5 things my kid does at this age that I never did

This week is birthday week for the kiddo. So, in honor of my mini-me, here are 5 things she does that has me shaking my head.

1. She says “I know, right?” and various other colloquialisms that she has no doubt picked up from me. Maybe I did this when I was this age? But I doubt it because my parents didn’t speak that way. They were just trying to speak plain English, their second language, and try to deal with three kids who were brought up with this second language as their first. The kid started saying “whatever” at a very young age and I got angry at her for that. She told the teacher this at Sunday School. I was sitting right there and was mortified and delighted at the same time.

2. She eats sashimi, and a lot of it. How lucky to be living in this city at this time with this family where sushi is a weekly occurrence because you can pick it up at the local store, where there is a full time sushi chef employed and they can make it to order …. AT THE GROCERY STORE. The first time I had sushi I’m pretty sure I was in high school. It was a big deal when they opened up a restaurant in “West Hartford Center” and dang it was super expensive. But here, still expensive but more bearable because, you know, I have a job and stuff.

3. Knows what sarcasm is by name, and the other day in school drew a Venn diagram. Conversation, once, in the car:

Husband: oh I love parking in the city.

Me: funny, you don’t sound like you love it.

Kid, in the backseat: That’s sarcasm! (as if explaining to me what her father was saying. But did she not get what I was doing? Maybe she still has a little bit to learn).

4.Not only has taken selfies of herself (and once, with her aloof dog Max). She even draws pictures of princesses taking selfies. Wait, WHAT?

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“they are taking a picture together”

(she also says “Wait, What?” but because her English is so proper she says, “Wait, what did you just say?” Similar to when I tried to teach her the words to the “Ghostbusters” song. “Who ya gonna call?” I’d sing and she would repeat, “Who are YOU going to call?”

5. I dunno, maybe there’s just 4 things I can think of at this second. So I’ll spend the rest of this post talking about how kind she is, empathetic, creative, artistic, outspoken (usually in a good way) hilarious and I could go on, but I know it’s not the most interesting thing to read about other people’s kids. (really, friends, it’s not)

Happy Birthday, sweet pea.

 

Hot dog? Hot dog!

“Lily, what do you want for dinner?”

“Hot dog?”

“Really? Do you know what a hot dog is?”

“Pizza?”

“But last time you didn’t eat the pizza.”

“Hot dog. Hot dog! HOT DOG HOT DOG HOT DOG HOT DOG.”

Come to think of it, hot dogs sound pretty good. Only we don’t eat hot dogs in this house. How does she even know what a hot dog is? How about some sausage instead? With some grilled peppers and maybe some sweet potatoe fries on the side? Yeah. That’ll do.

sausage and peppers via chattycha on flickr

For anyone curious as to how Lily learned about hot dogs, I suspect this book may have had something to do with it (the dramatic ending includes a huge hot-dog shaped blimp).

Lily’s Birthday Cupcakes

She turned 2 so quickly. My is time flying. I took the day off work and we had a wonderful day together as a family. Breakfast at Sunflour Cafe. A trip to the zoo, where the weather was kind and the animals were out.

happy birthday gorilla via chattycha on flickr

A nice long nap, followed by dinner and of course the obligatory cupcakes. I am including a pic of the cupcake without frosting, as the end result was kind of unimpressive.

mini cupcakes for mini me via chattycha on flickr

Remind me not to use that icing again.

Lily’s First Words

I wanted to write these down, lest I forget. Her first word, in my mind, was “shoe”. Still one of my favorites.

A rundown of Lily’s vocabulary:

  • Hi (said softly, “Hi-eeeee)
  • Shoe
  • Balloon
  • Zoo
  • Mama
  • Dada
  • Happy (anything that is good)
  • No (said, loudly, no-no-no-no)
  • Ball
  • Eye
  • Nose (said, no)
  • Cheese
  • Cheerio
  • Apple (app-um)
  • Banana (nana)
  • Bye-bye
  • Night-night

In the words of Marvin Gaye, What’s going on?

Wow. I sure do spend a lot of money to host a blog that I never update. Life has been busy as of late. In February I started in a new position at the firm, and suddenly life went berserk, but in a good way. Here are some highlights.

1) I had to quit Daring Bakers because I was getting too stressed out with all the fancy baking. You can still visit their challenges monthly, and in fact you should because there are amazing bakers over there.

2) I discovered a new genre of fiction … urban fantasy. Yes, I’ve always been late to the game and this is no different. Trying to catch up on the werewolves/vampires/shapeshifter/fae fiction out there. And there is a lot of it.

3) Along those lines, the family visited beautiful Forks, Wash. It was C-R-A-Z-Y. Here is a taste.

4) I got a Kindle for my birthday. YES!

5) I’ve been spending my free time (after work and feeding the baby and playing with the baby and putting the baby to bed) reading. Or maybe working. But not blogging.

