So now that Anda is a big 3 year old, I thought it was time for another edition of “Anda Says.” I’m not really a sentimental mom, so I don’t feel equal to writing a long, drawn out description of my daughter at this age. But I hope this post will offer a little glimpse of who she is right now.
It’s really hard to keep track at this point because every day is filled with funny things she says, but here are a few recent Anda quotes I have managed to remember.
Anda: Why Eugene calls Rapunzel “Blondie”?
Me: That’s a name for someone with yellow hair. Yellow hair is called “blonde” so he calls her “Blondie.”
Anda: I have brown hair. What’s my hair’s name?
Me: Brunette?
Anda: Yeah.
Anda: What do you smell like? [Which we think we figured out means "What can you smell right now?"]
Anda [eating jellybeans]: Mmm. This one tastes like jelly.
Dan: What does that one taste like?
Anda: This one tastes like beans!
She is also the only one who has provided Baby Lilah with nicknames–and plenty of them. Baby Lowly, Baby Ly-Ly, and Bubba Luh-Luh are the most common.
Anda: I like Baby Lowly’s face.
Hannah: Yeah, she’s cute.
Anda: She has a mustache.
Anda: What’s that?
Me: That’s a koala bear.
Anda: Korala bears eats noodles. Did you know that? Macaroni noodles.
Anda [drinking a carbonated drink or eating something spicy]: That’s spicekee to me.
Anda [going outside and seeing the work Dan had done on the yard]: Well, well, well. I can’t believe it.
I know there are more, but I am not good about writing them all down immediately, so they have been forgotten. That may be Dan’s best argument for getting me a smart phone–I’d be able to record this stuff on the go.
I also think it’s worth recording that she has several imaginary friends. The most prominent one is named Sallymenders. Anda is surprisingly consistent with her details about Sallymenders. She has dark black and dark white hair, orange eyes, is little like Anda, and is either 3 or 5. They get along famously.
Some other characters we’ve heard of are her brother John (he had a green mustache, but it has recently become purple), her “fretend” [pretend] Grandpa and Grandma (who live at Home Depot, I think–at least, they are there whenever we go), Aura (who I think is a mispronunciation of Aurora [Sleeping Beauty] and is often seen with Sallymenders), and a slew of others who seem to disappear after one acknowledgement and who often have those Tolkein-esque names that I can’t remember.
She is becoming more social with real people too, for better or for worse. Adding other people’s kids to our day is certainly…interesting. Here is what happened at her play date yesterday. (That’s styrofoam packaging. They were making it “snow”.)
Anda turned 3 on Tuesday this week. I’m becoming one of those people who can’t believe they have a kid as old as they do–I was looking at blog posts of things we did just last year, and it feels like a month ago to me, but her growth definitely says otherwise.
We started the day by going to McDonald’s for pancakes. I was going to make her some pancakes, but the sleep deprivation and Nana’s power of suggestion got the better of me, plus Anda loves the little play area.
She was lucky enough to have both sets of grandparents in town on her birthday (for Lilah’s blessing), so we had a little family party that evening. We met up with everyone at the Kangaroo Zoo. I think she had a good time.
The grown ups mostly sat around and played Trivial Pursuit. We had a good time too.
Then, since Anda doesn’t really eat food but we know she likes breadsticks, we all went to the Pizza Factory.
I was really surprised when, after months of making me do Google image searches for princess cakes, she told me she wanted a Blue’s Clues cake for her birthday. I got overly ambitious and, long story short, the Blue’s Clues cake ended up being a decorative/smash cake and the actual birthday treat ended up being our traditional cupcakes from the Cocoa Bean.
She had a hard time with the candles this year.
But she did not have a hard time eating Blue off the top.
This might be my favorite picture from the whole event. I can’t help imagining Olivia whispering, “My precioussssss…”
Then we did presents. Everyone was very generous and we will definitely need to make some kind of toy donation with some of her old toys in the near future.
Especially since she had even more presents waiting at home.
Well, she may be spoiled, but I think everyone deserves at least one day a year that’s all about them. Why not on their birthday? We should make that a tradition. Write to your congressman.
We were all wiped out by the end of the day, so it must have been a good one. I’ll do a more personal post about Anda being a big 3 year old soon, but the review of the party will have to do for now.
Happy birthday, little chicken!
I’ll admit that Easter has not always been the biggest holiday at our house–Our first year of marriage, Dan and I didn’t even realize it was Easter until we noticed a lot of talk about the resurrection at church. However, we definitely did do Easter this year; the blog post just got pushed aside because of other life events that took precedence at the time. So, a little late, here is the brief Easter post I had in the works.
We did the egg thing with Nana and Hannah.
Anda thought it was pretty cool.
And the bunny left her a basket Easter morning, which was also pretty cool, but which I didn’t get too many pictures of. I always wondered how people ended up with so much junk for their kids in their houses, and now that we’ve had a few holidays and birthdays, I understand. They’re so fun to shop for and they are delighted by the littlest things–it’s hard not to buy up the whole aisle of stickers for them.
