pitiful I brought her down to, once again, say good-night to daddy and Amelia.

Amelia was indulged a bit today because she had a rough time at the park. Sure she had a great time on the swings and the slides, and she even got to play "ring around the rosie" with two other young girls and their mommy, but her heart was crushed when she figured out that two older boys didn't want to play with her.

She first rushed over to the boys when she saw them bring out a baseball and bat. (Who wouldn't want to play baseball?) One of the boys played catcher while the other hit and abuelo filled in as pitcher and outfielder. The boys told Amelia she should get out of the way because she was too small and would get hurt. Grandpa was much more understanding and would pause the game to play catch with Amelia between pitches. Each time grandpa and Amelia would throw the ball back and forth one of the boys would say, "Can we go back to playing now?" which I found really amusing.

When grandpa got tired and sat down, the boys brought out a soccer ball and hit it far away from Amelia. Amelia felt slighted and began to cry, she then collapsed in a heap on the lawn and bawled. I love Amelia, but my goodness isn't she the drama queen? I finally got her to get to her feet and calm down with the promise of a cookie when we finally arrived home.

When daddy came home I asked if we had big plans for the weekend. He told me about some practical things we really needed to accomplish, and then Amelia piped up with her request for weekend fun: "I want to go to Disneyland," she said. I thought this was great. Amelia has never been to Disneyland, but she's heard mommy talk about it and how much fun it is, so she's ready to go.

Another very funny thing that Amelia has been saying every night is connected to a game she plays with mommy. Amelia's bedtime routine has become very complicated and includes a game where Amelia and I take turns making animal sounds. I will say for example, "What sound does a pig make?" and Amelia will make an oinking sound. Well, one animal we almost never forget is the kookaburra bird. The kookaburra bird is a favorite of mommy's because its call is so unique. Amelia can't quite say kookaburra, so every night she asks mommy, "What sound does a chocolate coke bird make?"

I assure you, I am not feeding my daughter chocolate coke, or any other kind of coke for that matter.

Lisa

Amelia, or merely a close approximation?

Like most of us, Amelia has her good days and her bad days. Yesterday Amelia was so good in many respects that I began to wonder if the real Amelia had been abducted by aliens leaving a clone in her place.

First of all, Amelia was very good at the grocery store. She did little to no dancing in the aisles (always good) and generally stayed close to mommy. We bought groceries for dinner and Amelia helped me pick out some fish at the seafood counter. She then asked to eat the fish. I told her that since we weren't at a sushi bar we would all have to wait until the fish was prepared.

At home, Amelia asked again for fish. I prepared the salmon with corn on the cob (which I had actually planned to serve with chicken the following day). Both Amelia and Diana LOVE corn on the cob, and I know Amelia can eat a ton of corn. After finishing her 2/3 of an ear of corn (Diana got 1/3) Amelia asked for more corn. I told her, "Not until you eat your fish." Now, this is normally the point where Amelia whines and fusses and claps her hand over her mouth, but instead she said, "Okay," and ate her fish.

It was really odd. Both girls had strawberry shortcake for dessert.

This morning Amelia did a great job in her gymnastics class (according to her instructor). After class she was her old self to some extent. Amelia can't leave the gymnastics school without running back and forth with at least one other child in the dance room. While she's there, she tries on and plays with the various props she finds lying about (like this black top hat).

While Amelia is in class, Diana and I go to Home Goods to find things to decorate the house (or Starbucks if I want to save some cash). The store has a rocking frog that Diana loves and she wants to climb on it and rock every time we pass it by.

Diana is also old enough to ride Amelia's rocking horse, though she needs help getting aboard. Tonight she smiled and rocked all alone. Each time I tried to put a hand on her, just to help balance her and to help me feel more secure, she would push my hand away. And after she had been riding for a while I asked if she was ready to get off to which she replied with a vigorous head shake, "No!"

Diana isn't much of a talker, but she's good at getting her point across. She's very good about indicating "yes" and "no" with shakes and nods of her head. I guess I've been teaching her some sign language without really meaning to do so. Maybe I am a good linguist after all.

Lisa

Found it!

Hey, I found my camera! Turns out that I hid the darn thing from myself by putting it in a shopping bag with some childrens' clothes.

Good thing I had my camera on hand at dinner tonight. Check out these shots of daddy feeding both daughters ice cream at once and Amelia disguised as Catwoman.

