Playing together

A rare photo of me and both girls. At Cal Academy of Science.

The girls being cute together.

Maija loves the oranges we get from our orange tree. She scrapes off little bits of the peel and chews on them. Yum.

Anja and the bounce house at the farmer's market.

Anja and I sometimes go for little hikes "up the mountain" at a little county park down the road from us. From the top you can see downtown Petaluma. She brought her baby flamingo (flingy-mingo) this last time. She is carrying her in her pouch. Because flamingos have pouches. To keep their babies warm.

Anja loves insects. I mean she LOVES them. She is petting this darkling beetle she found. Every morning she saves pillbugs on our sidewalk and puts them in the grass, sometimes with little nests made out of a leaf. Also sometimes she feeds them with things like a blade of grass.

Lately Anja wants to wear dresses all the time. Like Cinderella. She also still likes stickers.

Maija runs around.

Every night after dinner the girls have some sort of running around game. Ideally they wouldn't get all worked up right before bedtime, but we usually don't have the heart to stop them. At times like this I wish I could freeze time.

Maija says, "Don't stack blocks!"

Maija loves dragging things around.

Anja loves to be the mommy. At the children's museum she is protecting her duck babies on her lily pad.

Maija doesn't have any real words yet, but she really likes making noises and imitating us. Or getting us to imitate her, as in this case.

The girls sure like chasing each other around.

I let them think they were playing alone in their room. Anja is really great with Maija, now that she is realizing she has someone to play with. Covert video below:

Anja's comments:

Jay: (on Mother’s Day) We are doing secret card-making activities. You can never guess what we’re doing. Can I have an envelope?

Me: I like living here Anja. What do you think?

Anja: I would rather like a flying house. With some balloons.

Anja: Mommy, do you like cimmamon? I do. I like Cimmamon. It starts with the letter “cimma”. It’s kind of like chinchilla!

Anja: (to her Tyrannosaurus Rex) What do you like to eat?

Me: (as Rex) Squash, and ants on a log. And other dinosaurs.

Anja: No, that’s not nice. Other dinosaurs are fossils. But some dinosaurs are not fossils.

Me: Okay, I won’t eat other dinosaurs anymore, I’ll just eat grass.

Anja: No, that’s yucky.

Me: Let’s go home and have a snack.

Anja: Yeah, brachiosaurus is hungry for a snack.

Me: What do brachiosauruses eat for snacks?

Anja: Pinkets.

Me: Peanuts?

Anja: No, PINKets.

Me: Oh, pinkets. What are pinkets?

Anja: They just come from birds. From the sky.

Me: What do they look like?

Anja: They’re just round. They are also ROUND. They are just ROUND, like a donut.

Me: Oh. What do they taste like?

Anja: Like strawberries.

Me: Oh. Okay.

Anja: Why is that car there?

Me: That car is broken, someone has to fix it. Do you know who is good at fixing cars?

Anja: Yeah, Daddy. And Rob is good at fixing cars too. And Ian is good at washing cars!

Me: And what am I good at?

Anja: Uh, work.

Me: Oh yeah? And what do I do when I work?

Anja: Um. Just that work that you do.

Anja: Daddy let’s play a game called RUN! (runs away)

Anja: This is my flingy-mingo. Flingy-mingos can’t fly. They climb trees. They have sticky wings and feet. Like snakes!

Me: Sticky wings and feet like snakes?

Anja: Yeah!

Anja: (playing with a penguin puppet that she put on a stick) This is a potty stick!

Jay: A potty stick?

Anja: Yeah, it’s for going potty.

Jay: You can’t use a stick for a potty.

Anja: Yes you can. The poop just comes out, and goes down the stick (elaborates with her finger) and it stops here. And you can look at it for a minute. And then it turns into food!

Jay: Oooh. Usually food turns into poop, not the other way around.

Anja: (puts a santa hat on my head) You’re Santa. Do you have any presents for me?

Me: Yeah, here’s a baby for you (gives Maija to her).

Anja: Oh. Yeah. Hey, my present is walking away!

Anja: Mommy, this is my breast. It’s where I feed my baby! I need to get something. I need something for my breast.

Me: A bra?

Anja: Yeah! We should get one of those!

