25 posts tagged “toddler”

Anya started attending a local co-op pre-school a few weeks ago, and we both love it! At the end of her first day of school she threw a tantrum when it was time to leave. That was embarrassing, but also good to see that she really enjoyed her time there. Because the school is co-op I have to work in the class room ~3 times per month. Since she attends 3 days a week that means I work about one day a week. The time in the classroom is somewhat taxing, but my days off more than make up for it. Today after I dropped her off I had time for: a quick jog, a pedicure, a trip to fedex, a stop by a friends house to drop off donations for Easter baskets for local homeless children, and quick trip to Starbucks for a Venti iced tea. All with enough time left over to spy on observe Anya as she played outside at school before pick-up time. It was great! I can't wait until she starts "real" school!

For the second year in a row we hosted a toddler friendly fondue party for New Year's Eve. Once again it was a blast with 13 kids ranging in age from 8 months to 3.5 years and 15 adults, I think. The adults enjoyed many great appetizers that were brought to share and then dug into milk and dark chocolate fondues. There were an array of yummy fruits and AMAZING peanut butter balls to dip into the chocolate (thanks, calimama!). The kids had a great time with nary a dispute over toys (at least that I witnessed). Most people were home by 9 and we had the house semi-cleaned up and were in bed by 11:30!

Before:

On Tuesday we made our annual trek into San Francisco for a holiday tea. This year we went to the Teddy Bear Tea at the Ritz-Carleton.

We had some time to kill before the tea, so we walked to Union Square and looked at the holiday windows. Unfortunately most stores don't do the amazing windows that I remember from my childhood anymore. Macy's did have some kittens and puppies, though, and that kept us occupied for quite a while.

The tea itself was great fun. Anya was most enthralled by the bowl full of marshmallows on the table for the hot chocolate. There was a near meltdown when I dared to suggested that she might want to eat some of her more nutritious food before consuming the whole bowl. As it turns out her tea food didn't have much more nutritional value than the bowl full of sugar and gelatin, and she turned up her nose at anything that wasn't completely processed and gummy.

The highlight of the tea was meeting the giant teddy bear and getting a hug. The Binky the gay (of course) elf was fairly entertaining, too. It turns out that the theme this year was "London Calling" so his show was an odd mixture of Christmas carols and 80's pop. It's somewhat disconcerting to hearing Jingle Bells morph into Karma Chameleon. Not really what I expected from the Ritz, but fun none-the-less!

Here are a few of my favorite toddlerism of late:

Today after my shower: "You smell like pee-pee, Mommy." Uh, thanks, kid.

While Chris is tickling her tummy: "Stop doing that, Kiss-a-fer"

While singing: "Kerri, Kerri drive the firetruck." The lyrics really are, "Hurry, hurry drive the firetruck." She's very into using our first names lately.

Whenever she is unsure of an answer to a question she says: "Coley." Not sure what that means.

Her tutus are called: "Choo-choo train dresses."

She has also started to pick out her own clothes.

We had a great day at the beach yesterday with some wonderful friends. Although it was a bit chilly at first the girls had a great time digging in the sand, collecting rocks, and channeling Devo.

When it was time for the adults to have some fun we traveled down the road to The Pelican Inn for food and beer on the lawn. Again the girls had a blast running up and down the grass and picking flowers. Anya made herself right at home eating off of the other family's plate while we waited for our own food to arrive. She also sported some mighty fine plumber's  crack. Classy!

We have just returned home from a few days in The Big Easy. Thankfully no one came down with a stomach bug unlike our previous two vacations! We a lot of fun even though the weather was either almost unbearably hot and muggy or pouring buckets of rain. Most of our pictures feature our main form of entertainment on this trip...food! We started our trip off sticky right with a requisite stop at Cafe Du Monde for beignets and cafe au lait. Anya was a little put off by the mounds of powdered sugar on top of her "special donuts", but that was easily rectified and she quickly dug in and seemed to really enjoy them.

We spent the afternoon wandering and exploring, capped off by a swim in our hotel's courtyard saltwater pool. Anya LOVED swimming and would have been happy to do that the entire trip. She started off quite cautiously with her water wings and various inflatable toys helping her feel secure, but by our last day she insisted on going in without any artificial or human assistance and was practicing floating on the top step of the pool. I think I need to sign her up for some real swim lessons before the summer is over! That evening Chris and I left Anya with my mom in the hotel (thanks, Mom!) while we enjoyed a delicious grown-up meal at Restaurant August.

On Wednesday Chris attended his conference (the excuse reason for the trip) and my mom and I took Anya to the aquarium where we saw lots of "fishies and penguins" among other things. Once again the afternoon was spent in the pool followed by more yummy fried food and strong drinks to wash it down.