I found something else I had been looking for as well. This afternoon I found Diana's flouride drops buried in the laundry basket. (Our city doesn't believe in flouridating water, apparently.) I'm not 100% sure about this, but I'm fairly certain that Diana put the drops there.

I guess it's a good thing they didn't wind up in the washer (mommy did a lot of laundry today).

Lisa

Michief

As some of you know, I have given Diana the pet name "Stinky Toots." I don't think I need to explain how I arrived at that any more than I need to explain her new pseudonym, "Puddles." (If you don't get it, let's just say it may be time to buy a spot-treatment carpet cleaner.)

I love "Puddles," but it's difficult to keep up with her anymore. She has started doing many of the things Amelia only recently stopped doing herself. For example, Diana has recently decided that it's fun to pull clothes off of hangers. Because she can only reach my clothes in the closet, I now find piles of clean clothes on the floor if I leave my closet door ajar.

Diana also likes to carry clean clothes from her sister's closet (mostly underwear that isn't being used) down the hall and place them in the girls' laundry hamper. Though I can spot most of the clean items fairly quickly this confuses mommy enough that she winds up doing more laundry than usual because she isn't sure what's really clean or dirty.

"Puddles" has also taken to opening all cabinets and drawers within her reach. When Diana can't see the bottom of a drawer, she will simply start pulling the items out of the drawer and tossing them on the floor until the drawer is empty. The only thing worse than a baby who empties drawers is one who fills them with random objects. Diana does this, too. Things disappear for days because they have been carried off and stuffed into crevices here and there throughout the house. One of her shoes that had been missing for nearly two weeks turned up under a large stuffed toy in Amelia's room just this evening.

And while I'm on the subject, I have no idea where my camera has gone...

Lisa

To eat or not to eat

Diet, day two. Weight lost = 0.0 pounds.

Actually, my weight loss program went better today. I took a little extra time to figure out exactly how many calories were in the two teaspoons of nuts I was adding to my oatmeal in the morning and discovered that there are 48 teaspoons in a cup. If there are 48 teaspoons in a cup then there are 24 teaspoons in a half cup and there were about 8 calories in the two teaspoons of chopped pecans I ate this morning.

Not the 80 or so calories I estimated yesterday.

If I had gotten this right, I bet I could have had a cookie last night. Tonight I managed to save up enough calories in my "food bank" to have a grande mocha from Starbucks. Sweet nectar of the gods, it was good!

Diana is learning to eat with a spoon, to some extent. She can dip the spoon in a dish of food but hasn't quite gotten the scooping motion down, yet. This doesn't matter if you're eating sticky baby food, though.

Yesterday I heard a small crash and found Diana on the floor. She had reached up and grabbed a half-empty jar of bananas that I was feeding her earlier that day and was dipping a spoon into it, happy as a lark. I'm relieved that the jar didn't break when it hit the tile (you can't turn your back on Diana for an instant) - and really sorry I didn't get a photograph of the happy baby eating baby food on the floor beneath the kitchen table.

You really do have to have a camera on you at all times, if you want to catch the really cute stuff.

Lisa

The Biggest Loser

Two good friends of mine each lost a lot of weight following The Biggest Loser diet. Both of them look terrific so, I decided that I would give the diet a try. And what better time to try a new diet than with the opening of a new season of The Biggest Loser television show?

Here's my report on day one of the diet: day one went okay. Doing the calculations provided in The Biggest Loser manual I discovered that I could only eat 1085 calories a day if I wanted to lose weight. That did not sound like very much to me. A thousand calories a day equates to three candy bars - and I know for sure that I couldn't get through the day eating three candy bars.

But oatmeal is much more filling than candy bars. Yogurt is filling too, but I've never really liked it much. I felt good after breakfast and hungry after my snack. I took the kids in my famished state to the grocery store to buy some healthy stuff. Both kids went nuts in the store. Diana, who had never shown an interest in standing in a shopping cart kept trying to get to her feet. (Somehow I had picked the one cart with no seat belt.) Amelia always insists that we look at all of the decorated cakes when we arrive. Today, I was hungry and had no desire to look at cakes. Of course, today was the day when Amelia lingered over the cakes drifting up and down the pastry shelf four or five times. I kept thinking, "For only $1.50 I could have a beautiful, rich, slice of chocolate cake...mmm."

