October 2011 and Eliza's 1st birthday!

Eliza is now one year old! Unbelievable - that year went so fast. There were so many times during the year that when I remembered back to when Rosa hit a certain milestone (rolling over, solid food, etc.), it felt like she had been with us longer. With Eliza, all those milestones hit and I was just left saying where did the months go?

This video is old - from back in July. I meant to post it and don't think I ever did. Here's the little one shortly after she learned to clap.

At some point when Eliza's balance while standing started getting better and better, I realized that I didn't have any videos of her crawling, and that if I wanted to have some, I better do it soon before the crawling disappeared! The first one has the added bonus of the "uh-ohs." The second one also shows her climbing skills!

I still haven't managed to capture her walking on video (she's going all the way down the hall now, Frankenstein-style with arms outstretched!), but I did get her doing what we call "Compost Driver." She loves to cruise around the kitchen holding on to our compost bucket. Don't worry - the lid snaps closed very tightly!

Eliza has been taking a big midday nap for about a month now. On days that Rosa is not in preschool, this has actually become a really nice opportunity for some Mommy-Rosa time... as long as I can refrain from cooking or cleaning or doing all those many things that need to get done in a given day. One day I was about to recycle a box, and Rosa wanted to paint it and make it a house, so we did! Other times we have baked pies, made paper airplanes, read books, swept the leaves in the backyard, and other "projects" that one or the other of us dreams up. It's a good time for us!


This picture kind of reminded me of a picture of Rosa's Tanti Kira as a little girl, playing inside a cardboard box.


One day Rosa's preschool took a field trip to a cupcake store around the corner from the school. Since it was unfortunately not a day she was in school, and the field trip was happening right during Eliza's nap time, we didn't join them, but I decided that we would do our own field trip that afternoon after Eliza woke up. They were so cute sitting at the little table outside the store, devouring cupcakes together!

Rosa and Daddy, on a beautiful sunny afternoon.
Daddy and his girls!

I had to take these pictures one day at lunch because Eliza was just covered in her food!

Here's one of Rosa's preschool teachers reading to a bunch of kids in the school's courtyard.

For my 40th birthday(!!!), I asked my dad to pick out a better bass amp for me as my present. We went to Guitar Center to pick it up, and Rosa says, kind of quietly, "Mommy, I want THAT kitar." Can you tell which one?

THIS is the one. I told her - someday!

Rosa and Danya experience their first cotton candy. It was Danya's mom's idea!

Rosa's school had a big Halloween party fundraiser the Saturday before Halloween. I volunteered to be a face painter, although I hadn't really done it before. So the weekend before, I borrowed some face paints and an awesome How-To book, and went to town on Rosa! By the end just about every square inch showing was painted!



For weeks, Rosa had consistently been saying she wanted to be "tiger-mouse-dragon-fairy" for Halloween. This is pretty typical of Rosa, who seems averse to choosing one thing over another. (e.g. "I love ALL the colors!" or "I want the muffin AND the croissant!") So I got tiger tights and mouse ears and a dragon hat and we already had a fairy dress. But then on Halloween night, Rosa announced she wanted to be a ladybug. Ugh. No ladybug costume. And I had spent a decent amount of time gathering all the parts of her previously scheduled costume. But I decided not to make a battle out of it, and told her she could wear her ladybug rain jacket. Which she did. Oh well - better luck next year!

I was a dragon, and Eliza, who has been called "Little Pumpkin" more than "Eliza" in her life, was supposed to be a pumpkin. But she was so sick (fever and cough) that she stayed home for trick-or-treating. But we at least dressed her up for a picture, poor thing. It's good that she stayed home too, because she got worse before she got better.


For the second year in a row, we trick-or-treated with Rosa's friend Ember. My phone takes lousy nighttime pictures, but you get the idea of the cuteness.

Our pumpkin.

I was pretty amazed at the evolution of Rosa's drawing abilities! She originally told me this was a picture of her holding Eliza, although the story changed in the video below. You can see she is also starting to write her name! (Although there are a few extra letters.) And she knows very well that R-O-S-A spells Rosa, darnit!

Eliza's 1st birthday, bronchitis and all. We had cupcakes! Happy birthday, Little Pumpkin!

Eliza walking - pretty much!

There's a lot going on in the Luszcz household these days! There are also lots of good pictures and videos, but it's late and it takes SO long to upload them, so they will have to wait for another day (soon). Sorry Grandma!

I remember when Rosa started to walk, we were not quite sure when to officially call it walking. And it has been the same with Eliza. I remember with Rosa, she would take a step or two, then drop to knees and crawl. And then when it hit about 10 steps in a row, I think we said, "Now we have to call it walking." We hit that point with Eliza about 5 days ago I think, this is the official announcement that Eliza is walking! Now we just have to catch it on video.

And in Rosa news, 5 nights ago, Rosa told Jeff that she wanted to sleep in panties, not a pull-up. I was at one of my many meetings for Rosa's school that night. But I got home before she went to bed and got to witness her going to bed in panties for the first time, and hope for a dry morning. And dry it was! At this point, 4 out of 5 nights have been totally dry. One night, actually at 7:00 in the morning, literally a minute or two before I was about to go in and wake her up, I heard her wake up crying because she peed. But she's had two more dry nights since then, so it doesn't seem to have made her scared to try again. This is very exciting and such a milestone!

And I just have to share one more little Rosa anecdote. Rosa's preschool does a lot of awesome field trips. This past Wednesday, I knew they visited a Buddhist temple near her school, and I was so curious to hear what she would have to say about it. When I asked her what they did on their field trip that day, she told me they went to a place that had lots of poodles, and that lots of things were made of glass and belonged to someone else (read: not allowed to touch!). Oh, and that they had cookies in their backyard at the end. So sweet and interesting, to get a glimpse of the world through the filter of a 3-year old!

I will do my darnedest to get the next batch of pictures and videos up tomorrow!

REALLY big girl bed

This past May, we took the 4th wall down off of Rosa's crib and called that her "big girl bed." Now that we are hoping to move Eliza into Rosa's room sometime soon (read: anywhere from 1 week to 3 months), we started the process by transitioning Rosa to a twin bed - this is a REALLY big girl bed. Our friends got a great bed frame from Ikea that had railings on it, and we thought this would be perfect for Rosa too. And she loves it. I wondered if she might resist and want to sleep in her old bed, but she loves having this new REALLY big girl bed.


And now, here are a bunch of random pictures from the past - mostly of Rosa since Eliza wasn't born yet for most of them! I finally figured out how to download pictures off of my phone, and looking through them was a fun trip down (recent) memory lane. So I thought I'd share a few!

Rosa made an aluminum foil hat, June 2010.

Rosa had a fantastic time on the kiddie rides at Kiddie Playland (is that the name, Dad?) in Cleveland in summer 2010.

Rosa with double harmonicas going - when one is just not enough!

Rosa and her buddy Mateus on the bus - too cute!


Getting a little more recent, Rosa and one of her rocketship creations.

We went to a magic show and Rosa got chosen to assist the magician!

Rosa and Mateus get a new perspective on the playground!

Daddy and Eliza on Long Beach in Long Island, summer 2011

Rosa and her preschool class, enjoying "ice pops" on a hot fall day.

Forgot if I already posted this... Rosa's first haircut at a real beauty salon!

Two cute nudies on a hot fall day.

Preschool

Here we are, leaving home for Rosa's first day of preschool. It was an exciting day - Rosa had been looking forward to "going to school" for weeks! It's a co-op, so I work one afternoon a week, and my day happened to be Rosa's first day, so I just stayed all day. She had a ball (I was exhausted!) and has loved it ever since. I think she's proud to have a school that she goes to!


One day after school, we went to a playground (what a surprise!). I looked up at Rosa, who had climbed to the top of the climbing dome. One day, they are holding on to stand themselves up at the bottom, the next, they are at the top!

And now follows the series of cute pictures, for all the grandmas out there!

We had some hot weather recently , unusual for San Francisco. There are only 2 parks (that I know of) that have sprinklers, so we went to one of them. Rosa got soaked!

Eliza chose to stay dry.

We saw lots of friends there, and one of the moms brought popsicles.

Here's Rosa in one of her new dresses from Tanti Kira. Thanks Tanti Kira!

Here's Eliza in her ladybug dress from Murray - everyone loved it!

Rosa loves to help. She always asks me if she can help me cook, or make the bed (she made my bed one day!), or anything else that looks grown up and interesting. Here she's helping Jeff fix his bike tire.

Eliza is (somewhat inconsistently) repeating or saying about 6 words now - Mama, Dada, Elala (Eliza?), uh-oh, bye-bye, meow. Wow! She's also playing peekaboo (really helps keep her occupied to get her diaper changed), which I almost caught in the beginning of the video below.

Eliza is also standing on her own now... look out world - she'll be walking soon!

Jeff walked into the playroom and said "Holy ****!" I came running from the kitchen... didn't expect to see this! I have now put child locks on all the windows!

Eliza slept until 7am!

Just had to record this first! She has also been saying the cutest "uh-oh" in the world for several weeks (usually either before or after throwing something on the floor from her high chair) and has been napping for 2.5-3 hrs in her crib for her morning nap! Life is good! I need to discover an easier way to post pictures. The whole process (from camera to computer to blog) takes a long time and is a big deterrent to me posting pictures. Sorry Grandma Lois - too tired to do all this tonight!

