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!