Me: (driving past the high school) When you get bigger, you will go to that school.

Anja: Yeah. And I will drive cars too!

Anja: Bones are inside our bodies.

Jay: That’s right. Do you know what else is inside our bodies?

Anja: Brains!

Jay: That’s right. What else is inside our bodies?

Anja: Poop!

Jay: Yup, there’s poop in there.

Birthday, Easter and Spring

Hold on, this one is a long one! We are very busy here with working full time plus keeping the kids entertained. They are doing well, and sometimes have very cute moments:

Spring is amazing here in Sonoma County, and so green. This picture is from a month or more ago, and we have probably gotten the last of the rain until October or November. So we're enjoying the last of the green for a while. The river (small creek) near our house is still running but will soon be dry. (the picture below is NOT the creek near our house, but a trail in one of my favorite nearby parks for trail running)

Anja got to ride a real horse (was supposed to be a 'pony ride', but apparently they just have smallish horses for the little kids). Strangely I'm not sure if she enjoyed this more or less than riding the pink horse at the pizza place. We had built up this idea of a pony ride for weeks before we went and she talked nonstop about it all the way there. Once she was on the horse (safely led by an instructor around a small pond - about a 30 min experience) she didn't say a single word. I don't think I've seen her silent for so long.

Both kids seem so much older to me every day.

Maija loves her bumbo chair, although she never really sat in it properly.

We were at Armstrong Redwoods again recently. This is a great, easy place to visit with little kids. Lots to do, everything from driving tours to strenuous hikes. Maija likes this kind of activity:

For several weeks she had this amazing peacock hair that would not stay down. Now it's a little tamer as it grows out, someone recently called it baby bird hair.

I'm including this picture to show that not all our family photos quite work out.

Imagine growing up thinking that trees like this are the norm.

We took the kids camping at Salt Point State Park, up the coast a bit. I worried it might be chilly at night, but it was actually pretty nice. Maija is still not a great night sleeper so I didn't get much sleep, but other than that it was a good trip. We are still using two tents for camping, which seems to work out best. That way, one kid doesn't wake up the whole family.

Sometimes I think we should be advertisers for the Ergo, this baby carrier we use. I don't know what we'd do without it:

Anja loves camping. She has a ladybug sleeping bag, and her own water bottle, and is always excited to make s'mores and eat hotdogs. She didn't actually eat her s'more this time, but she sure had fun making it. She ate three hotdogs.

Maija loves flowers.

Anja had her 3rd birthday! She had a great one. She was so excited. All she wanted was "a dinosaur cake, and some presents, and for people to sing Happy Birthday to me." Done.

Lately Anja likes wearing dresses. Or actually nightgowns, as in this case, but we thought this nightgown from Auntie Beth and family was far too nice to waste on sleeping. And it has hot air balloons on it, just like her grandpa's.

Maija likes riding in the backpack carrier.

Just cute. Taking a break from hiking in Corte Madera.

Maija loves playing with her older sister. Anja is generally very good with her. Sometimes she gets frustrated when Maija doesn't understand or tries to grab her toys, but she is much better than I had hoped for at her age. I hope they continue to have fun together. Here they are playing a very gentle tackle game. Look at Maija running around so well now!

Anja now likes sitting on the big kids swings. She has finally stopped jumping off them unexpectedly.

Chasing clouds of gnats in the evening sun at the neighborhood park near our house.

Maija seems to understand quite a few words. And she is very good with the sign for bird. We haven't been very good at teaching her other sign language words, but she does use the sign for milk when she wants something.

Out of order, but here are the girls on Easter morning:

And Anja's contributions:

Anja: We should buy a mammoth. And I can ride on it.

Me: Where should we buy a mammoth?

Anja: At the mammoth store.

Me: And what kind of mammoth should we get?

Anja: A brown one! He matches my dog.

Me: Your brown dog?

Anja: Yeah, my brown dog. I named him Toby. And the mammoth has hair. And a trunk! And a long nose. A long looooong nose. And he has hair. And I can pet him! And he says, “Hee Haw!” Let’s get a real one.

Me: Okay. Good Idea.

Jay: (while getting ready to go “exploring” in the front yard with flashlights with Anja) I wonder if Maija would like to go exploring?

