What are they up to?

When we were packing up our gear to head out of Samantha's place, it got really quiet... we went off looking for the girls...looks like they'd all decided that Jade's bed was a really fun place to play!

Our morning out

Here's Emma, Queen of the Beach!

It's a little windy down here!

The trees are finally blooming!

Forget about smelling the flowers, I'm playing in the dirt!

Teach your children well...

DH is at work and Thomas is at a friend's for a few hours which meant Emma and I were left to our own devices which of course meant a trip to the beach! When we're in the car, Emma likes to dictate the music we play. Most often when she gets to pick what we listen to, we get stuck listening to Sesame Street. However, we've been trying to widen her horizons. So, today, from the back of the car I hear "Mommy, can we listen to Hey Jude and Hotel California"... YAY!!! Goodbye Big Bird!!!lol

Let's do lunch!

Doesn't Emma just look like she's heading out for a lunch date?lol She's not overly fond of the sun our Emma and most mornings when we head downstairs into the kitchen, the first words out of her mouth these days are "I don't like the sun" as she orders us to close the curtains! Needless to say, she's amassing quite the collection of sunglasses! Also, I bought a new summer purse this week. Emma has never shown any interest whatsoever in my purses, but she has fallen in love with this lovely summer Cole Haan number and spirits it away from me at every occasion. There's nothing like being in a hurry to leave the house and having to search high and low to find where your 2 year old has left your purse!!lol

Mandarin lessons

Thomas has been taking once a week Mandarin lessons for the last few months. I was just listening to him with his teacher tonight and I had no clue what was going on!! She was pretty much just speaking to him in Mandarin and he was speaking right back. I was so amazingly impressed... an hour a week and he seems to be learning so much!!! Gary's also teaching him and Emma some basics in Mandarin such as colours, numbers, animals, body parts and all that good stuff. Emma obviously must think that Mommy is a moron because she regularly tells me that Daddy is teaching her Chinese and she's teaching Mommy! The saddest part is that she's right...her Mandarin vocabulary has way surpassed mine by now, and Thomas' even more so!

Misc. Emma pics

Here's Emma, all ready to head out for our bicycle ride.

Emma insisted on getting her picture taken with Toby. He was less than thrilled at the prospect but since she kept following him around and plopping herself right by him, he finally gave in!lol

It's just as much fun to go up slides as it is to come down!

Here's another use for those cute little tables in the family room - they're great to practice doing the splits!

Do you like my ankle bracelet?

Morning cuddles

Here are Thomas and Emma all snuggled up this morning while Thomas reads to her... so sweet my babies!

A must read

If you are an adoptive parent or prospective adoptive parent, this post on JenEx's blog is a must read!

Interview Me

Shannon interviewed me. Her questions are below. If you'd like to participate, here are the RULES.

If you want to participate:
1. Leave me a comment saying, “Interview me”, or words to that effect.
2. I will respond by emailing you five questions, but I get to pick the questions.
3. You will update your blog with the answers to the questions.
4. You have to include this explanation, and an offer to interview someone else in the same post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.

SHANNON'S questions and my answers:

1. If you were forced to give up one of your five senses, which would you pick?

I'd have to say smell - it would help in changing some of those toxic diapers!lol DH doesn't have much of a sense of smell and it doesn't seem to have too too much of an impact on his day to day life.

2. You win the big jackpot in the lottery. $50 million. After you give to charity, pay for another adoption, buy new houses and pay off bills, what's the first truly indulgent thing you spend your money on? And it has to be just for you.

Well, I do have a thing for fancy watches, so I'd get a few of those, but overall, my big ticket item would be art. I love art and if money were no object, I would buy some amazing paintings and perhaps a few sculptures as well.


3. If a movie was made based on your life, who would play you and your husband & why?

Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie of course. Oh wait, you said real life, not fantasy... then it would be more like Rosie O'Donnell and Conan O'Brian or some other tall, skinny guy you can think of!lol


4. Would you walk naked down your street, with all your neighbors watching, for $1 million?

Not a chance... but I'd encourage DH to do it!lol


5. If you could live anywhere in the world for a year (money is no object) where would you live?

You know those houses you often see in Malibu, built right up on the ocean with those walls of windows so that there's a multi million dollar view from every angle... one of those would be amazing since I absolutely adore the ocean. Part of me also feels I should pick something more exotic... how about the beach in Australia or the canals of Venice. Sorry, I can't pick just one!!

You knew it wouldn't be long now...

You had to know once you read that the weather was vastly improving in our part of the world that it wouldn't be long before the beach pictures started coming again! So, off to the beach we went today.

Here's Thomas getting some water to make wet sand to build a castle.

