One day down, the rest of her life to go

Here is where Ava and I spent most of our Saturday. And it was totally worth it!


Miss Ava made it on the potty 6 out of 7 times. Yeah, my daughter rocks! I just hope her excitement and motivation carries on through tomorrow too.


Here are a few of her prizes she has earned so far. The princesses spent most of the day dancing, sharing clothes, learning to use the potty, and having Ariel take them scuba diving (Cinderella kept getting too close to the crabs and sadly got snapped a few times). I can only imagine all the other adventures these princesses will have around our house.

We're going to give it another go

At potty training that is. I think the picture below pretty much sums up how our last experience at potty training went. Not fun for anyone.

This time is going to be different! Hopefully when Saturday comes along Ava will look more like the picture below.

We've stocked up on yummy goodies, Ava's picked out a handful of princess dolls and books. She couldn't stop thinking about all of the fun things we picked up at the store all day. Without fail, every hour she would ever so sweetly ask, "Daddy, can we read a princess book?" Or ask for a treat of whatever else we got. So hopefully these things will be a bigger motivator for her this time.

I don't think I ever mentioned on the blog how potty training went back in Jan. One word, horrible. Our little stinker knew when she needed to go on the potty, but just decided she didn't want to. We gave it a try for 3 whole days, and there were maybe two times where Ava actually went on the potty. Out of the whole 3 days. She didn't want to do it, and nothing we would of given her would of convinced her otherwise. But I think enough time has passed that we are all up to giving it a try again. So this time around, we went to the store and she picked out what snacks and rewards she wanted. I'm going to put them all in a container so after she goes she can pick whatever she wants. So we're crossing our fingers that having a variety of things will help motivate Ava. Does anyone else have any suggestions on what worked for you?

I love him.

How could you not? My favorite little guy turned 10 months old back on the 28th. Each day this guy seems to be surprising us with new and funny things that he now can do. So I thought it would be fun to write down what Reid's been up to lately. Especially since a lot of you don't live nearby.

• Eats double the amount of food Ava does in one day. He eats 5 containers of baby food, a yogurt, an adult serving of oatmeal, nurses twice a day, must join us at the table for every meal (even if he just ate) and then tries to devour any morsel of food he can get his grabby little hands on. He's only in the 10th percentile for weight. We're still trying to figure out where the food goes.
• Going along with Reid's love affair with food, he says "Mmmmm" BEFORE and AFTER every bite. The only time he isn't saying it is because he is swallowing. I need to post a video of it.

(Sorry for the blurry picture, taken with Josh's iPhone. I have to mention, the cheese was on his forehead for most of the meal. And he also rubbed something in his hair to make it stick straight up for the rest of the night.)

• What's Reid doing in this picture? You guessed it, asking for more food. Just today he learned how to sign the word "more". But I still think sticking his hand out it pretty dang cute and it gets the point across too.

• We have a slight idea where the food goes, this kid is always moving. He can climb up the stairs, walk around furniture, and his superpower must be crawling, because this kid doesn't mess around when trying to get from point A to B. He is fast. He's usually trying to get to something before Ava or I take it away.
• Anything on the ground is fair game for going in his mouth. Including shoes. Yuck.
• He can stand all by himself for a few seconds. He's usually standing without holding onto anything because he is in the process of raising his hands above his head so he can body slam you.
• Can say "Mama", "Dada" and "Ba" (ball). He also mutters quietly when reading a book.
• Josh is able to work from home a lot. So whenever Reid misses his dad, he looks upstairs (that's where Josh's office is) and screams "Daaaaa!". He's pretty excited when it actually works and Josh comes out of the office.
• His favorite pastimes are playing catch with his ball, taking a bath (he would jump in with his clothes on if we let him), playing peek a boo with Ava behind our curtains, reading books, swinging on the swing, having conversations with us (he's actually now quite vocal), and being upside down. Oh, and can't forget eating.
• He still drools all. the. time. Seriously.
• His first tooth popped through this week. And boy, Reid sure let us know it was coming. He was not a happy little boy. But now he quite enjoys bitting the spoon when I'm trying to feed him.
• One last thing, he can't pass up a good game of follow the leader. Especially when we're clapping, waving or raising our hands above our heads. As you can tell below, he's pretty good at it.

I love him.

It's going to rain the rest of the week

Why not take advantage of the upcoming rainstorm and bring out the sidewalk chalk. After putting Reid down for his afternoon nap, we headed outdoors. Sorry Reid.

Ava really enjoyed getting to go outside today. Too bad the clouds are rolling back in tomorrow.

After she was all done drawing she decided she needed to sign her name.

I tried teaching Ava how to play hopscotch. She decided that was boring. But jumping from the step onto the numbers was much more fun. So that's just what she did.

It might be hard to see, but if you look right above Ava's hands you can see what she's smiling about. After she scribbled to her hearts content we brought out the bubble maker. She loves trying to pop all of the bubbles.

Another thing that makes Ava happy is completely showering her parents with bubbles. Lets just say that Josh opened the front door at the wrong time.

Don't mess with Ava when she's got the bubble maker, she has no mercy. Sidenote - I just saw today that Target is now carrying this bubble maker in their stores again. Hurry, go get one for yourself your kids. We play with this thing almost all year long.

