Surprise in the mail

Dear Happy Little Girl,

May you always believe that putting clean sheets on a bed is hilarious fun; and that when the dishwasher door opens for the contents to be emptied you come running to help; and that pulling and pushing the broom around makes you feel like a big girl; and that when Mommy is not visible, you feel uncomfortable and start to cry and look for her; and that seeing Daddy come home is the highlight of your day and you always squeal with excitement.   Love always, your parents

Dorothy

Yes, that's a reference to her shoes.

Breakfast with a whirlwind

The day in the life of Mommy's girl

Balloons keep tiny grocery shoppers happy

Racing cars at the mall

We are also very happy that Story Time is back in session at our library.  We have graduated to the Toddler one, and went to the first session the other day.  The librarian utilized lot more music and movement, which all the children seemed to enjoy.  Our girl spent the entire 20 minutes swiveling her head, watching and smiling at all the other kids instead of paying attention to the librarian.  I can just see her future report card now... "Lucia is delightful, however she needs to pay more attention to the blackboard whiteboard smartboard i-board than to her friends in the classroom."

Transit week

We love celebrating things around here.  Even transit week.  Any excuse to have fun will be utilized!  So, yesterday, munchkin and I rode the bus from our downtown train station to meet Troy for a picnic lunch at his school.  Whole Foods even threw in a fancy schmancy lunch bag (aka wine bag!) on account of me buying four bottles of olive oil.  Munchkin enjoyed the novelty of NOT being strapped into a car seat, and was definitely moving about the cabin, as the photos show.

Petunia Pickle Bottom

Since Troy noticed the bottom of my very special pink Tumi diaper bag was starting to show wear, I've been thinking about replacing it.  On occasion I've looked at the Petunia Pickle Bottom bags and even once shopped at Nordstrom for one, but then always wondered if they were worth the price.  This week, one showed up on Craigslist for ten dollars!  Seriously, that amount wouldn't even cover the tax on a new one.  Yesterday, thanks to Mollie's help, I picked it up and now just finished cleaning it.  The backpack bag is a brocade fabric in charcoal, pink and rose colors.  Beautiful, nearly new and almost ready to try out.  But how will I part with my other pink one??

Hey lady in the new Volvo wagon with out-of-state plates,

Please, please, please tell me that I did NOT just see you help your toddler son down from the car, pull his shorts down, encourage him to pee in the parking lot of our local park, and both giggle watching the urine stream down the blacktop.  I'm sure you saw the THREE fast food restaurants on the way to the park, namely McDonalds, Dairy Queen and Burger King.  Yes, the very same street, just half a block away from the park. And they all have restrooms.  Promise.  You might be doing your son (and all of us!) a huge favor by teaching him to NOT urinate in a parking lot.  Promise.

Wonder what the Bible says?

This nine-year-old boy seems to know! Thanks to Grandma for the link.

Guess who picked out this one?

Thanks for the balloon, sweet Lucia Sora.  You and Daddy make Mommy's birthday very special.

I'm also the very lucky recipient of my husband's detailed research for just the perfect smart phone.  Thanks, honey!  I'm excited to learn how to operate this inanimate object that really is smarter than me.  So far, I've hung up on three people accidentally, called my mom accidentally, had to re-type names into the contact list since they appear backwards (i.e. last name as first name) and almost missed some calls because I didn't recognize the new ring tone nor realize that there's a puzzle lock in order to answer it.

Thanks everyone for your birthday wishes, calls, emails, texts, and comments on our blog.  LOVE IT!  LOVE IT!  LOVE IT!  You all made my day very happy, and I realize again we have wonderful friends and family, near and far.  Apparently I need to start behaving myself since just about everyone is surprised at my age.  Guess I need to grow-up sometime....  (HAH!  What fun is that?!) 

