Amelia Takes On the World

Amelia didn’t nap on Sunday. I put her down for one, maybe a few minutes early because I needed a break. I thought sure, she’ll talk for 10 – 15 minutes but then she’ll take a nap. She always does, for at least 1 1/2 hours, if not 2 1/2 – 3 hours. Um yeah – haha. Silly me! She napped for approximately 0 minutes and instead talked and played in her crib for over an hour and a half. Needless to say I didn’t have high expectations of her mood when we went over to a friend’s house for dinner on Sunday. I have to admit though, she surprised me and she and her friend Carson had a fantastic time together. Carson is just over a year older than Amelia, and I think Amelia really does well following older kids around. (Carson is also a full head taller than Amelia which you will see in the photos). Enjoy the photos!

The hug started as unprompted, but we made them continue hugging so we could take photos.

Just cute girls, having a blast.

Amelia was having fun chasing Carson around – while carrying a hula hoop.  Because duh, of course you carry one while chasing someone older and faster than you.

Carson’s dad Shane had fun swinging the girls around.  Once Amelia saw Carson do it, of course she had to do it too.  And they both had to do it again and again and again…

Carson showing off her mad jumping skillz.  Amelia tried to jump but well, she just doesn’t get off the ground.

And finally just a couple fun pics from our back porch before we headed to the Joneses.  I am taking a photography class in June and am having fun playing and learning as much as I can even before then.

I hope everyone had a good weekend!  Next weekend I think we are tackling the zoo!

BabyMomma

Amelia and her cousin both love to dance.  Enjoy.

Yes, the joy.  Its like she turns 21 months, and a switch turned on.  Sigh.

Most of the time she is still my loveable, pretty laid back, adorable girly toddler.  Most of the time. (Sidenote, girly because she loves her bows, but she also really enjoyed helping daddy build & hammer the other day so she’ll probably have her tomboy inclinations just like I did as a kid)

Then there was the other night.  She was happily watching Mickey Mouse clubhouse (her new addiction) which kept her from asking to eat every 5 seconds while I got dinner ready.  We let the show end, turned it off, she seemingly went to her chair with no issues, she buckles herself in, picks up a piece of ham and throws it on the ground.  Hmm.  That starts a 20 – 30 minute tirade of crying and tantrum, punctuated with ‘mommy’ sniff ‘mommy’ sniff… We tried asking what was wrong.  We tried giving her what she might want.  We tried ignoring.  Finally – upstairs with a paci & lamby and then back downstairs for more ‘Mi Mouse’ and she ate her plate clean and she was mostly happy again.  (We never did find out what was really wrong)

We are thinking we need to set down rules now – she certainly can understand us – so we are going to say no TV before dinner from now on, even if it means I have no peace getting dinner ready.  Not sure its what caused it, but I don’t think it helped.  And I hate that we resorted to it to get her to calm down but we were DESPERATE at that point.

In the morning, another mini-tantrum when in the booster seat (I have a thought that might be part of the problem, she wants to sit in a chair like us but she isn’t tall enough for our table), but finally after a couple minutes the word ‘cereal’ escaped and we got her some cereal like mommy had and she was happy.  I’m happy to give her cereal if she asked, its shredded wheat – I’m happy for a toddler to eat shredded wheat (well its frosted, but still – wheat! fiber! all good).

Last night no issues.  This morning I thought we were doing well.  Then she found the can of puffs in her diaper bag – and she of course wanted to eat out of the can.  I offered her a bowl to pour them in but she refused and I took the can away.  (So mean I know – I mean granted the whole can is like 100 calories, but the point is she can’t just have whatever she wants, and she needs to pour out a serving).  This lead to me carrying a 28-lb toddler crying to the mini-van and strapping her in.  Minnie Mouse, her doll, helped calm her, and she then accepted the bowl of puffs I had poured.  Going into school, the bowl flipped, she lost the puffs and since I refused to let her eat off the sidewalk, I had to carry the same 28-lb toddler into daycare screaming for them.   She calmed down almost instantly inside the school, but it was quite a morning.

