Growing up

That's right. My little girl is growing up. And she seems to let me know every day that she is getting too big for me. For those of you who knew her during her first year of life you will be surprised that she actually leaves my side now. The invisible leash I seemed to have attached to her has disappeared over night. She used to stay within a 10 foot radius of me... at all times... no more. She even prefers having other people hold her sometimes. I expect this with Jon. It made me happy for him the first time I tried to hold her and she shook her head "no" and held on tight for him. It was so good for him. For so long he was the exiled Daddy. Always looking in on my relationship with Shayla and wanting to join in, but she always let him know he was not welcome. On many occasions he would look at me with puppy dog eyes and say, "My daughter hates me." Not anymore. Now if she doesn't get her morning cuddle from him she runs up to him and tries to push him on the couch. As if she is saying, "Daddy we cuddle in the morning, you can't really try and leave without a cuddle" (The best part of this arrangement is that Mommy usually gets to sleep in a little while Daddy and Baby cuddle.)

What really surprised was last week when we were at the park and she decided to adopt her friends Mom as her own. I guess I wasn't good enough anymore. This girl used to cower in my shoulder if anyone came near here. But when I tried to take her back from my 5 month pregnant friend she swatted me away.

Shay is a big 18 months! I think I'm most excited for her to start nursery and to actually be able to listen during a church meeting!
She is 36 inches tall and 25 pounds.
Her favorite activities are singing and listening to music. And dancing to said music. I love watching her in the center of the room twirling and swaying.
She loves reading books! Her favorite book is "Mommy may I please have a cookie" (Maybe because it has something to do with a cookie)
Her favorite word is "This" in fact it's one of her only words. Shayla learned early on if she says "this" and points at what she wants she gets it and doesn't need to say the actual word. She is a problem solver and too clever. We've been trying to work on this by talking about what "This" is every time she says it. My favorite was last week when she pointed at me and said "this" and gave me a hug. (She knows how to say Mama and Dad but for some reason I was "this") She is a little behind in her speech development so we go back in to the doctor in a few months to just do a check and make sure she doesn't need speech therapy.
Her favorite time of day is cuddle time. (Followed closely by any time she gets to eat) We cuddle in the morning when she wakes up and also in the afternoon when she wakes up from her nap. 

We have a beautiful, happy, healthy girl and I feel so blessed to have her in our life. She is very mild mannered but knows what she wants. She shares her toys willingly and loves to be outside. She even tries to do her own hair sometimes. I just love this girl!

Bundle of Joy

No this isn't a pregnancy announcement. We are still awhile away from that. First a trip to Guate is in order. Today while I was folding laundry Shayla decided this was the best way to use a laundry basket...

She is intently watching a cartoon right here. Do you notice the easy cheese in the background? It happens to be her new favorite food. I had a bad mommy moment this afternoon and left her in her bed while I tried to finish a project. Then as I was headed up to finally get her (It had been a half hour and she was getting insistent) I realized I had left our laundry in the dryers of the laundry room at our complex! Whoops! I went and grabbed the laundry because it would have been impossible to get with Shay. When I finally got her out of bed she was not happy with me. Hence the easy cheese lunch. Yes I suck up to my daughter. 

My favorite part was that she collected some of her favorite toys to sit in there with her. She was highly entertained with this arrangement for a good half hour. In case you are wondering I was extremely productive in that half hour. I did all the things I should have done during her nap.

Fishermans Wharf

Oh how I love three day weekends! I've come to appreciate them a lot more now that Jon works long hours. I never imagined how much I would look forward to the rare commodity time with Jon would become.

 Saturday we were in charge of Temple baby sitting for the ward and had an unprecedented 18 kids to watch. Luckily we thought ahead and brought a laptop and a movie. After driving to Oakland to babysit in the morning we weren't really in the mood to drive again and decided to take a walk to the park in the afternoon. Sunday was busy like Sunday's usually are. We had some good friends over for dinner and enjoyed spending time.

On Monday we had all day to do what we wanted so in the morning we went for a 2 mile run. (Yep we've started running together.) I have to admit I'm still incredibly out of shape but I'm hoping that I will slim down to close to my prebaby weight some time soon. There would be something so safisfying about fitting back into the clothes I wore before I had Shayla.

Once Shayla woke up we traveled to San Fran and walked up and down Fisherman's Wharf. Jon was extremely nervous the whole time I had Shayla up on this railing. She thought it was great and I had a firm grip on her. He was planning in his mind what he would do if I dropped her. Silly Daddy. Mommies don't drop babies.

We saw the biggest claw grabber thing I have ever seen. Could you imagine actually grabbing one of those things? If I didn't think it would have been a colossal waste of money I might have made Jon try. All I have to say is holy tamol-e.

We really enjoyed seeing it again. The last time we were there Shay was just a little baby. 3 months old to be exact. What were we thinking bringing her? This is what she remembers of her first trip here... Yep that's right she slept through the whole thing. My sweet baby.

I think Jon's favorite part of the trip was when a man dressed up like a monster jumped out of a trash can and freaked me out. The best part was that the sun was in my eyes so all I saw was this form coming at me suddenly yelling....

We had a great time and made sure to buy some sourdough bread from Boudin's. It was fantastic. We came home and had it with some yummy minestrone soup. The perfect way to end a wonderful weekend.

Sun!

It is currently 62 degrees and sunny. We have nothing but sun and mid 60's in the forecast for the next week and a half. I love my life. That's all.

Sleepy girl

At some point every night we hear Shayla drop her binkie out of her bed. Either intentional or not.... We aren't quite sure which.The other night Jon walked in to check on her and put the binkie back in her bed and this is what we found

Shayla has always loved lying this way in her bed and would get really frustrated when she started getting too long to sleep this way. She's a smart girl. A problem solver.