Though Troy really wanted to plan a big birthday bash, I told him it wasn't necessary, nor necessarily desired.  So, he has made the whole week special with little surprises here and there.  Our play group also celebrated my b-day today (a fun coincidence) with a yummy cake today.  Thanks, ladies... a celebration done perfectly.  I'm all for getting together with those who commented such on our blog, too.  We can celebrate for a whole month! 

And for those of you who are wondering, yes, my big calorie splurge today was a large, 710kcal, decaf, Mint Condition drink from Caribou Coffee... their gift to me!  Troy also brought me a mint brownie from Whole Foods.  My insulin is getting a good workout today, and the rest of me needs a good workout to burn off all these calories.

Finally, a huge hug, love and thanks to my own mom who made my birthday possible!  I know you didn't want anyone to know that you are actually old enough to have a 40-year-old daughter, but it's too late... your secret is out.  Don't worry, you don't look your age.  At least ten years younger.  At least. 

Wishing Youngin a Happy 40th?!

Leave your comments below!

**Happy Birthday, Youngin!**
tg

Woo, hoo!

Our new yearbook arrived!

Thankfully, the brakes were locked!

Oh, the irony!

By complete accident (since we rushed out the door to take Lucia's Daddy to work/school after his truck's battery died yesterday morning), I noticed munchkin had on this cute outfit.  Except nowadays, "tea party" entails a completely different meaning than little girls dressing up and pouring imaginary tea into teeny-weeny fancy china.  ANYway, the whole point of this ironic story is that she wore this outfit the very same day that the President of the United States showed up at her daddy's school.  Go figure. 

Eating more?!

Our munckin can eat well at times, and at other times, be too distracted to eat (like at convention).  Supper the other night consisted of baked maple salmon, butter beans, baked sweet potato and quinoa.  She ate all of it and then an hour later asked (by signing) for more butter beans and ate another huge helping.  Must be a Gilmore favorite vegetable!  We are excited to be using her plate and bowl set that we bought in Korea... finally!

Walking more confidently

Yes, she loves to pull her hair pins out of her hair.  Occasionally, she'll forget that it's there and leave it.

Denton with a one year old

We truly appreciated the helpful meetings at Denton.  I was unsure of how convention with a one year old who just started walking might go, but with Troy taking excellent care of her, the days went smoothly.

Co-sleeping

As most of you know, we have enjoyed co-sleeping with our girl in our bed.  It's the Korean way.  Or, maybe it's only the Choi way.  Who knows?  Anyway, we've snuggled our baby, touched feet, inhaled that freshly bathed baby scent, listened to her soft, rhythmic breathing, monitored her body temperature, stuck pacificers back in her mouth,  and admired the beauty of a contented sleeping little one.

Alas, our baby is growing up.  She occupies more than half our king-size bed.  Apparently she is practicing her walking in her sleep, too.  So we've been kicked in the mouth, kicked in the head, kicked in the gut, punched in the face, and have felt her flop around until she ends up with her head at my stomach and feet at my eyes.   No doubt we wake her also.

What are we to do??  I love having her sleep with us.  Troy probably would be fine either way.  We tried this method where she sleeps on a twin mattress next to our bed.   The first time she saw her bed, she squealed with delight, jumped onto the mattress, rolled all over it, scrambled onto the big bed and back down onto hers.  Thankfully, she seems happy.

Tornado watch

This week's rain and thunder kept this mom scrambling for play ideas.  One day, the tornado watch sent us downstairs, but we made the best of our hideout spot.  Stairs magically transformed into a fun playground.  (We really were under a tornado watch, although our girl is so busy that it's always a tornado watch at this house!) 

Notable changes

This week, our girl has been walking with much more stability.  She almost seems to prefer to walk instead of crawl, although when she was trying to keep up with some little boys recently she reverted to her mighty-fast-sideways crawl.   She finds everything and anything interesting, and so nearly runs everywhere.