But the best part was the Easter egg hunt our church did Saturday morning, after we attended a very Easter appropriate baptism. Anda is so timid we were afraid she’d be trampled in the hunt, but she caught on right away and had a blast finding the eggs hidden around the park.
Daddy helped. A little.
And the whole thing ended with doughnuts.
A happy Easter to us all.
Well she’s finally here! Lilah Paige was born at 3:46 am on Tuesday, April 10th. She was a (very) healthy 9 pounds, 20.5 inches. Everything went well with the delivery and we all went home less than 48 hours after she arrived.
Anda was thrilled to meet her little sister. When we got home yesterday, she insisted on holding her and wouldn’t let anyone else have a turn for a long, long time.
Dan was also pretty pleased with the results of our latest science experiment.
So far all she seems to do is sleep, nurse, and poop, all of which are fine by me.
I would like to record a little bit about the labor and delivery, just for my own memory. Feel free to skip this part and just scroll to the picture at the end.
We were pretty disappointed that she had missed her opportunity for every holiday available in the healthy delivery time frame (St. Patrick’s Day, April Fool’s Day, my dad’s birthday, and Easter), and more so that she was overdue with no real signs of coming aside from a few hours of false labor on the 4th. To further bum me out, the doctor told me on Monday that they couldn’t begin to induce until Friday (at 41 weeks) and that I would not be able to try the prostaglandin–I would have to go straight to pitocin. None of this was appealing. I had her strip my membranes again and went home expecting to at least have a Friday the 13th baby.
That afternoon, Dan wanted to go for a run up the canyon, so Anda and I tagged along in the Jeep to go for a walk on the trail while he did his workout. I started having mild contractions on the way up, but after the false labor following the previous membrane strip, I didn’t think much of it. They continued for about six hours, never getting worse, and seeming to get even farther apart. By 11:00 that night, I decided I’d just go to bed and see if sleeping would make it go away. At 12:45, something woke me up and I felt my water break a little. I jumped of bed and woke Dan up, and then my water broke for real. He woke up my mom while I took a quick shower, we threw some last minute things in the hospital bag, and we arrived around 1:10. By now the contractions were certainly getting worse, so he got me a wheelchair and we rushed up to the labor and delivery ward.
By the time we got into the room (around 1:30) I was hurting pretty bad and dilated to 4cm. I told the nurse I was no hero and wanted the epidural as soon as it was allowed and available. She ran us through the questions, checks, etc., while my pain rapidly got worse and worse. The anesthesiologist arrived quickly, but by that time (around 2:10) I was hurting so badly I couldn’t hold still and was sobbing a little bit with each peak. He did his work with me in pretty rough shape, trying to sit as still as possible, but when they needed me to lie down to get the medicine flowing to the right places, I remember feeling like a very grumpy toddler whining, “No no no no no…” When the epidural took effect, they checked me again and found that in just the last hour, I had progressed to 8cm. No wonder I was hurting so badly! My hat is off to anyone who has given birth naturally. That was easily the most painful thing I have ever been through, and I didn’t even do it to the end.
When Anda was born, the epidural worked so well I couldn’t even feel the pressure of her in my pelvis. I pushed literally without feeling a thing below my waist, and she was still born within only a few contractions. This epidural was different–I couldn’t feel the contractions, but man could I feel that pressure. The doctor came back around 3:15, checked me again, and told me it was time to push. I didn’t need him to tell me that, though–I could tell I had been ready for half an hour. As soon as everyone got into position, my regular contractions slowed down and we all kind of made delivery room small talk for a few minutes waiting for another one to come. We took guesses on the weight: anywhere from 7.5lb to 27lb (the 27lb guess coming from the woman lying in the bed who had carried the thing for nine months and could feel what she was about to deliver). When the contraction came, I kid you not–the baby was out within one contraction and about five minutes. Even with the epidural, that was hard work this time since I could feel it pretty well. But I had my mom and Dan making impressed faces and encouraging me, which helped a surprising amount. The doctor picked her up and let Dan cut the cord, and said he’d need to reevaluate his 7lb guess. She was a 9 pounder who scored a 9 on the APGAR test after 5 minutes. Healthy girl.
To recap, I started having mild contractions around 5:00pm. My water broke around 12:45am and the baby was born at 3:46am. I don’t care who you are–that is a fast delivery of a fat, fat baby.
So far she’s been a good sleeper (at least during the day–we’ll need to transfer some of that sleep energy into the night time over the next few weeks) and a good nurser, much to my relief. She seems as healthy as can be. We are all adjusting to the little stranger, but I feel confident that it’s going to go well. Anda is in love with her little sister, and so is everyone else.
Welcome to the world, baby girl.