Anja: No! She doesn’t like exploring! She just likes lying down!

(Anja crawls into the kitchen, pulling a wooden duck on a string with her teeth)

Me: Hi Brio (the duck), who is pulling you?

Anja: I’m a horsie!

Me: And what is your name?

Anja: Uh, Singie ming.. gaga! Because I like to sing! On Mondays and Thursdays.

Me: Oh, hi Singieming-gaga. Can you sing me a song?

Anja: Yeah! Hmmm mmm mmmmm ummmm mmmm (goes on for about 30 seconds).

Me: That’s a great song.

Anja: Yeah.

Anja: I like cheese today. I like cheese on Thursdays.

Anja: (in the bathtub - while making one plastic duck pour water onto another one) "Here you go, YOU can drink some water from my BUM! Then you won't be so THIRSTY!!!"

Anja: (looking at the clock) But it’s not pointing at naptime, it’s pointing to four!

Anja: My tummy hurts.

Me: How much does it hurt?

Anja: Four seconds.

Anja: (after whining for a granola bar) My tummy hurts…

Me: Oh, then maybe you shouldn’t eat a granola bar.

Anja: My foot hurts.

Tahoe and crawling

How to pose your children for a portrait:

Maija is really getting around now. She crawls everywhere and pulls up on everything, and is just starting to let go and stand for a few seconds unassisted. She likes pulling books off the shelf and turning the pages.

Maija is loving fulltime daycare, and is a favorite there. When I come to pick her up, it is common to find another parent or older child holding her - everyone wants a turn. Everyone tells us we are so lucky to have had two "easy" children. Of course we think we are lucky, but not so much just for that reason!

A few weeks ago I took both kids by myself to Tahoe to meet up with a group of 25 coworkers for the weekend. I was there for two days before Jay came up for the last day. The drive up went really well, but before I could celebrate being Supermom, both kids decided to have various versions of colds (details omitted for sake of grossness), and neither wanted to sleep through the night. I went to bed with both of them at 8:00 the first two nights. The snow was covered in ice so we couldn't really play in it. Anja kept falling down since it was so slippery, "Mommy, I don't like snow!"

But at least we did get a cute picture. See below for smiling Anja and stunned baby face Maija.

I made a little hole in the snow with my boot and stuck Maija in it.

In local news, Anja LOVES the local horses. There is this one, at Pinky's Pizza, and also her favorite, named Champion, on the sidewalk downtown.

Comments from Anja and Maija:

Me: (talking to Maija whose foot is on her tray) We don't eat with our feet or hands.

Anja: No! We don't eat with our feet or hands. Or our toes, or eyes, or hair, or beards! Hahahahaha!

Anja: Maija goes to work.

Jay: She does? Where does she work?

Anja: At Berkeley!

Jay: What does she do there?

Anja: Uh, birds. She looks at all kinds of birds!

Me: What should we have for dinner tonight?

Anja: Ohhh, just some different kinds of stuffs. I don't know what kind. (puts finger on chin) We'll have to think about it.

Anja: Mmm.... it smells like movie night!

Me: What does movie night smell like?

Anja: It smells like strawberries!

Anja: (looking at all the cars as we are driving through town) Mommy, look at all the cars! There's fifty-five thousands of them! There's SO MANY cars!

(by the way, the next day at the same place she told me there were SIXTY-five thousands of them)

Anja: Mommy, your name is Sue! And Daddy’s name is Jay. And she’s named Heather. And she’s named Maija. And she’s named Blue, and she has front feet and back feet. And she walks on them!

Maija: Da.

Jay: She said “Daddy!” (does victory dance)

Anja: (squriming in her seat like crazy, trying not to pee her pants)

Me: Do you have to go potty?

Anja: No…oooo. (continues to squirm). I’m just… doing… yoga…

Anja: Maija doesn’t have any teeth. She doesn’t know how to talk. She doesn’t know how to say noodles or cup or tissue.

Beaches, trails, and harmonicas

Never not smiling. But who wouldn't smile at Point Reyes?

Anja likes to pose for the camera now. She thought it would be great to show her sandy hands at the beach.

