Some cute pics

This first picture is from a couple of nights ago. For her birthday Amanda got a play "purse" that plays music, teaches numbers, and has several items she can take in and out of it, including play money, a mirror, a bracelet, keys... and lipstick. After her party, my sister tried to show her how to "put on" the lipstick, but she'd just laugh and hand it back to have Ilene do it again. Then the other night, she sat down to play and started babbling to herself, while "putting on" the lipstick! Priceless!



This is last night. I was making dinner (stirring some rice in a pot), and Amanda got into the cupboard I leave open for her and took out a wooden spoon and bowl. She "stirred" just like mommy!

I'm in heaven...

Why did no one tell me my favorite Girl Scout cookie came in ice cream?!?!?!?! I found this at the market and have since had several bowls of heaven on earth. Ahhhhhh... no more trying to find the stores with the girl scouts selling cookies in front, I can just go in and find some Dreyers!! This used to be so much easier when I was a girl scout, I'd just buy some boxes from myself. I can't wait until Amanda is old enough, then I don't have to search out my beloved girl scout cookies!

Latest Fortune Magazine

I'm going to divert a bit from the family for a moment, so skip this post if you don't want to read about current events...

Anyway, if you haven't read it, there is an article in the latest Fortune Magazine called Melinda Gates Goes Public. It's an amazing article about an amazing woman. She is what I aspire to be like. Have you seen pictures of her? Does she *look* like the wife of a multi-billionare? No. She's so down-to-earth and not so plastic and made up that you don't recognize the real her anymore. I love that about her. I like that she has stayed true to her own self-image and hasn't given in to the pressures of being "perfect" in the public eye. And she runs the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which gives more charitable contributions than you and I will ever see in a lifetime. Amazing. Anyway, I don't want to go on an on about it, so just read the article if you have time, it's very eye-opening.

Fun with laundry

This morning as I was doing laundry, Amanda climbed into the basket and wanted to go for a ride, I had to oblige! I stopped to take a few pictures of course ;)





Also, we've had a *lot* of rain here the last couple of days, and last night it finally started to break up. On my way home from work I saw this and thought it looked cool, so I took a pic. You can *almost* see the sunset :)

Happy 1st Birthday Baby!

Amanda turned 1 on Thursday January 17, 2008. I can't believe my baby is 1 already! The first three months went by SOOOOOOO slow (probably because I was learning what to do), but after that we definitely cruised through the next 9 months no problem.

Thursday a gift from her aunts in Illinois arrived. I decided since it was her birthday I'd let her open it. She had fun finding what was inside :) She got a fridge magnet set which has been so much fun (more on that later)!

Saturday was her "official" party. As I was getting ready, I stubbed my toe on her baby swing (still sitting in the living room), and I'm pretty sure I broke my pinky toe. So when everyone arrived I was icing it :( Nevertheless, we had a good time. We did make-your-own pizzas in honor of Amanda's love of pizza. Everyone put the toppings they wanted on, and my little sister was in charge of the oven and cooking each one.

Then we did presents. First, from Aunt Ilene, a Build-a-Bear that she LOVED. It even sings a special happy birthday song to her, and she wants this bunny with her ALL.THE.TIME. now. It's weird how vehemently she has bonded to this bunny!

Amanda also got a lot of clothes, the most memorable was this shirt ("My Dad is the MAN"):

The biggest gift was the Discovery Dome from my parents. Her cousin Zach had this in Illinois and she LOVED it. So now she has it at home to play with! Notice how she's always looking off to her left? My nephew was sitting over there playing with her toys. She seemed more interested in him than in her gifts at times!

Then we did cupcakes. As I'm sure most 1 year-olds do, she LOVED her cupcake!! She took one taste of frosting, and then she was off! She devoured her cupcake more quickly than I've seen her eat anything else! Here's a few pictures of that:

Here's a picture of the cupcakes that were left after everyone had one:

That night I set up the magnets on the fridge, and Amanda had so much fun!

Other than that, it's been business as usual around here. Mike's working late a lot as they get to the end of the video game he's working on, so most nights it's me and Amanda. She got a book from Mimi called "first 100 words" with these big bright pictures of things like "Yellow Duck" and "Blue Shoes". She has taken an interest in this and loves to point at things and listen to me say them. She sometimes imitates the sound if it's easy enough. I think we're right on the verge of hearing her first words (other than the obligatory 'Uh-oh' that she currently uses every time she drops something). It's just a matter of time!

Quick update

Not much going on here.  Amanda has the bug that's been going around.  Last Tuesday night/Wednesday morning she started vomiting.  I couldn't get her to hold anything down all day Wednesday or Thursday.  She started getting better Friday and by Sunday she seemed back to normal.  But I sent her to daycare today only to get called in the afternoon that she had thrown up again and I had to come get her.  *sigh*  No fever, and other than not eating she seems fine.  We went to the doctor on Friday and he said it's just been going around, and not much I can do for her except try and get her to drink liquids and not get dehydrated.  So we are waiting.............

