March 2012

Well, it's been months again. And those months have been filled to the brim, mostly with goodness, and then more recently with sadness. In February, we lost our sweet Grandma Judy. She passed away very unexpectedly, and it was such a shock to all, but especially to Jeff, Aly, and Papa Chuck. We will all miss her dearly.


We saw Grandma Judy last at Thanksgiving, which we spent with Jeff's mom's family.

And then just a few days ago at the beginning of March, our Mr. Judd left us. He had had kidney disease for many years, and finally he got to the point where he couldn't eat much. The house feels really empty without him.


Here are some pictures from everything else in between since the last post:

During the Christmas season we took a trip downtown to see the lights and tree in the Hyatt hotel. The girls (Rosa, Eliza, and Rosa's friend Audrey) loved riding up and down in the rocket ship elevator!


We took the BART to get there... just liked this picture.

Rosa had her first sleepover in December. The girls finally dropped off to sleep around 10:00!

Here's what I believe to be the messiest Eliza has gotten to date while eating.

It's been warm and sunny this winter... here's a morning at the playground with a friend from preschool and his family.

I like this picture of Rosa. For some reason (the scarf I think), she looks like a little French girl to me. My friend Eva says she looks like a hippy!

We had a Christmas tree that was decorated and undecorated constantly over the couple weeks it was in the house. The scarf is to keep it warm...

And Rosa was always taking ornaments off and making little scenes with them. Eliza just chewed on them.

We did our family Christmas presents the morning of the 23rd...

We left our house Christmas Eve to go to Grandma Lois and Papa Misha's house.

Jeff put the camera on video and left it sitting by the piano (pronounced "pan yo" according to Rosa!). If you have the patience for this long video, you'll see the girls each have their own distinctive style!

And of course, there were lots of Christmas carols!

There wasn't much snow in Ohio, but we got about 1/2 an inch one day, and we got out there right way to make our snow girl!

And on the un-snowy days, we tried to get out for a walk every now and then.
We got to see some cousins - here's Rosa with cousin Chris.

We got back at about 11pm on New Years Eve. Eliza fell asleep in the cab and we managed to get her into bed without waking her up (hooray!). Rosa stayed awake (!!!), so we decided to let her stay up to ring in the New Year with us. (The dark shape in the corner is Judd!) It was mellow, but sweet.

When we got home, there was a pink sweater from Santa waiting for Rosa! Here's a picture of it, Tanti Kira.

Rosa learned to ride a pedal bike in January! She had been riding her balance bike for ages and was even doing tricks on it where she would tuck her feet up by the handle bars and swerve and swoop around. When I saw this, I thought - she is ready to try a pedal bike. So we borrowed one from school and one day that weekend I suggested we give it a try. Jeff was in the car with sleeping Eliza, and Rosa rode up and down the street with me holding on to her waist and running along behind her. By about the 3rd or 4th trip down the street, she was doing it by herself! We knocked (quietly!) on the window and had Daddy come out to watch - he was amazed! A couple days later Rosa rode her balance bike to the playground and kind of crashed into the fence at the bottom of a slight downhill slope. She got the attention of a lady inside who came out to see if she was ok (she was). So I started talking to her (I recognized her from the neighborhood), and she randomly asked if Rosa needed a pedal bike. I said, "Yes please!" And now Rosa has her first real bike! For a few weeks, she needed my help to get started, but now she has gotten the hang of pushing off by herself. So exciting!

Tanti Kira got the girls American Girl Bitty Twins, where you get to choose the hair and eye color (in this case to match Rosa's and Eliza's). When we opened the box, Rosa immediately said, "This one is mine, that one is Eliza's!" And then, "Oh... I wish she was real!" Eliza said, "Eye! Eye! Eye!" as she poked her dolly in the eye (like she does to anyone who will let her). These are very special dolls! Thanks Tanti Kira!

One day the tide was super low, so we went tidepooling. We got to see tons of starfish and anemones. We heard later that a friend of ours even saw an octopus that same afternoon, but we didn't see it.

Here's another picture of Rosa I thought was especially good - maybe will work it into the blog title one of these days. (Note to self: I need to take more pix of Eliza too!)

Jeff got Rosa these neat blocks for Christmas. Rosa loves them.

A pretty pic of downtown at dusk.
We had another sleepover! Here are the girls in the morning - the two big ones are playing "twins."

Some noteworthy events!

Oof. It has been a tough few weeks, getting ready for Christmas and travel, being out of our time zone and our routines (although we had a wonderful visit!), then coming back home to Eliza having an ear infection and molars coming in and not sleeping through the night since we've been back, then Rosa having either food poisoning or flu bugs twice in the last week. I have a bizillion pictures to post, but just don't have the energy tonight.

But - I just wanted to jot down a few milestones and fun observations from the past few weeks:

Rosa
* learned to ride a pedal bike today! (no training wheels! we love balance bikes!) I promise video soon!
* now uses the word "like" in her speech, as in "how about we like go to the playground or something..." (somehow I was hoping she'd skip this!)
* has really been wanting to help me cook lately - lasagna, french toast, scrambled eggs, almond butter and jelly sandwiches (ok, that's not cooking, but she can make her own sandwich!), etc.

Eliza
* new words: pee pee, poo poo, choo choo, beans (she says eens, just like Rosa did), oof oof (woof woof), and probably others I'm forgetting
* told me "poo poo" today, then went and sat on Rosa's little potty (with her clothes on), and sometime shortly after this did have a poopy diaper
* insists on eating with whatever utensil she can see on the table that is the most ridiculous / ineffective. Tonight she would only eat her lasagna off of a butter knife. Sigh. At least she was eating.

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!