When the sun comes out, you've got to go out and play

Well Shelby, you should of stayed an extra week. The weather today was 68 degrees without a cloud in the sky. It was a perfect day to take a trip up to the Berkeley hills to visit the Little Farm.

Upon arriving Ava ran over to the fence, points, screams "Cows Mom, cows!", and then excitedly jumps up and down for a few seconds. I guess it's been awhile since I last took her on an outing to the farm.

Once Ava noticed just how large the cows were she quickly announced that she wanted to see the chickens. So here she is peering at the chickens and geese, who are not as intimidating.

Then she felt brave enough to go peer at the dairy cows, but not brave enough to actually feed them some celery. When I handed her a stalk of celery to feed the cow, she was going to totally do it, until the cow stuck her head through the fence. Then she handed it to me and said, "I want to watch you feed the cow."

Here's Reidy enjoying our little outing in the safety of the bjorn. It was actually quite nice not having to haul the stroller around. I love having little kiddos. Makes my back a lot happier.

On our way back to the car to get some lunch, a bazillion butterflies decided to join us on the trail. They ranged from medium sized bright orange ones to teeny tiny periwinkle ones. Here's Ava watching the butterflies fly by.

Sidenote, notice how Ava is standing on a tree stump. When she saw the stump she proudly announced, "If I saw them cutting down the tree, I would say 'No cut down tree'." We've been living in the bay area for way too long!

After following the butterflies for quite some time we finally made it back to the car to retreive our lunch. Why does food always seem to taste better when you're outside? Ava's showing me what a daddy bite would look like.

Here's the aftermath of the "daddy bite".

Here's my best picture of all of us. Ava says I should finish the post by saying, "I love going to the animal farm." Yep, agreed.

We had a visitor!

And what a fun visitor she was! This past week Josh's Mom Shelby flew out to visit. The weather was cloudy and cold (for CA) for most of the week and both kids developed an ear infection, but I still think we had a grand ol' time.

After a few nights we were sad to discover that our blow up mattress was not living up to its job description. So on Monday morning I made a quick trip to Target to find a replacement. The old mattress quickly found a home in our playroom as a trampoline. Reid and Ava couldn't of been happier. Notice the humongous grin plastered on Reid's face. So Shelby got a mattress that actually holds air longer than an hour and the kids got a trampoline. It was a win win.

Ava has gotten way into playing board games lately. Her favs at the moment are Hi Ho Cherry-o and Memory. Shelby got roped into a few games during the week. If anyone has any game suggestions for an almost 3 year old, I would love to add some more variety to our board game mix.

Once the kids were feeling better we made a trip over to the library and a nearby park. It was nice having Shelby join us in the book searching because she came across a book that she used to read to Josh and his brothers. Ava and Josh have read that book almost every night since. Adorable, right?

I never knew this could be possible, but Reid just might love the swing more than Ava.

At the end of the week we headed over to the Abraham Lincoln Museum? Modern Art Museum? The local thrift store?

This picture should clear it up. By the way, isn't the picture above pretty impressive. There were portraits all throughout the factory made with Jelly Bellys.

They take cleanliness very seriously on the tour. In order to go on the tour (which is above the factory in an enclosed walkway) you had to wear the hat. Personally I think they just wanted to give the employees below a good laugh when they look up and see all these dorks wearing these paper hats. But hey, I didn't care, they gave me loads of free Jelly Bellys :) Looking good guys!

They did make sure to give Reid a hat to wear on the tour, but thankfully they didn't enforce it.

Amazingly we ended the tour right at noon. How lucky were we that there was an In N Out within a few minutes of the factory. It was meant to be.

Any guesses on how many times we ventured over to Nordstroms? Not one, not two, but three times :) One of our favorite little places to go with Shelby is the Nordstroms' Cafe.

I think Ava is a fan too. She gives the mac and cheese two hands up!

On Sat. the clouds parted and the weather warmed up into the mid sixties. And of course it happened to be Shelby's last day visiting. So we made a quick stop by the park so Shelby could soak up some CA rays before heading back to the snow.

It may look like Reid has hardly any hair, but look closely. You can see his very fine hair blowing in the wind. Adorable little guy.

There is no way that I can look at this picture and not laugh. These kiddos of mine are a crack up.

This big, wet kiss is just for Nana from Reid! We loved getting to spend the whole week with you.

9 Months

My baby boy is 9 months old today. Eek! I must admit, I'm having a slight panic attack. He'll be a year old in 3 months. I'm not ready for him to grow up yet!

If Reid will be one in 3 months, that means that his big sister will be three in almost 3 months. Double eek!

I can now completely understand why my mother-in-law made Josh promise to never grow up when he was a little boy. I am just loving the age that these too kiddos of mine are at.

Christmas time in '09

Posting about our Christmas break has been on my to do list for a month now. Sadness right? But hey, when you have 498 pics taken just during your almost two week trip, you might just keep putting it off too! (I did not take all of those pictures. I put all the pics taken from everyone else's camera on my computer) But I'm hoping that today I will finally be able to cross it off of my list.

Whew. Now I can finally get around to all of the other pics I took in January that I've been DYING to post!