As we were walking down this trail after a few hours at the beach: "Mommy, I like this place." "Me too."

Limantour Beach, Point Reyes. We had one of those great blue sky/foggy days, where thick fog repeatedly rolls in off the ocean and then clears to blue sky again.

Jay calls this the baby gate. It prevents sand eating.

3/4 family portrait.

Anja still mostly thinks Maija is pretty funny, or at the very least, entertaining. Maija doesn't get the joke.

Maija is really getting around now. Mostly through army crawling and inchworming, but also sometimes through rolling. And she pulls herself up quite a bit too.

I love this little local park - so does Anja. She took "Dave the Minion" for this walk.

With some Christmas money, we bought a set of harmonicas and a mandolin. Anja loves the harmonicas. Here she is playing a song for Maija, and then for me:

We took the girls for a stroller hike on Bolinas Ridge trail last weekend. It's a fire road along a ridge that goes on for miles with views of the bay area. I had somewhat higher hopes for the road condition, and we were only able to go a couple of miles with the strollers before turning around. Maija can ride in the backpack carrier now, but Anja is just too heavy for us to carry, so stroller hikes are really the only way we can hike for any distance right now. The road actually looks fine in these pictures, but it's pretty rough further down, since it's also open pastureland.

Anja with her tights, sun hat and sunglasses. Anja still loves to go for hikes in any form. She always want to see animals, "like lizards... and birds... and whales..."

Jay took this great picture of the girls at the store. I love Maija's dazed baby look and Anja's Elton John sunglasses. As usual Jay noted that he received piles of comments about how he was Super Dad for grocery shopping alone with two kids, even though there were at least six other women doing exactly the same thing.

Anja's comments:

Jay: Anja, do you want to do some yoga with me?

Anja: No. I'm gonna do dinosaur yoga. (puts head on the ground and foot up in the air) It's for spinosauruses and ankylosauruses... and brachiosauruses... and pterodactyls...

Anja: I'm a baby brachiosaurus. And that's Mommy brachiosaurus, and Auntie brachiosaurus.

Me: Are you going to help Daddy do that puzzle?

Anja: Yeah, I'm a brachiosaurus. I'm so strong.

Anja: Auntie Heather eat all your food and get big and fat!

Jay: No, you mean 'big and strong'

Anja: Yeah, like Daddy!

Jay: Yeah.

Anja: Mommy, it's so nice to meet you at our house. It's so nice to meet you here.

Me: Oh, thanks, it's nice to meet you too.

Anja: Yeah. And you can live with us here. There's lots of room for you. And you can play with my toys!

Jay: I'm gonna go change a diaper, Honey. Want to help me?

Anja: NOOOO!!!

Jay: Okay, just checking.

Seven months old

Maija is very sneakily getting bigger. It's hard to believe she is seven months old already. We weighed and measured her for the first time in a while today: 98th percentile for height and 40th percentile for weight. Still tall and thin for her age, and eating like crazy. She can demolish a huge bowl of solid food, and even cries for the split second between spoonfuls when she isn't actually receiving more food.

She loves the baby swing at the park!

And actually, Anja still does too.

Now that Maija is eating a lot more solid food and no longer nurses EVERY minute of the day, I can actually leave the house without her sometimes. On one of those occasions, Anja and I went on a short hike in the park at the edge of town recently. The hike was really just to the top of a large-ish hill overlooking Petaluma, but a good little trek for Anja, and I love that she calls it a hike. I told her we would look for salamanders since it was so wet lately, but it turned out to be way too cold for them to be out. We did see a hunting kestrel, and one hummingbird, which was good enough for her. And later the next week Anja asked me if I remembered when we saw the kestral on that hike.

Anja really loves dancing lately. Dancing mostly means walking in a circle with exaggerated slow movements to music, but it's really fun for her.

I think it's funny that Maija never really understood the concept of a pacifier. We bought every brand, style and size pacifier when she was a month old and I was so desperate for a break, but she hated them all. Even now, she seems to think, "I ought to like this, but I just don't." At least now we don't have to worry about weaning her from it later.

A nice photo of Anja and me from my 365 Day Project - a self portrait per day for a year.