We are having another one?  I think now I know why people tell me its the older child that is actually more difficult the 2nd time around.

I love her, and she is a great child.  I know this is a stage all 2 year olds go through… I just don’t think I was ready.

I love you Amelia!  We will have a great weekend, I just know it.

Baby Momma

I am so happy for Amelia that she has her cousin Lena who is just 6 weeks older.  I’m hoping that the wonderful relationship they seem to be developing is a clue into how much Amelia will love having a sister.  Sure there are sharing issues, they are toddlers afterall.  But mostly they just have a blast.  Lena has shared her love of Mickey Mouse Clubhouse with Amelia (oh toodles!) and how to break dance, and Amelia showed Lena just how much water could be splashed out of the water table (video of that to come).   Here are some fun pictures from the weekend.  In just a month, Amelia will get to spend a whole weekend with Lena without us around – I think she will have the best time.

Dearest Amelia,

You were 21 months old last week.  It isn’t that long now and we’ll be saying you are 2 years old.  I’m not sure I’m ready for that.

Let’s just concentrate on your current cute-ness.  A few of the recent cute things you do (and maybe a few not so cute):

- You try to sing!  First Twinkle, Twinkle… now the Hot Dog song from Mickey Mouse clubhouse.  And the Baby Signing Times jingle from those dvds. I love it!

- You will, unprompted, come up to my belly, pat it and kiss it and say baby. So cute.

- You’ll let me hold you like a baby for a few minutes.

- You love play-dough.  Though mostly taking it in and out of the containers.

- Your favorite book of the week is ‘Boom boom’ (what you call it) – also known as chica chica boom boom.

- After spending only one day with your Nonni, you can say your name, you know the ‘creepy, creepy, creepmouse’ tickle game and the Hot Dog song from Mickey Mouse clubhouse.  Amazing what true one on one devotion can do.

- You love to splash water (a bit too much in the tub), but you also have learned to lay back in the water (we are working on floating).  Such a big girl!  Can’t wait til the pool opens in another week.

- You really have words for almost everything even if you rarely put more than one or two together (though that’s more because we can’t understand you I think – I think you really are putting them together but we haven’t learned it yet).  If you don’t have a word you pick it up almost immediately after us telling you.

- You can now say the ’sound’ for each letter with your Letter Factory dvd.

- You love popcorn and want to go to the basement to see if there is any down there ALL THE TIME.

- You still don’t like sweets (you spit out cake yesterday).

- You love your cousin Lena (videos/pics to come soon), expect when she takes something from you

- You tend to be the one who has stuff taken from you, not sure why that is – your defense mechanism is this really … um… not pleasant screaming.  Not sure how else to describe it.

- Particuarly when tired or hungry, you throw a mean temper tantrum.  On the floor, lying down, crying, wailing, feet moving…. but if we ignore you (we explain why we said no first), you get over it fairly quickly.

- You try so hard to be doing stairs, but you really just aren’t all enough.  You do fine if we hold your hand – please don’t try on your own yet.

- You like to stand on couches no matter how many times we tell you no and even put you in time out.

- You give the best hugs and kisses.

- You move your hand to do the ‘Father, Son & Holy Ghost’ and say Amen during nighttime prayers.

- You love your pillow, pacis and lamby to sleep.

- Favorite foods besides popcorn?  Well you eat most anything.  You really like asparagus.  And corn.  And fries.  And grapes.  You LOVE your morning oatmeal with either yogurt or applesauce.  We introduced you to corn on a cob the other day and you loved gnawing away at it.  All in all you eat pretty well, and eat most  anything we try on you.  We might have to have it on our plate so its more desirable to you.  The only things you won’t eat?  Sweets (like cake), and the plain original boca burgers.  You refuse.

- You still really like your sleep, thankfully.  7:30 – 6:30, almost clockwork.  Even if we keep you up late, you are up at 6:30.  Unless your grandmother is here and then you magically sleep late.  Its really not fair.  You nap 2 – 2 1/2 hours almost every day too.  Love it!

- You love wearing your Duke ballcap!  Yeah!

- You are starting to realize when we are taking pictures… hopefully you won’t start that fake smiling.  We try just to make you laugh and sing for photos.

- You are a dancing fool – you love to dance and we love that you dance.

- You finally have 3 canine teeth with the 4th just breaking through… does this mean we get a break? I’m betting 2 year molars are just around the corner.

I’m sure there were many more adorable things you did, as well as some not as quite adorable things too.  You are growing so fast its hard to capture.   We love you so much, and try to tell you that often, especially if you are having a bad day.  You are (knock on wood) a fairly easy toddler considering… you are very sweet and loving, love to play and sing and dance, love to go to school.  We are very lucky to have you.  You will always be our first born, our dearest Amelia-bug.  I know life will change in just a few short months, but I know you will be the best big sister.

Love,

Baby Momma

Here is a video montage of the weekend at Duke (its all about the kids), along with a brief video of the freaky hail we had Thursday night.  I forgot to mention we thought it was just raining, so we brought Amelia outside (Before the hail) and she got to be outside for a large and loud thunder/lighting bolt – she seemed traumatized, very upset.  We are hoping it was more so that she didn’t feel well since she ended up being sick later on…. guess we’ll find out later.

Well, the last 24 hours has been an adventure.  I’d hoped to get this post done, but first I had to go see if I had strep (negative), then we had a crazy crazy hail storm (video to come eventually), then Amelia woke up throwing up just before midnight.   (She’s doing better now but we had a rough 5 hours or so last night)

So Amelia, you are 21 months old today and I love you very much, but I’ll write the letter and post some videos hopefully this weekend. 

Baby Momma

Recently, Chris and Amelia travelled with me back to Duke University for my 10-year reunion.  It was a lot of fun, especially since all of the ‘Goonies’ could make it.  Yes, we called ourselves the goonies.  I think pixie stix and adult beverages might have been involved in that.  It was so great to see Dave, Matt, Cynthia, Pookie, Clare, Laurel and Liz, as well as their significant others and other Duke friends.  Probably one of the most fun things for me was to see all the other children – we are up to 5 now (left to right – Toby, Julia, Andy, Amelia and Katie).  Classes of 2028 – 2031 so far.  Hopefully you will enjoy this pictures of Goonies and Children of Goonies. (We might have needed a little editing help to get smiles on all 5 kids at the same time but… )

Here is a profile of Baby Dyar #2.

She played with her hands quite a bit – you can see one by her mouth.

Proof its a girl – three darker lines, just like the textbooks say!

We are so excited.

Baby Momma & Family

We started Easter weekend by visiting Amelia’s cousin Lena Friday morning.  Here they are being so cute together – it was hard to pick just a few photos – they were adorable during their photo shoot.  They held hands, they played with each others feet, they giggled… I love that Amelia has a cousin so close in age and in the same city that she can grow up with.  You can tell they are related even though they look different from one another.  They have a similarity about them.

After Lena’s, we made the short trek up to Kaykay and Grandpa Joe’s cabin.  Kaykay was very generous and provided a basket and eggs for AMelia to have her very own Easter egg hunt.  She loved it!  Somewhere along the way she learned to say ‘mine’ when she picked up each egg for her basket – oh well.  Look how proud she is with all her eggs though.  (It was colder than expected, so she had to be bundled up – no cute Easter dress for the egg hunting.)  

After egg hunting, Amelia got to open the eggs.  She was very excited to find ducks in them!

Easter morning arrived with a basket from the Easter bunny – but that will be in videos to come later this week.  For now I will leave you with an image of my girl trying her first peep (its really hard to find good Easter candy for a dairy, egg and peanut allergic toddler).  True to form, she wasn’t a fan of the sweet and gave it back to me after the photo.  More for mom I guess!

I hope everyone had a wonderful Easter weekend.

Love, 
The Dyar Family

Kelly, Chris, Amelia and baby ‘Thumper’