Meanwhile, I got a new dining room table last week!  Funny story actually.  I've been bugging Mike for years to get a new table, but he didn't want to spend the money.  Then last weekend we were talking about remodeling the kitchen (which is when we had agreed we'd get a new dining room table), and Mike mentioned he would like to get a table that is small and round (we have a very small dining room), but that you can open and add leaves to.  I said good idea!  Then I was looking through the newspaper and saw an ad for Cost Plus World Market - they were having a 50% off all furniture sale, and there it was, the perfect table!!  So I called all around and finally found one in Northridge.  We got an awesome deal (which made Mike happy), and it's exactly what I wanted!

Here's Amanda playing with the box while Mike was assembling everything:


And here's Mike all spread out assembling a couple of the chairs.
 

And here's the table set up tonight!  


As you can see my hutch no longer matches, but I think we're just going to put up with it for now and when we remodel the kitchen, I'm going to knock down the wall between the kitchen and dining room and put a bar there that will serve as my "buffet".  Now I just need to convince Mike to remodel the kitchen sooner rather than later!!

Amanda turns 1 on Thursday (the 17th), and that Saturday (the 19th) we're having a small party for her.  So I'll probably  have pics from that soon.

Illinois Trip in Review

Well, we made it back safely!
I already told you about the first few days in my previous blog. So here are the pictures to go with it. Here's Amanda in the Airport (Long Beach) before we took off on the 20th:



We were very surprised by how small and easy it was to get through the Long Beach Airport. There are only 4 terminals, so while ours was pretty busy, as you can see the other three were practically empty. So I let Amanda crawl (and walk) around to wear her out so she'd sleep on the plane ride. It worked like a charm!

Here's Amanda at the waterpark:



Mike brought the Wii with us because his mom likes to play tennis on it. He got a second controller for Christmas, so we were able to play against eachother. Here Mike's playing boxing against his friend Tom:




Meanwhile, Amanda loved to play Mimi's piano. My little music-maker in training :D



Christmas Eve was spent at Mike's sister's house. Amanda played with her cousin Zach's toys

Zach liked to climb on the presents before we opened them:

Cousin Natalie just watched the fun everyone was having:

Christmas morning we went to Church mass (Amanda did great!), and then opened the adult's presents. Christmas day was pretty laid back. We were supposed to have a ham dinner, but someone forgot to take the ham out of the freezer, so we ended up just having pulled pork sandwiches, and had our Christmas dinner the next night.

We flew home on the 27th, which was again pretty non-eventful. The TV's didn't work on our return flight, which sucked, but Amanda did really well again, sleeping through the last 1.5 hours. We landed at 8pm CA time and hightailed it home.

I had to work Friday, but Mike stayed home with Amanda. He set up her new walker she got for Christmas, which I wasn't sure she was ready for. But she surprised me by immediately getting up on it and walking!

Ahhh, my little girl is growing up!

Not much planned for New Years, just having a few friends over to play some games. Hope everyone had a great Christmas!

Merry Christmas from Illinois!

No pictures this time!

We flew from Long Beach to Illinois on Thursday December 20 and surprisingly had an easy time! I booked our seats on JetBlue with an empty seat in the middle, hoping no one would book it and we'd have a "free" seat for Amanda, but alas no luck. It was still unbooked the day before, but sometime between 10:30am Wednesday and 10:30am Thursday, someone booked it. So Amanda sat in my lap the whole time. However, she did really good! She slept during the whole first hour, including take-off, then ate and played the rest of the time. I had her suck on a pacifier during descent and she watched out the window as we landed. She didn't seem to have any problems with her ears!

Amanda's Uncle Mark picked us up at the airport, and we headed to Grandma Mimi's house where a surprise awaited us! Mimi and her Mark announced they were engaged (as of about an hour before)! We are so excited for them!

Friday was spent at home until the afternoon, when we joined Amanda's Aunts (Laura & Kathy) and their kids (Alison and Zach) for a trip to an indoor water park! Pictures are forthcoming after I can download my pictures at home. Amanda had a ton of fun! She played in the shallow baby area, then we took a couple laps around the lazy river before warming up in the hot tub. Did I mention it was a balmy 82 degrees inside?? Such a relief from the 37 degree freezing temperature outside! After a quick dinner, it was back to Mimi's for the annual "neighbors party" where all the neighbors got to meet Amanda for the first time.

Tomorrow several more family members are coming over to meet Amanda, and then it's on to the Christmas festivities.

I hope everyone is enjoying the balmy CA weather that I'm sure is much warmer than it is here, and that everyone has a very Merry Christmas!

Bowling

I totally forgot to post these pictures before. The weekend before Halloween in October Mike and I decided to go bowling at the local bowling alley on Sunday afternoon, so we took Amanda down there in her stroller and a good time was had by all!
Here's Amanda keeping an eye on the action:

Here's Amanda smiling up at the camera when she realized what I was doing:


Here's Mike bowling:


And me with the FIRST Turkey I've ever made!

Playing with napkins

I just discovered I can post directly from my new flickr account, so this is a test to see it works.
Amanda has decided she loves ripping up napkins and playing with the peices. I took some pics of that, and here they are: