Ongoing observations

I plan on recording little things that happen throughout the day. They may or may not be in any particular order, but I think it is the little everyday things that can be the most important, and the things I want to remember most. Also, I might find the motivation to write more often this way!

Fall Fun!

Lucy and Mommy at the zoo

at La Jolla Shores after the aquarium with Nonna

sweet giggling Lucy

Ava & Mommy at Sea World

Ava & Nonna at our afternoon picnic

Ava's clownfish talking to the real clownfish

Ava & Lucy playing at the aquarium

Ava & daddy on a "big girl ride" at Sea World

Sea World with the girls' favorite Sesame guys!

Lucy at Sea World in the toddler jumpy area

Lucy on her first ride at Sea World!

Ava always loves the flying Elmo

Lucy enjoying lunch

At Disney on Ice

Ava's first glimpse of the flying Tinker Bell at Disney on Ice

Ava takes milkshakes very seriously! Corvettes after the Disney show

Sea World petting the starfish on Halloween celebration day

Nonna, Ava & Gramps at Sea World

Nonna as Tink

Mommy & Lucy with the fishes at Sea World

Ok, so admittedly, I am not good at blogging regularly. I just have to talk about how much Lucy and Ava are growing lately! Lucy waves obsessively at everything! It is too cute. She first waved on 4/23, crazy I haven't blogged since March!  I haven't written all summer and now it is mid fall, so yes, they are very different! I have to get on the ball! First of all, Ava is completely obsessed with Halloween! She loves everything about it! We have Halloween books, stickers, decorations, etc. I wonder if she likes to be a little scared. It is very unexpected that she likes this holiday so much! The spookiness, the spiders, skeletons, black cats, webs, pumpkins and everything else Halloween all make her giggle with excitement. She has changed her Halloween costume several times. She wanted to be a dog, then a spider, then a butterfly (this is the costume we have for her), then a black cat. She likes to pretend to be a black cat and I pretend to be a magical fairy. She meows all the time and wants me to pet her like a cat. So funny. She is just the most amazing little girl. Now that I am home full time, I can fully appreciate her unique, clever little ways. Every morning I go into her room and say "good morning, beautiful girl!" and she says "good morning..." followed by exactly what she is thinking at that moment. It could be anything from "I went pee pee in my diaper" to "mommy I dropped my tiny guinea pig can you get him please?!" Then she gives me a tackle huggie and we get ready for the day. This is my favorite time of day with her. She is so incredibly smart. She says the most amazing things and sometimes I can't help but laugh and she says, "mommy, don't laugh!". But I can't help it. She is also getting much better at being nice to Lucy. She gives Lucy hugs and plays tag with her, during which she inevitably knocks Lucy down then gives her a hug. Ava has come a long way from shouting "stop crying Lucy!" (Lucy would actually stop crying!) to talking for Lucy and saying what Lucy wants. Ava also says that everything happens "eight years ago", even if it is yesterday or last week. She doesn't understand that she wasn't alive 8 years ago!
For Lucy's part, she has really come into her own lately. First of all, she absolutely loves Ava! She always wants to go into Ava's room in the morning and help get Ava dressed. Lucy is also a Daddy's girl. Daddy is the only one she cuddles with and puts her little head down on. Her first day at the beach was on her birthday, that was fun! Except she kept eating sand. She is running now. She is now nodding and shaking her head to express what she wants along with strong "huuuuuhhh" for "yes". She isn't speaking yet except for Momma, Dadda, and Nonna. I am a little worried about her because at this age Ava was saying "banana" and "Abby Caddaby" but Lucy will move at her own pace I think. Lucy is very strong willed and knows what she wants! She loves to read anything that has a Sesame character in it and she likes to read over and over and over again. She also likes Sid books and likes it when I sing "rugtime" over and over and over again. She loves to dance! She bobs up and down and smiles and laughs like crazy when I bring out my computer because she knows I will play some music. So cute! She is quite a handful though because she knows her mind! Overall a good trait, though admittedly frustrating because she can't talk yet so I don't always know what she wants. I am loving staying home with my girls and watching them grow and change everyday. They are incredible little girls! I am so lucky to have my sweet babies!

A Banner Day!

Lucy wants a hug from Ava...not likely!

My sister made me dress like this!

Mommy and Lucy

Sharing a water cup

I want a Big Girl cup!

Ava reading to Lucy

Lucy on the go with her crab crawl

Lucy loves Ava!!

Lucy hit quite a few milestones today! She can now stand like a little elevator without holding on to anything, she just kind of wobbles in mid-air looking around, and she took her first baby step! Twice!  I am so glad I was home to see it and I didn't miss it. Nonna was there too and we had such a great afternoon playing with Lucy. She was grabbing the bottle and feeding herself too. So much fun! I feel like Lucy never gets one on one time with me because Ava is always there wanting attention. I am happy to play with Ava too, of course, but I get a little sad for Lucy. Ava had such special time with me when she was Lucy's age since she was the only one, but Lucy doesn't have that experience. I guess Lucy has the wonderful experience of growing up with a sister. She just loves Ava so much and wants to be with her all the time. She chases Ava all over the house and Ava has been so much better lately about playing with Lucy. Ava crawls after her all the time and they crawl together on the floor chasing each other. Ava has also been in this "I'm a baby" phase. She wears a bib and wants to be like Lucy too. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em I guess. While I was playing with Lucy, Ava was at the park with Jeanette, she had a wonderful time, of course. Lucy is also getting her top left tooth coming in through her gums, no wonder she has been cranky at bedtime! Jeanette spotted it. Lucy also initiated a peek-a-boo game with Jeanette today where she picked up a towel and put it on her head and smiled and giggled. Sooooo cute!!
Ava is just getting smarter and smarter by the minute. Her new favorite thing to say is, "you're full of drama, Mama!" Yesterday she asked me what slugs dreamed about. Wow. She also loves playing with the computer games on PBSKids.org. She sits right next to me and plays the games. She does really well with the letter/sound games and is getting better at identifying shapes. She needs to start to work on numbers, but I don't want her to not like it. Right now learning is so fun for her. Tonight when I was tucking her in she said, "I'm a little bit sad, I want some more attention." Oh, brother!! That little girl gets buckets of attention. What a ham! She also went to the Airbands show at school last night and had an absolute blast! She was dancing and singing and at one point she said, "I want to go and dance with the kids on teh stage!" and she ran towards teh stage full speed. Jeremy had to intercept her. She kept saying, "one more song!!" She was dancing all over the place and clapping like crazy! I love it. I have to get her in a dance class ASAP. Ava has also been having a wonderful month playing with friends. She always talks about playing with Nala. She and Nala just run like crazy and dress up in princess costumes and have a marvelous time together in their own little world. Last time Nala was over, they grabbed a flashlight and called Shalyse and me into Ava's room and performed for us. It was the most adorable thing ever! Ava had a great time at Nala's party playing with Kennedy too. Finally it seems like those two are getting in sync. They ran around teh yard singing and dancing and Ava even let Kennedy hold her hands and they danced in a circle. Adorable. Ava also had fun with her friend Aron. they were playing "check-up", tag, and watering plants together in the yard in Ava's "garden" (really a bunch of weeds growing by the fence). They were just too cute together. I am so happy that Ava is becoming more social and enjoying playing with other kids. It is amazing to watch her development.
I am so lucky to have my two gorgeous girls, I hope they don't grow up too fast!

Yikes it has been a long time!

Wow, I am so bad at keeping up with this. I'll try to update as concisely as possible. Ava is a talker! She has blossomed so much in the past couple of months: she is asking questions like crazy, she is descriptive about what she wants, she barely has accidents anymore (except at friends' houses, grrr...) and she is becoming like my little friend. Lucy is developing at lightning speed. She is crawling like a little crab all over the house. Since she doesn't crawl on her knees, she uses her feet and her hands and looks like a little mollusk. So cute!! She wants to play with and be with Ava more than anyone else and won't tolerate being held for long, she just wants to be down and crawling and playing. Lucy is now in a hard plastic harness. Her right hip is at 25 degrees and is good, but her left isn't getting into place quite as easily. She has to wear it at night and nap and we aren't suppose to let her stand up, but that is really hard. Hopefully at her next appointment at the end of March, she will be all better and we can ditch the brace. We will see.
Despite our struggles and sleep deprivation (Lucy is still routinely waking up at 1 or 2 in the morning to eat) I am so thankful and grateful for my two beautiful daughters. Ava has been more interested in playing with Lucy lately and while she still doesn't like it that Lucy takes time away from her, she does give Lucy toys to play with and even said today, "I want to play with Lucy". I was so happy! Yesterday, Ava wanted to feed Lucy, so I let her. It was the most adorable thing ever! Ava actually did it and Lucy opened her mouth for the spoon. It was such a fun moment! Also a big deal for Ava, she actually played with Nala the other day. They were playing princesses and Ava let Nala put a necklace on her and they were running all over the house together playing hide and seek and talking up a storm. I was so happy to see her playing with another kid and not hiding! It took a load off of my mind that Ava doesn't have some sort of emotional issue, but she is just shy and apparently Nala knew how to get her out of her shell. Phew!
While Lucy was sleeping yesterday, Ava and Nonna and I had a grand old time. Ava got some paint on her hands and started painting the glass on the front doors, and we let her. She was so excited and creative and Nonna was laughing so hard! It was a fun afternoon. Nonna and Ava were dancing around the house like crazy together. Those two are two peas in a pod. They are so alike. Mom was telling me stories about how she was actually quite naughty in school and defiant and that she sees a lot of herself in Ava's behavior. Great. I am not excited about the teen years! Nonna also got a felt board for Ava and we set it up. Ava really liked it. There were some felt dinosaurs and Ava knew almost all of their names. I was amazed! She even knew Perisaourlophus. Amazing. Lately Ava keeps saying "I miss you" "I want you to play with me" "I want you to be with me". It just breaks my heart when she says that! I don't know if she knows what she is saying, but it just kills me every time! She really likes saying it as I am putting her to bed and when I leave for work. That is the worst. I know one day I'll long for the time that she wants to be with me and I will be competing for her attention. I am not excited about not being the center of her world anymore, but I know it will happen and there is nothing I can do about it. I am treasuring this time with her and with Lucy.
I just love my two girls. I could not be happier being their mom!

Sitting, standing, pretending, and more...

an artsy Lucy pic

Nonna and Ava reading after Ava's bath

Lucy in her Christmas dress

Nonna, Ava and Mommy at LegoLand!

Right before Lucy got her two bottom front teeth...smile!

Well, well, well...so it has been over a month since my last entry. I can only blame laziness. But despite my lack of updates, much has been happening with my two little princesses. Christmas was absolutely wonderful. We had a magical time with Nonna and Gramps and Aunt Adrienne and Uncle Joey. Lucy and ava got more presents than we could bring home (literally) and Nonna went way overboard! But we spent some quality time with everyone and relaxed together as a family, which was the most important part of course.

Lucy is sitting more than steady and she pulled up to standing on 1/15! I was so proud of her! She rolls in her crib, even with the harness and the funniest (but saddest) thing about her right now is that she gets stuck sitting up in her crib. She just can't figure out how to lay back down when she sits up. Poor baby! Lucy is starting to figure out how to crawl, but she still mostly scoots backward. She is a bit slower at developing physically than Ava was, but she is in that harness most of the day so that impedes her I think. She has also recently discovered gravity. She gets a kick out of dropping her toys and looking for them and waiting for me to pick them up. Ava likes to pick them up for her too, she thinks it is a game, which is nice for me so I don't always have to be reaching down to do it.  Lucy is still so sweet and wonderful with the most contageous smile and giggle. She is so cuddly! But she has been more adventurous lately and loves to be on the floor to crawl and explore. Everything goes in teh mouth of course. She also got her two front teeth on the bottom a couple of weeks ago. Now she likes to chew on things with her little teeth. All she wants is to be with Ava. She loves her sister, I can see it in her face, but Ava wants to do her own thing most of the time. Although, Ava has been slightly more interested in Lucy lately. She brings her toys and calls her "my little sister monkey". Ava has intellectually been exploding. She is asking questions and her new favorite thing to say is "Is that ok?" SO CUTE!! She is just learning about voice inflection and how to end a question with an upward vocal inflection. The other day she jumped out of her bed and ran to the back door yelling "its a beautiful day, come on mommy! come on!!" She then ran out the back door and started dancing. Such a joyful child! She also has been giving tanti bacci, and licking my face because that is how Lucy gives bacci, then saying that I am gross because she licked me. Ava loves to dance! She does her "circle dance"and runs around picking up her feet and jumping. We took her to a ballet class and mom got her ballet shoes, they are so cute! She liked watching the class, but she was scared to participate with the other little girls. She does like to do ballet with me though, which I am ecstatic about, since I want her to be a little ballerina. Last week, poor Lucy had to be taken to Childrens for an ear infection (she is ok now) and in the meantime, I took Ava to the park. We had a fabulous time! She didn't even want to go on the play structures at all. She wanted to go down to the stage and dance! There were some other older little girls dancing on the stage and she loved watching them. She got up on the stage with them and just watched, awestruck. It was adorable! We played in the "fairy princess house"which is a woody area of the park and had magic wands. This past weekend, we went to the park again, just Ava and me. This time, Ava said she was Abby Caddaby and I was Gonigin. She kept calling me Gonigin and made me call her Abby. We went exploring the "jungle" and the fairy princess house again and she kept giving me new wands. She learned how to roll down a hill and we explored the canyon. The whole time she was Abby. She was in absolute heaven! I was amazed by her creativity and ability to pretend and create fantasy worlds on her own. She reminded me of me when I was little and all I needed was a stick and a cape and I was in worlds of my own imagination for hours. That is so healthy for her. Just to play and be creative, developing her sense of self. She is the most incredible little person I have ever met.

Christmas preparations galore!

It is inching closer and closer to Christmas and I know it will be here soon. I still want to do so much! Make more cookies, go to the Holiday of Lights, take the girls to see Santa (even if Ava is afraid!), go to the Nighttime Zoo festivities...there just isn't enough time! Ava and my mom made some ornaments for the tree and Ava and I painted them, they turned out really cute. She doesn't have the attention span at this point to finish a project so I usually end up finishing it, along with cleaning up a huge mess. But that's ok, at least she is exposed to different activities and to art. Thanks mostly to my mom. She brings over her "lesson plans" and has so many ideas of what to do with Ava to help develop artistic creativity. Ava is in a huge puzzle phase right now. She loves doing puzzles and she is good at it! She can do a 23 piece puzzle all by herself and does a Sesame Street puzzle book with 5 different puzzles in it over and over again. Ava continues to say the most incredible things! Of course as I am writing I can't think of anything specific, but she really knows exactly what is going on. My favorite parts of my day are when I go to get her out of bed and lay down next to her and she just starts talking up a storm about her dreams or what she wants to do or what we did yesterday. (basically all things happened "yesterday" even if it was a few days or a week ago). It is such a magical time of day for her when everything is fresh and she says "Good Morning Mommy!!". Then I get her dressed and sometimes it all falls apart and she gets in a mood or sometimes her good mood when she wakes up carries through the morning.  But before she gets out of bed, she is just so lovable. My other favorite time of day is when I walk in the door after coming home from school. She runs to me with urgent news about what she is doing with Jeanette. She is so excited about is and she yells "HI MOMMY!" and gives me a huge hug. It is the best!
Lucy is now sitting stable, so that is encouraging. She still needs a pillow behind her, but overall, she is pretty stable. She wants to crawl so badly! She just can't seem to prop herself up. If she is laying down, she is like an upside-down potato bug, she can't right herself. She gets so mad when she wants something and can't reach it. It must be very frustrating not to be able to move forward to get what you want. She puts EVERYTHING in her mouth with so much enthusiasm, it is incredible! She is extremely driven to get what she wants! She is as passionate as Ava is, but where Ava is thoughtful, Lucy is impulsive. It is so interesting to see their differences, even though Lucy is so young, there is little that is similar between them, apart from their appearance. They truly look alike, but Lucy seems younger than Ava was at this age. Ava seemed more grown up, even back then. Lucy is much more of a cuddler, a baby-baby. Ava was more on top of her game at that age. I remember driving up to Passover in Newport Beach with Ava in the backseat and Ava basically demanded that I read her the Farm book over and over and over. She got upset whenever I stopped reading it. When I read to Lucy, she just lunges toward the book with her entire being and wants to eat it. She loves pictures in books and is excited when I read to her, but it is hard when she just wants the book in her mouth. It is especially frustrating to Ava when I attempt to read to the two of them together. I get Ava's point of view that Lucy wants everything she sees...she does!
I love my two wonderful girls so much and am excited everyday as they grow and change. A big part of me doesn't want them to grow any bigger. I just want them to stay like this forever. But I am also thrilled when they reach new milestones in their development. Parenting is a complete and total paradox! And I love it.

December Nights and February 1st

Yummy milk! 

I am so cute in my harness-free outfit!

Ava and teh Nativity Scene: "Talk them!!"

In front of the Balboa Park fountain

Mommy and Lucy at December Nights!

End of the night, Ava doesn't want to leave

Ava and daddy exploring how gravity works at the Reuben Fleet Space Center

We had a wonderful time at December Nights last night! Ava loved the nativity scenes, especially that I narrated and made all of the figures "talk them". She had gingerbread men (just the feet) and got to play at the science museum in the kids zone. She had an absolute ball! She loved all of the lights and running down the Prado. She was afraid of Santa...very afraid! She was last year too. She hasn't quite made the connection between presents and Santa yet. Once she does, I'm sure her fear will go away. She did like seeing the flying Rudolph and reindeer though. Lucy was a trooper, she was pretty good, but started to lose it at the end of the night around 7, so we called left. Ava protested vehemently, saying she wanted to stay.
As far as Lucy's development goes, we went to see Dr. Pring and good news overall: her left hip has corrected to 28 degrees, but her right hip is still at 31 degrees with no improvement. Dr. Pring is optimistic that she will correct with no problem, although I am nervous. If it isn't working, we are going to try a different type of brace and the next step is surgery. Again, Dr. P doesn't think that is likely. We have another appointment on February 1st to check again. I am just praying that both are corrected even more, hopefully at or below 25 degrees. She is now wearing the harness 18 hours per day so at least she can wear normal baby clothes for part of the day. It is the little things sometimes. On a bright note, Lucy is sitting up like a champ, she still falls over sideways occasionally and arches back, but overall, she is doing really well with that milestone.
We are off from school for Christmas break in 2 weeks..yay for being teachers :-) (at least there is that perk!)