Happy 2nd Birthday, my dear Amelie

Well, I can't help myself but to say I feel bad that I have not been able to chronicle Amelie's early life in as much detail as I did with Alia...but who knew two kids would be so much more than one! Especially now that they are soooo busy.

Well, lets start with right now, since that's what's on my mind. Amelie turned 2 last week and this weekend we had a wonderful birthday party for her at Alta Laguna Park up the street from our house. I hoped to have the important people in her life there to celebrate and we weren't let down...nearly forty people showed up and it was seriously a wonderful day. The sky was bright blue, big white puffy clouds sprawled, and the sun was as bright as a November sun could be. Amelie was in heaven since she was surrounded by all of her favorite people...Jessica our nanny, Kori our former nanny who moved away about 5 months ago, and of course Mommy, Daddy, Aunt Carol and Uncle Jim, and let's not forget her big sister Alia. All the rest of the people were very comforting to her because they were all the people Amelie has come to know in her life, but let's just say Amelie is a small pack animal.

Developmentally, right now Amelie amazes us. She began talking in sentences at about 18 months. Way ahead of the curve. She has known all letters and numbers up to 20 for at least 6 months. She sings Old MacDonald Had a Farm on key. Oh, yeah, and she also speaks Dora Spanish (counts from 1-10, colors, up, down, yes, no, good morning, good night, hello, goodbye, and anything else they teach). She is a very early talker. Amelie expresses herself very well...she never had the frustration-based tears Alia had before learning to talk. I remember teaching Alia to sign because her cognitive skills were so far ahead of her verbal development. Not Amelie...sure she signed because her sister did, but she also learned to speak so early that she's been able to articulate her thoughts with ease.

Physically, Amelie is tall and lean. She is the same as Alia height-wise, but a little leaner in stature. She walked a little earlier than Alia, too...she had some one to catch up to and that really has been the motivator of her life...keeping up with Alia. She walked at 11 months, and since then has been very physically active. She runs so fast that she shouts "Slow down, Mimi!, Slow down!!!" as she rounds corners without slowing. Her favorite thing is to run with her favorite bear held high above her head at full speed ahead and shout "slow down Bear! slow down!" She has quite the sense of humor. Oh, and did I mention she's already showing great progress with potty training daily? Mommy likes this!

Personality wise, Amelie is pure love. She warms my heart with her sweetness. She is loving, funny, and hilarious. Her sense of humor is beyond her years. She hugs and kisses and so far has not shown too much of terrible in her 2. Although I do see signs of her asserting her independence daily, it's not quite so hostile as Alia's display. Amelie's favorite expression is "Mimi does it byzherself!!!". This is shouted any time she is struggling with something and I try to help. Getting something on a fork, unzipping something all the way, unbuttoning something, fitting one thing into another thing.

Activity wise, Amelie has taken toddler gymnastics and toddler ballet through Laguna Beach community programs. She attends lots of play dates with the parents club, and loves going to the park and the beach. She loves television although I limit it to one or two shows like Dora the Explorer or Calliou or Max and Ruby per day, and she loves to draw, paint, and work puzzles. And I cannot believe I am this far into the post to mention her loooooove of the iPad. and iPod. and YouTube. And anything technological. In fact, her technical savvy is frightening.

Her favorite people are 1) Alia her sister 2) Mommy and a close 3) Daddy. She prefers women to men in general. She  loves her Noni (my Mom), her Aunty Carol, and Aunty Tina. Amelie really connected with her Aunty Merfe this summer, and always asks about when we see her 'gain.


My last year with Amelie has been a joy. She is so loving, so smart, and a joy to be around. I cannot imagine life without my little love.

Alia: Mimi! You smell like wild animal poop!

Thank God for video...

A day in the life...

So lately, it's busy around here. I know I've been saying this forever, but I just can't seem to find time to keep up with my blog. So how better to determine when I should make time for it than to account for the time I do have.

Well, on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, my days go like this....wake up and shower before 6:00AM. Get ready for the day...makeup, shower, dress. Get the girls up around 7:00. Make breakfast and prod them along by singing various songs on demand or telling various stories with or without variations. Clean up breakfast and pack Alia's snack. She's in school from 8:30-11:45 for the next few weeks. Throw in a load of laundry. Round up the girls and lead them to their room to get them ready. Brush teeth. Wash face. Brush hair. Lotion up their little bodies. Get both girls dressed. At this point I allow them to read, work puzzles, do whatever they'd like while I gather my purse, keys, sunglasses, Alia's backpack, Amelie's travel needs (diapers, snacks, milk) and load the car. Put the laundry in the dryer. I then return and attempt to gather up the girls again and move them to the car. Buckle them in. Determine the popular song of the day...Pop Goes the Weasel or the one about the tired horse.

Once we're in the car, we head to the Montessori and drop off Alia. Although drop-off is not quite the reality. Currently it involves 20 hugs, 20 kisses, cuddles, 20 bonus hugs, crying, more hugs, bargaining, promises, and finally Miss Cindy offers the prize...she leads Alia to the corner where she can view me pulling away with Amelie. We stop outside the window, make funny faces, and leave the premises an emotional wreck. (By the way...the moment I'm out of sight, Alia's fine and already painting and making bead bracelets). By now it's 8:45 or so.

From here Amelie and I attend to what needs to be attended to. Grocery, a trip to Target, back home for chores, etc. My nanny arrives at 11, so I've got Amelie all morning. Around 11:30 I start thinking about picking up Alia. I make lunch while nanny plays with Amelie, or I play with Amelie and she makes lunch. I go and pick up Alia at 11:40. I'm back at 12:00 or a little after. Once again I work on rounding up the girls with nanny's help, seat them and offer them lunch. They eat. We sing songs. Then Alia bargains that she wants to play awhile before nap, which is at 1:00. Around 12:40 I put Amelie down for her nap. I leave for exercise at 12:45. Nanny puts Alia down around 1:00.

I've been working out with a trainer since January on Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 1:30. It takes me a little over 20 minutes to drive there which is nice because it's the only time of the week that I'm alone with my thoughts. I can listen to podcasts, call friends, or just space out and drive....for 20 minutes. I start the workout by running a mile or so, or if my knees feel wonky, I'll walk at 15% incline at 3.2 for about 20 minutes or however long I have until the trainer shows. He systematically kicks my ass for about an hour, and then I go home. I arrive at 3:15. The girls are waking up. They are hungry. Nanny has packed my swim bag. We have Mommy and Me swim lessons every day at 4:00PM. I change to my bathing suit and grab whatever girl is joining me, and head out. Sometimes I'll drop nanny off at the park with whichever girl isn't partaking in the day's swim lesson. Go to swim. Finish swim. Pick up nanny at park. Go home. Start dinner while nanny plays outside with girls, or sometimes we reverse this role. At 5:30 or so it's dinner time. After dinner we move to bath. Every other day we wash Alia's long lustrous hair before moving to bath. Around 6:15 we finish with bath and it's cozy time! That's when the girls line up on the couch and get to watch one, perhaps two episodes of Dora the Explorer. And then, around 7:00PM we make the pilgrimage to the girls' room. We brush teeth. We read stories. Alia goes potty for the last time. Amelie gets her last fresh diaper. And we toss them in the bed and sing the last song of the day...Amelie likes to hear her ABCs and Alia prefers 5 Green and Speckled Frogs.

Tuesday, Thursday are very similar, however, there is no meeting with the trainer, so I typically use the time between 1 and 3:00 to either 1) nap or 2) attend to whatever little projects pop up, such as reorganizing the play room, boxing up old clothes the girls have outgrown, pre-making snacks for weekday snack, attempting to organize my iPhoto events, or call me crazy, going to pick up miscellaneous items without 2 girls in tow. We still have swim at 4:00PM. We still have the same morning and nighttime routine...it's just that I'm not spending nap time at the gym.

And every day of the week? After the girls are in bed? I make dinner for Ajay and myself. We spend the remaining hour or so of our day eating, cleaning up, catching the latest show that Tivo caught for us, and call it a night at 9:00PM. From that point, I may be awakened throughout the night by Amelie's cries perhaps 1, perhaps 3 times, or perhaps rarely not at all. But on the not-at-all nights, I awaken myself, in fear of being awakened, and wait for the crying. Which, if it isn't happening, really sucks because I'll lie there awake all night waiting to be awakened.

Saturday and Sundays are family days when Ajay isn't working. We try to do something together as a family in the morning, like going to the park, the beach, the carousel, and as of recent, the movies (Winnie the Pooh is the first movie that both girls have gone to and we've seen it twice in one week!). We have lunch together, and then during nap time, Ajay and I usually take advantage of the silence and grab some rest ourselves. After nap, we swim in our pool, play in the playhouse, or go to a park or a local outing. Then again, it's time for dinner, bath, and the bedtime routine.

