Ok, so she went from running away and constantly whining whenever she saw me reach for my camera, to all of a sudden, being a little ham, saying cheeeeese with her fake cheesey smiles. I'm just looking for a happy medium here.
Tomorrow morning we're off to the beach for a week. Not sure if we'll have internet access or not, so this might be my last post for a while, we'll see. Wish for some nice warm hot weather for us!
We stayed in our jammies all day long. And all Poppy wanted to do was read to Lola. And Lola didn't mind because she was scared of the thunder, so she liked being close to Poppy.
"Mama, I read Lola!"
Taking baby doll for a walk...
...and of course baby doll had to be buckled in, or maybe she was trying to buy herself more time before nap.
Oh, and check out the new headband. It's actually not new at all, but it was discovered today and she wanted me to put it on her. As soon as it was on, before I even had a chance to fix her hair, she took off running down the hallway and checked herself out in the mirror, admiring her new do with a big smile on her face. This was the first time she's actually checked herself out in a mirror and I thought it was too funny. And then the headband was too tight and I could tell that it was bothering her, but whenever I would ask her if she wanted to take it off she would yell, "No mama, stay on!!!". Anything in the name of fashion.
My girl is obsessed with books. Which is great, except for the fact that she is also obsessed with taking every single book off of her bookshelf every single day and making piles of them all over her bedroom. Did I mention she does this every day? Anyways, she loves books. Love to read them herself, loves to sit on a lap and be read to. If it gets unusually quiet while I'm getting ready in the morning, this is where I can usually find her (otherwise she has been known to get a hold of a tube of neosporin and lube herself up with it, or scribble on every check in a checkbook while I'm getting ready too)...
And here she is singing me a song...
She also goes through spurts where she is absolutely obsessed with one or two books in particular. This month it has been "Are You My Mother" by P.D. Eastman. She calls it the "mama book" and insists that I read it to her multiple times a day. She's also been in love with the Ruby and Max books for months now and this morning I showed her the Ruby and Max tv show and her jaw just about dropped to the floor. She couldn't believe her buddy Max was on tv.
Off for an exciting date night tonight! We're going out for dinner and then going to see H.P. So excited!
This playground is one of her favorite places in the world. She still says "oh boy!!!!" whenever she sees it.
Tonight we took our 9 year old nephew, Gage, to the Bison's game for his birthday. Poppy doesn't get to see Gage too often because he doesn't live very close, so we weren't sure how long it would take for her to warm up to him. But she was pretty much instantly smitten with him. All he had to do was look at her and she would burst out laughing. And she's pretty much just been following him around all day.
Of course, if you're going to bring Poppy to a baseball game, there's gonna be ice cream.
We had a lot of fun at the game. Poppy was more interested in what Gage was doing than following the game, and I don't think Gage minded a bit. We even made it until the very end when they had fireworks. Poppy tried to catch the fireworks and eat them and she was giggling so loud that she had the attention of just about everyone sitting around us. Silly girl.
Lately, part of our daily routine is to make a smoothie after nap. As soon as she sees me take the Dora cup out of the cupboard, she starts chanting "Smoody, smoody!" And today I didn't blend it good enough because her straw kept getting clogged, so I ended up taking the top off and let her drink it out of the cup. I have a feeling taking the top off is now also going to be a part of our routine...
Helping Uma in the garden...
Busy day today - playdate in the am, shopping, and then the Italian Fest for dinner. The coolest thing happened when my mom and I went shopping today. We had been shopping for a couple of hours and we were just getting ready to leave the mall, when a security guard approached and us and told us that he had something to tell us. We both had this shocked, scared look on our face and we turned around to see a crowd of people surrounding us, including photographers, a video camera and a bunch of women throwing confetti and waving balloons. Apparently today was the grand re-opening of the mall and we were randomly chosen to win a shopping trip. So they reimbursed us for all of the shopping we had done that day! It added up to a couple hundred dollars! How cool is that?! We didn't even enter a contest or anything - they just found us! Seriously, I've never won anything in my life, so this is pretty exciting stuff for me!
It's been one year since we became a family of 3. The most amazing, fulfilling, emotional, exciting year of my life. A day without Poppy in it is simply unimaginable.
We went to our usual restaurant of choice, The Koreahouse, for dinner. I've never in my life seen Poppy eat as much food as she did tonight. Crazy girl.
And then we always manage to go to this awesome bakery down the street for dessert. I got my usual apple pie and Poppy said she needed one of each item in the window, but settled for this massive chocolate cupcake...
I had every intention of having an awesome video recapping our first year together, but, well, I'm still working on it. Soon though.
