How Bout…

  • Posted on February 4, 2010 at 9:22 am

Just had to document one of the things Amelia does lately that makes my heart melt in its cuteness…

I know I should probably correct bad grammar/language – and we do, but Amelia has some fun sayings.

If I ask her if she wants something – like what kind of juice or what to drink – she answers “how ’bout … milk” or “how ’bout … apple juice” – cracks me up.  (The … represents her drawing out the bout)

If she is eating at dinner and finishes something – its ‘I ate my chili all’ – we’ve tried correcting this one many many times, but I still find it cute.

At dinner last night she told me ‘Good dinner mommy’ – awe.  Made me all warm.

She calls the thermometer, and the sound monitors – something along the lines of ‘mom-eters’.

Oh and thanks to Sid the Science Kid and our project to make fruit juice pops – Amelia ate her first ice pop!  Made with oj.  It was funny – she didn’t want to try it but by demonstrating, Chris finally got her to lick it – then she just kept licking it and saying she liked it.  Finally had to be taken away because it was melting -she wouldn’t bite into it but that doesn’t surprise me since its cold. (Neither of my kids like cold!)

Toddlers are fun!

Sneak Peek Of A Valentine

  • Posted on February 2, 2010 at 1:27 pm

I left the hubby in charge of taking valentine’s photos of the girls while I went to the store on Sunday – and you have to wait to see the end result – but this just cracks me up.  The expression of ‘Daaadddd… what are you doing….’ – I’m sure we will see it a lot as she grows older.

And Amelia knows that I take a lot of pictures and at 2 1/2, she has gotten to where she tells me no.  However the other day she was all loving on Katherine and said ‘pick up your camera mommy’ – hehe.  Glad she wants me to document the wonderful relationship she has with her sister.  (Video to come another time) I am constantly impressed by how great their relationship is, especially given their ages of 2 1/2 and 6 months.  You can already see the love there.  It makes my heart warm.
Updated – I just happened to be looking through the Beautiful Baby Gallery for Regis & Kelly’s baby search (I enter every year) – and look – it’s Amelia!

http://www.parenting.com/gallery/Baby/Beautiful-Baby-Search-2010-Round-5/3/


What To Do When Its Cold Outside

  • Posted on February 1, 2010 at 7:11 am

When you have toddlers, you really start getting creative when the outdoor play gets put on hold.  It is a must to burn off some of their energy.  When weather is good, we have our annual passes to the Atlanta zoo – but its been awhile since that’s been possible.  When the weather is bad… we all go stir crazy.  So this year we decided to get annual passes to the Georgia Aquarium – and it might be the best investment we’ve made.  Yesterday was our 2nd visit this year, and Amelia really loves seeing the fishes and the sharks and the whales.  And I love taking pictures there.  Sometimes they come out better than others, but its always fun to try and capture Amelia’s wonder at everything around her.  Yesterday was also Katherine’s first ‘awake’ visit and she seemed to really enjoy riding around in our chest carrier taking it all in.  She was awake almost the whole time.  A fun side note to the whole thing – we had Amelia in a pull-up – just not sure I’m ready to risk public places and panties yet – but she stayed dry the entire time (2 1/2 hours all together) I tried to get her to go potty twice, but I think the loud flushing there was scary so she said she didn’t need to go.  And I didn’t push it – and she was still dry when we got home.  Good job Amelia! (say it louder mommy) GOOD JOB AMELIA!  I think we may truly have a potty trained toddler.

And yes, it worked.  Amelia ran around, climbed steps, walked pretty much the whole time – and took a 3 hour nap afterwards.  Thank you aquarium!

In other news, Katherine is getting really close to sitting on her own (she does have a solid base to work from after all haha).  She mostly ends up in this kind of three point stance to use a football term.   She also LOVES her exersaucer.  So a couple cute photos to start your week.

A: 30 Months Old

  • Posted on January 24, 2010 at 3:12 pm

2 1/2 years old! Wow Amelia, you are growing up fast. Now you will be closer to 3, than 2. That is crazy!

This has been a good month for you. You’ve really enjoyed painting on your new easel, you got to start going back to Little Gym, you are becoming more and more clear in your communications… and the big news – you are potty training. Really I should say you are potty trained – we’ve had very few accidents, you do really really well. We are so proud of you. Occasionally on the weekends I think you need a break from being a big girl, so we let you choose what you want to wear but most of the time its princess or minnie panties. Great job!