So, where might I find time to write? Well, I could get up earlier. But typically I'm bargaining for the love of whatever God might be out there for more time in bed when my alarm rings, so the idea of facing the day earlier is well, just sad. There's Tuesday and Thursday nap time...which is when I'm writing this...but typically I schedule myself to the hill with my doctor, dentist, haircuts, errands, etc. on those days.  So where does that leave me? In my mind, the weekends are kind of off limits because I really like for us to spend what time we have together as a family as a family and second, I typically put Ajay's have-tos ahead of my want-tos. If he needs to call his patients for work on something for his job, I'll cover the girls so he can do what he needs.

So I suppose I'm going to have to keep eking out little bits of time here and there and record what I can. In the meantime, trust that my girls are growing, healthy, adorable, challenging, smart, funny and beautiful. Totally worth falling behind in the blog I've dedicated to them!

Alia this morning: But Mommy, I can't eat right now. I need to dance.

...a little wedding in France

So at the end of our holiday, we stopped in Crouttes, France for a beautiful family wedding. The bride was gorgeous. The family traveled from far and wide to attend. And my girls? And their cousins? Were flower girls.

Here, Alia sits with her cousin Haylah with her Aunt Shefali and Uncle Shuja behind.

Thank God for the iPhone...

Did I mention my girls love the iPhone? 

My handsome husband with his beautiful mother

...and me with Amelie, and Amelie with her iPhone...and Buttah Bear

...with thanks to my trainer for getting those arms in shape for this dress!

Alia with my first niece Haylah and her lovely Mama Lena

...and Amelie with her iPhone...again...

 And me the proud Mommy of two beautiful girls...

...how proud am I?

and let's not forget the most beautiful bride, Lia, and her lovely party!

.

Wagon!!!!

Amelie. She is a funny little girl. She understands that a wagon is something I pull, right? Well, now? Everything pulled is a wagon.

The wooden Melissa and Doug green frog on a string? Froggy wagon.

A chair pulled behind her? Chair wagon.

My new bikini top pulled behind her? Bikini wagon. 

A shopping cart pulled behind her? Well.....

The honeymoon....

So, we've been in Turkbuku for about a week, and it occurred to me that we will never again have an opportunity like this...the girls are comfortable, have transitioned to the change of 10 time zones, and we have lots of family around who are completely capable of watching them. And not to mention a world class resort about 500 yards from our home here where Bill Clinton, Caroline Kennedy and Gwenyth Paltrow have stayed. So Ajay and I? We went and stayed at Macakizi last night.

We packed our carry on bag with what we needed for a dinner out and a workout in the morning. We asked Ajay's Mom Maya to book their smallest room. The place is very pricey to say the least and all we were hoping for was a solid night of sleep in which no one cried or called out for us...and maybe a little romance...and a nice dinner without wrappers and sippy cups. And upon check in? We were informed that our room was complimentary. And as we walked the pebbled path to our room, we walked right past all the little rooms in the back of the lot, all the little rooms in the front of the lot....to out Junior Suite. The door opened and I was struck by the white on white decor with the simplest of Turkish furnishings....through the double balcony doors peeked the deep blue Aegean with yachts creeping by.

From there we went to the hotel gym which is indoor/outdoor by design with the ocean peeking through the trees and beautiful pathways. We exercised. We took our time. Then, like other civilized human beings, we showered, readied ourselves for dinner, and retreated to the bar where I enjoyed a watermelon martini....made with real watermelon,...locally grown...that tasted like watermelon.

Friends joined us at the bar. The lady in charge overheard it was our friend's birthday and graciously offered champagne on the house to celebrate. Not a glass. A Bottle. And not a semi-decent bottle. A €400 bottle. And a phenomenal night just got better.

After the champagne, our friends left us to our lovely dinner overlooking the Agean. I had the sea bass. Ajay had the lamb. More wine was enjoyed. They brought dessert...with a candle and a sparkler on top...to celebrate our honeymoon. We indulged. And that's the end of what I'm sharing.

We're in Turkey!

