Sleepy Princess Gabriela

Don't you ever go night-night in YOUR tu-tu??

Apple Pie

Our Valentine's peach pie was such a success. It was not only delicious, but (I'm embarrassed to say that) we ate the WHOLE thing. We only gave away one slice. Obviously, the only natural thing to do next was bake another pie.

Lane requested Apple Pie. Last night I made the crust - which is a bazillion times easier in the food processor, and baked it in the morning. It's just sitting on the kitchen counter now, calling our names.

WHY?

This weekend as we were driving in the Target parking lot Gabriela said Y all of a sudden. We weren't really sure why, but then we realized that we had just driven by the pharmacY sign. When we went outside she said Y again. It's so exciting that she's starting to recognize letters in the world around her, instead of just in her little puzzle!

Weekend

Our weekend started out just right with a visit from our dear friend Malia's Aunt Debbie. Aunt Debbie lives in Hawaii, but is living in Crystal City for a three week temporary work assignment. We met at the Thai restaurant across the street from us and had a delicious dinner while catching up. When we got there, all the staff recognized Gabriela. When one guy greeted her, he said, "ah, yes! SPICY GIRL". That's right, folks. People call our 1 year old Spicy Girl. It's because she loves the spicy curry dishes, but still it's pretty funny. Aunt Debbie was so sweet to bring several nice gifts for Gabriela. We really enjoyed her company. By the end of the night, Gabriela said "Debbie" and gave her lots of kisses when we said goodbye.

We finally transitioned Gabriela into her big girl front facing car seat. She LOVES it! She sees so much more while we're driving and she talks all about it. "bye, bye helicopter. bye, bye dog". The other highlights of our weekend involved house cleaning and organizing and grocery shopping. It was very suspenseful.

Gabriela has been going crazy this weekend saying Uncle Noal over and over again and looking for him in her family photo book. Pretty sweet. Here's a video of her looking for Uncle Noal in her book.

19 months old

A couple weeks ago, Gabriela finally started saying the word "please", although it sounds more like "meesth". She has only done her sign for please once since then! She asks for things so politely now.

Gabriela's language development seems to have really increased this month. She repeats nearly anything we say. If we tell her the name of something once, she remembers it days and days later. Gabriela loves her Richard Scarry book.When she used to point and just say "car", now she says "a pink car, a yellow car, a brown car". She's quite the little chatterbox.

Sirens are very exciting for Gabriela. Whenever she hears them, she asks us to pick her up so we can watch the fire trucks and ambulances go by. Gabriela mimics the fire truck sounds, says bye-bye to the trucks, and then reminds us (over and over) that the sirens are all gone.

Gabriela has gotten really good at recognizing letters from her alphabet puzzle. She says lots of letters and will point to the correct letter when you ask her to show you one. Some of her favorites are K, R, S, Y, and Q.

She can say many colors, and will usually respond with the correct color when you ask, but her favorite appears to be yellow. I don't know if she likes that color the best, or if she just likes the way it sounds.

Gabriela is an expert at drawing circles now. She also draws lines and dots. She says star, circle, and triangle and recognizes the correct shapes. Although Gabriela doesn't really count - she just likes to say the number two, she does recognize when she has two of something and will point to them both and say TWO.

Gabriela has been practicing recognizing all her family members by pointing to the right people in photos. Some of the names she has mastered saying recently are Uncle Noal, Uncle Jesse, Auntie Theresa, Claire, Natalie, Chaney, Beau, Mina, and Andrew. We're working on the rest!

Happy Valentine's Day

On Sunday morning, Gabriela handed Lane the valentine she and I made for him while he was working on Friday. She was so sweet. She called, "Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaddeeeeeee" and walked up and handed him his homemade I Love You card with heart stickers she artfully placed.

While Gabriela and I took a luxuriously long nap, Lane went to the grocery store, placed vases of tulips in different spots in the apartment, and started making a glorious Valentine's dinner.