My mom is in town to help out with the new baby, but since the new baby has decided not to make her appearance, we have had some time to play. Last week, we went to the children’s museum in Salt Lake called Discovery Gateway. My pictures are not great, but the museum really, really is.
We started in the farm section where Anda rode a horse, gardened, gathered eggs, etc.
Then we hit up the water play area.
They had aprons to keep the kids from splashing water on themselves. However, I discovered they could also be used to cover naked butts when a kid pees herself because she’s having too much fun with the water to take a bathroom break. Nana saved the day by running to the Old Navy (the museum is in a mall, after all) and getting Anda some replacement pants. I had replacement everything in my bag–except that. Great thinking ahead there, Rachel.
Once the new pants were on, we made our way to the other exhibits.
I think one of the most popular exhibits is the helicopter they have outside. The whole museum is set up really well, so that even though it was crowded the day we went, there was always enough space for everyone to play. The helicopter is the one exception. This would not be a problem if more parents would teach their children what a line is, how to recognize when a line is forming behind you, and how long it is appropriate to make people wait in line for your turn to be over. Unfortunately, politeness and even passive-aggressiveness did not work and I ended up yelling at someone else’s kids when enough was enough and after she had waited very patiently for an eternity, it was Anda’s turn to drive the helicopter for all of 30 seconds so I could take a picture. The moral of the story: Don’t ignore your kids being rude, teach your kids manners so you can ignore them without worrying about them being rude, or just don’t get mad at me when I do your job for you.
Still, other people’s kids and the wet pants incident aside, we had a really good time and love going to this place.
I haven’t been up to doing much lately, but Anda and I did make the best chocolate cake I’ve ever made last week. Even the batter was irresistable.
But Dan has been very productive lately. His Jeep got a fancy new bumper along with a spare tire, hi-lift, and zombie-apocalypse-approved ax. It looks really cool and is ready for all kinds of adventures now.
He also spent all day Saturday putting in a drip system for our bushes and for my garden.
This has got me really excited about planting this year. Although I think I’d be more excited if a certain someone would get out of my belly so I could bend over to actually do the planting.
Speaking of which, there is at least one other project I’ve been working on for almost the past nine months. I figured since we have multiple pictures of me pregnant with Anda, it was only fair that this baby have one, too.
Anda felt the same, so she drew the baby a picture with chalk.
Pretty good, I think.
I know only terrible moms do this to their two year olds, but I thought it would be fun as long as we weren’t going out until I cleaned it off. It turns out “holding still” is as important and as difficult for her in doing makeup as it is in taking pictures. Still, it was a fun half hour.
We finally got a little snow that stuck around, so Anda and I made a snowman. She was adamant that it have a carrot for a nose–she started insisting on it as soon as I told her that the tiny ball I was pushing around was going to be a snowman. So once the pieces were in place, we went inside and got the biggest baby carrot in the bag. When we came back out, the snowman was gone. Or rather, it had fallen backward and become mostly indistinguishable from the rest of the dirty snow on the ground.
So we made another one. Being roughly eleven months pregnant, I think I earned the sticker I put on our family goals chart under “exercise” today.
I also want to point out that I was at a loss when it came to putting a mouth on this thing. Eyes from rocks are fine, but I didn’t want to use too many then forget about them come spring time, when the lawnmower would discover them again. I asked Anda what we should do and she reached up and drew the mouth all by herself. What a smart little cookie!
She even named the snowwoman (she told me it was female), but the names she comes up with are so made-up-Tolkein-esque that I can never remember them. Just trust me: it was a good one.
Last week, we dropped my sister Amy (“Aunt Mimi”) off at the MTC. She’ll be serving an 18 month mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Buenos Aires, Argentina, after training for about six weeks.
They really expedited the drop-off process recently, so it was a brief goodbye.
We are very proud of her and looking forward to hearing great stories about her experiences.
I’ve never really been big on Valentine’s Day, but we thought we should at least do something for Anda. We got her a candy, some hair clips, and three balloons. She decided that since there were three balloons and three of us, we each needed an assigned balloon, which we were allowed to part with only if we kept it close to us. I thought it was funny that when we all sat down to watch a movie that night, we had our balloons marking our spot on the ceiling.
I also put a heart in her hair.
The week before, we made a heart-shaped Valentine’s Day treat (http://www.thenovicechefblog.com/2012/01/marbled-red-velvet-cheesecake-brownies/) which was delicious. Anda was a big helper–she loves to bake.
I haven’t been updating much because there hasn’t been a ton going on. Although in mid-January we did go stay at a Bed and Breakfast for a few days with Dan’s sister and her family.
Anda really loved hanging out with her cousins all weekend, even if she definitely did not love ice skating.
She was willing to pull Dan around with her boots on, though, so there’s that.
Other than that, we’re kind of in fun activity hibernation. It’s cold outside and lately I’ve mainly just been in countdown-to-baby mode, trying to get things ready with a toddler and a watermelon strapped to my stomach. 50 days left!