The other thing I learned you could do was draw a letter A – I was surprised actually – didn’t expect it but when we went to ’sign’ daddy’s birthday card, you did it. So we practiced and yes a good many of them aren’t quite right you do get it some of the time and you know the concept. Another great job!

Whenever I tell you good job for something you tell me to say it louder so GOOD JOB!

Probably my favorite thing is watching you and your sister together – you love her and you are so wonderful with her. You are going to make an amazing big sister.

Happy lunar birthday baby girl – you will always be my first baby and I love you so much,

Mom

K: Five Months Old

  • Posted on January 21, 2010 at 10:02 am

Dearest Katherine,

How are you five months old already?  This month has marked quite a bit of change.

We started off with a cold, croupe than another cold with led to us spoiling you quite a bit.  We broke you of the paci then gave it back.  We let you sleep in a bouncer.  We created a baby that was waking up almost every hour asking for her paci back…. so the end of this month, we introduced tough love.  I am so sorry honey – trust me, hearing you cry is not easy on us.  It feels awful.  But in 3 days you went from waking up hourly, to sleeping 7 – 2 without a peep.  A bottle then, and you went until 5:30 – it was fantastic!  So I think we will all be happier and well rested now.

You have been teething all month long with not much to show for it – the top teeth have ‘descended’ but not come through – the bottom ones might be breaking through, hard to tell, but they aren’t there yet.  Teething seems to be more than a month long process which really is not fair to either you or us.

While we knew you had rolled over once, because we found you on your back when left on your tummy – you demonstrated multiple times back to tummy starting on New Years day.  At first it was only once or twice a day but now its a fun play thing – I’ve found you under the table having rolled there.  And yes, now you go back to tummy and tummy to back – but usually only one direction.  This means sometimes we find you sleeping on your belly too but stuck against the side unable to roll back. 

On New Years you also clearly giggled at daddy and definitely giggle more and more.  You giggled quite a bit for Nonni the other night which made her day.  You are a happy happy baby, and you really do light up the room.

We introduced rice cereal and pears – we couldn’t take you sitting there drooling and sucking your lip while we ate.  It was pitiful.  Took about 2 days and you now love eating which shouldn’t surprise anyone (did I mention you are 95th on weight and 40th on height?).  The last two days we even fed you rice cereal for breakfast – I am amazed at how well you have taken to it. 

And probably my favorite thing is watching how you are starting to interact with your sister Amelia.  Probably your favorite activity is watching your sister.  I’ll end this with a video – without prompting Amelia was telling you about baking a cake for dad and you were hanging on every word – of course once I got out the camera I had to promp Amelia a bit, but its still cute. 

We love you baby girl,

Mom

The Christening

  • Posted on January 20, 2010 at 11:15 am

We had Katherine’s christening the first Sunday of the new year and things could not have been more perfect.  We had all our immediate family in town, we were the only family having a child christened so it was very intimate and we had a great luncheon afterwards.

Here is the day in pictures:

Snow? Who Cares About Snow…

  • Posted on January 15, 2010 at 8:26 am

This will be a collection of stories from the past couple of weeks with photos – enjoy!

So you might have heard we had some snow here in Atlanta?  And everyone went crazy!  I mean schools closed, etc.  Granted there are only 4 snow plows in the city and it is a problem when roads ice because we aren’t prepared for it and it was cold enough before hand the snow stuck around – so rare for us.  I hyped up the snow with Amelia – we were going to build a snowman on the deck – she was so excited.  We got her dressed, I went out first to our deck… and she wanted me to pick her up.  I said no, and she went back inside as I took pictures.  (Yes they are in order, its her shutting me out)  That was the end of our snow experience.  She decided she wanted nothing to do with it.  However, during prayers at night she does say she is thankful for the snow.

Instead mommy decided to play around with taking photos – Katherine was much more cooperative than Amelia – all except this one of Amelia is her being silly and moving so much, they are all a blur.

Amelia’s favorite gift from Christmas has to be the art easel – she LOVES to paint – she’d probably paint all day if we let her.   She just forgets she has paint brushes in her hand and tends to walk around…. we are trying to teach her not to do that.  Luckily toddler paint cleans up.

Amelia and I went on a date with Miss Heather and Graham to the Children’s Museum here in Atlanta.  It was way too crowded and not enough things to ’share’ and kind of frustrating – but Amelia did have a good time and one of her favorites was fishing in the pond (followed 2nd by tap dancing in tap shoes).

