Vacation

We arrived home Monday from our wonderful vacation to Holden Beach, NC! What a fantastic trip. The beach house we rented with 2 other families was right across the street from the beach access and was perfect! I was very impressed with the east coast, having not been there before. The water was soooo warm and there were no crowds - I have been completely converted to an east coast girl!

The week went so well, in spite of having 3 families all living in the same house. The house was big enough that we didn't feel cramped, and I guess we're all just such good friends that no one really got on anyone else's nerves, as far as I could tell, anyways. What a blessing to have such good friends and to still be in touch with them after 5 years (I think) since we all met back in CA!

Some of the fun, besides hanging out on the beach, was playing Mexican Train Dominoes, playing Corn Hole (see the Heldt's blog for more on that), collecting shells with Laina on the beach (Jay will have to post more on that as it was more of a father/daughter activity), and my own personal highlight of the vacation....reading the first book in my new found favorite series, Twilight. I won't get into the details here, but let me just say that these books are more captivating than anything I've read in a long time, maybe more so than anything I've read, ever. I finished the first book in 2 days (Tara brought it to the beach for me) and passed it off to Rachel who finished it faster than me. Before we took off on the flight home on Sunday, I purchased the second book and finished that by Monday at 3pm. Then I happened upon the 3rd book at the grocery store on Monday afternoon and just finished that one before starting this post. Now I'm in trouble because there is one book left in the series, but it doesn't come out until August 2nd. What's a girl to do???

Alright, enough about books...on with the pictures from the trip.

a bit windy but we got a decent "self portrait"


The awesome view from the family room upstairs in the beach house
(we saw dolphins from this view one of the days!)

Laina loved playing in the sand

and floating in the super warm ocean!

Words

I'm not really one for keeping track of baby "milestones" and charts and measurements and parent bragging rights and all that. In fact, it's quite detrimental to Laina's baby scrapbook, which I haven't worked on for some months. Luckily I do remember that her first tooth came in at 11 mos and the first time she crawled forward was also 11 mos.

I do not, however, remember when her first word was. I think it's because she babbled so much and it's hard to say when she first started actually meaning something by her "mamama" and "dadada". Well, Laina talks A LOT now. She has so many words it's crazy. I stopped counting before her one year birthday (well maybe I never really even started). At her one year doctor appointment I had to think fast and count them up for the pediatrician who asked. She had at least 10 I could think of on the spot.

Anyways, at the encouragement of a friend, yesterday Jay and I sat and tried to think up all the words Laina knows. Well, here certainly is my bragging right as a parent. Laina doesn't walk, doesn't stand by herself, in fact, she barely pulls herself up to her knees. But she sure does talk! Are you ready? Here it is...she knows at least 83 words...yes, eighty three! Actually, I know there is more because after we made our list we kept thinking of more. And just this morning she pointed outside to the kiddie pool Jay filled yesterday and said "pool", which isn't on the list. Plus she also says part of the alphabet, with help. I think Jay actually got to the end with her once or twice, but I can only get to about J with her. The long list we scribbled on scratch paper is definitely going into the baby book! There is no way we can keep up with this kid! She is learning so much everyday.

Some of her most notable words are "help", which is one of the first ones I taught her because I didn't want to hear the whining when she needed something, "dirty", "turtle", and "Laina". She also has a few phrases or short sentences, including "brush teeth", "all done", and "butt day" (which you may remember from a previous post).

And, just because, here's a cute picture of Jay blowing bubbles with Laina. Oh, there's another one, "bubbles," that's not on the list...


So there you have it, a post bragging on the genius of my baby. I promise it won't happen too often.

She Wears Many Hats

This post has been a long-time coming. We have to share with you an unhealthy obsession that our daughter has developed... Hats.

She loves them.

No matter the size, the style, the color, if it fits on your head or not, she loves it. So far we've managed to trick her into not wearing one while eating and sleeping, sometimes she rolls with it, sometimes she can't stand being away from her hats for that long.

She's even mastered putting hats on by herself... even a beanie! She put the beanie in the slideshow above on by herself first try (which is why her ears are sticking out). (Heads up to those viewing this on Google Reader or some such viewer, you may not be able to see the slideshow that should be playing above)

I've actually come up with a new idea today that could work to our advantage. One reason we won't let her wear a hat (most of the time) while eating is that she has a tendency to run her fingers through her hair/hat right after eating some yogurt/pasta/beans/etc., thereby gunkifying whatever happens to be up there. Well my genius idea is for Jenna to make her a version of a 'doctor's surgery cap' out of some waterproof fabric she has. She just happens to have perfected sewing those for a friend of hers who's husband is Ella's vet, so it should be a perfect solution: Laina gets to wear a hat while eating, and she keeps her head clean! We probably couldn't put it on her while out though (or maybe we should, Jenna could sell 'em!)

Maybe we'll have to come up with some kind of sleeping cap, too.

Must I Have a Title for my Post?

I have too many random things to talk about so how am I supposed to pick a title for this post?

First off, we saw Prince Caspian yesterday!! Woohoo, a real movie in a real theater! Our church bought all the tickets to the 4:45 showing and then sold them to the congregation in hopes that people would bring friends and neighbors. I was bummed - the 2 families I would have invited had members out of town.

