On Sunday we watched Fiona’s friend Luciano. We went for a ride in the wagon:
Fiona doesn’t like wearing clothing or diapers. My dad managed to wrangle her into a pair of underwear so if she went to the bathroom, it would at least be partially contained:
Amazingly she didn’t have any accidents, but I’m still really glad that we have wood floors.
Work and school have me feeling like a crazy person. I live for the weekends, when John, Fiona, and I can spend time as a family. A couple of weeks ago, or maybe it was just last weekend, we went to Ikea. Ikea is an hour away so it is a special trip for us. We bought Fiona an easel that is not yet set up, and a table and chairs that is. You can kind of see it in the background of this picture:
We call it Fiona’s desk, and it’s her new art station. She colors, draws, paints, and puts stickers on everything while sitting there. She sometimes insists that a person occupy the other chair. That person varies with her mood. Speaking of sitting, my mother was supposed to be leaving when I took this picture, but Fiona sitting on her lap eating snack immobilized her and she couldn’t move. Haha!
We also bought some clothe fruit that Fiona sometimes plays with, but mostly dumps on the ground for fun. Here she is trying to get into the box we put the fruit in. She got very frustrated that she was too big to fit in it, something I don’t think she’s used to:
You can see the fruit on the ground.
I got Fiona a new swim diaper. Her old one is too small. She likes to wear it on her head, or occasionally on the outside of her clothes:
She is interested in real books again. For a while, she only wanted to look at her baby photo albums, but now she is back to liking real books. She even reads them in her crib:
And in her chair:
Ok, those were photo albums, but she’s hardly looked at them since this picture was taken.
Another new development in her life is new binkies. We bought orthodontic pacifiers and hid her old ones. She definitely has preferences, but doesn’t seem to mind the new ones at all. Dr. Brown’s seems to be the brand she likes best, but we have a few others, including some that were given to us when she was born, and she takes them all.
We went to see the seals again and my camera battery died (after over a month of using it with the original, out of box charge) so no good photos. But at the end, there was a random hot dog stand, so we got two hot dogs and ate them!
Not a great snack but hit the spot that day. We also went to the beach there and discovered that tar seeps out of the rocks. Not going to swim there anytime soon!
This is the only picture (not from my phone) from the day:
It does not remotely do any justice to the amazing wildflowers that are growing everywhere! Yellow, white, purple, orange, you name it! Beautiful! And great weather to boot!
Fiona is still obsessed with walking around the planter fifty times a day, today insisting that I alone hold her hand. She likes to balance walk on anything she can.
We broke down and bought a plastic sand box. John didn’t want to build one and we didn’t want to pay $150+ for kit from the internet. Local hardware stores had nothing, and John didn’t want to buy one of those cheap, plastic pools they sell at Lowes. So we bought one. And we love it!
Fiona also loves her water and sand table even more, now that it has sand in it. It’s her favorite thing beside walking on the planter (that she calls “wall”).
Naked of course, and yes she is wearing sunscreen. I should really call it the water and mud table because she put so much water in the sand, it’s like soup. She spends time moving water into the sand, then moving sand into the water. Then she uses the pool to clean her hands.
Other happening lately include Fiona knowing some of her colors. Most of the time, she can accurately identify pink, purple, blue, green, and brown. She recognizes the letters O, B, T, and I. I have no idea where she is getting the letter recognition. She has letters in the tub, but until she started holding them up and saying their names, we never emphasized them or even really told her what they were. And she definitely knows “two” means two of an object, as she is constantly finding pairs of things, bringing them to me, and saying “TWO!” She also likes to point out boys and girls in public and in books, shouting “Boy!” when she sees a boy, and “Girl!” when she sees a girl.
Also, she has been really clingy and mommy-obsessed, having a hard time falling asleep, then taking really long naps, and why? I think it is because her bottom two molars are about to break through. I can see the teeth below the surface, one is a bump, the other not quite, but they are definitely there. Fiona was one of the last of her friends to start getting teeth, and now she is getting teeth none of the rest of them have. She succeeded in finally doing something first! I will be so so so happy when they finish breaking through. This has been going on for a couple of months now, the on and off odd behavior, and I’m ready for it to be over, so we can move on and commence the terrible twos.
Ok, maybe I should strike that last sentence from the record, but seriously, I am so tired of the teething monster. It turns my wonderful little girl into a beast.
Other than that, there is really not much else to report. My students are finished with state testing, which means school is almost out and we can relax a little. Fiona is talking more and more and saying a lot of new words each day and each week. I act as a translator because for some reason, I can understand her better than anyone else. I never thought it would happen, but it must be some mysterious mother-baby bond that allows the mother to understand her child’s babbling.
Fiona likes to make jokes and makes her self laugh all the time, sometimes we know why and sometimes we don’t. She continues to tell us when she pees but now will sometimes deny pooping if it means a break in playing. On more than one occasion, she has denied pooping and then run away when we tried to check her diaper, all because she knows she needs a change and doesn’t want to stop whatever it is she is doing. We eventually prevail, but it’s definitely getting interesting, and exciting!
Have a great week!
Here is an update on what we’ve been doing lately. The title is taken from a thought I’ve had several times in the last 24 hours. You see, my mother was sitting in a chair, complaining of being in pain (her back hurt). Fiona ran off to her room, then came running back and insisted that my mom get up.
“Uppy!” She said. “Up please.”
And then took my mother by the hand and pulled her up out of the chair, dragging my mother to her room.
There, it was discovered that Fiona put pillow on the floor. She pulled my mother to the ground and made her lie down, then got on her back and “massaged” her as best an almost two year old can.
Witness exhibits A through G:
I asked my mother what it is exactly that they do all day while I am at work, that Fiona knows to get a pillow and massage the back.
But then, today, John was lying on the floor of Fiona’s room and she took a pillow from her window seat, handed it to him, got another one, and joined him:
She thought it was funny. I was left scratching my head, wondering why this is all so routine for my child. When we are home together, we don’t lie on the floor. We play outside, we go for walks, we go to the park, or berry picking, or to the beach, or we visit friends.
Apparently, even Wrinkly (whom Fiona called Doggie) is used to this:
She put him there herself. I think I need to train her to fetch me tea or something else useful, like letting me lie on the couch with my eyes closed for half an hour each day. I guess I will have to settle for her readying the potty for me when I have to go, and handing me toilet paper when I am finished.
Such is life.
First, I want to say that I really love our new little point and shoot camera. It’s small, light, fast, and takes decent pictures. I like that it doesn’t flash all the time, even when indoors. Anyway, on to the post, that should really be titled “Why I Love Living in Southern California”.
So it was very sunny today. The sun came out yesterday or the day before and I hope it stays for a little while. I don’t mind rain, in fact I LOVE LOVE LOVE the rain, but I don’t like gray overcast days that are just cold and don’t rain. And that is usually what we get here, abundant sunshine, or cloudy gloom. Either way, dry. So if it is not going to rain, it may as well be sunny!
Fiona was playing in the backyard, naked of course (she looks for any excuse to take off her clothes, including pouring water on her shirt and then insisting I take it off) and I noticed the oranges were really...orange! And there were a lot of them. So John brought out the juicer I gave him for Christmas 2010, picked a bunch of oranges, and made juice. Fiona helped by handing him the oranges:
He filled this container:
The discards:
I am sure they will attract some animal we don’t want in our yard, just as the grapes, that are growing out of control, attracted raccoons last year. I didn’t even know raccoons lived around here!
