2 Years Old

Amelia had her little family birthday party today. When she woke up, Philip sang her Happy Birthday, so all morning she expected me to sing to her at her command, which I did. I told her that when dad came home she could open presents and eat cake and sing more. She kept asking "daddy happy birthday Meeya (Amelia)" so we could get on with the festivities. She was pretty excited when she heard his key in the door and he brought her a balloon. I made ice cream cone cupcakes so she could enjoy fake softserve and decorated them like banana splits, strawberry and vanilla with sprinkles or chocolate chips. She's not much into sweets, so she ate a little frosting, then told me to "open it" while trying to take the frosting off. Maybe she expected the top to pop off like her plastic ice cream cone toy. She opened her gifts and played so gently with her new tea set. She set the table and drank out of everyone's cup (like she does in real life) and fed her baby doll. Then she conked out. All in all, it was a pretty successful birthday.

A Tribute to Amelia

Here is my tribute to Amelia's second year of life. These are a few of my favs. It's funny to see how much she's grown (especially her untamed hair). We can't believe she's 2 today. Happy Birthday Amelia.

Family Trip

Last weekend we made it to Utah to bless Ben. Thankfully, the kids did pretty good and a chunk of our families were able to make it down. It was great weather and Amelia enjoyed being outside and having some freedom to run around unaccompanied in nature. I think I won some over on the no dairy diet. I cannot take any credit for the recipes. I got them off allrecipes.com. Here's the links to the cinnamon rolls and the chicken marinade. Of course, I substitute all the butter and milk with non-dairy stuff and make my own frosting without cream cheese so Amelia (and I guess Ben vicariously through me) can enjoy. I can only imagine how delicious these would be with all that buttery goodness. Oh how I miss dairy.

Birthday Spoils

So Amelia got an early birthday present from Grandma and Grandpa: a set of plastic food. It has been keeping her busy and appeasing her need to teethe on everything and make believe she can eat cheese and soft serve ice cream. Yesterday when I was playing with her, she handed me a hot dog and told me "hot doggy". It made me laugh. I took a video because it was just so cute. Enjoy.

Things you may not know about me

Since I am not really sure who reads this blog anymore, I thought I would take a minute to tell you a few things about me that you may not know.

I cry while watching weird things on TV. Like recently the Olympics and even some of the commercials for the Olympics. Every time USA wins a gold and they play the Star Spangled Banner, I get all choked up. I don't know if any of you watched Shawn Johnson win her gold medal, but when they panned over to her mom and dad sitting there bawling, I was straining to hold back tears of my own. I don't know if I am still post pregnancy hormonal, or if this was really that touching, but it still gets me. I also get choked up by that Visa commercial where they are showing the guy who fell during his race and his dad ran to the finish line with him just so he could finish. Here's the video. If this doesn't make you cry, you are a stone (Philip hates the narration, so he feels only annoyance for this commercial....I rest my case)

I like to crop and splice pictures. It's true. In college, before all the fancy digital editing you can do at home, I had a habit of cutting up pictures and splicing them together, then color copying them so you couldn't tell. It was like some personal challenge if someone said, "I like everything about this picture except........" , and I would jump into action to alter that picture to their liking. Now that I have a computer, I enjoy editing out stray hairs, arms and feet of my children or even cutting out the one person who isn't smiling and replacing them with a better face. Here is one of my latest.

I also like to recycle clothes. That may sound weird, but don't you love a shirt or pants and then they get a stain or rip, or don't fit or get out of style and I hate parting with them, so I reuse them to make dresses for Amelia or squares on quilts or other things. I've made capris long shorts, all our Marshall Island clothing into a quilt, and the one most people are shocked by is I cut up the skirt of my wedding dress and made it into a blessing dress for Amelia and this little vest and necktie for Ben. Both were fun labor of love projects and I hope someday atleast one of my grandkids will wear them. This is what it was before and this was Amelia's
and this was Ben's

Throw Rocks

Traveling with babies ca be hard for lots of reasons. One is that Amelia gets really carsick. I kind of know the signs and can tell when "it's" about to happen. We were driving on a curvy stretch of road when I noticed the signs. I started to continually ask her if she was going to throw up or if her tummy hurt. Finally after some whining and suspicious gulping, I made Phil pull over to give her some air. We were on the highway, so to keep her from running into the road, Phil interested her in throwing rocks. Now, all she wants to do when she sees rocks is throw them. She's not half bad, and this kept her busy at the lake for quite some time. I like how if you look closely, you can see her rock mid air. Plus, I like her fashion statement.

Anything you can do I can do better.......

So Philip took Amelia to this playground with a little climbing wall and she acted like it was no big deal the first try on it. What a little monkey. She makes this stuff seem so easy, no wonder she is constantly trying to convince Ben to walk by holding his hands and saying, "Ben..walking....up, Ben". I keep trying to tell her that he doesn't know how because he's little, but all this does is change her walking commands to, "Little Ben, up, walking" She is going to be so wowed once he finally can.

My laziness

So I have been bored about blogging or lazy or tired or something lately. Oh yeah, it's called sleep deprivation or as some would define it as "the joys of motherhood". I also am weird and don't like to post without a picture, but I am slowly getting over that, so maybe the posting will be more frequent. Here is Ben's baby announcement for those who haven't seen it. I ran out of envelopes so I am doing the cheaters way out and just posting about it so you don't have to wait 6 months to get it in the mail.