Daddy’s so fun!

See the cool mask Doug made for Amina last night?  We seem to like cardboard as a toy at our house.  Amina has a cardboard and duck-tape play house, a cardboard baby bed, and now a cardboard mask.  She did learn a couple new words with this new toy – mask and rubber band.  Can you see Amina sticking her tongue out in the picture?  She’s so fun and so is her Daddy!

 

Kitchen helper

Today we are having Olive Garden at home for dinner, with our friends Bill and Shawna coming over this evening.  So Amina has been helping Mama get the house ready.  Yesterday she helped me vaccuum and clean.  And today she's been helping me in the kitchen.  It does tend to take at least twice as long to do anything in the kitchen with the help of my delightful girl, but it's worth it for the joy she brings.  She gets the biggest smile on her face when she gets to do something she doesn't normally get to do.  Amina enjoyed helping me knead the dough for the bread sticks, and she was especially delighted that she got to taste a bit of this dough.  Now I hope it doesn't carry-over to playdough time, but what can you do?  Hopefully she'll see that the dough tastes much better cooked and won't want to keep eating it raw! 
Here's a quick little video of Amina helping make the bread:


Amina also helped by dumping the canned tomatos into the soup pot (well most of it landed in the pot anyway!) and by carrying cans to the counter for me.  She's such a big helper these days!  And I only put Seasame Street on for a little while so I could do some of the cooking without her help... though that only keeps her attention for a few minutes anyway.  Since Amina was helping so much I need to go re-clean the kitchen now!  Better get going!

First House Project

We love our new house.  It has lots of extra space that we are using and some that we are looking forward to setting up still!  Our new house is only 5 years old, so it really doesn't need much in the way of upgrades, other than a few little things here and there.  For instance in the first 2 weeks we were here I pulled down 2 towel racks and a toilet paper holder just in normal use... I guess the previous owners must have either been gentler in their daily use of the house or they were really good at reattching these fixtures.  Anyway, Doug kinda missed the idea of doing lots of house projects (as our old house had a long list of project to be done from the time I moved in with an unfinished list when we moved out), so this last weekend Doug decided to find a project to do.  Hoping to find a solution for Christmas decoration storage other than taking up his precious garage space, Doug cut a hole in the back of Amina's toy closet (just off of the 'great room/family room') to see if there was some 'wasted space' under the stairs. Luckily he was right and there was a lot of extra space under the stairs that was being used for nothing!  He proceeded to cut out the whole back wall of this closet out, reframe it, and reclaim that wasted space to store things we only use once a year.  There are a few pictures below.  The part I'm most excited about is what Doug's putting at the back of the closet to cover the storage space.  He got a piece of wood and painted it with chalkboard paint and once it's completely dried it will be screwed over the opening so that Amina has a chalkboard at the back of her play closet.  It will be such a fun addition to that already adorable space!  I'm so thankful to have such a handyman husband!

This is a picture of the closet before we moved in:

Here's what it looked like when the wall was torn out:

And now the space is cleaned up with the reinforcement installed:

Amina enjoying the new space:

And now it's full of Christmas storage (you can't see the huge bag including a 7ft tree and other greenery):

I'll have to post and after picture once the 'chalkboard' is in too! 

Potty!

Today was the first time Amina went pee pee in the potty!  We were at our friend's house for playgroup where they have a double toilet seat that has the small seat inside the large seat that you can lift up or put down for the little ones.  So I asked if Amina wanted to go potty and she said yes.  So she sat on the potty for a while and successfully peed twice!  So we have a long way to go to potty training but this was the start... she was at least able to sit for a while (and wanted to sit even longer) and understand the concept!  Wahoo! Such interesting things we get to celebrate these days!

Playgroup day

Today we had our playgroup that a couple of girls from our church started when Amina was just a couple of months old.  The regular attenders of our group have changed since then a little bit, but there are a few of us who have been together since our little ones were tiny!  And now the group is pretty steady with who attends and we have fun ;)  Today we played with a parachute that Rachael found at a used kids store for only $10 and the girls enjoyed it for at least a few minutes, though Amina kept wanting to stand on top of the parachute rather than shaking it and going under it.  And she was the only one that refused to sit down on it for a picture... but we did get one picture with all the toddlers.  It's good to be able to have a place to go and share your joys and trials of parenting and let your kids play, or at least 'learn to share' if you will... :) I'm so thankful to have friends with kids my little girls age... and that we can get together somewhat regularly! 

Friend Fun

Amina had her friend Ashley over this morning for a couple of hours and the girls had so much fun! They colored together for a while. Ashley kept giggling at Bruin and thought he was the funniest thing ever. Also I made playdough and they enjoyed squishing it, making gingerbread men and trees, snakes, and balls. The color didn't quite turn out as purple as I'd hoped, but the girls didn't seem to mind the greyish color. I also brought down Amina's cardboard house and they loved playing inside for a while. Amina usually wants me to get in with her, but Ashley fits much better than I do! These two girls play together so well and I hope they'll grow up to be great friends. Plus Ashley's mom is a great friend too, so I love having play dates as much if not more than she does! Today was the first day Ashley came over without her mom, and though I missed my social time we still had lots of fun! Amina has been talking about her friend all day. We went for a short walk around the block this afternoon, and Amina kept saying 'Ashley house?' so I had to remind her several times that Ashley doesn't live close enough to walk to her house, but we'll go play with her soon. It was really cute.

