Soccer isn't so bad after all!

When we first brought up the idea of a soccer class, Xander was not interested at all. I think he overheard a story from one of his friend's parents and decided soccer was too scary. However, when Aria got her big pink ball for her birthday, Dolphin used it to convince Xander that soccer is fun. It didn't take long for Xander to be convinced. So, we signed him up for Soccer.

Xander had his first class this week and really enjoyed it. They kicked the ball to kill the aliens (cones). They did some classic red-light/green light. All of that pretend play is totally up Xander's ally. His buddy is in the class, too.

Looks like I better go invest in an orange slicer and a giant SUV.

Sherwood Forest

It's taken us a couple of weekends, but we finally were able to make it out to Sherwood Forest, the local Renaissance Fair. The last time that I went to one was in Arizona, long before Dolphin and I were married or the kids were born.

Xander had a great time, but he was also a bit fearful at times. There was a live acting play before the doors were opened. The actors were shouting so that everyone could hear them, but Xander was afraid of the yelling. He almost didn't want to go in. Xander was too afraid to go on any rides, which is typical for him. He really enjoyed feeding the petty zoo animals, eating all the fair food, climbing around the kids' castle and King Arthur's round table (pic above), and watching a few shows.

Xander's favorite part was the pirate show. Some actors, dressed as pirates, gathered a bunch of kids together to go on a treasure hunt. They followed up map, counted paces, and actually dug up a treasure chest. The treasure chest was locked and actually a teaser for the pirates show. So, of course, we HAD to go to the show to find out what was in the treasure. Xander was very pleased to find out the treasure was golden chocolate coins which all the kids got to eat.


Aria had a good time, too. She was not fearful at all. She made friends with everyone, waving and smiling. She enjoyed climbing around the kids' castle also, and got totally filthy dirty in the process. Her brother had found sticks (the fair was in a forest) that he was using as swords. She totally got into stick-sword swinging and poking as well.

Dolphin ran into a huge fan at the show as well. I was wearing this wide brimmed hat that Dolphin got from his work. I wore it because it was very good at blocking out the sun, but it attracted a fair amount of attention from fans of his company's game, Wizard 101. After I told one boy that Dolphin made the game, the boy was in total awe. To totally make his day, Dolphin pulled out of his wallet some cards for the boy which give him extra points in the game. It was little a teen girl of the 60's running into John Lennon. Total adoration!

Chasing Butterlfies

This weekend was THE weekend for all the parents of young children in central Texas to partake in the annual blue bonnet pictures. We have beautiful wild flowers every spring, with the Texas blue bonnets being the most predominate flower. My office complex has fields full of them. So, we took the kids down to take some pictures. This year, there were tons of butterflies. Both Aria and Xander loves chasing them around. Aria's version of chasing involved pointing with her finger and say "buh" (the only part of butterfly that she can pronounce). Xander tried a variety of unsuccessful techniques.

Walking Red

As promised, here's some video of Aria walking and toddling. These shoes are like her magic feather for walking. She has such small feet though that I struggle to get hard-soled walking shoes that will stay on her feet. Of course, she likes to pull them off for fun, too.

Walking

Aria is better and better walker with each passing day. I probably should post some video soon of her toddling around. She's losing some of that fear of falling and getting much braver. We often have jump time in Xander's room on his bed. Aria's in the middle of the bed trying to stand up and walk around while Xander jumps in circles around her. It's certainly a great test of her balancing abilities and she has a fun time doing it.

Maglite - a favorite toy

I don't know why I'm surprised, but the best kids toys sometimes aren't really toys at all. Recently, I got Xander his very own flashlight. I splurged on a little Maglite because I wanted that would stand up to the vigorous activities of a three year old, and, if you can believe it, these things are still made in the USA. Xander is in love with this thing. The flashlight was first just cool to shine it against the wall. Then, he figured out that the flashlight top came off for candle mode, and we were all blinded for a while. He's used it for reading books, and is actually excited about turning off the light at bedtime these days. During the day, he uses it to kill pretend ghosts and monsters. It also has a fancy SOS blinking feature that triggered a whole educational discussion with Xander. I wasn't surprised at all when he told his teacher it was one of his 4 favorite things from home (I almost cried that another one of the 4 was mommy). The choice of a Maglite has turned out to be good one as it gets tossed about very much and has held up so well.

Fashion freeze

Dolphin bought matching shirts for us. Yesterday, Xander and I wore them. He was so excited that we matched. Can I just freeze time for just a bit? How long will a little boy think it is cool to have on the same shirt as his mom? I imagine it isn't long.