Rib eye roast, yukon gold mashed potatoes, sauteed green beans and mushrooms and honey balsamic glazed butternut squash!!! Wow, am I proud of Lane and his amazing culinary skills! I was so bummed, I forgot to use our homemade heart placemats from my awesome sister-in-law, Meliss!

As much as I enjoyed eating a fabulous dinner without planning or cooking it, I started to feel funny about not having a job in the kitchen, so I decided to make dessert. Remember over the summer when we bought a 10 lb box of peaches? Well those frozen peaches came in handy in a delicious peach pie! I was especially proud of the crust - thank you very much, Cooks Illustrated. Having peach pie in the dead of winter convinced me to buy more peaches for freezing this summer.

As a follow up to our dinner date, we went on a movie date on Monday. Our dear friend Katie watched Gabriela while Lane and I went to the movies together for the first time since before she was born! It was a treat.

Yoga Baby

I miss yoga. I don't really want to spend the money or time away from my family to take a class at a studio, even though it's waaaaaay better than trying to do yoga at home. But yesterday I gave it a go. I thought Gabriela might get a kick out of it.

She didn't join me for my yoga session, but she climbed in and out and all around me while I was doing different yoga poses. She must have learned something because I caught her doing THIS later that afternoon:

Check out that upward facing dog (in her Valentine's outfit)!

And just for fun, take a look at this silly face!

Snow WEEK

I know I've said this before, but the very thought of having to stay home from work because of the weather was a little ridiculous to me at first. Ridiculous, yet exciting - you mean, I would be forced to stay at home and not work, and get paid, and not have it count against my vacation!?!? Bring on the snow days!!! That was in 2005. After four winters of ZERO snow days, I was starting to think it was a hoax. Clearly, it was all talk. I wasn't ever going to get a day off from work because of the snow.

Then, it finally happened in December. And then again last Friday (half snow day), Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, AND Thursday!! Most people are back to work today, but daycare is closed so I'm still home with Gabriela.

Wednesday morning WAS ridiculous - It was just pure white outside, the snow was POURING down incredibly quickly. And there wasn't a car or person in sight. Just a very thick blanket of snow covering every inch of every surface - the trees, bushes, sidewalk, streets, ledges, awnings. Something these California kids have never seen before.

There were guys out plowing snow all night, dumping it into huge trucks and taking it off somewhere. And even after some sunshine and tons of truck loads of snow removed from the streets, it's still piled so high at the corners and along the streets. Gabriela enjoyed watching the "tractors".

We've had a fun week spending extra time together. Even though I've had to do a lot of work from home over the week, we've still managed to make the most of the snowtastic week. It was very refreshing to cook and bake so much, especially since I haven't had much time or energy to really cook since the Haiti earthquake hit.

Now that the snow's over, we have a three day weekend to enjoy and then it's back to the old routine. I could have gotten used to this one.

Sledding

After being cooped up in the apartment for nearly a week, Gabriela was getting antsy. Even after all the coloring, puzzles, bubbles, books, cooking, dishes, giggles and chasing and other indoor fun antics, Gabriela was starting to miss her little friends. She'd tell me "Keady? Chase? Aadi?"

So it was good timing that we went on a playdate with Keady and family yesterday afternoon in the snowy park. They brought a snowy boogie board, and our whole little family went sledding for the first time. Keady's parents couldn't believe we'd never been sledding before, and were eager to show us the ropes. We always have a fun time with them!

Rhonda and the girls going down the slope.

Gabriela's first time sledding ever! She kind of whined the whole way down. Next year she'll love it.

Lane gave me a big push and I made it all the way down to the end of the hill.

That's right, I'm a professional :)

What? Lane sledded like a pro his very first time? Shocker! For those of you who know him well, this will not surprise you in the slightest.

So Sweet

When I was pregnant, there was this teeny tiny bump poking out of the left side of my extremely ginormous bump of a belly. As soon as she was born, I recognized her itty bitty heels from her
crossed ankles. I just love these little ankles to pieces. They are always crossed - so sweet and dainty.

