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!

Lake Sammamish

What a fun day Amina and I had in Issaquah today.  It was so sunny and warm and spring-like.  We got to go to a toy store to look for some birthday gifts – yes it’s great to be able to shop for birthday gifts with the birthday girl, as this will probably be the last year we can do that!  Then we went for a picnic lunch at the park.  It was so wonderful to be able to eat by the lake in the warm sunshine and enjoy some time with my little girl.  Amina loved seeing all the ducks and seagulls.  When we were done eating I let her throw some bread to the duckies and she thought it was the neatest thing in the world! Later in the night we were telling Doug about our day and Amina used her longest sentence yet to actually answer the question ‘what did we get to do at the park’.  She said something like ‘Amina throw piece food to duckie’  I got to go for a nice walk, and then Amina got to play on the playground.  There was no one else at the playground when we got there, so after playing with Amina for a little while and making sure she knew how to climb up and go down the slide on her own I actually got to sit down and read a page of a book while she played!  That has never happened before :)  But then another little one showed up with her parents so I had to put the book down and make sure Amina was playing nice ;) She does really good, but she wants to do everything the other little girl was doing.  The other girl was just almost 1 so her parents were helping her slide and swing, etc.  And of course Amina wanted to do every thing the baby was doing even if she didn’t like it before.  She was cute though.  She got to swing on the tire swing – which was a fist.  She said “Amina swing old kid swing” as I’d told her that swing was for older kids, but then decided she could try it.   And another first – she jumped down off of a step to the ground.  She’s been jumping getting both feet off the ground since 17 months but had never before jumped down from a step.  The warm sun was a nice treat for a February day today!

Amina walk self

We have been loving having sunshine here this week, with relatively mild temperatures.  So of course I’ve had to go outside and enjoy the nice February weather as much as possible!  We’ve been for a walk every day this week (Bruin must think he’s died and gone to doggy heaven).  Amina usually rides in the stroller so that we can walk at a faster pace.  Well this morning I had to do an online training for keeping up my speech pathology certification, so I didn’t get to pay a lot of attention to Amina during that time.  Afterwards I decided she’d love some attention so we went for a short walk around the block, leaving Bruin at home so that Amina could walk the whole time.  She loved picking up leaves, picking dandelions, listening to wind chimes, holding and tearing apart a mushroom, etc.  But most of all she loved that she could walk by herself for part of the time.  She didn’t want to hold her mama’s hand the whole time so she said “Amina walk self”.  As we were just in our neighborhood and there were no cars around I thought this was an okay enough time to let her try.  She did really good staying near Mama, but was hesitant to hold my hand again when I asked her to.   I guess we will be working on the ‘obeying’ lesson for a long time anyway ;) After our walk we got to play in the backyard for a little while and enjoy that delightful sunshine and throw the rope for Bruin a little bit.  He still misses our big backyard where he could really run, but he’s surviving ;)

Birthday Party Fun!

Last weekend we went to Devin’s 1st Birthday Party! Devin is Bill and Shawna’s son and they live on 10 acres with lamas, chickens, cats, and dogs.  So for the big day we got to go out to the ‘farm’ and see the animals.  Amina enjoyed the lamas at first, but when one got a little pushy when we were trying to pet it, Amina decided she’d rather watch the lamas from outside the barn.

This was the culprit who didn’t want to be petted… well he was eating at the time ;)
Amina pointing to another lama outside the barn. 
The chickens were much more fun for Amina to chase around… and she even enjoyed touching one… a little more than Mama wanted her to! 

Happy Birthday Devin! Amina’s been talking about Devin’s birthday all week!  Now she can’t wait for her own party!  Whenever I ask her what she wants for her birthday she says something that sounds like ‘bush’.  I don’t know… I really don’t think she wants a bush for her birthday… but maybe I’m wrong!  We really need to get busy planning for her special day – it’s only 3 weeks away now!

A few more pictures of the fun time:

 

Auntie Hannah

Yesterday Amina and I had the pleasure of going to “Auntie Hannah’s” house for lunch in Seattle.  We usually meet somewhere in the middle of where we live but this time we drove all the way to Hannah’s house, so it was a fun treat for Amina.  She talked about going to Auntie Hannah’s all day.  And as a bonus treat the sun was shining and we were able to go for a walk around Greenlake afterwards.  We saw seagulls, ducks, lots of people, dogs, trees, the lake…. and enjoyed some time outside ;)   

 

Bouncy Place

On Tuesday Amina and I met up with our playgroup friends at the Bouncy Place in Kent.  It was so much fun! They had a room full of inflatable toys and we went for the drop in toddler time session, so there weren’t any big kids to have to watch out for.  Amina loved jumping and bouncing on the toys.  And of course she wanted to climb up and slide down the big slides, but she couldn’t quite climb up all by herself so I ended up carrying her up – boy that was quite the work out!  My friend Stacie said she’d have a great memory of us '”inching our way up the Mt. Everest of blow up slides” for some time.  ;) Amina was worn out after about a half hour but we stayed the full hour and she kept playing… just not jumping quite as much after that first little bit.  And she even said “Mama carry you” a few times!  That never happens – it’s usually “Amina walk” when we’re out and about.  We had such a great time doing this I’m sure we’ll be back!  The only bummer is that I left my camera in the car, so I wasn’t able to get pictures.  My friend took a few pictures so I will post those once she gets them to me!  Afterwards we went out to lunch at Panera.  Amina sat nicely the whole time! I guess wearing the kids out first was a great idea!   We had a huge table as there were 7 moms with 7 toddlers and 2 babies – we used up all the highchairs in the place!  At least we were there for an early lunch so we were able to find enough seats.   What a fun time!  Amina is really noticing and talking about her friends a lot now.  We like to look at pictures and she will name everyone in the pictures.  And after playing with friends she talks about them for days afterwards.   Amina also loves to give her friends big smothering hugs! They don’t always appreciate it, but it’s usually pretty cute :)