I managed to get out of the store with no cake. I did stop at Starbucks and get a diet frappuccio on the way home, but it wasn't very good so I didn't finish it. I was very hopeful that if I kept a really close watch on my calories I might be able to eat ONE cookie before bed. It didn't happen. Even though I only ate about 2/3 of my salmon patty (dry and nasty) at dinner, thereby saving even more calories, it wasn't enough for even one cookie.

I racked my brain for the best way to spend the final 60 calories I had remaining at the end of the night and found out that I could eat 6 gummi bears for a total of 52 calories. (Makes me glad I told Amelia she could buy a few gummi bears while we were at the store.)

Yes, fruit would have been a better option, but I had already had two servings of fruit and I'm not supposed to have more fruit than vegetables. And if you think I'm going to sit down to some cucumber slices right before bed, you're dead wrong.

So, the diet will require some tweaking, but I'll get it right. I'll post some 'before and after' shots when I'm thin and sexy. Oh, on a side note I did not get to see The Biggest Loser television premier tonight. I'm hopeful it's available for download somewhere. (Daddy got home late from work, and the girls were up late, and we don't have a VCR hooked up right now.)

Lisa

It seemed like a good idea at the time

Question: What do the following artists have in common?






Answer: Each of them has a song on Amelia's favorite song collection.

Yes, mommy put together a small recording of Amelia's favorite songs on her mini iPod so that she could play the songs in the car. Thus far, mommy has found 13 songs to add to this collection including: In My Room by the Beach Boys; Bella Notte from Lady and the Tramp; Funkytown by Lips, Inc.; and Bark at the Moon by Ozzy Osbourne.

Putting together this compilation has been both a blessing and a curse. It's great to have the songs available because sometimes it's difficult to get Amelia into the car at all. When I tell her that she can listen to her favorite songs in the Big Red Car, she's eager to go anywhere. Diana loves the songs as well. She is beginning to coo along with the songs (very cute) and tries to count three strikes on her fingers when she hears Take Me Out to the Ball Game.

The flip side of all this (excuse the pun) is that Amelia ONLY wants to listen to these same 13 songs over and over again. (Iron Man is still her very favorite song and the one she requests most often.) Mommy is starting to get a little tired of listening to Funkytown. I'm having flashbacks to when the song first became a radio hit and drove me insane!

What's worse is that Amelia insists that mommy sing along with every song. If I'm not feeling the tunes that day or don't know all of the lyrics to Smoke on the Water (and I don't), it makes no difference to her. She doesn't seem to mind when mommy sings, "They burned down the gambling house, it died with an awful sound...something, something, something...smoke on the water..."

Amelia even gets irritated if I don't sing along with the guitar chords on Smoke on the Water. I have pointed out that there aren't any words to sing, but she wants to hear me, "dun dun dun...duh duh duh dun" anyway. And today when I was singing Iron Man for the 100th time Amelia pointed out to me, "You aren't Iron Man, mommy." I told her that I was just pretending to be Iron Man for fun. I guess you could call that fun.

I think what I really need are more songs. If any of you know of songs that Amelia likes to sing, please pass them on to me.

On a completely different topic, when I took the girls to the grocery store today Amelia was still in her gymnastics leotard and skirt. Someone asked her in the check out line if she was a ballerina. Without missing a beat Amelia replied, "No, I'm a princess." Everyone was amused.

Lisa

Another successful vacation

This has been another very nice weekend vacation for our family. As usual, Amelia could not wait to get to the beach and was eager to play in the water. What was surprising was that Diana was excited to play in the water as well. Diana was like a boomerang. Every time we sat her down, even if she was far away from the water, she'd rush back to it. The water was freezing cold, but neither of the girls seemed to mind.

When we brought Amelia back to the beach Sunday morning it was a different story. Amelia had no interest in getting wet and would run from small waves that might or might not reach her bare feet. Of course, being Amelia, she asked if she could go out surfing after seeing other surfers and kids with boogie boards. I told her she would need a wet suit to get into the water and she suggested I get one for her.

Right away, Amelia.

Today we also got to visit a farm where the girls got to feed goats, chickens, donkeys, sheep, emus, and a cow. There was also a peacock and a peahen. Amelia said that her favorite animal was the peacock. Her favorite experience was probably eating purple (blackberry) ice cream.

-Lisa