Playing in the Snowpocalyptic Snow

the sidewalk outside our building was plowed, at least.

Lane diving into a pile of snow

There are piles and piles of plowed snow like 6 and 8 feet tall. I can't imagine what it will look like if we really do get 10 to 20 more inches!

It was up to my knees!!!

Gabriela checking things out on the balcony.

Snowpocalypse 2010 Part 2

We just can't get over how beautiful the trees are all full of snow. As a result, we can't stop photographing it.

Snowpocalypse 2010

I haven't posted about the snowpocalypse yet because I didn't want to pick which pictures to post, we took so many! Here is the snow just as it got started on Friday morning.

And here is the same view Saturday afternoon. It snowed hours more after this pic was taken.


I stayed home Wednesday with Gabriela because overnight we had received like 5 inches of snow and daycare was closed the next day. I've hardly been to work since. A huge snow storm arrived on Friday, and we had an early release scheduled so we could all get home in time. I decided to do some work home instead of having to rush home in the snow to get to Gabriela if daycare closed early. It snowed from 10 am Friday until 6 pm Saturday, and we got nearly 2 feet of snow! We had a snow day on Monday, work and daycare are closed again today AND another 10 to 20 inches is supposed to make its way to us starting this afternoon. Surely, tomorrow will be another snow day!!!

My goal over the weekend was to make as many Cooks Illustrated recipes as I could. As a result, we've been eating like kings. So far we have made the Pizza Margherita, Chewy Chocolate Brownies, the Best Buttermilk Pancakes, Indoor Pulled Pork (and South Carolina Mustard BBQ Sauce), Minestrone Soup, Cranberry Pecan Bread, and Braised Butternut Squash with Dried Apricots and Madras spices. These were just the Cooks Illustrated recipes. We ate more, believe it or not. I think it's wrong when you wake up after sleeping all night and you are STILL full. whoops. We are enjoying being snowed in.

I need to pick up a few groceries before the snow starts up again, since we'll probably be confined to the house for another few days.

Some Weekend Fun

Look how much these two love each other!
Our little salad spinner! Gabriela took all the basil leaves off the stems, put them in the salad spinner, spun them around (after I rinsed them), and of course, checked on her results.
I bought Gabriela a new coat and matching rain boots on Saturday (notice the tag is still on her coat). As soon as she saw it, she tried putting the coat on, pointing outside saying "no" for snow and "side" for outside. She was nearly in tears, she wanted to go outside so badly. This melted Daddy's heart, and they bundled up to go outside and play together.

Talking Baby

Gabriela is really starting to make sentences, it's so exciting! She started out saying "IWANNNMORE" and "I yah-you" ("I want more" and "I love you")

This weekend she's really started expanding.
I want zapatos/shoes
I want yellow
I want color
I want baby (as in mommy, I want you to draw me a baby with this yellow crayon)
I want stroller
I want my Daddy

You get the idea.

And Gabriela is also organizing things. Instead of just saying our names, she's progressed to saying, "That's Daddy's" "That's Mommy's" and "Ba-LAH-la's" This works with pointing out everyone's shoes, drinks, breakfasts, dinners, etc.

Awesome Parenting Milestones

Two weeks ago it was our first incident with blood, this weekend it was vomit. Oh, what joy!

Gabriela was her normal happy self when she got a little fussy and the next thing I knew, she had thrown up on the kitchen floor. Poor little sweetie wanted to get a tissue to help clean it up. I was holding her in the kitchen when she did a repeat, but this time I raced just in time to the sink. Gross, I know, but not as gross as getting it all over us. Gabriela couldn't keep anything down. She even threw up in the bed after having some water.

Lane came home from his friend's house and took over by finishing dinner (Cooks Illustrated Beef Stew) and making home made buttermilk biscuits to go with the stew.

The next morning, Gabriela was doing just fine again. She must have caught some sort of bug at daycare because Keady was sick on Saturday night too.