New...To Us

A friend from church who has five daughters has been great at passing down toys that her children have outgrown to Y.  It has really come in handy because we have been able to take many of them to her Nana & Grandpa's house in Canada so that she can have toys to play with while we visit them there.  It's great because we don't have to constantly take toys back and forth.  A few of the items we have kept here though, one is this wooden rocking horse that one of their neighbors made specifically for their daughters.  At first Y was a little afraid of it but now that she has gotten older she loves to jump on the horse and pretend she is riding on it.  She also likes to point out all the features of the horse's face: eyes, mouth, ears, hair, etc.

Well one day at church this Sister asked me if I wanted a Little Tykes slide for Y.  At first I wasn't really sure because we don't really have a yard here in the condo that is specifically ours.  She said that actually they bought it to teach their first daughter to climb stairs because they lived in an apartment and didn't have stairs and that they actually used it completely indoors.  So after considering it for a bit I totally agreed because, well, Y loves to slide! I went to pick it up the next day and just left it in our garage for a few days until I had the time (and motivation) to clean it.  After we got back from her birthday dinner and outing I decided that while B gave her a bath I would just go out and clean it.  It wasn't extremely dirty but being that it was coming inside I wanted to make sure it was extremely clean.  So I diluted Clorox in some water and set at it, after the Clorox wash I did another bath with detergent and water and finally I rinsed it all down with plain water and dried it up.  We had to figure out how to reassemble it while simultaneously realizing that, in my thorough cleaning of it, water ended up inside it and was leaking out on the carpet.  We put a few towels down to catch the water and Y couldn't wait to jump on it and start playing.

She loves that slide and if you really want to be entertained, ask her to send Elmo down the slide!  She thinks it is absolutely hilarious to send her little Elmo's down the slide and to listen to her laugh at it is hysterical.  She has the funniest and cutest laugh...I love her!  She also sends balls and other miscellaneous items down the slide but nothing gets a laugh out of her like Elmo!

Birthday Celebration

Since Y's Uncle T was going to be moving into his new dorm room (it's his first year at college) the weekend of Y's birthday, we moved it up a few days and celebrated with a few family members and friends.  It was a really good day and Y had a lot of fun, except she was extremely tired and somewhat cranky.  Here are a few pictures from that day.



She is REALLY into Nemo right now. In fact she watches Nemo at least once each day, sometimes twice. It never fails, even though she has seen the movie many times whenever it gets to a point where something might happen to Nemo, Marlin (Nemo's Dad), or Dori she gets very upset and distraught until I reassure her that that particular fish is going to be okay!



To me it looks like she is doing a Michael Jackson impersonation here and I am just waiting for her to throw that hat off at any moment.



She opened each present very carefully and wouldn't move on to the next until every single piece of paper was off the gift.



She LOVES this Elmo!  It is called Elmo's Greatest Hits (or something like that) but it has a microphone which allows her to sing along to whichever song she happens to choose.  Most of the time she just talks (or breathes loudly) into it.  I saw this at Walmart while in NC browsing through the toy section and immediately knew she would love it so when her Nana & Grandpa asked what to get her for her birthday...it was super easy!



My niece in NC had this drum set and Y just loved playing with it so we decided to get her one for her birthday.  You can see from the first picture that she already had some drumming experience.  And with the vast number of musical toys she has, hopefully she will have some sort of musical abilities...if not then I want my money back!

This arrived after the little party but before her birthday.  She has recently really gotten into Dora the Explorer (when we're not watching Nemo, we're probably watching Dora).  We thought that maybe if we got her a sheet set for her toddler bed then it would be easier to get her to sleep in her bed without such a huge hassle...not sure if it was the sheet set or not but she has gotten much better at sleeping in her bed.  She typically only wakes up once per night and I just return her to her room.  We really wanted to find an Elmo sheet set but I was really disappointed with the options.  First there apparently is no sheet set with strictly Elmo and the only Sesame Street one I was able to find was some sort of construction/sports theme which was very boyish, so we settled for Dora instead!

