Archive for February, 2010
After a hectic morning running boring old errands we stopped off at a new local playground as a reward for her patience and tolerance. She behaved beautifully so I felt like she deserved a little running around and screaming time – - despite the rapidly dropping temperatures.
“Come on, Mama.”
She was a little disappointed when we got to the play area since there was no swing in sight (oh, the horrors). She recovered quickly and headed for the slides.
Little slides, big slides – she did them all. I even tried the big slide and realized that my tush is way too big to attempt sliding on the little kid playground equipment. For a brief moment I imagined having to call J to some and unwedge me from the slide but we made it work and all was well.
As I mentioned, the playground has no swings which was a huge letdown for her but not so much to me. Swings are like crack to her and if there’s one about then she could swing for hours with little interest in doing anything else. Easy for the pushEE obviously, but you can see why this can be somewhat tiresome for the pushER.
So she decided to climb. This is a very big deal because Ave (thankfully) is not a climber. It’s rare that she scales anything higher than a stepstool at home. She never once attempted to climb out of her crib nor have we caught her attempting to climb any bookcases, tv stands, dressers, etc. Since my goddaughter is a fearless mountaineer and has been found in some precarious situations it’s made me even more grateful that Ava prefers her feet to remain firmly planted on terra firma.
Here we go:
Onwards and upwards.
Hey. This is kind of fun all touching the sky and stuff.
Uh-oh. She looked down.
This is NOT good.
Terror commenced shortly thereafter accompanied by much whining and “I can’t do it, Mama.” Being the mean Mama that I am I refused to help her and instead told her that yes, she could and would do it since she was mayyyyybeeee 10 inches off the ground at this point. She eventually did make it down on her own and promptly exited stage left making a mad dash for the car. I’m not sure if that was to get away from the offending piece of equipment, to get away from me (who she was very, very angry with), or simply to warm up since it was freezing outside.
Regardless, it appears that I will not have to worry about her climbing Mount Everest anytime soon. I look at this as a very.good.thing!
It’s not often you get to celebrate TWO holidays at the same time, eh?
First was Valentine’s Day. We waffled back and forth on whether to do Valentine’s cards or not for Ava’s daycare friends since the two year old class neither encouraged nor discouraged them and we ultimately decided not to bother – - – until I dropped her off at daycare on Friday and she pitifully asked me where hers were since nearly everyone else had sent bags full of cards and candy along with their kids. Of course I had to save the day and spent 1/4 of my workday hastily shopping for and assembling Chinese red envelopes, tiger valentines, and chocolate coins to be distributed at their Valentine’s party to be held later that afternoon, which I now had to leave work early for in order to attend since I had to deliver the valentines to distribute so we wouldn’t be forever known as the slacker parents.
Needless to say, it was not my most productive day at work. She, however, made out like a bandit. Who knew that Valentine’s is comparable to Halloween in regards to how much chocolate/sugared loot can be scored in one day?
Sorry, no pictures from the daycare party. Primarily since she wouldn’t leave my side for even one single minute once I walked into the room. It’s kind of difficult to take a picture of someone who’s physically attached to your leg.
She got her valentines from mama and daddy on Saturday morning. Of course Mama shopped for it all while Daddy got most of the glory for being the presenter but whatever. She was happy and Daddy now knows that his job is to ensure that she receives a heart box of chocolates every single year until (minimum) she turns 18. My dad did this for me for years and years and I loved it – I saved all the tacky lace and plastic flower decorated heart boxes for years until they all got thrown out (not by me) during a move. It meant the world to me and it’s a memory I want her to have.
Of course it was also Lunar New Year – so we had to welcome the Year of the Tiger in with much fanfare. We had tastefully decorated the house with some scattered lanterns and we’d swapped out last year’s ox for our new tiger.
Oh wait, did someone say new tiger? Oh yes, here he is in all his glittery glory.
We have some old tiger friends, too.
I cannot believe she used to wear these shoes, by the way. They’re so tiny. We bought them for her while we were in China and she wore them to her first FCC Chinese New Year party.
After she posed all her tigers for their photo shoots she consented to sit down and (sorta) allowed me to take her picture.
Sorta because she wasn’t given her hong bao until she sat at her table to fill the rice urn with rice and coins (unfortunately not gold coins but we’ll take any kind of extra prosperity we can get). Yes, we bribed her but she had loads of fun doing it once she gave it a shot.
Me? Not nearly as much fun as she did since I was cleaning up rice for a solid week afterward.
We finished up our New Year celebration with a lovely Chinese dinner out with friends. If only all holidays could be like this – low stress, minimal spend, and sharing good food and better conversations with family and friends.
Life IS good.
When I was little my parents used to watch the Lawrence Welk show every week. I grouched and grumbled every time it came on but secretly enjoyed it – the women were sooooo pretty, got to wear fancy dresses, and they could sing. What more could you ask for? Oh, and bubbles. Yep, they had plenty of those too.
Did y’all know that the LW show is still on the air thanks to syndication and public broadcasting? Yep, already we’re finding ourselves regularly settling in to watch at 7PM on Saturday nights. And yes, I am aware of how pathetic and boring that sounds but Ava loves the show and is entranced with the music and the dancing. J grumbles about it since it is invariably interrupting yet another Cops marathon but I’m convinced he secretly enjoys it, too – even though watching and listening with much older and experienced ears makes us realize that some of the acts were, ummmm, not so good after all.
Really though, how could he not enjoy it when Ava just wants to dancedancedance with Daddy every single time a (arguably) good song comes on. Since tonight’s show’s theme was Love Songs and was originally recorded in 1980 there were plenty of dancing opportunities even though J’s ears were near to bleeding from the massacre of a much loved Beatles song. Do you know how freakin’ cute it is when Ava shows us how to tap dance just like the people on TV?
Almost as cute as watching Daddy teaching Ava how to samba. He was successful, btw. Sooooo cute!
Shopping:
Sticker Shock:
And finally, waiting very patiently in the check out line:
As we approached the cash register I asked her who was paying and she looked at me and said, clear as a bell, “I need you debit card, Mama.” So I gave it to her and she held tight to it all the way up to the counter where the checkout guy completely and totally ignored her. Good thing she was fascinated with the teeny cart and didn’t notice his lack of pint-sized customer service.