I was, of course, very anxious to see this second movie in the Chronicles of Narnia series (Can I call it a series? I don't know how many they plan to make and wonder if they'll make all seven?)
Anyways, Prince Caspian did not disappoint! If you've read the book, you know that Narnia is a much different place than the first time the Pevensies visit. The movie did a wonderful job portraying that and made me long for the old Narnia, just as I'm sure the characters did. Two things that were interesting to me - (1) Prince Caspian himself was much older than I had imagined from reading the book, and (2) Aslan's first appearance was not clap-worthy. You know, when He appears the whole audience bursts out in cheers and clapping. That did not happen, and it wouldn't have been appropriate. I don't remember the first time Aslan appears in the book, except for when Lucy sees him. Something in me just really wanted to shout and clap when Aslan showed up, but it was a much "softer" moment. Maybe that in itself is some sort of allegory to the way Christ shows up sometimes - not always with shouts and thunder, ya know, but in the quiet.

Next - not nearly as exciting to you, but pretty exciting to me, Laina is transitioning to one nap a day. I have been trying to figure her out and figure out how best to make this transition, when it occurred to me that I need to re-read my favorite baby sleep book, "Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child" (well, at least the section on naps). Sorry, you can't really search inside this image, I just pulled the image off Amazon.com, but you can click on it to go to the listing.


Once again, I was not disappointed! I love this book! It totally described what Laina is doing (either laying in her crib playing, and/or not wanting to go down for her afternoon nap, which is the one you want them to keep as they get older!) and had solutions to help "fix" the naps. I have been doing what Dr Weissbluth recommends for 3 days now and IT WORKS! Amazing! For her AM nap, I lay her down and don't leave her for longer than one hour. If she plays that's fine. If she sleeps that's fine. But don't let her sleep for more than an hour. We want her to be able to take a good afternoon nap. Yesterday she took a 2 hour afternoon nap, which is 1/2 hour longer than normal. Eventually she should be taking a 2-3 hr PM nap and no AM nap. I am really looking forward to her being on only one nap a day as I think it will help me feel less "tied to the house". I would love to get this sorted out before our NC trip, but it may take a couple months of transition, so we'll see.

And that leads to the next exciting thing - our trip to Holden Beach, NC is quickly approaching! In June we are renting a beach house with two sets of friends. It's going to be a long awaited, much needed real vacation. I know it will be much different than the vacations we used to take before becoming parents, but hopefully it will still be great, just in a different way. Maybe even a better way. This is the house we're renting, called "Simply Breathtaking". Yes, they name their houses out there. Weird, I know. I guess it's like naming a boat or something.So there you have it - a few different things all in one post - how would I begin to come up with a title?

Butt Day

Laina has a new phrase, "butt day".

How did she learn that one?

It went something like this while we were changing Laina into her PJs for bed tonight:


Jenna (to Laina): Puttin' diaper cream on your butt

Jay: So are we going to let her use the word "butt" for her butt?

Jenna: Yeah, what else would you call it?

Jay: I don't know, a "bottom" or "behind" or something

Jenna: No, there's nothing wrong with "butt"

Jay: Fine by me, I just remember when "butt" was kind of a bad word

Jenna: No, its not a bad word

Jay: Okay, just wanted your opinion... "butt" it is

Jenna: Woops, I got a little diaper cream not on your butt, Laina

Laina: Blahg Nagn

Jay: You got it on her non-butt? Her un-butt?

Jenna: A very very un-butt-day, to you!!

Laina: Baah Tay, Baaht Dee

Jay: I think she's saying "Butt Day"

Laina: Bahtay Bahht Teh Bat Teh

Jay and Jenna: (uncontrollable laughter)

Jay: I guess she knows it now!

Laina: (laughter) bahn tay, baht tay, bahtay, bahtay!

Jenna: We'll just tell people she's saying "birthday"

Too Good to Be True??

I was updating my Java the other day, and saw an ad for what seemed to be too good to be true... A free open source competitor to Microsoft Office that is compatible with all the Office file types! (I know, its exactly what you were expecting!)

I don't know how new it is, since I don't necessarily follow this stuff, but I do know that our laptop didn't come with any decent Office-type applications, and I didn't want to bootleg it, so until now we'd been using random stuff like Google Docs, WordViewer, and some cheap rich text editor do create and view documents.

Not anymore now that I found OpenOffice! Apparently Sun Microsystems bought out an Office competitor a few years back and developed it to be freely available specifically to cut into Microsoft's domination with Office. I haven't actually had to use it for anything yet, although I did try it out just to see what its like (and read reviews). It seems to be a pretty good set of programs. It comes with a version of Word, Excel, Powerpoint, etc., and can open and save-as in .xls, .doc, and .ppt format if needed.

So if you've got a computer and you're too cheap to buy Office, go download a free copy of OpenOffice.org!

(end of strange unpaid advertisement)

Speaking of open source software... I've also heard there is a free open source video editing program out there called Jashaka (www.jahshaka.org) that's pretty good, though I haven't tried it... also a photoshop alternative called The GIMP (www.gimp.org).

End of amateur computer-geek post.

Here's a picture of Laina wearing my giant headphones (I was practicing some basslines for church and she wanted to wear my "hat")

Just another cute video

Laina made up a song and here she is singing it with Jay (and me). She had a better melody going before I started taping, but what I filmed is still cute, at least to us! Be forewarned, there is some drooling around the middle of the video.