Summer Happenings 2013

Fire station, first movie theatre visit, pools and popsicles…
We do home pre-school every once and a while. A few months ago, we did a firefighters pre-school theme and Ashlyn was fascinated. Since then, she talks about fire trucks and firefighters often and HAS to point out every.single.hydrant she sees. One morning we went to a doughnut shop and in walked a couple of firefighters. I pointed them out to her and for the next 10-15 minutes we were there, she talked about them (and everything relating to their job). As we were leaving, one of the firemen told us that they heard her talking and asked if we wanted to go to the fire station. We had no choice at that point. Ashlyn toured a fire truck, we all got a tour of an ambulance, and Daddy sprayed the fire hose. The firemen were incredibly nice and patient and gave us lots of goodies to take home.

Also, this summer, Ashlyn had her first trip to a movie theatre. The Studio Movie Grill in Copperfield was offering $1 kids movies on Wednesday mornings so I took her with my friend Ivy and her two boys, Dennis and Micai. They sat quietly through the movie and had a great time. I’m sure the sitting quietly part had NOTHING to do with the loads of popcorn and unlimited lemonade they were consuming throughout the whole movie.

Ramon and I bought the girls a bigger “baby” pool this year. Their old one was only like four feet in diameter. We’ve used it several times this summer and they’ve had a blast. Here are some pictures of the summer activities:

Sariah Summer- 18 Months

Our little Sariah poo turned 18 months old this month. She is SOMETHING ELSE! We’ve figured out that she A LOT smarter than what she lead on…and she’s done that purposely, which is smart in itself. She knows exactly how to get what she wants and manipulate us, or her sister, which we’ve just recently really figured out. We used to think she just didn’t really understand everything that was going on or didn’t really understand the consequences but OH she does. Just a few examples:

The other day she started hitting me (which has been her common attention-getter of choice) when I was trying to dress her. I firmly told her, “No, No. We don’t hit” and then held down her arms. Then she started kicking me, so I grabbed her legs (while still holding her arms) and said “No, No. We don’t kick”. She didn’t have any other limbs to fight me so she decided to spit at hard as she could.

Another example of her attitude is that one of her main goals is to get a rise out of Ashlyn…especially if Ashlyn is already angry. If I tell Ashlyn “no” or if Ashlyn is getting a quiet time to calm down, Sariah often always walks over to her and tells Ashlyn “No” about 20 times.

Sariah also deceives us by playing dumb. She was being naughty the other day and every time I would say, “Sariah, no, no” she would start pointing to people/animals around the room with the most innocent voice and facial expression and say, “Daddy!”…”Ashlyn!”…”Maestro”. She was obviously just trying to distract me from her misbehavior.

BUT, on the flipside, she is the sweetest little girl. She started giving kisses and lots of hugs. In fact, she won’t let Daddy leave for work without giving him several hugs and kisses. (She’s still mostly a mommy’s girl though). For a while, I was the only one that would do.

Her speech is pretty advanced at this point. For a while she didn’t say much but now, I would guess she says at least 200-300 words. She probably learns at least a word or two every day. Some of my favorites to hear her say are “stashio” for pistachio (she likes to say this a lot), “dropped it”, “banket” for blanket, and “bear” but the “r” is more like a “w”.

She still would prefer bread to anything just about, but she’s doing much better about trying new foods and eating the healthier option on the plate instead of us “forcing” her. Her top five favorite foods are probably bread, homemade smoothies, cheese, olives, and bananas. The main thing we’re having a hard time with is green veggies (unless it’s from a can, which pretty much defeats the purpose). But she LOVES homemade smoothies so I can cram all sorts of healthy things in there that she’s clueless about.

Sariah has somewhat transitioned out of the baby-doll-obsession phase into a mechanical obsession phase. She really enjoys figuring out how things work and putting them together. For instance, she will not hardly color with markers because all she want to do is try to pull the caps off and put them back on. She has gotten really good a blocks though recently. She can easily put 10-30 blocks together by herself now. She also even tries to stack blocks (and the other day, dominos) that don’t stick together like the toddler ones do. She can only ususally do a few of these before she accidently knocks them all down.

Here are several pictures of our sweet Sariah recently.