Lydia is growing up

Hello World!

No, I have not died.  No, I have not been deported.  No, I have not been hiding under a rock.

I've just been, well, busy.  Either that, or figured my life was too boring and nobody wants to read about it anyway.  That is probably still the case, but I'm back all the same.  And, with any luck, I may actually blog again within a month, instead of waiting nearly 2 years................

we'll see.........

Anyway, my life has become extremely hectic recently, what with teaching 25 private students, working full-time as an elementary school music teacher, serving as the Primary President in my ward (that's the leader of the children's organization), supporting an over-busy husband, trying to get approved for another adoption, and most importantly of all, trying to do the best I can to mother my sweet 3-year-old girl.

Let's talk about Lydia.

It's a good thing I love her.  She's doing really well, and is bright and intelligent.  She makes me laugh on a daily basis, and it gives me the greatest sense of joy when she gives me a big hug, plants a giant kiss on my cheek, and says, "I love you, Mama!"  She loves to read and learn new things.  She's very independent and wants to try everything by herself.

She's also messy.  Very messy.

You know that saying where everybody tells you that you will have a child exactly like you someday?  Apparently it's not just genetic - it even works with adopted children.

When I was a little girl, I was given the nickname "Jaylene, Jaylene the mess machine."  I thought that we had avoided that problem when Lydia was little.  This is what I thought was a "big mess":

Now, I have never been the absolute cleanest person in the world, but I am also not a pig.  I vacuum, empty the garbage, and try to keep my house at least sanitary.  But after a long work week, it starts looking like this:

Argh!  Oh, well.  I guess it's a good thing I love her no matter what the house looks like!

Shopping

Lydia loves going to the store with Mama and/or Daddy. Since the "event" of her falling out of a shopping cart in the summer, we can't get her to ride in a shopping cart for longer than 5 minutes. Therefore, my shopping trips usually consist of either:

1. Pushing the shopping cart with one hand, holding Lydia in the other, and somehow trying to manage all of my coupons, or....

2. Letting Lydia carry out her "own" shopping trip through the store, as follows:

http://www.youtube.com/user/picardy4th#p/a/u/0/6rihy4naF6E

Today, Steve pointed out a girl her age sitting calmly in a shopping cart, seatbelt on, waiting for her mom, and said to Lydia: "Look at that girl sitting in the shopping cart. Why can't you sit like her?" Lydia's response to him was to hand him a bottle of Centrum Silver. Agree to disagree :)

Little Helper

I can't believe how quickly my little girl is growing up. It seems like it's only yesterday that we got the phone call from the adoption agency that a baby girl needed a home, and now, all of a sudden, we have a toddler. She has entirely won us over, and we (of course) think she's the smartest and cutest girl there ever was.

Lately, she has become more of a "helper." She LOVES to help Mama out by "cleaning," "vacuuming," and "doing the dishes." Of course, as soon as we clean up her toys, her favorite thing to do is to dump them all back out again. She follows me around the house with the play vacuum and "vacuums" while I do it for real. And, of course, she loves to help empty the dishwasher, which becomes a bit challenging when I am trying to load it at the same time :)

A couple of the cutest "helping" opportunities happened recently:

1. Daddy was washing the Jeep a few days ago. Lydia picked up a rag and started washing it with him. I was only able to catch the very end of her "helping" on video, but it's still adorable, so I thought I'd share!

2. During one of my recent voice lessons with a student, Lydia decided that she, too, needed to come and help demonstrate proper singing technique. So, here was my student, doing her best to keep singing and keep from laughing when Lydia was trying to upstage her. It was SO cute - and I wish I had been able to catch it on video. I guess y'all will just have to use your imaginations instead!

I'm Back

I have come to accept that I am an awful, awful blogger. Whenever I have something to blog about, life just gets way too busy to do it, and then when I have time in my life, it seems like I have nothing to blog about. And, I don't really want to bore all 2 people that read this blog, so I had thought it best to just stay away.

And then I decided that wasn't the best idea, so I'm back, hopefully more often in the future :)

And now, for your viewing pleasure, here are some recent pictures we took at the college family night. We went with our friends Jamie and Jordan, and got to eat free food, bowl, climb the climbing wall, and have a lot of fun!

Randomness from Lydia

Lydia has recently been working on learning a lot of new things, like parts of her body. She's really cute about it. An example from a couple of days ago:

Me: Where are Mommy's eyes?

Lydia: points to my eyes.

Me: Where are Lydia's eyes?

Lydia: points to her nose.

Me: Where is Mommy's nose?

Lydia: points to my nose.

Me: Where is Lydia's nose?

Lydia: points to her nose.

Me: Where are Mommy's ears?

Lydia: points to my ears.

Me: Where are Lydia's ears?

Lydia: points to her nose.

At least she knows where her nose is.