Oh Lordie... (everyone is ok)

I got the call from Jeff (home with both girls) tonight that started, "First, everyone is ok. We're going to the hospital because..." Because Rosa was hanging from Eliza's clip-on high chair and pulled the table over on her head. With Eliza in the chair. Yes - all true. And everyone is fine. Eliza walked away without a scratch, and Rosa has a bruise and lump on her cheek. After pulling a table over, some piece of which landed on her head. And none of the glasses that were on the table broke. Amazing. All while I was driving to band. I of course turned around and drove to the hospital where everyone was in high spirits. I think Rosa is trying to tie my record of 4 sets of stitches - in the head - before age 5. Sorry, didn't manage to snap any pictures of tonight's events. The girls looked cute in the matching hospital bracelets. Oh, and we will evaluate the effects of these events on Rosa's ability to refrain from future hanging on the clip-on chair. If she seems like she might possibly be tempted to do it again, yes, we will get Eliza a different high chair.

What else... I'm backlogged on reporting Eliza milestones because I still don't know how to get pictures of my phone. And here's why. I had mastitis this weekend. Ugh. Severe shaking and fever spikes, seriously painful breast, and now unknown future of milk supply. Not fun.

But back to Eliza. In the past week, she has started clapping, then inch-worming, then pulling up to standing, then crawling, as of today. I think the clapping started in earnest last Thursday (will see date if I can ever get that video off my phone). Now she claps any time I clap and say "yay!" She claps when she eats. She claps when she wakes up. She claps when I close the door and say "night night." She claps when Rosa gets her all excited. It seems to be the go-to reaction to everything these days. Very cute.

Then the next day, we noticed she was definitely making forward locomotion. Not gracefully, but undeniably. She would get up on her hands and feet, lunge forward, sit up, and repeat. Then yesterday, I had the computer open on the couch, and boy did she want it, so with all her might, she grabbed the piping on the couch cushion and pulllllllled herself up, and voila! She was standing, all by herself. Then today, she finally found her knees, and is doing real crawling. Lots going on in that little noggin these days!

And on that note, I sign off. I promise some pictures soon

Rosa's 3rd birthday and July 4th

The last month or so has had some big events, most importantly Rosa's 3rd birthday! As usual, I'll let the pictures do the talking:

Some random (and cute) harmonica playing.

The night before Rosa's birthday.

We had all of Rosa's presents (from us and the relatives) waiting for her when she woke up. She knows what presents are all about!

Rosa and some friends playing in the sand after a Bernal Bambinos event on Rosa's birthday morning... just a cute picture.

Eliza was there too.

On Rosa's birthday, we had pizza for lunch in a restaurant with Ember and Paxton and their families. After this birthday pizza lunch ended, Rosa informed us that the dress she was wearing was called a Pizza Dress. Indeed it was!

Here are two more portraits from the Rosa portrait gallery:
Her rocking horse, Cinnamon
and her baby sister, Eliza.

Here's Rosa's birthday party, which was actually the day after her birthday. This is the kids doing a bean bag toss. They made the "bean bags" earlier in the day by filling socks with sand. I think this was more fun than the actual bean bag toss!

The Happy Birthday song. It was so windy at that point we didn't even try to light candles.

Eliza and Baby Macy were born 1 day apart!

Lin, Lyla and Lander. They've gotten so big!

Eliza is now spinning in all directions and scooting backwards. She wasn't so happy when she got herself stuck under Rosa's crib. And as is usually the case when Eliza does something that gets attention from Jeff and I, Rosa had to follow suit and do what Eliza did.

Right before our camping trip, Eliza was covered in baby food and I think Rosa had gotten pretty dirty and sticky that day, so I decided they needed a bath. The quickest way of course was to do them together, so they took their first sisters-together bath!

We went camping in a wonderful county park called Memorial Park. We were taking a little hike to the swimming hole that turned out to be more adventurous than Yvette and I expected! Thankfully Eliza (under the polka-dot blanket) slept through it all (and I didn't slip!).

Here's our beautiful campsite. I love this park!

Jeff made a spiral in the sand and Rosa and Paxton walked it like a meditation labyrinth.

When we got back from camping, we took the girls to their first July 4th fireworks show. The city fireworks were pretty far away, but there were volunteer fireworks all over the place! We had let her nap that day from 4-6pm (a very late nap!) so she could stay up for the fireworks. I guess we sort of overshot, because she didn't go to sleep until midnight that night. Sigh. Tired Mommy and Daddy, excited girl!