On Thursday after a quick trip to the gym to try to combat some of the deep fat fried grease that we could feel clogging our arteries, we then undid the whole workout (and then some!) with brunch at the New Orleans breakfast institution, Brennan's. I had the three course meal which included strawberries in double cream, fried shrimp in hollandaise sauce, and bananas foster, of course! After brunch we took the streetcar through the Garden District out to Audubon Park and the Zoo. Again the rain was torrential, but since it was fairly warm , we decided to just give in to being wet. Luckily the rain let up after about 45 minutes and it didn't dampen our fun. We saw lots of great animals, including gorillas, rhinos, and elephants, which Anya had specifically requested to see.
All in all it was a successful and mostly relaxing trip!

In the two weeks since Anya's birthday there have been some big changes in the Bubble Toes household.

The first change came when we replaced Anya's crib with a new big bed. She was getting perilously close to climbing out of her crib, so we decided it was time. She adjusted to the new bed with no trouble at all, and has not expressed any dismay at the removal of her crib. She stays in bed until we come to get her after naps and nighttime sleeping, which is great. A few days ago she told me "I like new bed" when I came to get her in the morning.

The second big change is that she is in "big girl undies" when at home exclusively (except when sleeping) with no accidents *knocks on wood*. She tells me when she needs to "pee pee" and goes to the bathroom on her own (I help her to wipe and pull down her undies). We are having some issues with pooping, but she has done that successfully, too. She has even made two trips of about 1 hour each outside of the home in her big girl undies with no accidents. The next big step is getting over the pooping phobia and convincing her to go on the toilet instead of her little bjorn potty. She is still a little bit scared of the big potty ever since an unfortunate flushing incident with one of her friends.

In non-milestone news we had a great trip up to Yountville to have breakfast pastries from Bouchon. It was fantastic! Four pastries split between two adults and one two year old isn't excessive, right? We devoured everything, but the "nutter butter" was heavenly! We then stopped by Whole Foods to do some shopping and Anya did a great job pushing her cart around.

And on a completely different note, now when she eats something sour she says, "Too sassy!", which I find super cute and I admit I have been encouraging the use of sassy in place of sour. It just sounds so much more fun and less judgmental!

Today is Anya's second birthday! We had a very low key day hanging out with Grammy. All of the excitement took place on Friday when we had a party at the park.

The party was lots of fun. We met at Children's Wonderland and staked out some tables in the shade. While the previous day saw temperatures in the triple digits it was a little bit cooler on Friday (only mid 90's by the time we left). The kids didn't seem to mind the heat that was melting the adults, though. The staff even set up a sprinkler and there were some wet toddlers before too long. Anya and one of her best friends even spent a little bit of naked baby time running around in the vicinity of the sprinkler, but neither were daring enough to run through the middle of the water stream.

After snacking and lots of playing we sang Happy Birthday and ate some delicious Tres Leches cake.

She also received some fantastic gifts: an absolutely adorable dress from Calimama, a fabulous hand-made tutu (now know as a "choo choo dress") from one of her best friends, a great swimming pool from Grammy, a train set and tea set from Mommy and Daddy, and much more.

Chris called me between classes yesterday to tell me that he was on his way to take Anya to the radiologist. I have to say that may have been the quickest way to give me a heart attack! It turns out that she went down a slide with her babysitter and somehow got her leg caught at the bottom. Mary (the babysitter) didn't realize anything was wrong until she put her down to walk to the house and she started to cry and limp. She called Chris who came home to find Anya happy, but unwilling to put any weight on her right leg. He called the doctor and got an appointment for 10 minutes from then. They rushed over and were seen quickly. The doctor felt her leg and moved it in every direction and she seemed ok, but when she was put on the floor to walk, once again she wouldn't put her foot down. So he sent them to the hospital for x-rays. Chris said she was terrified by the x-ray machine :(. The rad-tech said he didn't see anything, but that the doctor would call in the morning. When I went to get her up this morning I half expected that she would be fine, but she still isn't able to put any weight on the leg. The doctor called and said to keep giving her Motrin and keep her off of it for a while.

So no trip to the gym this morning, or pizza night with friends, and we canceled the playgroup that we were hosting tomorrow. We spent most of today watching Curious George and Anya saw her first episode of Sesame Street this morning.

On a positive note she told me she had to poop and we went to the bathroom where she pooped on the big person potty!

Last weekend we hosted a few of our friends and their beautiful children for authentic Chicago style pizza party. The kids had a blast running around and pretending that our storage boxes were cars to race in. Meanwhile the adults enjoyed pizza flown in from Chicago just for the occasion, along with some wonderfully tasty salad (thanks, Calimama!), and real Chicago chocolate chip cookies served warm with ice cream. It was really fun and a night that may have to be repeated soon!

In other news from the last couple of weeks:

• Anya loves coloring in the bath with her soap crayons, and she ended up writing her name all by herself. Here is the photographic evidence
  

  First time writing her name ;)

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• Chris was the very happy recipient of Anya's very first unsolicited, "I wuv uo" and I have to admit that I am a wee bit jealous
• Anya now consistently counts from 1-10 (and sometimes to 11) without leaving out 4-7 like she used to!
• Anya and her friends love to walk holding hands with each other, which might be the cutest thing ever.
  

  What?! Haven't you ever seen two girls holding hands before?