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She's also working on animal sounds.

Me: What does a cow say? "Mmmmooo."

Lydia: Mmmmmm

Me: What does a chicken say? "Bock bock bock."

Lydia: "Ma ma ma ma"

Me: What does a sheep say? "Baa baa baa."

Lydia: ha ha ha ha ha

My daughter is SO cute - I just can't get over it!

Pushing Laundry

So it has almost been 2 months since I've posted to this blog - so much for New Year's Resolutions! And since it has been so long, I've been trying to think of something incredibly cool or awe-inspiring to post so that people will forgive my blog absenteeism. However, that's not really going to happen. Instead, I'm going to post about the one thing I talk about to anybody who will listen - how cute and sweet and talented my daughter is.

I honestly can't believe how fast Lydia is growing up. She is doing something new almost every day. Steve and I stayed up one night just talking about all of the things Lydia can do now. Some of them are the "normal" things that parents brag about, and some of them are things that probably only we think are cute, but I decided to share a small list of the things she is doing right now that we think are really cute.

1. Lydia loves "helping" her Mommy. She always wants to be in the same room and often tries to copy everything I am doing. I am often in the kitchen, doing the dishes, and she comes and tries to help me load or unload the dishwasher, or put things in the garbage can -whether or not they go there. It's nice to have such a helpful daughter, but I have to keep a really close eye on her to make sure she doesn't throw anything valuable away!

2. Opposite of "helping" Mommy, Lydia also loves to take things out of boxes, bags - pretty much any container holding things should be empty, in Lydia's view. I often find her after she has just emptied her diaper bag or the cupboard under the bathroom sink. Her most recent discovery is relieving a toilet paper roll of all of its toilet paper.

3. Lydia has recently started to walk, and walks everywhere she can. She best accomplishes this by pushing objects - toys, furniture, you name it. She often pushes objects while looking straight down at the floor rather than where she is actually going. This causes her to run into a lot of walls, which is frustrating for her.

4. Lydia loves to vocalize. She babbles all day long. So far, the only actual words she can say are "Daddy," "Uh-Oh," "Hi," and "Eye," but she loves to say nonsense things all day long. One of the cutest things she does is that she stands at a window and points at things outside and yells at them. We're not quite sure what she's trying to say - we just know it's absolutely adorable. I just hope that she learns the word "Mama" pretty soon - I'm feeling a little left out.

5. Lydia loves to learn. She is learning the parts of her body right now, and loves to point out her eyes to anybody who will listen to her. She then will poke the unfortunate listener in the eye several times, all while saying "Eye, eye, eye, eye" over and over and over again. We're trying to teach her other things, but eyes are her favorite.

6. Lydia loves reading books. She loves when Daddy reads to her especially, because he always makes fun sounds and voices. If Daddy is not around, she tolerates Mommy reading to her, but she will also pick up a book on her own and turn the pages while "reading" to herself aloud. It's absolutely adorable.

7. Lydia is an absolutely independent eater, except for bottles. If she is eating table food, she refuses to let us help her eat. She HAS to feed herself. However, if she is drinking from a bottle, she wants to be "babied" and will only drink if we hold it for her. We're trying to wean her from this habit - and she does better with Daddy, but she thinks it's Mommy's job to baby her.

8. Lydia loves playing with other children. If there's another kid in the room, Lydia makes a beeline towards him/her and tries to play. We think she's going to be a little social butterfly.

9. Lydia definitely came to the right family - she LOVES music! She has a few musical instruments, which she loves to play, but whenever she hears music, she will try to lead it like a choir director, or claps her hands to show enjoyment.

10. Lydia loves to dance! She will dance to music or to silence, but she just moves her body back and forth, back and forth, and she loves it when we join with her in the dancing.

11. Lydia is a climber. We have no stairs in our house, fortunately, but she climbs up on furniture or anything else she can.

All in all, we are pretty fond of our sweet little girl, and can't wait to see the new things that she'll learn this year.

Lydia's Birthday Party

We celebrated Lydia's birthday today. Since we live so far away from family, we just had 3 of Lydia's friends and their parents come to our home for a small party. It was fun! We colored pictures of ladybugs, played with all of Lydia's toys, had a lunch and ate some super cute cupcakes made by my friend Kristi. Lydia loved opening all of her presents - but especially playing with the tissue paper, the boxes, and the wrapping paper!

Here are a few cute photos of the event (more on my facebook page):

We call Lydia our "Liddy Bugs" so my friend Kristi made these super cute lady bug cupcakes.

Lydia had some balloons to play with, and she loved them!

Lydia and her friends colored pictures of lady bugs. Lydia actually did color a little bit before she started eating the crayons.

Lydia enjoyed her first experience with cupcakes.

Lydia got tired of opening presents and started chasing after her new toys.