Katherine is getting her top two teeth – and I think this picture is a good example of her trying to chew on everything.

Can’t remember for sure but I think this was on the way home from the aquarium with my brother’s family when Amelia was protesting that she was not going to nap, she does not sleep in the car…. snore….

The Georgia Aquarium is just amazing – we got annual passes this year.  It also is great fun to take pictures there.  I didn’t even have the good camera but I still had some fun.   We went with my brother’s family and really enjoyed the visit.

Amelia showing off her I love being a big sister shirt and Katherine modeling her Little Sister shirt…

Last but certainly not least – Katherine was christened the first weekend of this year.  I have so many pictures capturing the event that I haven’t gone through yet – it was a fantastic weekend.   We really couldn’t have asked for it to turn out any better – we had the church to ourselves (there can be up to 4 babies, but we were the only one), we had a wonderful intimate gathering afterwards at the yummy Magianno’s… and we got to spend a lot of time with our family.  Katherine was just her normal happy self throughout the whole event (which was a relief since Amelia screamed through hers).

And the dress – the Christening gown was made from my wedding dress … you can’t tell from this picture but I had buttons going down the back – one of my favorite features.   On Amelia the dress was huge (we had it made for a 6 month old size baby, ended up Christening her at 3 months, and she was a tiny 3 month old).  On Katherine – it was like it was made just for her – she looked so adorable.  Hopefully it will become an heirloom dress they pass on to their kids as well.  It does have special meaning and I definitely want to keep it in the family.

Hope everyone is having a good week, and enjoy the three day holiday weekend!

So….

  • Posted on January 11, 2010 at 8:45 am

I finally had some time this weekend to get on the computer and look at the pictures & video and maybe edit some… and I ended up spending over an hour trying to figure out how to get lots of video clips onto a dvd in a menu format and let the computer use all its RAM trying to render and burn it and didn’t get a single picture edited – and the kicker – the dvd has nothing on it.  After 2 hours!  UGH.  Stupid technology.

So one of these days I’ll post some video from the holidays, tell all of you about the wonderful Christening we had for Miss Katherine and update you on funny stories about Amelia.  Really I will.

One funny Amelia story to leave you with…

Last night, Amelia was abnormally hyper as we got her ready for bed.  We had just come from Nonni’s house (where we know exactly what she ate/drank and it was a wonderfully nice dinner without much sugar) – so we joked did Nonni give you sugar? ‘Yes’, Did Nonni give you coffee? ‘ Yes with sugar and milk’… ‘and pancakes’.   She is very imaginative which I love – and its fun to have conversations with her now.

Have a good week!

Merry Christmas!

  • Posted on January 4, 2010 at 8:27 am

2009_12_25_1-05

We had a wonderful Christmas and hope everyone else did as well.  It was Katherine’s first, but really probably the most fun was Amelia starting to get ‘into’ Christmas.  She loves trees, lights, Santa, baby Jesus, singing carols and more.  So it was really fun to start truly making traditions for Christmas.  Ironically, guess she isn’t quite old enough to understand about the presents waiting downstairs so she slept in until 8 am!  Crazy for her.  Here our pictures from our wonderful morning which we followed by traditional (my side of the family) waffles and then a nice Christmas luncheon with both sets of grandparents.  Amelia now keeps asking to see Christmas lights and to see her favorite Mickey Mouse episode where they save Santa – and occasionally mentions we need presents for baby Jesus.  I haven’t managed to really get across how the holiday season is over and we’ll celebrate next year… least it was memorable for her and she enjoyed it! Merry Christmas to all our friends & family.

One fun side-note – if you asked Amelia what she wanted Santa to bring her, she would ask for chocolate.  Yes, the daughter of mine with no sweet tooth, asked for Chocolate.  And Santa brought her Santa chocolates – and she ate one and enjoyed it!  I think she’s finally figuring out sweet can be good. Maybe she is my daughter after all…

Love,
Dyar Family

Christmas Eve with Family

  • Posted on January 4, 2010 at 8:23 am

On Chris’ side of the family, it has become tradition to have a Christmas Eve get-together for anyone who can make it.  Kids play, lots of food and a gift exchange is held (you draw names before hand).  His sister was this year’s host and here are this year’s pictures – we were lucky to have my parents join us as well.  The kids were really cute with one another – always steal the show.  They got very excited to help everyone open gifts.

Thank you Ann for a wonderful party.