Five Years and Counting

Happy Anniversary

ABCs and a late 22mth update

I can't seem to post Naomi's monthly updates on time. She turned 22 months last week. Yea, that's 2 more months til our baby is TWO. Unbelievable.
As we encroach upon 2, Naomi has embraced the terrible twos with all her heart. In one moment she can go from the sweetest child, running around hugging and kissing everyone and everything, using her sweet little voice...and before you can even bat an eyelash, she turns into this little monster who's throwing her entire body onto the floor, stomping her feet, screaming so loud that our neighbors must think we abuse our child. Anything, absolutely anything can set her off. She LOVES bathes, she always asks to stay in for 5 more minutes every night. But the past two nights, she's completely resisted. Last night, during one of bigger meltdowns, she was literally trying to hit me with her shoe, while simaltaneously trying to put her sock on, and yelling out that mommy should go away cause she was a "BAD GIRL". It sounds awful I know, but picture the smallest two year old you know, yelling out phrases and sentences that you didn't even know she knew. It took everything in me to stop myself from laughing everytime she yelled out Bad Girl. I finally got her in the bath after my mom saved the day by telling Naomi that if Naomi wasn't going to take a bath, then SHE was going to go turn the water on. That immediately got Naomi to stand up, bolt into the bathroom, yelling out, "NO I'll DO IT!!!"
Temper tantrums aside, Naomi continues to amaze me everyday. As you can see in the video, she can sing her ABC's, while not perfect, it's completely recognizable and just unbelievably cute.
She can count to 14, then she gets stuck like a broken record..."1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 8, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 14, 14, 14, 14! YAY!!"
She's speaking in complete sentences. Her teacher left a message for me the other day when she was shocked to hear Naomi turn around and say, "Marcy, what's Drew doing?"
She understands the concept of when someone is over at our house or if they've left. Every day when I pick her up, she asks me if Ah-ma (grandma) is still here. I say yes. Then she'll say, "Ah-ma still here! Do-Do (what she calls my dad) in Chi-NA"
She loves the playground, mostly the slide. Whenever we drive by the playground (basically every day on our way home from daycare) she asks, "outside slide?"
She loves to sing, is always humming, or singing along with us. This makes me so happy since both Austin and I have a huge love for music. I'm excited that she picks up and enjoys music so much even at such a young age. She'll even pick up a mic we've given to her, and run around singing and dancing.

I really can't believe in less than 2 months she'll be two years old.

My Ray of sunshine on an otherwise dreary day

Time for a change?

I'm working from home today and was able to keep Naomi home with me since my mom is here to help me look after her when I get busy. This morning, Naomi asked for a blankie, and when she got one, she kept laying it on the ground and telling me it was her little bed. I asked her if she wanted to sleep in a little bed, and she said Yes. At school, they sleep on little cots, and apparently she's never had a problem going to her cot after lunch for nap time. She always lies on her cot, falls asleep on her own, and waits to get up until the lights go back on. If she wakes up early, she'll patiently lie on her cot and hug her mimi and izzie doll. At home, she's strictly been sleeping in her crib both for naps and nighttime.
Today when it was time for her nap, Naomi told me, "no crib" and was extremely sad. She kept lying her blanket down in the living room, where I've parked myself with my laptop and work. I decided to make her a makeshift cot out of a soft blanket. She immediately brought a stack of books to her "cot", her mimi and her izzie, and lay down and read her books for about 10 minutes before falling soundly asleep.
Maybe it's time to look into transitioning her into a bed.

Picture Day

Today was Naomi's first picture day at daycare. I'm a little sad that I missed getting her ready in the morning. I did lay out her outfit the night before, but it's still not the same since I depend on Austin's iphone pictures in the morning each day to see what she looks like. Her teacher's say she did really well and even smiled for the camera. Here she is practicing her for her portrait shot this morning.

Haha ok that's not her picture day outfit. This is:



Can't wait to get the actual pictures in 4 weeks. Excuse the greasiness..she had just received a fresh application of sunblock.