On her Birthday we had a very relaxed day.  We took her out to eat at Red Robin where they sang a birthday song to her and gave her a free ice cream dessert.  She LOVED being sang to.  When they came over clapping their hands and started singing to her she got the biggest smile on her face and started clapping along with them, she probably would have sang too but didn't know the words to the song they were singing.  After dinner we took her to the park to play for a bit but it was pretty cold that day (I think it was like 65°F and very windy) so even she tired of the cold pretty quickly.  We asked her if she wanted to go home and she was adamant that she didn't want to go there yet...she would rather freeze in the park.  So I suggested that we go somewhere inside, like a mall.  That worked perfectly because she loves to ride on elevators and escalators as of late.  In fact anytime we say we're going bye-bye she requests elevators and escalators, though she doesn't differentiate between the two.  We really wanted to take her swimming, her first love, but as I mentioned it was too cold for that.  We ended up buying her some new shoes to wear to church when it gets a little colder out since we'll be putting away her sandals!



 

Toddler Bed

As I have mentioned before, we converted Y's bed into a toddler bed after we returned from vacation.  She quickly learned to climb out of it after we moved and so we found ourselves quickly needing to remedy the situation.  The new found freedom was more of a curse for us than a blessing because I had many nights of walking her back to her room only to have her running back to ours 5 minutes later.  I am happy to say that, for the most part, that is all in the past!  She now goes to sleep in her bed at bedtime without a big fuss, she goes down for her nap now without a fight as well, and she is only waking (on average) once per night!  I am breathing a sigh of relief but know that we are not truly out of the woods yet, nor will we be until she is sleeping completely through the night and doing so for at least a month or more.  The good news is that we will not be going on any extended trips to places she is unfamiliar with so it'll give her time to adjust.

The Best 2 Years

I have just completed the best 2 years of my life thus far.  I say thus far because I am sure that I will say this many more times in my lifetime.

Y is now a 2 year old, it is so very hard to imagine that my precious baby is now a toddler.  She has added so much to my life and has given us the greatest joy.  I can never think of her birth day without getting teary eyed and it's not because of all the grueling hours of labor, or the frustration of having a C-Section, or any of those things.  It makes me so emotional because I can look back and see how much our lives have changed since her birth, how much our lives have improved just because she makes our day brighter.  I never knew that a heart could hold so much love and adoration for one person and each day it expands and grows as we watch her grow and realize that she is being raised by two parents who not only adore her but also adore each other.  I truly believe that the greatest gift we give our children is a happy, healthy family environment where they know without a shadow of a doubt that they are loved beyond compare.

We've had our trials throughout the last 2 years.  Being a new mom, or just a mom in general, has been the hardest experience of my life but it is also my most rewarding experience.  Motherhood gave me a whole new perspective on life and a new set of priorities.  Not a single decision is made without first considering how it would affect her, I have learned a whole new definition for selflessness.  It is amazing how one little person can motivate you to do things that you should have been doing all along.  Things that will only benefit you in the long run but that you never really felt you had the time to do before, nor did you want to make the effort to make the time to do them.  And why do you do them now?  because you know that by making the sacrifice to do those things you are being a better example to her and guiding her down a better path in life.

In short, I love being Y's mommy and all the joy it brings me.  My heart and life are so full and so enriched.

As for Y she still loves to go to the pool and play in any amount of water no matter how big or small, she loves all things Elmo.  Recently she has discovered Nemo and Dora the Explorer but Elmo is still numero uno!  She loves to give hugs and kisses, mostly to mommy and daddy but with a little coercion she'll give them to others as well.  Her favorite animal right now is a monkey, she would wear her monkey pajamas all day, every day if I allowed her to.  She loves the color green; anytime she sees it she will grab my hand and want to go see it.  Her vocabulary is amazing and for the most part she speaks extremely clear (for a 2 year old).  Her memory, well it's nothing short of amazing as well.  She remembers the smallest details with ease and I am often left wondering, "how on earth did she remember that?"  She is very polite and can always be heard saying, "excuse me" when she needs to get by or "you're welcome" after you thank her for doing something.  She calls everyone Sweetie and I still find it hilarious how she says, "hi, sweetie" whenever someone enters a room.  She loves to sing and walks around the house all day asking for either songs or susic (music).  She is a HUGE daddy's girl and I absolutely LOVE to watch her face light up as she realizes he is walking through the door.  She thinks that any man with full facial hair is Jesus (we're working on that one).  And she loves to sit at the computer all day and look at pictures and videos of herself, many of the videos she can quote word for word.  She would rather sit and watch herself than watch cartoons or anything else that may be on TV.  She is TONS of FUN!!!