Xander is already so picky with clothes. He has very strong opinions about what he wants to wear. Here are some of Xander's current fashion rules that I have picked up on:

1) Shirts must have a picture on it. Super heros usually go over well.
2) No buttons (which translates to no jeans, button pj, or button shirts)
3) Microfleece pants are preferred
4) New shirts are preferred to those he has already seen on his classmates. Nearly everyone at his school shops at the same stores and gets the same clothes. 4 of his classmates all had his same jacket this winter. For now, he doesn't want to look like his peers.

Spring!

We had absolutely perfect weather here this weekend, which lead to all sorts of springtime fun.

Our neighbor brought over 3D sidewalk chalk. The chalk comes with special glasses to make the drawings look 3D. I don't think the glasses worked all that well, but they did make the chalk drawings look pretty weird. Xander and I made a pizza drawing together. In case, you are wondering what the blue is that is "blue cheese".



This is Xander's picture of me. That thing on the top of my head? That's a giant knot in my hair. Am I really that frumpy, Xander? I had to draw the heart for him. Whenever drawing a picture of mommy or daddy, he always requests that we draw the heart for him.


In addition to sidewalk chalk, I also got out the blow up pool. The kids spent a good hour and a half playing with that. I'm sure we will frequently use it from now until November.

We enjoyed our Saturday night dinner out on the patio as well. Our new patio, which we built last year, is working out so well for the kids. There's enough space now that the whole family can be out there at the same time.

Toy Master

When I play with Aria, she seems to always surprise me with how well she can play with toys. In the picture above, she took out all of the people from her Duplo box, and put them into this hat. Once she got them in there, she starting clapping for herself. She's got great eye-hand coordination. Already, she's able to put rings on the ring stacker. She can put puzzle block shapes into puzzle holes.

One of the cutest things that she does is play with dolls though. Grandma and Grandpa T got her a baby with magic bottles. I remember having bottles like them where it looks like the baby is drinking up all the liquid when you turn it upside-down. She loves to give these magic bottles to the babies. When her talking baby cries, she gives it a hug. It's really just adorable to watch.

Kids Garden

Recently, I decided to make a little garden in our yard. One of my motivations was to block of a corner of the yard so our dog, Peanut, would stop jumping on the fence. He's jumped on it so much, while trying to catch birds or squirrels, that it broken in several places and we had to repair. I also thought it would be fun to grown something with the kids.

After much coaxing, I convinced Xander to go with me to the hardware store to seek out supplies for the garden while Aria was napping at home with Dolphin. Xander was a big help at the store. He picked out all the plants. I was going planning on finding some edging to build a garden myself but then found a raised bed kit that was perfect.

When we got home, I lugged everything to the backyard. Dolphin assembled the raised bed kit and we got started.

Xander demonstrated his muscles. These were 30lb bags of soil that he helped to dump out.


He opted for getting his hands into the soil to spread it instead of using a tool.


Aria really got into the action, too. She got her hands in and even tasted a little bit of dirt, yuck! After I put the weed fabric down, she got on top of the garden and danced around.


Here's the finished result. We have a yellow tomato, an egg plant, a daisy, and two strawberry plants. Xander picked up on which plants are which right away. He's very excited about the strawberries, of course. We've even added a scare-pinwheel to hopefully scare the birds away. Uh-oh, now that I think about it, I've probably just attracted more birds to annoy Peanut.

Aria's One Year Wellness Checkup

Aria had a great time at the doctor's office today. Despite having to wait quite a while, she had fun pointing at all the decorations in the lobby. As usual, she was poked, prodded and measured. She is 28.5inches tall (25-50th percentile), 21lbs 3z (50-75th percentile) and head circumference 46.8cm (90th percentile).

The doctor said she was slimming down a bit, which may be too all the activity she's been doing recently. She's just started to take a few unassisted steps, but prefers to hold onto or push things while walking or just crawl. She's also started to climb things, which is a bit scary. Even though she is short, she some how manages to climb up on beds, sofas, and step ladders. Most of the time, she remembers to go feet first when climbing down, but sometimes she is a bit TOO fearless.

Her pediatrician was pleased with her language development. She has a few signs down well (milk, more, all done) and gestures (bye-bye, pointing). She has a few words da(dog), buh buh (for bubble), booh (book), booboo (same funny nursing word that I talk Xander), mah (more), dada, and mama. She likes to look at books, point at pictures, and turn the pages. She has her non-verbal ways to show us that she really understands what we are saying.

Aria is sleeping through the night, and the doctor was happy about that. When she is well, she sleeps from 7:30pm to about 4am, then with a little setting, again from 4am to 6am. This ought to be perfect with the time changes this weekend. I guess she just likes to sleep because we haven't employed any sleep training.

She received 3 vaccines (MMR, HepA, and chicken pox). I was doing a little dance as she FINALLY got her chicken pox vaccine. Yay!

We got a prescription for Aria's own eczema treatment. We had been using some of Xander's steroid cream on her, which is fine. He hasn't had any outbreaks for a long time (can't even remember the last). Now she has her own. Hopefully, she'll grow out of it as well as Xander has.