"Open mama! Open!!!"
"Fill her up!"
Right now it is 2:00 and here is what I have accomplished so far today:
Woke up and made Korean pancakes (Ho-Ddeok) for the first time. Poppy absolutely loved them.
Then we hopped in the car and drove an hour to go cherry picking. We told Poppy we were going to a farm to pick cherries and the whole way there she kept asking where the 'bahhhh' (sheep) are. Seriously, she probably asked about a million times. And we had no idea if they would actually have any animals at this farm. We were so relieved when we pulled up to see a bunch of goats in a pen. They had food available for feeding the goats, but Poppy couldn't get the concept of holding her palm out flat, so this goat ended up taking a little nibble of her finger. She didn't cry, but she did re-enact that assault a couple of times for us.
When she saw this little baby goat, she decided to try feeding him and things went much smoother...
After our visit with the goats, it was onto cherry picking. So we went to the little store on the farm and asked where we should start picking and they informed us that cherry picking season is over. I felt like saying "Um, did you see my daughter's shirt? It has little cherries all over it!" But instead, we were just re-directed to the raspberry bushes.
Raspberry picking was very serious business for Poppy. One in the basket, one in her mouth. Seriously, so many raspberries were consumed by this little girl today that she is definitely going to have some digestive issues over the next couple of days. But there was just no stopping her from popping them into her mouth.
On the way out, we stopped by the naked cherry trees...
Then we stopped for lunch, drove all the way home and I've already managed to make a cherry clafoutis to bring over to my parents house tonight (luckily we stocked up on cherries at the farmers market yesterday) and finish my blog post of the day! So pretty much, I'm on fire and tomorrow we will return to my regularly scheduled laziness. :)
One of her newest little 'quirks' is freaking about having food stuck in her teeth. Corn on the cob has become quite the ordeal - she loves to eat it, but opens her mouth and grunts until someone picks the corn out of her teeth! Such a little lady.
It was finally hot enough to go in our little pool today! It took me all morning just to get this teeny tiny pool blown up and then I filled it up with water, which then had to warm up a bit in the sun. Poppy finally gets in and decides that she doesn't want to get her bathing suit wet. "No mama! Stay dry!!!" So she stood outside of the pool taking small cups of water out of the pool and dumping them into Lola's water bowl. After 20 minutes of this, I finally splashed her little bathing suit with water to show her that it could get wet, and as you can imagine, she was not happy. So when I went to take her picture, she was trying her hardest to be mad at me and not look at me and not smile...
She spent most of her night on Uma's lap saying "No more Lola, no more!" because she was scared out of her mind of a person dressed up in a giant dog costume (the concert was sponsored by Target, so they had the Target dog - who apparently Poppy had confused with a giant Lola - walking around).
Tomorrow is Marc's actual birthday. 35! Maybe Poppy and I will make him a special breakfast...
Potty training is still going great. Her fear/anxiety of poop is gone, which is awesome. Every couple of days, we still might have a little pee-pee accident, but as soon as she realizes that Elmo is wet, she gets very upset and runs to the bathroom to finish going. And I thought that being out of the house and having to run errands would be the hardest part about potty training, but that is actually when she does best. We have never had an accident while out and about, and this morning we ran errands for hours. The most exciting thing for me was packing up all of her cloth diapers yesterday and putting them away in storage. Yes! I loved saving the earth and everything, but I'm not gonna lie about how excited I was to be done with cloth diapers!
(please try to ignore the fact that Marc is wearing socks with flip-flops - not sure what was going on there)
Oh - the concentration!
So somehow, my little baby has turned into this little person that is full of emotions and opinions and love and attitude and everything else. And I'm loving every minute of it!
She could spend hours a day playing with this little kitchen. It was given to her by one of my 1st grade students, which I think is really sweet.
Hmmmm, should I try eating this?
This afternoon wasn't just all about playing in the kitchen though. Her buddy Claire stopped by for a visit too! It may not look it from their expressions, but everyone was having fun in this wagon ride, trust me!
After the wagon, Poppy was so proud to show Claire how she can go pee-pee on the potty, and then Claire taught Poppy how to jump on her bed. Good times!
Check out her new bad-ass Sleeping Beauty sunglasses. They are way too big for her and they always fall off within a minute, but she just loves to wear them.
So we spent the 4th down by the river hanging out with the fam. Poppy had a blast playing with her cousins and staying up waaaay past her bedtime.
She loved the fireworks and pretended to catch them and share them with us. As much as she loved them, she was barely awake by the time they were finished and then fell asleep within minutes of the car ride home.