Also this week, we noticed that she has two more upper teeth budding.  That might be the reason why she has felt slightly warmer occasionally, even though the thermometer shows 98.7 or less each time.  And also why she wakes out of a deep sleep around 3 or 4 AM (yes, AM!!), crying.  She doesn't stand, sit, nor hold still for more than a second so trying to capture a photo of the teeth is nearly impossible!  If the pictures look like we were coaxing her to smile wide, you would be correct in your assessment.

It must be confusing to be a little kid.  The adults around her applaud her enjoyment of water, especially baths.  But her new-found interest in the toilet (not actually using it unfortunately, but playing in the water) makes those same adults cranky.

The other thing she started doing with more regularly recently is shaking her head, as if to tell herself "no."  She's done that a few times before, but a couple of examples from this week... my phone was on top of a cabinet while we were in the basement and as she passed by, she looked up to check its status.  Obviously, she wanted it, but shook her head without saying anything.  And then yesterday while we were at the library, we passed by a man with his young son in the children's section.  His laptop computer was plugged into the wall and sitting on the floor.  Lucia glanced at it, then turned to look at me and shook her head "no" which is a major feat of restraint since she loves her daddy's computer keyboard.  Interesting self-talk at this age!

Finding parks is my new hobby

A mom at our local park told me about another park that is supposed to be one of the best for kids in the area.  Since we took Troy to school after our Chick-Fil-A breakfast yesterday morning, I decided that we were so close that it would be good to try out the new park.  The place is built like a wooden castle.  She really like climbing up all those steps, and of course squealing at a little boy there.

Unfortunately, the sky was overcast and after about 15 minutes of playing, a few raindrops began to fall.  The Vietnamese Parks and Rec maintenance man there must have felt sorry for this mom.  He told me about an indoor play area a couple miles north which I decided to try.  There, we met another hapa kolea girl who is 2 years old and her mom told me about some other parks and recreational areas for toddlers.  This facility was very clean, air-conditioned and well-suited for children.  We'll definitely go back when it's too hot, too rainy or too cold to be outdoors, and now we have more options to explore, thanks to Nina's mom.

Smothered laugh vs discipline

In the past week or so, several amusing episodes in the world of child-rearing made me pause.  Let me preface by stating that I really am trying to discipline our girl, but she makes me laugh and so entertained that sometimes I thwart my own efforts.  For example, last evening, she climbed onto the coffee table which has been in front of the fireplace to prevent her from bumping the brick and also from using the fireplace as a fort.   The "coffee table gate" worked great until now when she discovered that she could actually climb onto the table and then onto the hearth, which is just a metal curtain pull away from the fireplace.  EEKS!   So, we pulled her off the table two different times, telling her no and redirecting her attention to another activity.  One of those activities was throwing a soft, plush ball around.  At one point, the ball landed on the hearth by accident and she looked on with delight, wheels churning in her head!  I reached over and pulled the ball back out.  She took the ball and threw it back onto the hearth, then put her arms out as if to say "what happened?!"  The little turkey!!   I had turn  my head to hide my laugh but Troy tells me I was too late.  I told him he could take this one.

Computer hiccups

These past few days, after much prompting by hubby, I finally sat down to work on revising our yearbook.  Our plan is to print our blog posts into a yearbook, uh, every year.  We completed one last August, and we love having an actual book to thumb through and revisit the year.  (If you ever wonder why we post something that might seem mundane or odd, it's because we have in mind that we want our girl to be able to look through the yearbook and know what occurred). 

Anyway, it's fun to put the literary magazine thinking cap on again, but frustrating to use this particular program that crashes on me about every 10-15.  Needless to say, the first time it occurred was after I put in about 2 hours of work.  I now save my changes every 2-3 pages.

First bee sting

Oh, the perils of being outdoors at the park, in the driveway, or in the yard.   The mosquitos have been horrendous with each of getting 5-6 bites just walking to the mailbox.  And at the park, at the very bottom of the slide, was a bee that stung her thumb.   Ouch, ouch!