Preschool

I decided to sign Amina up for a co-op preschool this year.  Since it is a co-op both of us get to go.  There are about 12 kids in her class – all 2 year olds.  On alternating weeks half of the parents help out in the classroom while the other half are involved in a parent education discussion group.  We’ve only been twice so far, as we missed the first day of class while we were on vacation with my parents in Myrtle Beach.  But it is really fun so far!  Amina loves going to school and does such a great job following the routine and playing with others – most of the time anyway ;) I love that they do fun messy things that I wouldn’t usually get around to doing at home – like playing in shaving cream on a table, painting, using lots of glue to do projects, etc.  I’m so glad I get to be in class with her half the time too – I love seeing what all is going on.  And there are 2 other moms with young babies and 2 of us that are pregnant and due this winter.  So I know I won’t be the only one carrying a baby around the classroom for a while.   The pictures are from the first day we went to school.  Fun fun!

The toddler bed saga…

So this week we decided to move Amina into her toddler bed… finally.  I’ve been putting it off as long as possible as I really enjoyed ‘my’ time during her naps and in the mornings while she typically played and sung happily in her bed even after she woke up.  On Saturday she woke up and Doug put the bed in her room so it would be ready for nap time that day.  She was so excited to sleep in her new bed that she asked to go to bed all morning.  We only made it until about 11:30 before she just had to go lay down in her bed.  After about 10 minutes she realized she hadn’t eaten lunch and was crying that she was hungry, so I got her up and fed her lunch before putting her back down for her nap.  She stayed in bed really well for that nap – I’m sure it was the novelty of the new bed.  At night that first night she woke up and cried in her bed for about 30 minutes so I went in and sang to her and calmed her down for another half hour or so.  Since then the nights had been great – she goes right down and stays in bed all night.  She just gets up earlier than we’re used to and comes into our room with us.  Doug has decided to rename her our little alarm clock.  ;)  But naps have been a struggle after the first couple of days.  Our dear sweet Amina is realizing she has more independence now and is pushing it.  I tried putting up a baby gate in front of her door so that she would at least have to stay in her room.  But the first time I tried that she just climbed right over it.  The next time I tried to put it up a little higher so she couldn’t climb over it, but then she just pushed it over.  (When I asked her about it she said “I pushed it with my belly” all proudly).  On Wednesday this week I had to put her back in bed 15 times and she still wouldn’t stay, despite the fact she was getting a spanking each time – which i really hate to do.  I ended up putting her back in her crib after that because i was just so done.   And of course she was asleep within 10 minutes of being in her crib.  Doug was able to work from home on Thursday and was able to be the nap police for me that afternoon and she got by with only 5 times out of bed.  Today I wasn’t  looking forward to how nap time would go, but we talked a lot about how she needed to stay in her bed and get her rest.  I gave her a magnetic drawing board to play with in bed while she was falling asleep.  I was listening to her on the baby monitor and she was ‘spanking’ her baby doll and telling her she needed to stay in bed.  LOL! She actually stayed there for about 20 minutes before coming out of her room this time.  Then she had a stinky diaper and wanted me to change her.  So I did, and then I put her back to bed and told her she needed to stay there to sleep.  Much to my surprise she was quiet within 10 minutes and has been sleeping for almost an hour now.  Wow! I really hope this is a breakthrough and that it really only took a week of excessive patience.  Though tomorrow we have a birthing class and will be gone all day, so she will not have a normal routine.  I hope that doesn’t throw her off!  Now to get used to getting up earlier so I can shower before “Our Little Alarm Clock” comes into our room. 

Great News!

In case you haven’t heard yet, Doug and I are expecting Baby #2!  The next little one is expected to arrive right around Christmas!  My due date is either 12/25 or 12/28.  We are so thrilled!  We have been waiting for this for what seems like a long time – though I know others who have had to wait much much longer, and now we have finally been blessed with a sibling on the way for our darling little girl.  I always thought I’d want my kids really close.  Our plan was to have them about 18 months apart.  But God’s plan was different.  The waiting was really difficult at times, but now I think the timing will be perfect for us.  I get to spend this summer with just Amina, going out and exploring and enjoying my delightful girl.  And she will be a few months shy of 3 when the new baby arrives.  That is a much more independent age.  And I know that siblings that are 3 years apart can be just as close of friends as ones that are a little closer in age.  Now we just have to get busy on the potty training so we can hopefully have a few months being diaper free in our house! :)  We will likely be finding out the baby’s gender in early August.  This pregnancy has been flying by! I can’t believe I’m nearly 17 weeks already!  When we ask Amina if she thinks she’s having a baby brother or a baby sister, she always says baby sister.  We will just have to wait and see! 