Here's Emma, running off, hair flying, as usual.

Thomas is looking for some good flat rocks to skip in the water.

Emma doesn't go for flat rocks, the bigger and heavier they are, the better for her!

Here she is searching for the perfect rock.

Here they are walking back up the beach...I so love to see them together.

Sun, Sun, Mr. Golden Sun!!

Yes, finally, the good weather is here!! Our bicyling group met this morning and everyone wore t-shirts, some even wore shorts! When we met this last Monday, we still needed gloves!! The lovely Miss Rebecca came to play today, here are the girls enjoying themselves in the back yard. Here they are doing a little playing, chatting and hugging.

Goodness gracious, I think spring has finally sprung!!

Yes, we finally got to head out, without mittens, hats and scarves!!! Here are the kids playing in the back yard yesterday... today, they got to take off even more layers and play without jackets....wooohooo!!!

You paid what??

I may have mentioned in previous posts that we're house hunting. I love houses so I'm pretty much always house hunting, but for the last few months, we've been doing some serious house hunting. A few days ago, a great house came up on the market and we put an offer in on it. So now you'd think I'd be writing to tell you about our new house. Not so fast!! Multiple offers on a property are quite common here and the house ended up selling for $220,000 ABOVE the actual asking price for the property and we weren't the highest bidders, so no new house for us. How depressing is that!! According to all the real estate agents, the house was priced at the very high end of what that type of house should sell for, but they still got $220,000 above asking price anyhow...I'm sure the sellers are having champagne as we speak, but as a buyer, it's pretty depressing!!

And yes, I will post pics of the kids one day soon...it's just so darn cold and dreary out, we never get out and they're both pretty sick of me sticking a camera in their faces in the house!lol

Verify your comment

You know how when you type a comment on a Typepad powered blog, before the comment is posted, you will often be asked to verify that you're a human and not a machine by typing in a code that appears in a little box? Am I the only one who sometimes finds the letters and numbers so distorted it totally turns into a guessing game??lol

Shopping!

Really, when the weather is this cold and depressing, there's not much to do other than going to the mall!! Carolyn and I bundled up the girls and headed off for some retail therapy... let's just say Emma's summer wardrobe is now pretty complete!lol

Spring...could have fooled me!!!

Apparently, someone forgot to send the memo about spring having arrived to our part of the world...here's a picture of Emma playing in the back yard yesterday. And look at my poor spring flowers, they don't know what to do at this point!! I can't even verbalize how sick I am of the cold!!!

A day in the life

Notice anything different about Thomas?lol

Here's Emma hugging her fave Webkinz - thankfully she doesn't put the squeeze on the real cats!lol

I don't get these...

I don't get these...do you?? I can see them being used by little girls as leggings in dance class but I don't see the point for babies... anyone?? They're apparently quite popular so I must lack the cool factor needed to see the point of them!lol That's okay, I'm pretty sure Emma will live a happy and productive life without ever having had a pair of Baby*Legs!lol

Understanding language

Emma talks up a storm. She really has an amazing command of the language for a child of her age (27 months). You can literally have a full conversation with her which honestly just both amazes me and cracks me up. Now don't get me wrong, there are still times when we have no idea what she's saying to us and times when her pronunciation leaves a lot to be desired, but you can really see her language development from week to week and month to month. For instance, she now rarely refers to herself as Emma but will use "I" and "me" properly in sentences. She's starting to use "don't" or "do not" instead of "no", so she's saying things like "I don't like cucumber" instead of "I no like cucumber" (BTW, I believe cucumber is the only food she's encountered so far which she doesn't like!!lol). Anyhow, what's really amazing me now is her beginning understanding of nuances of language or intangibles, not sure what to call it. For instance, tonight she was asking if she could watch Dora. We were heading out and I told her that she might be able to watch Dora when we got back home if it wasn't too late and she replied "I hope so". "I hope so"... to me, that requires an understanding of language beyond the tangible and concrete...it's kind of an abstract. She's using expressions like that and showing an understanding of language, of chronology, of more abstract concepts. I'm sure there's a name for this stage of development and it can be explained clearly in a word rather than vaguely in a paragraph as I've done here, but I hope you get the idea I'm trying to convey. Have I mentioned that I love this age/stage? It's just so cool - there's so much going on and it's all really amazing!

My big brudder!

Emma LOVES her big brother, or perhaps "brudder" is a more accurate rendition of what she calls him. All through the day while he's at school, she asks for her big brudder. When he's home, she runs around with him gleefully, often asking to hold his hand as they play. She's brought out such a wonderful side of Thomas...I love seeing them together. :-)