On another note, we got a call from the daycare today telling us that Naomi got into a fight with another kid today. They were out on a walk and Naomi was sitting next to her "friend" when they got int.o a little shoving match and Naomi's finger ended up in her "friend's" mouth. Yea another kid bit my kid. And that kid broke skin. grrr. Makes my skin boil...but what can I do...it was about a month ago when I got a phone call telling me that Naomi had bitten another kid. (at least she didn't make the kid bleed!) The school is really careful not to divulge the name of the offender, and only referred to the other kid as a classmate or "friend" in class. But the cool thing about this age is that Naomi can talk and understand when I ask her questions. So as soon as I got her into the car I asked her who bit her, she told me, and it was exactly the kid I thought it was. A girl in her class who I always see shoving, pushing, throwing, kicking, hitting and even sitting on other kids. Guess we know who the bully is in the toddler class.

Still rocking the shades

It's 4:50am, i'm up getting ready for work and decided to peek in on Naomi. Yup she's still rocking the Hello Kitty Shades. nice.

In other news, Ashley's got a cool giveaway on her blog for this cute chalkboard. Yes we already have the chalkboard wall in our kitchen, but this would be super cute in naomi's room, or maybe in our soon to be finished basement?

Ok off to get ready for work. ugh. is it weekend yet?

Random lovies

I mentioned in a previous post how Naomi has been holding onto random objects when she goes to sleep. Tonight it was her hello kitty sunglasses. She put them on while brushing her teeth and decided she wanted to leave them on. So throughout our bedtime stories, lullaby and prayer and finally down into her crib, she had them on. Every time I asked if I could take them off, she said nope, and pushed them back up securely onto her face.

Miss independent

Naomi is growing up and wants to do everything herself. Possibly one of the most used phrases these days is “I’ll do it” or some variation of that (I’ll read it, I’ll sing it, I’ll eat it). She loves “reading” to herself, and her nigthly bedtime stories have turned into her time to read to mommy and daddy. I say “read” because she’s basically memorized a bunch of her books and recites them to us. It’s pretty amazing. We have a Winnie the Pooh book of Nursery rhymes. It has about 50+ nursery rhymes in it, and Naomi will just flip through page by page and start reciting them. Of course she can’t really recite the entire nursery rhyme, some of the words are too hard, or she can’t remember them, but you always know which nursery rhyme she’s reading and she’s always on the right page!. For example, The Farmer and the Dell sounds something like this: “The Farmer and Dell, The Farmer and Dell, Hi Ho Merry O, Farmer and Dell. Farmer ooh emph Wife. Farmer ooh emph Wife. Hi Ho Merry O, Farmer ooh emph wife.”
She also has to walk up and down the stairs by herself, usually refusing to let us hold her hand. It’s a slow and scary process as I hover next to her ready to grab her in case she slips.
She wants to undress and put her clothes in the laundry basket, put away the trash, open up her own snacks, serve herself food from the main serving dishes into her own bowl, brush her own teeth…
I’m constantly finding myself battling between being ecstatic over how much she’s learning and how independent she is, versus being annoyed at her stubbornness. I love that she’s excited to try and brush her own teeth, but it’s a task that ends up taking a full 5 minutes and leaves us with a not so clean mouthful of teeth. And her desire to walk everywhere is great when I have my hands full, but incredibly scary when we’re trying to get back to our car and that includes a walk across a busy parking lot.

A Sunny Afternoon

Battling the Monday's with some cuteness

We had a good weekend, although as always, it was too short.
Saturday was sunny but cold, we started out early by going to Montclair for brunch.
Did some shopping, got Austin his early anniversary gift - the Apple, iPad - it's so cool!!
Then we made our way over to the airport to pick up my parents.
On Saturday night, I went out for a ladies night with some friends from church. It was one of the few nights I've been out without Austin or Naomi, and I stayed out well past 1am...whoa that's a first for me!
When I got home, Austin was waiting for me with the lights on in the front living room. Haha I felt like I had a glimpse into Naomi's future.
Sunday we managed to drag ourselves out in time to make it to early service at church. We came home and had brunch outside at the new cafe that opened up down the street from us. It was so warm and sunny, such a great afternoon. We took Naomi for a wagon ride around the neighborhood, which she loved.
After a family nap we had some time outside at the park, where Austin was amazed as he watched Naomi go up and down the steps of the playground, and slide down all by herself. (I had witnessed her learning how to do this just last week).
For dinner Chris rode his bike over from NYC.