Summertime

Hi! If I still have any readers out there… I decided to finally come back! :) Yes this is the theme of my blog – here for a while, gone for a while, here again.  I just can’t seem to keep up with it for long periods of time.  But a few entries to remember the life of today is better than none! 

So summertime has finally hit the Seattle area.  We had a long chilly, rainy June.  But as soon as 4th of July passed the sun graced us with its presence and temperature in the 90s.  Which meant that we broke out our swimsuits and have been enjoying the water!  This week has been milder – in the 70s mostly, but that hasn’t kept us out of the wet stuff!  Amina definitely takes after her mama… she LOVES to swim.  The Volz’s came home one day with a kiddie pool so we filled it up (not too high) and let the little ones play.  Amina had so much fun playing with Nathaniel and Bethany in there!  They spent half the time just laughing!  Every day she walks over to the pool and if we aren’t swimming at the time I have to drag her away from it so she doesn’t fall in trying to touch the water.  She loves to wear her ‘fwim fuit’ and go ‘fwimming’.  We also have a friend with a deeper backyard pool that we can actually swim in.  So one day we enjoyed an afternoon over there.  Amina was given a hand-me-down swim suit with flotation devices built in, so I put her in that, put water wings on her, and got in the water with her.  At first she was clinging to me, but then she remembered that she’s 2 and that she has to do everything by herself.  So she wanted to try swimming by herself.  I let her try (standing within arms reach) and she was able to keep her head above water and float for several seconds on her own.  She even go to the point where she wanted to climb on and off of a floatie all by herself over and over again.  Now the tricky part will be to teach her to swim without all the floatation devices!  That day I had to drag her away from the pool at 3:00 (her nap time was 1:00) and she fell asleep on the 5 minute car ride home!  We sure do love this weather! 

And the videos of Amina, and Amina with her cousins…

Easter fun

Wow has it really been almost a month since I’ve posted?  Oh my it is hard to get back into the habit once you get out of it.  But I want to blog more!  :) We had a great Easter celebrating at Ben and Maralee’s house with a full houseful of family and friends.  Amina loved finding Easter eggs.   It was a bit windy and chilly, but at least it wasn’t pouring down rain this year!  Every time Amina picked one up she’d try to open it and say “what’s in there?” (with the emphasis on there) – it was so cute :)  Needless to say she didn’t find quite as many as the other kids who were running around  filling up their baskets without stopping, but that’s okay, she didn’t need that much candy anyway!  And she found enough hard boiled eggs so we got to have some yummy breakfasts the week after.  Though once she learned to  tap the egg on the counter (or the floor, the wall, the piano… anything near by) to crack it so she could peel it she tried to peel several eggs that afternoon.  She ate 2 whole eggs and was still wanting the peel them!  They ended up in the fridge pretty quickly ;)

We also enjoyed coloring eggs at home the day before.  Amina likes to do things all by herself so it can be challenging to let her do messy things as I know she’ll be resistant to having any help… but in the end it’s worth it!  She only broke a few eggs by dropping them into the cups of dye.  And after trying to take a bite of one right out of the dye she learned that vinegar egg dye really doesn’t taste good!  Ah the joys of being a toddler :)

 

And Thanks you to Grandma and Grandpa Rolley for the Easter gift of dresses, a stuffed rabbit and a cute necklace.  Amina loved her gift :) 

