2 years old! (June - July 2010)

It's now March 2011. I started this post a long time ago (apparently September 2010 according to the date it's posted as), covering the months of June and July 2010 - including Rosa's second birthday. Since this is ready to go, I'll post it. But after this I think I need to just jump to the present. If I try to go back and cover all that time, I'll never get back on this horse!

June and July were pretty cold months... sure, we had a few days warm enough for beach trips, as you'll see below, but I love that our June 25 birthday girl is wearing long-john jammies and a sweater while playingwith her new choo choo trains on her birthday morning... looks like Christmas!

For birthday dinner, we got Rosa her long-time favorite - burrito (of course)! Can't go wrong!

And here's her happy birthday cake! Although she was a little tentative here, Rosa has been singing happy birthday to herself ever since. Sorry about the crazy videography.

Here's a silly picture of opening presesnts after dinner.


Rosa on the drums at Erika's Tech-Free Day (and freezing cold!) picnic. This is the day after Rosa's bday - June 26 and I mean FREEZING cold.

Just before her birthday party.

On one of the huge slides at Pump It Up!

Pizza after all the sliding and jumping. They were all so tired that they looked like well-behaved kids!

Making pizza with Daddy.

Rosa and Daddy on the beach

May 2010

May was a busy month, with a visit from Grandma Lois and Papa Misha, a tour of our local fire station, and our first family camping trip!

Here's a neat shot of Rosa in her Ikea tunnel (one of best purchases ever!), taken by Papa Misha.

Grandma Lois got to pick Rosa up after naptime and get some cuddles while Rosa was still drowsy.

Rosa has loved building towers for a long time now. She had Papa Misha working hard too - here's one of his creations.

Grandma Lois spent some quality time at the playground with Rosa

We took Grandma and Papa to an art class. Rosa's favorite thing to paint was always her hands!

But she did some painting on the paper too.

Here is the final product of that class - what a cool hat! Mommy glued the flower and ribbon on.

Rosa loved brushing the goats at the zoo.

A little music session with Grandma and Papa!

One of the neighborhood moms organized a tour of the local fire station - what a treat! All 2-year-olds, whether boy or girl, are obsessed with fire trucks it seems!

Rosa got to sit in the fire truck and ring the bell!

She and daddy are the new fire truck mascots.

Rosa got to slide down the pole. She talked about the man sliding down the pole literally for months (she still asks for songs about this).

The same neighborhood mom who organized the fire station tour organized a 4-family camping trip (she's organized!). What a blast! It was so nice to be there with 3 other families - it was actually relaxing! And the kids loved having their buddies there.

Rosa liked climbing on the logs and is totally fearless about bugs (wants to pick them all up). Paxton takes a more scientific approach with his magnifying glass.

The kids mostly played nicely!

This was Rosa's first experience with tents. When we arrived at the campground she looked around her with wonder and pointed out all the umbrellas in the trees. We told her those were called "tents." When we set up our tent, she was so excited to get in it with us, but got all freaked out whenever I tried to zip up the door. This could be a problem! But eventually I just held her back from scrambling out and zipped it quick, and after that, she magically got over it. Phew! The first night she didn't sleep so well (lots of squirming and early waking), but the second night she slept until something like 7:30 the next morning!

Paxton's mom and dad brought a little inflatable boat, which was super relaxing and fun to take out for spins on the lake.
One of the other families brought their two doggies (and you think your car is crowded going camping, you should have seen theirs with a car seat and two decent-sized dogs in the back seat!). Rosa loved hugging them!

More cute videos - Daddy introduced Rosa to the joys of building forts and tents out the couch pillows and blankets.

April 2010

And now for some long overdue (yet again) catch-up work. I've been so remiss in my blogging because I've been completely exhausted since about March. In the beginning, I wondered what the heck was wrong with me, but then eventually when smells started to bother me and I started gagging at weird times, I took a test and learned that Rosa's little brother or sister had started growing in mommy's belly. Like I said, I've been exhausted ever since, but generally am doing just fine. The baby is due in November, and we are keeping the gender a surprise. Rosa is pretty sure it's a baby boy. So this blog will be incorrectly titled in a few months since someone else will be keeping Rosa company on her adventures soon!

But for now, back to Rosa. Since I didn't do any blogging for several months, I've missed capturing all the day-to-day changes she's had, especially in language ability, which has been growing like crazy over the past few months. But by going back through all the videos in the last few days, it's just amazing how her abilities have exploded in that time. In the videos from April, she's saying a couple words together. I kind of remember when she would say, "I mommy" to mean something like "I want mommy to come here." Now she orders me around with perfect grammar!

So her language definitely continues to be so fascinating to watch develop. And now, without further ado, on to cute toddler pictures!

One of many merry-go-round pictures. Giraffes are unquestionably Rosa's favorite animal, so here's a shot of her riding one.

A late afternoon in Dolores Park, having a picnic with our friends Bill and Angela.

In March of this year, we started doing a share-care (one nanny watches two kids) with another girl in our neighborhood - it has been so great for Rosa to have a buddy to share days with when I'm at work! Rosa and Lina do all sorts of fun things together, but really love pretending to go night-night together in the pack-n-play.


In early April, Papa Frank and Nana Anita came to visit!

We had all sorts of adventures, including going to the zoo, doing the parachute (Rosa's favorite!) at the Rec Center,

doing many visits to playgrounds,

getting together with cousins Loretta and Norman,

and going to the beach, among other things!

Here's a picture of Rosa and some of her buddies, taking a popsicle break at the playground! Lucky kids!

Rosa and Mommy taking a rest break at a hike in Glen Canyon

All sorts of cuteness in this video - I won't even bother with any explanation.

Cousin Norman's excellent rendition of the classic, "Brown Bear, Brown Bear."

Rosa hugging Mr. Judd.

One of Rosa's friends had his 2nd birthday party at a place called Pump It Up, which is big party rooms filled with inflatable jumpy castles and 3-story giant slides. I had a conflict and couldn't go, but Jeff took Rosa to the party. He came home filled with stories of how she loved it so much that she was dripping with sweat by the end. Here's a video of fearless Rosa, 2 months shy of 2 years old, shoving the other kids out of the way to throw herself down the slide!

Finally!

Finally, this morning for the first time, Rosa made a poopoo in the potty! There were many congratulations and big smiles. This has been an elusive accomplishment for Rosa, since she really likes her privacy when making poopoo; usually she goes behind a chair or into the laundry room with the door shut and loudly says "bye bye mommy" or "bye bye daddy" if one of us comes too close. So today, when she headed for the laundry room at her usual time, I finally managed to get her potty to her and take her diaper off in time, then let her shut the door and have her privacy. I was so good - I didn't even peek while she was in there working. And after a few minutes she came to the door and I heard her little voice say, "I made poopoo in the potty!" We called daddy in to look and there were lots of high fives. Potty training ain't over yet (by a long shot from what I've heard!), but this was a great breakthrough!

2 quotes

Oh dear - once again it's been months since I've written anything in this blog. I guess this is an attempt to get started again.

Today, Rosa said two things that made me say to myself - if I was still blogging, this would go in the blog. So I'm at least going to record them both here and now, albeit without any cute accompanying photos.

Normally I wake up to Rosa either calling "Mama!", chattering about firemen going down poles or other thoughts running through her mind, or occasionally just crying. Today, despite it being too early (6:10 instead of at least 6:30), I got up right on the spot because she made me laugh out loud. I think I was already a little bit awake and either Jeff or I must hvae made some noise rolling over or something and Rosa says in a singsong voice: "I hear you Mama! Mama, where are you???"

Then later in the day when Jeff got home from work and was headed toward then den with his laptop, Rosa chased after him saying, "I check my email!" I'd never heard her say that before, but apparently Jeff had, since she learned it from him!

Hopefully more blogging will follow after this tiny attempt to get started again!

Zoo, beach, and more

Two Saturdays ago, we went to the much-hyped Golden Gate Mothers Group East Egg Hunt. It was at the zoo, which is always a favorite, so I knew it would be fun no matter what. As always, we started with the giraffes, then headed over to the children's zoo/farm area. Rosa had a ball working as a farm-hand!

She also really liked talking to the sheep! (Most of the sheep were out in the yard, but these few were in the barn. I'm pretty sure they all get to go out and wander around most of the time.)

Then, at the appointed hour, we went to the Easter Egg Hunt. Somewhat strange event. They were blasting old pop music, which was sort of odd. But they did have age-specific jumpy castles, which was great, and also a marionnette show that absolutely captivated Rosa... for a few minutes anyway. They announced that the Easter Egg Hunt would be starting shortly, then did a countdown. 10 - 9 - 8... 3 - 2 - 1! About a million kids descended on a what looked like a decent-sized bit of lawn covered in plastic eggs. But whoosh! All the eggs were gone in literally about 45 seconds. I jumped in a grabbed one (from a kid with about 10 who was going for #11) and put it in front of Rosa. She enjoyed picking it up and opening it. But what an anti-climax. Good thing the giraffes and the sheep were so cool.

Well, the zoo wore Rosa out. I drove home, and I saw Jeff turn around and start snapping pictures. He actually caught Rosa in the act of falling asleep!
The next day was a lovely sunny day, so we headed out to Ocean Beach.

We put our toes in!


Rosa spent about 15 minutes pouring sand back and forth from one hand to the other. It was the longest we had seen her sit still and focus on something pretty much ever!

Beach walking with Mama.

Beach walking with Daddy. Daddy is so silly. Who else in the world walks in the ocean in their business shoes and socks. At least Rosa helped him roll his pants up!

This past Saturday was Rosa's buddy Lina's 2nd birthday party. Here's a very short video of everybody dancing.

The party was in Lina's dad's warehouse / workshop. He had built a swing for Lina that hung from the rafters, probably at least two stories high. Rosa LOVED the swing.

And finally, a self-portrait early one morning, not long after waking up.

21 months

First of all, "umm" is done. Hooray! That went quick. It was cute, but glad it's over.

It's been a long time since I wrote - yikes! As I think I said in a previous post, I threw my back out for about a week, but thankfully feel completely better now. And I've just been too exhausted at the end of every night to even consider sitting down with the laptop. But I got the dishes done quickly tonight and it's still early so here we are. Rosa is 21 months old today, and I felt like this was an auspicious occasion to get caught up (with a long post and lots of pix and videos)!

We've been doing a LOT of fun stuff since I last wrote. Here comes quick descriptions for all the outings where I managed to take pictures. By the way, at least on my computer, the videos DO work, even though they all look black until you hit the play button (and wait a little bit for it to buffer).

We went to the "Little Farm" in Berkeley with a neighborhood playgroup. Rosa's first experience with live farm animals! Cows, ducks, goats, piggies! Unfortunately I was so taken with the experience that I didn't pull out my camera until the ride home. Rosa and Mateus both had a great time and passed out instantly in the car.

After the Little Farm trip, we went to a storytime about farms.

We've been trying to do a big nature trip at least once a weekend for the last 3 weekends and it has been great! By nature I mean a place where we can be away from cars, off of pavement, and not at a playground (we get plenty of that during the week). We went to the arboretum in Golden Gate Park last Saturday. The highlight for Rosa (based on what she continues to talk about) were the 3 squirrels that we stopped and watched (and who stopped and watched us) for probably 15 minutes. I'm pretty sure they wanted Rosa's apple. I'm not sure what Rosa wanted from them...

Soon-to-be-Mama Eva came along on this trip.

Daddy found Rosa a beautiful, huge pink flower... that had fallen on the ground - for real!

Daddy does take a lot of the pictures, so here's one documenting that he was on the trip too!

The next Friday, a bunch of kids from the neighborhood went to the Discovery Museum in Sausalito. We had never been, so we tagged along. It was fantastic! Our first stop was the stream, with fishies, froggies, and sticks!
Then the kids climbed this cool hill that had a tunnel through it (Rosa is super into tunnels right now) and stopped to ride the giant lizard. Don't know the girl in the middle, but that's our friend Paxton at the end.

Then there was this cool maze of woven sticks... as you'll see, Rosa has entered a new phase where if something seems cool and forbidden, she tells me to go away when she thinks I'm going to spoil her fun.

It was a hot day, and I was more than happy to keep feeding Rosa "beeps."

And the following Friday afternoon, Rosa was in heaven - she got to hang out with her two best buddies that she talks about constantly - Peter and Ember (who didn't want to ride on the tire swing).

This was another Saturday "nature" trip, this time to Stern Grove. Rosa found a tap-dancing stage (I think it was a covered fire pit).

About a month ago, Jeff started building towers with Rosa, usually after dinner. In the beginning, it was Jeff building and Rosa knocking down. I knew that Rosa was doing more building lately, but one morning, I was cleaning up after breakfast and came out to find this tower that Rosa had built! I know there was no tower at all before breakfast, so Rosa did it all herself. Pretty good!

I posted this video because I was thrilled to have captured Rosa's version of counting 1-10 on video. She's only missing a few numbers!