Another super funny part of the day today was when Amina and I were playing with playdough this afternoon just the two of us. She made a Christmas tree and then said Baby Jesus so I made her a little playdough Baby Jesus and a little bed for him. She was playing with him and having a good time but then she dropped him on the floor and Bruin came over and immediately chewed him up as usually when she drops something from the table it's food. Amina started crying and saying "Bruin Baby Jesus"! Bruin ate Baby Jesus! Oh my! That's not something I ever thought I'd say! Luckily I just made another one for her... though it does seem a little unreligous to let your dog eat Baby Jesus...

A first... and hopefully last

Today I put Amina down for her nap but she wasn't too interested in sleeping right away, so she cried rather hard for a little while. It got quiet for about 15 minutes so I assumed she had fallen asleep. But then she started crying even harder than before. As I've learned to leave her to cry and go back to sleep if she hasn't been down at least an hour I let her cry for a while, though she seemed to be crying much harder than she usually does if she's just resisting sleep. Well after a little while she did finally quiet down again for at least a half hour or so. So when she woke up the next time I went up to get her. Imagine my surprise when I walk in and find her laying buck naked in her crib holding her diaper. Oh my! No wonder she was crying so hard! She must have taken those 15 minutes to get her clothes off and she couldn't get them back on! Not to mention that she had wet her bed and was laying in it... she always sleeps in the same place in her bed so she didn't even think of moving down in her crib, or apparently of pulling her blanket over her. So yes, I felt like a bad mom for a little while because I didn't go check on her when she was crying so hard... but how was I to know? I wasn't. So I'll just blog about it and remember this as the first time Amina was able to get all of her clothes and her diper off by herself. I guess that 'learn to dress monkey' she got for Christmas is teaching her a lot!

Despite Amina's rather poor nap she was in a good mood the rest of the day and we got to have lots of fun with the Rowleys. We went on about a 2 mile walk on the pipeline trail and found a geocache by the dropoff - it was so pretty! And it was sunny and warmer out today too, so it was so nice to be outside! Amina got to walk for a little while and she wanted to keep going even though she was clearly getting tired. She finally let uncle Ben carry her on his shoulders for a little while. After that we went back to their house and played games for several hours. It's so nice that Amina can entertain herself for a while now so we can play games again! She loves to sit in her high chair and color. And she loves playing with her cousins and their pets too! I'm so thankful for our wonderful family and that we get to spend lots of time with those that live around us.

"More ha ha"

Amina is great at making us laugh these days. Today Doug was watching some movie trailers and there was one with a cartoon laughing and laughing. When the trailer was over Amina looked at her daddy and said 'more ha ha'. We just cracked up ;) Yesterday we were at a birthday party and after the candles were blown out Amina pointed and said 'on'. I love the way her brain works :) Another thing she loves to do right now is play follow the leader where she does something with her hands or feet and says 'Mama' and wants me to do the same thing. Sometimes they are big movements like jumping and other times they are the smallest little things like holding her fingers a certain way. It seems we could play that game for hours if I didn't get bored of it before that. I'll have to remember that when we are somewhere where I want her to sit quietly, though I doubt it would work as well if it's my idea to play! Amina does love to share things with her Mama, though I wish she were as good at sharing with other kids! She is also starting to carry on conversations with us. This week she had a lemon in her water at a restaurant. We brought her cup home and we had to say bye bye to the lemon as it went down the garbage disposal, and for days after that she asked for lemon water. She also noticed that we took down the rest of the Christmas decorations and talked to her Daddy about how Mama took down the garland (she called it a tree) and put it away. Amina is learning new words every day right now and she sure makes life fun :) I'm so thankful for our little girl!

My Little Helper

Today I am thankful for my little helper. I know Amina won't always want to help with the housework, so today I'm glad she wants to do everything Mama does, even if that means it takes twice as long :) When I said we had to clean up her toys so we could vaccuum Amina immediately and excitedly said 'baccuum!' and she proceeded to find her toy vaccuum to help Mama. One of her newer words is 'turn' so of course when I was using the attachment to vaccum the stairs Amina came and said "Amina's turn?". So we took turns vaccuming the stairs this afternoon. I'm thankful for my little girl's helpful heart. She loves life and she loves helping Mama do whatever I'm doing. And I'm so thankful that I get to be home with her so I can have these special everyday 'ordinary' moments with my Amina.

A new blog

I haven't blogged in so long that I felt like starting a new blog. This blog will be a place where I can post short snippets of things happening in our lives. A place to record fun new things our little girl is doing or just little bits of encouragement that I come across. I know how powerful a thankful heart is and I would like to have a blog dedicated to these small things in life for which I am extremely thankful. At least that is where I'm starting! It was too overwhelming to me to come up with posts and pictures about all the big things happening in life - like our moving adventure - so I am starting small. New house, new year, new blog (and it is quite fitting that I'm not starting until the 14th of the new year - It's just in my nature to be late in everything I do!).