I think I got some brownie points with the doctor. I was giving Aria freeze dried strawberries as a snack while we waited. The doctor thought it was a very healthy snack and wondered where I got them. The kids love these. They are the slightly less mess travel version of real strawberries.

All in all it was a good visit. For posterity's sake, I'll share a few more notes on this time in Aria's life. She continues to be a very social baby. She has a reputation of "always smiling" at school, quite often willing to enjoy interacting with strangers. The teachers and staff have picked up how very different she is from Xander (who is much more shy like me).

As you can tell from pictures, she still doesn't have much hair. In addition, her hair color is light so she almost seems like she has none. I'll just count my blessings that she'll be out of the messy stage before she has enough hair to get food stuck in it.

She seems like a pretty observant little cookie. She watches very closely when I explain and demonstrate how to use a toy and is often to eager to try to do it herself. Just like her brother at this age, whatever is new is the most interesting thing. Which book to read? The one we haven't read before. Which toy to play with? The one I haven't played with before or recently.

She's starting to assert her opinion more. She can be very vocal if I or Xander take something she wants away from her including myself! As a side note, Xander is SO tolerant of her. I always felt bad for the dogs when Xander attacked them, now Xander's getting some karma back as Aria attacks him.

All in all, I can't believe my baby is a year old. I'm looking forward to this next year and all the fun of toddlerhood.

Goofy Xander

Some of Xander's goofy quotes:

- [After I finished counting to 100 with him] Is 100 the LAST number? I think Daddy can count all the way to 7.

- See, Mom. I didn't get electrocuted THIS time. Were you watching me?

- I don't want to eat fruit or vegetables anymore. I want to stay a kid forever. [In a pouting voice no less].

- Quota? Mommy, "quota" is a potty word! [I couldn't agree more]

- [After I told him to close his eyes and picture the story I was reading to him] Mommy, when I closed by eyes, I saw a Barbie dream house.

- [After I caught him looking at a book in bed with a flashlight] But I want to learn more more about the sun swallowing up the earth in 5 billion years. [Then, he comes out of his room 15 min later]. Mommy, the sun doesn't have a mouth so it can't swallow up the earth.

Berry Motivated Little Boy

My little boy got dressed all by himself this morning. While he's been physically able to do this for a long time, there is usually a great deal of nagging, coaxing, battling, and sometimes threatening involved in getting Xander to do it every morning. Last night, Dolphin told Xander he could have a waffle with berries and whipped cream if he got dressed before coming to wake up Daddy. Low and behold, it worked. A fully clothed Xander came bounding out of his room this morning, straight into the kitchen for some blackberry breakfast.

Happy Birthday Aria!

It's so hard to believe that my little baby girl is now a toddler. We celebrated her birthday this weekend, a little earlier than her actual birthday. In the above video, we sang for Aria and presented her with her cake. You can tell she is the attention starved 2nd child as you see the look of bewilderment for all the attention she is getting at snack time. She wasn't huge cake smasher, just a few finger pokes in the frosting.

I made the cake with a white cake mix that I flavored with rose extract. Then, I frosted it with vanilla butter cream. I mixed red food coloring, white http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifchocolate and a little milk to make a ganache to poor over it. I didn't follow a recipe for the ganche so it was a bit too thick. Lesson learned! Then, made frosting roses. I was running out of frosting or I would have covered the whole cake.http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif

For everyone else, I made these gigantic cupcakes. We all could have just shared one of them. Way too much sweet!

Here's one of Aria's presents. Her name is Andy and she comes from Rag Doll Rising, and Etsy find.

Xander picked out this giant pink ball and Aria just loves it. As expected, she loved the little Duplo many that came with her Lego Duplos. She absolutely loves the little Duplo people in Xander's set and Xander's Imaginext Batman and Robin. I almost bought her the "people of the world" Duplos since she loves the little plastic people so much, but they are a little too small/choking hazard for her.

Goofy girl

Aria has taken to cruising with all sorts of walkers these days. She has a walker at home, from our neighbor, that she frequents every day, but she doesn't just limit her self to devices designed for such purposes. She's also been known to push around chairs, laundry baskets, boxes, and her brother's tricycle.

Also, in this video, you get to hear Aria's "woof". She loves to point at one of the dogs, say "da(dog), woo, woo, woo". Lowering it an octave and add 20 decibels and I think you have something that sounds a lot like our Copper dog. Aria's a little bit indiscriminate though as she does this for other furry brown stuffed animals around the house (monkeys and bears). Not all brown furry things are dogs!

Bath Time Aria

Aria absolutely LOVES bath time. It's a battle to keep her from wandering into the bathroom and trying to climb into the tub. Getting her out of the tub after a bath is often met with a really loud tantrum.