These are A Few of My Favorite Things

With the exception of a box full of shoes we are officially unpacked!  I, however, still have not hung a single picture on the wall so once I do that I will snap a few photos and share them with you.  For now though, I decided to take some quick pictures of my favorite elements of our new home. 

Some of you may be accustomed to many of these things but my family was always one of very simple means and so these things are things which I have never had the luxury of having before in my parents house growing up or even in an apartment which I lived in.  So you'll have to excuse me if I get excited and caught up in what some may deem as the "simple" things in life! 

Here goes:

This is a picture of a remote.  But this remote controls the living room ceiling fan, so if I get hot...I don't have to move.  Unless of course the remote is across the room from where ever I happen to be.  It totally promotes laziness but with 15 foot ceilings it is also a huge necessity since we don't have anyone living with us who is the size of Shaq.

We can pretend that we are in an episode of Seinfeld with our buzzer/intercom.  Someone rings/buzzes the doorbell and I don't have to run downstairs to see who it is, I just press the talk/listen button!  Thus far we haven't had too much use for this because we haven't had any unexpected visitors.  What I really need is for some unwanted solicitors to come to my door so that I can put it to good use...I'm thinking a hard-of-hearing, elderly, Asian woman might live here all of a sudden!

Cabinets that have shelves which slide in and out...a woman must've thought of this.  It is ingenious!!!

An ice maker!!!  It's not one of those that is on the outside of the freezer door, nor does it offer crushed ice but who cares?!?!  It's an ice maker!!!  I don't mind opening the stupid door for my ice and after the amount of crushed ice I had during labor I am happy to live without it now!

Water at the push of a button!  Again it's inside the fridge, not outside if the door but who cares!!  No more refilling the Brita pitcher or buying the filters, I just press a blue button!!!

A food pantry!  Do you know how much space this opens up in my cabinets?  Let's just say I only have one visible appliance on my countertop and that is a toaster oven.  It's not huge but as you can see it holds more than enough food for 2½ people.

A gas fireplace.  I don't have to chop down any trees (I just have to learn to light a pilot which for me may be just as hard).  I can foresee what that this year's Christmas Cards will have a picture of this (in use) with a Christmas Tree to the right of it and a happy family poised in front.

In Case You're Wondering...

...how it's going getting Y to sleep in her new room while simultaneously introducing her to the freedom of a toddler bed...a picture is worth a thousand words:

Quick Updates

It has been almost a month since my last post but I figured you would all understand!  We moved into our new home and slightly less than 2 weeks later we left for vacation, having just returned yesterday I thought it appropriate to post a little something here to keep you all updated.

I had set a goal to have everything setup here in the new place before we left for NC to visit my family; I didn't quite meet that goal.  I still have a few things to put away (more like figure out where I want to put them, mostly things like Christmas decorations, etc.) and to hang all the pictures on the wall.  Y's room is the only room that is completely done, in all the other rooms I still have pictures to hang.  In fact there is nothing on any other walls except the mirror I purchased to hang above the fireplace.  I still get excited thinking of the deal I got on that mirror - 50% off at Garden Ridge because they are moving from one location to another.  It looks great hanging there and I really can't wait to get everything else finished so that I can post pictures for all of you guys to see.