We got a good laugh over this. Sleepy baby!

New Years Eve

You may ask yourself how the parents of a 1 1/2 year old spend New Years Eve. Well I can tell you what we did... Thanks to Jon's work we went to a ridiculously expensive restaurant and had a little bit of a night out on the town together. You may be asking what I think a ridiculously expensive dinner is... Well we both choked a little when we saw the bill. It would have been double the cost if we were drinkers. (Another time when I am so grateful that we are mormon!) The only reason it was kind of sad that we don't drink is because they had specific wine pairings for each dish. It is the only time I have ever thought it would be cool to drink just for the experience. Instead we had some nice glasses of sparkling cider. mmmm.

It was a 5 course dinner with 4 desserts. It took three hours to eat and was quite the experience! The waiters timed everything to a T. It was like watching an intricate dance the way they served. First they would place the silverware you would need in front of you for that course, then simultaneously 2 other waiters would place our plates in front of us at the exact same time.

Our first course was an oyster with rutabaga choucroute. It was served on a bed of sea salt. In the lighting it looked a little bit like rice and Jon may have tried a little bit... you didn't hear it from me....

Then we had an Arpege egg. It is an egg that has been lightly poached in it's shell and the top of the shell is cut off in a perfect circle. Then they add a few more layers to it and you eat the whole thing very, very carefully and delicately.

The second course was Ceviche of lobster and sea bream. It was good but the first time I've eaten raw fish. (Well kind of raw. Cooked in Lemon juice) then it had grape fruit and fennel with it. The waiter noticed that I didn't eat my grapefruit and so they substituted it for orange in another course that had grapefruit. They were very observant and very happy to help in anyway they could. We felt like fish out of water! Oh it was so out of our element! but a fun once in a lifetime opportunity.

Our third course was Atlantic stone bass roasted with sesame and hickory nuts
dungeness crab, a bouillon of dried tuna and black tea.
It was probably one of my favorite courses. It was amazingly delicious. And this comes from a girl who really doesn't like sea food!

Our fourth course was Abalone in brown butter, salad leaves from the garden. served with a light puree of smoked lentils. In case you are wondering what abalone is, snail. A large sea snail to be exact. It's about the size of a thick pork chop. I didn't know what it was when I ate it, which may be a good thing since I think I would have been freaked out by the thought of snail. It was pretty good though. One of Jon's favorite's.

Our fifth course was Roast sirloin of wagyu beef served with a potato and truffle croquette and vegetable hash. The croquette was probably the tastiest thing I have ever tasted in my life. When I ate it I think I died and went to heaven. This was both of our favorite meals.

Our first desert was a Champagne jello, raspberries, rose sorbet and lychee. I can honestly say I tasted champagne. It really wasn't that good. After that I didn't feel like I had missed out on anything with the whole wine thing

Then we were served a frozen orange parfait with black sesame ice cream, topped with meyer lemon croutons and honey peanut crumble with citrus supremes
This was a really odd desert. Not my favorite but very fancy and very unique.


Then they served us home made truffles and Petits fours. It was so amazing and I was stuffed by the end of the meal. It was such a great experience.

We got home at about 11, Jon took the babysitter home and we went to bed early. Suddenly when you are the parent of a toddler staying up until midnight jsut doesn't seem that cool. Sorry there aren't any pictures but we didn't want to stick out too much as people who had never been to a place like that. It was fun getting dressed up and going out on the town with my love though!

Christmas Day

We had a relaxing Christmas Day. We woke up when Shayla did and the best part was seeing her reaction when we walked downstairs. She just looked at us like, "What are those toys doing there? They weren't there before!" After a minute she decided she would get out of Jon's arms and investigate.

She immediately went for the shopping cart and tried to drag it somewhere. (My only guess is that she was afraid we were going to take it away. I'm not sure why, we don't take toys away from her.)

I promise you it was like she was trying to keep it away from us though. The other funny thing that she did was sit on all of her toys at first while we opened presents. I guess she thought if she sat on them they would be safe.

You can't really tell in this photo but every time I took out a new toy she would promptly put it under her little tushie. Silly girl. It took awhile to get through all of the presents just because she was so distracted by each new toy. Usually as soon as one was opened she would stand panting until it was out of it's packaging.

A big hit that day was a puppy who barks and walks. She kept picking him up and giving him kisses. It made Jon and I feel a little guilty that she doesn't have a pet. She also likes to stare out the window at all the squirrels around. When one happens into our backyard she stands at the glass door and shrieks at them pointing saying, "That! That!" Cute girl.

Christmas Eve!

Ok so I know that it is January 4th... but I thought I would catch everyone up over the next few days on our Christmas and New Years festivities. Many of you know that we stayed in California this year and had our first Christmas alone. It was relaxing and fantastic! On Christmas Eve we started a new Laudie tradition and traveled into the City to walk around and see the large tree in Union Square.

It was cold (for California) so we bundled up. Yep that's right, bundling in California meant we walked around with sweaters on. I did put a hat on Shayla at least...

Shayla loved the tree and kept telling us stories about it in her Shaylanese. (This is the language she is currently speaking) I was a good Mommy this day and listened attentively.

Jon also listened very carefully as she told us all about what was happening.

Shayla's favorite part of the day though was climbing all over the steps. She did this over and over again. She also liked chasing the pigeons. Luckily they never let her get near enough to them to snap a picture of this part of the day.

We went home and put Shay to bed, had a nice Christmas Eve dinner. And played Santa! For the first time we got to be Santa and Mrs. Claus! It was exciting! It made me so excited for Christmas day! Then we had to wait until the next morning to see Shayla's reaction....