yummy chocolate walls!

Last weekend was fun, aside from me checking every now and then to see if our domain was back up (google fails, godaddy rocks as always btw).

We went to a local park on Saturday morning, had a picnic, then Aria played with her friend Austin from across the street. They played in the pool, and sat in the tree. hey, wait. they sat in a tree, but smiled for the camera, and that's it! here's pics to prove it!

JUST sitting in the tree. Nothing else to see here, move along...

As mentioned in the previous post, I painted the walls of baby brother's room on Saturday and Sunday. The top 2/3s of the walls is a light tan, and the bottom 1/3 is dark brown. Dana craved chocolate when she was pregnant with Aria, and I think that craving is beginning to manifest itself in her choice of paint. This "dark brown" really looks like milk chocolate to me! When I was pouring out the paint it reminded me of the chocolate river in Willy Wonka's chocolate factory. I had to stop myself several times from licking my finger whenever I wiped up a mistake! It went on brownish-almost purple, then dried a nice hershey bar dark brown. Maybe the boy's name should be Augustus? :-)

------------------------------------------------------------

This weekend has been fun so far, we went to our friends' house this morning and Aria played with their son Devin. They are having a girl about a month before we're having our boy, so we exchanged clothes. thanks guys!

Well, we maybe stayed a little longer than originally expected, through lunch, Devin's nap, and all the while Aria played, and ate (we found out she likes spinach alfredo pizza). I thought she would fall asleep in the car about 5 minutes from home. no, more like 5 minutes INTO the trip home!

I decided to let her sleep on me for a bit after we got home cause in the past, she wakes up right away if we lay her on the couch or her bed. We wanted her to get more than 20 minutes for her nap, even though it was kinda late. And I love it when she sleeps on me. Dana took pictures, and it reminded us of when she was just two weeks old...

Look at how small I've gotten!

baby brother's room

We're just about done with baby brother's room—as usual Dana did an awesome job designing and painting. I helped by breathing paint fumes all last weekend, Dana did the detail work during the week. Grammy is hard at work quilting and sewing the various things to finish off the room.

Yesterday morning, I showed Aria the room, and she said "OH WOW!" when she saw the argyle designs on the walls. Then when she saw the crib, she said "I'm gonna give baby brother a buddy." Aria ran to her room, saw a little elmo doll, said "ooh elmo. no, wait! I give baby brother my caterpillar!" Aria still likes to sleep with the Baby Einstein stuffed caterpillar from her pack and play, but she grabbed it and ran back into baby brother's room. She threw it into the crib, and said "there. he can sleep with it now." And she hasn't asked for it back to sleep with!

a close-up shows the caterpillar waiting for baby brother

as for names—we have a short list now. And we're pretty sure what his name will be, but we still have time to change our minds. :-)

where was goofydaddy?

Some of you may have noticed the blog was missing since last Thursday (I know one person did, I hope there were more than that though). Well the domain expired, and I never received an email saying there was a billing problem. Then, I changed the old blogspot address, thinking "well since no one is going to the old address anyway..." But I was wrong. Some people have the old baby-amz.blogspot still linked. So I changed it back to that last night.

but goofydaddy.com is back, so hope you didn't miss us too much!

edit: i decided to change the blogspot address back to http://goofydaddy.blogspot.com. It makes more sense now that she isn't a baby, and the new one won't have the AMZ intials. I did create a new blog for those of you who still want to go to http://baby-amz.blogspot.com

Time management and the cheese incident

toddlers don't understand the concept of time. What they do understand is being rushed. I've noticed that if we are running late in the morning, and I push her to get dressed, or help her get an article of clothing on, or whatever it is she should be doing, she reacts by taking longer than usual to do whatever it is she should be doing. I've blogged about those mornings where it takes forever for her to get dressed or get ready and it frustrates both of us to no end.

I don't know why it took me so long to realize this. I guess part of me expects her to understand that "we are running late" means what it means. I tend to treat her as if she's much older than she is because of how intelligent she already seems.

So. Now I know how much time to give Aria to get ready in the morning, and that way I can let her take her time getting dressed, with gentle reminders when one of the steps takes too long.

This of course changes from day to day depending on her mood. or my mood. or doogan's mood. or the weather... but it's a good guideline.

One thing that is funny, is that on days when Aria gets ready promptly, there seems to be something at the very end, usually right when we are about to go into the garage, that comes up. Today Aria decided that I had to put her hair in pigtails. not a problem. while I'm doing that, she says "I need something to eat."

"how about some little animal crackers?"
"noooo, I need something to eat."
"ok, how about some chewy bunnies?" (relax, they're little fruit bunnies)
"noooo, I want something to eat!"

by this time, I'm done putting her hair up, and she's going to the fridge TO GRAZE. I wonder where she learned that? our on-time/late window is wide open now, and I'm beginning to worry about whether or not we'll be able to go into the back entrance at her school (they close that gate at 9, and then we have to go in the front entrance and walk the whole length of the school and down a flight of stairs to get to her class).

So I make my final suggestion "how about a piece of cheese?" Aria loves cheese. we get those little baby bells wrapped in wax, and she enjoys unwrapping them and eating the creamy cheese inside. Aria accepts one, and sits down to unwrap it. ugh.

"let's go in the car and eat that, ok?"
"noooo, picnic!"

I convince Aria to come out to the car, with some tears shed, she unwraps the cheese and takes one bite and then hands it to me so I can buckle her in the carseat.

"I'm done, daddy."
"really?"
"yes."
"are you sure you're done?"
"yes, daddy, you eat it."
"are you sure I can eat it?"
"yes!"

I put the whole thing in my mouth, and Aria screamed that she wanted to eat it! It was litterally in, cry, out. I handed it back to Aria, she inspected it for daddy cooties, and continued eating it.

Our back entrance "window" has now closed. And we were SO gonna be on time today!

we did our usual chatting during the car ride to school, talking about planes, other cars, clouds, the birds she sees and wants to tell her teacher about, etc. I park the car at her school, and come around to let Aria out of the car. she has one tiny piece of the baby bell left.

"can you finish that so we can go into school?"
"no, I'm done."
...

did I learn anything? no. at this point in the morning, I'm all about getting her into school (the front entrance, long walk, flight of stairs). So what happened not 10 minutes prior isn't even on my mind. let's play this one out...

"are you sure?"
"yes, throw it away."
"Ok, I'm going to throw it away, and then you won't be able to finish it..."
"I'm done, daddy, throw it away over there." (Aria points to the dumpster in the school parking lot that she likes to point out from time to time)
"are you sure?"
"yes"

I throw the small piece of cheese, and I get "OOOOH NO DADDY! You threw the cheese away!"
drama queen. tears streaming down her face for that lost little piece of cheese. I apologized and explained to her that she chose to throw it away so it is gone. now I have to carry her the whole way through the front entrance, the long walk through the school, down the flight of stairs, to her classroom. otherwise it would mean dragging a screaming kid. she calmed down by the time we entered the school, but didn't want me to put her down once we were in her class! very clingy indeed.

Once Aria saw her friends, she let me put her down and gave me a big hug and kiss like she usually does. what an interesting morning!

Easter!

Before Easter, we stopped at the aquarium. Aria had fun, and loved seeing all the colorful fish!

We colored and dyed eggs, Aria did a little. the crayons were key to keeping the mess down.

After her nap, we went outside and Aria got to fill a basket with all the goodies we hid!

This is the facial response to the question "Are you ready to eat your Easter chocolate?"

School Picture

...forget those ugly pictures, she is a cute little thing :-)

a face only a mother could love

words fail me, though it is mostly my doing. she is her daddy's daughter!