6) Baby is AWESOME.

7) What else do you want to know? I will try to come back and visit soon.

XOXO

You say it’s your birthday!

While L’s actual birthday was last week, I will never forget that my water broke the night of the AFC/NFC Championship games, which happened to be tonight. Haven’t decided who I’ll be rooting for in the Super Bowl, but I will try to remind the husband that I called these two teams as meeting in the Super Bowl back around week 5 or so. Seriously. No, really. I did. Maybe it wasn’t too difficult a call to make considering both teams were so frikkin hot, but I did and that’s what’s important. But, I digress.

Due to scheduling, we did a little celebratin’ yesterday, when Grandma was in town. Sheva, a gal I know from work who does photography on the side, came over and took pics of the family. I made cupcakes for the little girl. I made it easy on myself by purchasing Dr. Oetker brand organic cake and icing mix (chocolate/chocolate, as requested by the husband), then just whipped up a little bit of icing to decorate. Used some handy decorating tools that the MIL gave me for Christmas. Thus the fancy-schmancy leaf tips and star tips and somewhat neat handwriting using the round tip. Thanks, Grandma, for playing with the little monkey while I baked and frosted.

happy birthday

Happy Birthday, little monkey!

Then and Now

I was swinging by some old posts and I caught this one, where I detailed out how we rearranged the furniture in our living space. And I saw the pic I took of our living room and giggled. Here is the pic:

THEN

THEN

And here is what that space looks like now.

NOW

NOW

Yes, that’s a baby in the middle of all the hubbub. And that is Max creeping up on the lower right hand corner. We’ve overtaken his previous blankie spot. Now he slumps against the door to snooze. He doesn’t understand why SHE has so many blankies all over the house and he’s just got the one upstairs now.

Too much stuff. And it keeps growing every day. Yikes.

Banana, Green Lake and one cute kid

Banana - All gone

Banana - All gone

I’m not updating like I used to, and I apologize. The two things I enjoyed writing about most, food and fitness, have both taken a trip to the backburners as baby L has taken priority. So, I could write about her food and fitness. Food: Loves pears, banana with rice cereal, avocado, sweet potato and yam. Couldn’t care less about peas and carrots. She’s now enjoying two solid meals a day, in between her liquid lunches and dinner. She definitely has a sweet tooth. Gets that from her mom.

We are slowly introducing new flavors, too. I’ve tried a little yogurt, and a little tofu. The yogurt I think will be okay. The tofu on the other hand … not so much. I’m excited to try a litle spice as well. So far it’s been steam and puree, steam and puree. More than once, while baking then pureeing the sweet potato I’ve been tempted to drizzle a little olive oil and then season with salt and pepper. I mean, that’s how I enjoy a sweet potato. Alas, I remember it’s for her. Maybe some seasoning like that a little bit later on. Right now I just want her to take it.

And she does. Little girl loves to eat!

As for her fitness, she takes daily walks with her dad. They are nice, long five- or six-mile walks. Which is great … for Dad. I take her on run/walks around Green Lake. Also good, except that a couple of weeks ago I tripped and found myself splayed out on the walking path. Major road rash on both knees and my left hand, still now scabbing up. The girl, safely strapped into the megatron that is our jogging stroller, came out unscathed. But the ordeal has slowed my step a bit. Today’s walk around the lake was just a walk, no run. Which is disappointing, because for the first time in a real long time, I was actually enjoying the run. Not only was I getting great benefit out of it, but with Lily in the jogging stroller it was something fitnessy that I could do with the babe. The days of hanging out at the gym a few times a week, on top of morning practice three times a week are a fading memory. The husband takes care of the babe most of the week while I’m at work and the last thing I want to do is a) tell him to watch over her for a little bit longer because I’m heading to the gym and b) spend that much more time away from the babe that I haven’t seen more than a few hours a day. This depresses me a little bit.

So how pleased was I when I picked up running (slowly, with walking in between, but still I was running) again and it felt … good. While I feel no problems about running by myself, the thought of running with the girl in a stroller kind of freaks me out. My twisted ankle is still a little tender, so I suppose I have a little more time to get over that fear. However, it’s harder to do when I hear people say, after the debacle, “Well, I guess we won’t be doing that again, now will we.” Why not? If I didn’t get back on my bike after falling the first time, wouldn’t that have been ridiculous? Yes.

Moving on. Fitness for the girl includes bobbing up and down in a sitting position, some air drum, and general running in place when we hold her in the air. She also does her own form of yoga. Cobra! Downward-facing dog. She loves all that. Gets exhausted by giggling tons, too.

getting a workout in the exersaucer

her michael jordan look as she gets a workout in the exersaucer

Sigh. So cute. I’ve become that person who does nothing but talk about the kid. Get over it.