We went to Fisherman's Wharf this past weekend to visit the aquarium where we have a membership. It expires soon, and I think we may instead get a membership to Cal Academy this time (which actually has a bigger aquarium than this, although I will miss these gigantic underwater tunnels). Maija loved the jellies, they're my favorite too:

Awesome.

Anja built this great playdoh boat for her guys to ride in. They are on their way to the aquarium to see "fish and dinosaurs and sheep."

And from Anja:

Anja: (as Maija grabs her) NO! I'm not a very good baby toy!

Anja: (looking at the toilet paper roll that had been unrolled and then rolled back up) Who did that? Was it me?

Me: It's going to be cold outside today and a little bit rainy.

Anja: But we can still go outside. It's going to be dry outside today, is that okay?

Me: Tonight is a movie night. What movie should we watch?

Anja: How to Train Your Dragon! But we don't usually train dragons, that's just a funny joke.

Anja: Let's both be Night Furies! (crawls around on all fours)

Me: And Maija can be a Gronkle.

Anja: And Daddy and Auntie Heather can both be Deadly Nadders. We are all dragons in this house!

Me: When I was a little girl, I had those books too.

Anja: When you were a little girl? And then what happened, when you were a little girl?

Me: I grew up, and now I'm big. And some day you will be big too.

Anja: I will grow up. I want to be just like you guys.

Me: Sure, you can grow up just like us.

Anja: And then what can I be?

Me: Well, you can be anything you want. You can even be a mommy like me, if you want.

Anja: I want to be a spinosaurus.

Me: Okay, you can be a spinosaurus.

On Dasher and Dancer and Firebot

I'm way behind on updates. Since I last wrote I've flown across the country twice with Maija (once with help and once by myself). We've visited or been visited by grandparents from both sides, and Maija has started daycare one day a week.

Maija and I look a little bit alike:

Grandma R visited and we took a trip to Armstrong Redwoods. Anja is seen here posing with "Rocky", her gecko/flashlight that Grandma bought her during that visit. Actually, this Rocky is technically "Rocky #1", due to an unfortunate mishap the following week that Anja did not know about, involving Jay's car. I made an emergency trip to REI to get Rocky #2 while Anja was out the next day.

And here is a rare picture of the four of us! Most of us are looking at the camera and some of us are even smiling.

Santa came to Petaluma on a tugboat.

Petaluma had its downtown tree lighting ceremony. Which we technically missed because we were in the candy store, but we came out afterward to see it.

The following week we watched the lighted boat parade downtown. It was pretty spectacular, although less so if you are only 2.5 years old and your parents get the time wrong and you spend an extra 30 minutes standing in the cold and dark waiting for the drawbridge to open and for the boats to come.

We had a beautiful foggy evening in Petaluma afterward.

We ran across Petaluma Pete, the wandering piano player. Anja was a big hit and even made it into the local online paper:

http://petalumapete.blogs.petaluma360.com/12449/big-downtown-crowd-last-night/

Maija is an expert at sitting now, and when I gave her something to hold onto today, she pulled herself right up.

In case you needed any more Christmas-themed content, here is Anja singing "Joy to the World" (Joy to the Whir-old), accompanied by Jay on plastic piano.

Tree up and decorated:

Anja says funny stuff:

Me: Look, it's Super Maija! (holds Maija up in the air)

Anja: No! It's just Regular Maija.

Me: Special Maija?

Anja: No! Just Regular Maija.

Me: Just Regular Maija.

Anja: Yeah.

Jay: (to Maija) Your bib says "Daddy loves me". Daddy loves Maija. And Daddy loves Anja. And Daddy loves Mommy!

Anja: And Daddy loves Oskie! (the neighbors' cat)

Anja: What starts with poop?

Me: Poop starts with the letter "p".

Anja: P...p... pee. Pee in the potty! Hahahaha!

Anja: That's Firebot the Reindeer!

Jay: Firebot?

Anja: Yeah. That's Rudolph and that's Firebot.

Me: Maija is a little sad.

Anja: It's okay Maija. PEEKABOOOOO!!!!! She likes that. That makes her happy.

Me: Do you like your little sister Anja?

Anja: Yeah!

Me: What do you like about her?

Anja: I like about her that she grows up.