Y is now sleeping in a toddler bed.  A few nights after moving into her new room she quickly figured out how to escape from her crib.  We have had a really difficult time getting her to adjust even though her room is almost exactly the same as before (just almost twice as big).  One morning I woke up to find her laying in my arms and when I asked B what time he had brought her into our bed he replied, "I didn't, I thought you did it."  That is how we figured out she could climb out of the crib.  Honestly the struggle we've had with getting her to sleep in her room has been the only downside of moving.  The past month has been hard on her, I mean we move to a new place then 2 weeks later we go on vacation to a place she probably doesn't remember and then we come back here...I feel for her.  But anyway, as for the toddler bed we really lucked out.  Her crib is a convertible crib so we had to order the special guard rail in order to convert it to a toddler bed (yes they sell rails at Walmart for $20 but I didn't wanna take a chance and buy that one and ruin my beautiful crib).  The only place to order it is at Babies R Us and I had inquired about one earlier in the summer and was told that it would take 10-12 weeks to deliver because it was a special order.  So I called in a panic right before we left for vacation, thinking that would knock 2 weeks off since we'd be away anyway, and they informed me that they now stock them in their warehouse so it would take 7-10 business days for it to arrive.  So it was waiting for us on Saturday after we returned from vacation.  I put it together that same night and it was pure hassle trying to get her to sleep in it because she was beyond tired and hadn't really had a good night sleep since before we moved.  I finally got her to bed only to discover that sometime during the night she had crawled into bed with us.  Tonight it took between 35 and 40 times of her getting out of bed only to have me put her back in bed before she actually fell asleep.  We'll see if she sleeps there through the night...

As for our vacation, it was great!  I loved spending time with my family and seeing how much my nieces and nephews have grown.  We went to Virginia to go to the beach and I gained a huge appreciation for the Outer Banks of NC!  I had been there before but never really had much to compare it to so when we went to the beach in Virginia we really learned the difference between them.  So on Friday we took a 1 day trip to the Outer Banks and really enjoyed it, it was B's first time going there and he kept commenting on how beautiful it was.  We definitely want to go back and stay longer next time.

Well that's a quick run down but I will be back soon with pictures of vacation and the condo once everything is set up.

The Story of Our Lives...

"I too believe that God will always make a way where there is no way. I believe that if we will walk in obedience to the commandments of God, if we will follow the counsel of the priesthood, he will open a way even where there appears to be no way."

--Gordon B. Hinckley, "If Ye Be Willing and Obedient", Ensign, Jul 1995, 2

Love this quote!  Loved this man!  I have witnessed this so many times in our lives.  Sometimes I have my "why my" days, weeks, or even months when I feel as if nothing I want or feel I need is working out right.  And it can be so frustrating especially when things seem to come so easy for others around you.  Or those times when you KNOW you're on the correct path and going in the direction Heavenly Father wants you to go but it still seems like you're hitting one road block after another, after another and just when you're ready to give up because you have tried every possible way around or over that road block to no avail...the pathway just opens up and you are able to continue on your journey.

Heavenly Father loves all of his children and He will always provide a way for us, even when we don't think it's possible.  It may not be when we feel we need it or in our time frame but "He's always on time."

WooHoo!!

We did it!  We took the plunge and are now homeowners...now just to get all our crap moved!

We're Almost There

Today is the day!!!  Today at 1:30pm we're going to do the final walk-through and at 2pm we are scheduled to sign all the papers.  I'm feeling quite a few emotions right now.  I'm nervous and excited and even a little sad but all-in-all we are so very ready to take this next step.

I am nervous because I fully realize that until those papers are signed, this isn't a done deal.  I'm excited because this is a huge step for us and is something we've been praying about for a very long time.  Heavenly Father has blessed us in so many ways and opened doors for us when there didn't even seem to be a door.  We know that this is what is right for us at this moment and we are so very grateful.  In all the excitement there is also a little big of sadness, a small amount because of the amount of money we're about to spend but more because I am extremely nostalgic.  Our current apartment isn't my first place (that was actually in college at VT), nor is it my first apartment as a married person, but it is the place that we brought our beautiful baby girl home to after she was born.  She crawled here, walked here, said her first words here, etc.  And honestly we have loved every minute of it but it is time to move on.  Life is about progression and constantly evolving who you are and that's just what we're doing.  We're taking steps we believe are necessary for us and our family, not to mention the strong desire to expand our family once again.  So we'll move on and yes, I can guarantee you there will be a bit of sadness in my heart for the next few months as I think of our times here or as I drive past the complex but I know that we will be having many more firsts in the hours, days, months and years to come...and I can't wait!!!