Three Months Later...

I am sorry it's been so long since my last post. Over a month ago I organized our pictures and updated our Picasa albums in preparation for a post, but never got around to writing it. Those pictures will be linked herein, but we have taken a ton more pictures since then. However, if I wait to blog until I have all the pictures in Picasa albums, it could be another three months. So here goes.

The girls are doing spectacularly. They are adorable and hilarious. Kira is two and a half, talking in complete and complex sentences, and making us laugh every day with her antics. She is very, very smart and amazes us by the stuff she knows. Lia is sweet, cute, and happy. She will walk any day, as she's been walking along things for awhile and has recently begun letting go and balancing for up to about 5 seconds before falling on her bottom.

There really aren't any Lia stories right now. She eats, crawls, coos, sleeps, poops, and cuddles. While she is tremendously cute and I could talk about her for a long time, I recognize that list of actions isn't necessarily compelling to the general audience of this blog. Therefore, perhaps unfairly, this post is going to concentrate on a couple months worth of ridiculous stuff our oldest has been up to.

In no particular order (certainly not chronologically, since I have no idea):
1. Kira was walking around the living room picking up invisible things and putting them on her head. When I investigated, I found she was picking up actual hairs and placing them on her head. She said she was "putting them away." Mommy's little helper...
2. She occasionally calls us by our first names. The other day she said, "Get me some milk Casey." I said, "EXCUSE ME?!?!?" She said, "Get me some milk Casey, please!" The upside of this is it is a good safety measure for kids to know their parents names. She also knows her last name is Anderson.
3. She can't say neighborhood. Instead, she says "hambergood." Say it out loud. It's funny. We pull into our development, and she says, "We're in Kira's hambergood!"
4. When she needs help, she says, "Lil' help?"
5. She holds Lia's hand in the car.
6. She does somersaults, which she learned in her "tap and tumble" class at school. When she completes one (successfully or unsuccessfully), she shouts "TADA!" and puts her hands in the air. (She calls it "sticking the landing.")
7. She can do the O-H-I-O cheer. That's right, my kid knows how to spell her state but not her name.
8. She knows when we are getting close to the school or close to home. From about a mile out she starts telling me where to turn.
9. She knows numbers from 1-20 (mostly in the right order), numbers in Spanish from 1-5, and her ABC's like a champ. However, despite her friendly invitation at the end ("Next time won't you sing with me?"), she does not want you to sing with her the next time.
10. She was touching her nipples when I was changing her clothes. She looked at me thoughtfully and asked, "Them moles, Mommy?" I entered a lengthy explanation which I thought would clear everything up. Then she said, "Them feckles?" (Which is how she says freckles. Mostly sounds like the f-word with "les" on the end.) So I explained again, to which she replied, "You sure them not moles, Mommy?" Oh well.
11. She can say "s" and "w" sounds independently, but "sw" comes out "f." Like over Thanksgiving she went "fimming" with her cousins in the pool. She calls Lia her "Feetie, feetie, feetie." Lia loves it.
12. She says "All day long!" at pop-culturally appropriate times. We have no idea where she picked this up. We started saying it like her, and she got mad. She says, "No say that, Mommy. Makes me SAD!"
13. We went to a family Christmas party at Jason's work. Kira saw Santa, did some Christmas crafts, ate lots of sugar, etc. Now she thinks Jason works at a Christmas party.

Kira got her first haircut in October. The mullet had a good run, but it was time to say goodbye. Pictures are here. I'll say that kids' haircuts have come a long way since I was a kid. She got to sit on a firetruck and watch her pick of movies on her personal viewing screen while her hair was cut. There was a very large piece of playground equipment inside the place. She got a balloon and a certificate. She loved it and didn't want to leave.

I went to Catalina Island via six separate modes of transportation (car, plane, bus, train, foot-power, and ferry) to spend the weekend with good friends Christy and Jason. It was a very fun and relaxing weekend. We ate, swam, relaxed, had cocktails, walked, "sailed," motored around, talked, laughed, and had a great time. Thanks guys! Pictures are here.

This fall we planned a camping trip with our good friends Dan and Lisa and their kids. At the last minute, Lisa had to stay home with her two sick boys, so it was just Dan, his daughter Indigo, and us. In the middle of the night the wheels came off in the Anderson tent with both girls awake and screaming with no end in sight. We decided to pack them into the car with Jason and go home. I stuck around to get up, eat breakfast with Dan and Indi, and pack the other car and go home. I guess it was kind of a bust in terms of the original plan, but we had a lot of fun while it lasted. Kira and Lia LOVED the campfire. We had a really nice time and hope to get out camping much more next year. Pictures are here.

Halloween was fun. Kira was going to be a Flamenco dancer (in her authentic and expensive Flamenco dress my Spanish family gave her) and Lia was going to be an elephant (in the adorable and elaborate elephant costume Uncle John gave her). However, once Kira saw that elephant costume, she was having none of anything else. She would be an elephant. Period. I know I'm her mom and bigger and stronger and could have forced her into her dress kicking and screaming. However, it was Halloween. I wanted her to be happy and have a lot of fun. So I caved. Kira was the elephant. You can tell from the pictures that the costume was way too short for her, but she was very happy. Lia wore the ladybug costume Kira wore last year and was very content. (Lia is always content.) Kira was thrilled enough about the costume, so you could have knocked her over with a feather when she realized there was candy in the bargain too. She was so confused and elated every time we went to a house and got strangers to put candy in her bag. She ate two pieces before bed and forgot all about it the next day. Jason took all but a few pieces to work to give away, and Kira was none the wiser. (We aren't too big on lots of sugar, which you would never know by the amount of it Kira has eaten in the last couple of weeks.) They were so cute in their costumes. They also had a Halloween parade at their daycare center, which was so much fun. Pictures are here.

Here are some other pictures from the fall.

Kira is so excited about Christmas, but she's pretty suspicious of Santa. We've seen him now at 4 different parties / events. She says hi from a distance but will have none of sitting on his lap. She helped me cut out and decorate sugar cookies. She has candy from her Advent calendar every night. And she's already had lots of presents to open from early Christmas celebrations with our families. Lia, as you might expect, is nonplussed. She is a very big fan of all of Kira's toys, naturally. That earns her a violent, "No THANK YOU, Lia!" from Kira, as Kira rips toys from Lia's little hands. We're working on sharing. It's a process.

We got their portraits taken in late September. I have the digital files (and rights to them), so I'll be posting them here soon. I'll also have tons of Christmas pictures to post.

I hope all our blog readers have a safe and happy holiday season with lots of family and friends and love. I am very happy to be spending Christmas at our house with our amazing girls. Seasons greetings! See you in 2010.