I’m back…

Sorry to be gone for so long… well this isn’t that long compared to how long I’d been gone from my other blog… but anyway… we were busy getting ready for Amina’s birthday, then my parents were visiting from Virginia, and then Amina and I got the stomach flu.  But now things are getting back to normal.  Amina’s birthday was so much fun! I’ll have to do another post just about that day!  But I wanted to put up something quick first.  Right now I have corned beef cooking on the stove and I was cutting up cabbage to add to it in a few minutes.  Amina wanted to help cut the cabbage so I sent her to get her wooden cutting fruit that she got for her birthday.  She’s currently diligently working away at cutting up her bread, carrot, pepper, cucumber, watermelon, and app le.  (All wooden of course). She’s getting really good at it!  The first time she tried this was last week when Grandma Margaret was with us and I was making soup for dinner.  So of course today when I got her all set up she asked if Grandma was going to help her.  :)  Sorry Amina Grandma would love to help you but she is across the country now!  We had a really fun time having Grandma and Papa here with us for the week.  We were sad to see them go!  But we are also looking forward to having Uncle Scott, Aunt Brenda, and cousins David, Sarah, Matthew, Nathaniel, and Bethany coming to stay with us for 4 months.  Amina’s Uncle Scott is arriving in the country today but will be heading down to see his family for a while.  We are still waiting to see when the rest of the family will be able to leave Africa but we are hopeful that it will be in the next couple of weeks.   Then we will have a houseful!  We are very much looking forward to spending time with our family who is usually across the world from us and I’m especially excited for Amina and Bethany to get to spend lots of time playing and getting to know each other.  Bethany is the cousin closest in age to Amina – she’s 14 months older than Amina.  I know we will have lots of fun together while their family is here! 

Belated Valentine’s

Doug and I went out this afternoon for a fun evening away while Amina got to play at Auntie Kerrianne and Uncle Tim’s house.  Doug did some online research and found the best place in Seattle to go for savory crepes and we were looking forward to a yummy French crepe dinner.  When we got there the place was closed – apparently there were only open until 4:00 on Saturdays.  This has happened to us before when we’ve driven into Seattle to go somewhere specific to find it closed… those silly city hours!  But it was all for the best tonight I think!  We remembered that cousin Ben had told us about this great Italian place down the street from his apartment that he’d been to a few weeks ago and we decided to try that place instead.  So off to Pasta Freska we went.  As we were out in the town a little early we had to wait for it to open so we walked along lake Union and looked at the yachts, deciding which one we’d choose if we had to pick one to live on ;)  After 20-30 minutes we went back and the restaurant had opened.  I’ve never been anywhere like it! There are no menus – when you arrive the waitress asks you if there is anything you are allergic to or are unwilling to try.  Then they just start brining you food!  Doug requested no seafood so he got a few things that were different than me and I think he missed out!   We started with an appetizer of a squash with tomatoes, spinach, and cheese on top.  Then we had some garlic cheese bread, followed by Caesar salad and delicious spaghetti Bolognese.  After that I had some type of chicken rolled up, filled with spinach and cheese, and covered in a delicious warm sweet vinaigrette sauce while Doug had a manicotti filled with chicken and cheese.   Next was mussels for me and lamb for Doug, a small piece of steak, and yummy fish for me and spinach ravioli for Doug.  And finally we had the most decadent dessert sampler including the best tiramisu I’ve ever tasted, very rich chocolate cake, and a spumoni type  gelato.  Wow this meal was amazing!   Definitely not your typical Italian.  And it was perfect for Doug and I as we take forever to decide what to order for dinner!  We didn’t even have to pick a wine… we just chose red and they brought us a delicious bottle of some kind I’d never heard of.   I loved getting lots of small items so we could have a little of everything.  We’ll have to try the crepe place another time, but as I said before I was not too sad that it was closed this time!  After our 2 1/2 hour dinner we got to go to a game store and play a game of Carcassonne the Castle.  Then we made a quick stop by the TeaCup where we bought some new loose leaf tea which we are now enjoying by our fireplace.  Sounds like a pretty perfect 2 week late Valentine’s date, right?  :)   And Amina had so much fun with Tim and Kerrianne too – they took her out for dinner and fed her noodles, rice, chicken and soup… her favorites ;) Apparently she was asking to go back to auntie’s house the whole way home (as they brought her home to put her to bed for us).  I’m sure she’ll be asking to go back to Auntie’s house all week!