All in all a nice weekend. i was still really tired and feeling weak/sick, and I'm definitely feeling tired this morning. But it was way too beautiful of a weekend to just stay in and rest/waste the beautiful weather!!

Naomi's playlist

Naomi has eclectic taste in music. She loves listening to music and can name the song within just one or two beats of the song playing. It's pretty impressive. She'll could be a major contendor in any future "name that tune" games.

Here are her favorite songs right now.

Down by Jay Sean
Replay by IYAZ
Bad by Michael Jackson
That's Not my Name by the Ting Tings
Remix by DJ Earworm
Single Ladies by Beyonce
I'm Your's by Jason Mraz
Splish Splash Jerry Lee Lewis
In the Jungle (Lion King version)
Dirty Water
Sweet Caroline
In my arms by Plumb
That's my daughter by London Wainright
Jesus Loves Me
Wheels on the Bus
Twinkle Twinkle little Star

Overheard

After waking up from a nap yesterday, I overhead Naomi talking to herself. I turned on the baby monitor to listen and heard, "Nomi, no eating boogies otay? otay." At least she listens to us.

And We're Back...

It's been a crazy last couple of weeks. After we got back from Orlando, we ended up taking a last minute trip to DC to visit Austin's grandmother, but on the way down, Naomi got sick again, so Naomi and I hung out in the hotel while Austin went to visit his grandma with his cousins. Then we got home, work was really crazy for both Austin and I, then I got sick on Good Friday....and I mean sick. I had a fever of 104, couldnt' get out of bed for a couple of days, couldn't eat..it was just bad. Anyway, I'm finally feeling better, and am back at work..(which of course means I have time to blog again!)

Naomi is growing up fast, even in just the few days where I was out of comission, as I watched her playing with Austin, I realized how much she was changing on a day to day basis. Since I was feeling a little better yesterday, but still was out of the office, I decided to keep Naomi home with me so we could spend some time together. We had such a great day going to the park, we went to a new cafe that opened up in town and had lunch together on their outdoor patio, we were both wiped and took a long 3hour nap, and then went back outdoors in our backyard to enjoy the warm weather even more. All in all it was just a great day. It still shocks me to see how well Naomi can communicate. Of course, she's learned a bunch of phrases that I'm NOT too happy about...like, "Stop It", "Go Away", "No Mine!". She's also starting to get a little rebelious. When she hits Austin or I out of frustration, we'll tell her to please not hit and only use a gentle touch becasue we don't hit in our family. And if she does it again, we'll ask her if she wants a timeout. Well recently, she's been replying, "Yes" and showing us an incredibly stubborn face. Lovely. Yesterday we had one incident (really not bad considering it was one out of the whole day!), we were outside in our front yard, and she fell over, so I walked over to help her up. Silly me, she's going through an independent phase as well, and wanted to stand up on her own. So she swatted at my face and said, "Go away mommy, Nomi does it". So of course I gave her her warning, and she did it again, and I asked her if she wanted a time out, and she said YES, so I picked her up and walked back inside. When she realized that a timeout meant going back inside, she quickly started giving me hugs and kisses and said over and over again, "sowwwy mommy sowwy ssowwy!!" I still gave her a timeout for 1 min. and when it was done she ran to me and gave me a hug and said sorry again.
On a more positive note, Naomi is still as girly as ever. The photo at the top of the post was taken yesterday morning. I told Naomi we had to go take daddy to the train station, so she yelled OTAY, and got ready by putting on a sparkly headband, another headband around her arm, a pearl bracelet, and pearl ring, her cinderella brush and two hairclips. A girl can never be over accessorized right?