We arrived here in Turkbuku late Wednesday night. This time we decided to break journey in Frankfurt, which lengthened the journey but provided a much needed bed and place for the girls to run around. And the crazy thing about traveling 8 timezones is sleep is very confused...in fact, as I lie awake in my bed at 2 AM, I began wondering when the gym in the hotel would open. So around 5 AM I got up and decided to find out. But first, coffee! I went downstairs to the lobby where I found a very empty cafe. I ordered a coffee and inquired about the gym, and mentioned our flight out was at 1pm. The lady then informed me that the volcano? In Iceland? Caused a how-do-you-say-in-English? Smoke cloud? And very many flights and airports have closed? Yes...perhaps call your agent?

So...knowing Ajay and the girls were finally sleeping, I decided to check out the gym, which was still closed since it was 5:15 in the morning and you'd have to be crazy to want to exercise at that time. So I returned to the room, and eventually Ajay woke up and got the wheels in motion to gather the necessary information that would determine our destiny. And luckily? We weren't impacted at all and arrived Istanbul with just the right amount of time to catch our connection to Bodrum.

And once we were finally on what was the newest plane I had ever been on (it actually had the new car smell!) just as we were about to close the door and prepare for take off? The baggage cart hit the landing gear of this sparkly new aircraft, and once again, we deplaned, but not at our final destination. And the spoiled child in me? What did I think? Not I hope they have a different plane for us so we are not stranded. No, no! I thought, I hope they have another brand new plane for us! And they did!

Amelie is 18 months old

The past months have been busy ones. I have been inconsistent to say the least at keeping up with the girls monthly blogs. But here we are...getting ready to go to Turkey in a week. Amelie is 18 months old.

Amelie amazes us on a daily basis with her language development. Similar to her cousin Allison, she is a very early talker and can repeat just about anything you say. She has a true understanding of hundreds of words. Amelie counts to 10 easily and is actually quantifying while doing so. I'll watch her move 10 blocks, one at a time, from one side of the room to the other. 1! 2! 3! she counts all the way to 10. And happy? Nothing makes her happier than showing off her mad skills. 

Amelie chains 3 and 4 words together now to get her point across. Yesterday at the bank, she found a penny, picked it up, and pleaded with me with desperation in her big beautiful sad eyes. "MIMI! PENNY! THROW!" she said with all the emotion an 18 month old can muster. She wanted to throw the penny in the fountain. So we did.

Amelie is only happy with one shoe off. I put them both on. She takes one off. Then the accompanying sock. So anytime we get anywhere, I have to find the shoe that she's thrown behind her in the car, and do my best to get it back on. But lately? I just let it go. So she won't wear both shoes....who cares? But what will she wear? Her jeans jacket. All the time. She puts it on and smiles as big as she can, and runs around shouting "Mimi Jacket Cute!!!!!" 

And speaking of running around....Amelie is a little rascal. In fact, after every diaper comes off her sweet little bottom (ok, not always so sweet if you catch my drift), she takes off running shouting "Rascal! Rascal!" because some time ago, she just happened to take off when the diaper was off and I followed her, tickling her, saying "you little rascal"...and the game was born. 

Amelie has full command of the the brand new iPad. She plays lots of games, her favorites being iTots Flashcards  and A Bee Sees  but sometimes accidentally deletes her favorite apps by holding down the home button for too long...the icons wiggle and she deletes them.  She also has full command of YouTube on the iPad, and watches endless videos. She prefers Elmo videos to anything...her favorite is the Outdoors song with James Mraz. She knows all the Sesame Street characters on sight and calls them by name. She also knows the letters of the alphabet, although not in order.

Amelie is showing that she is very socially aware. Take today for example. She was absolutely humiliated when I confiscated the paper cup of milk with a straw in it at Ruby's. See, she becomes obsessed with taking the straw out, putting it back in, taking the straw out, putting it back in until it inevitably ends up on the floor, spilled everywhere with her in tears. So when I took it from her and poured the milk from the straw cup to her very babylike sippy cup, the look on her face said, "how dare you humiliate me in front of all these people". And she cried. And cried. And cried. Baaaaad Mommy. 

Amelie loves to dance. She has a little electronic piano that plays a variety of songs; she will push the button again and again until it plays the Hokey Pokey. And when it comes on? She busts a move.

Amelie has a very sweet disposition. She is a total Mommy's Girl and plays the innocent roll very well. Although I am aware of her evil darker side when I leave the room. She will taunt and provoke Alia to a point of hysteria, and inevitably Alia will snap and push her away, and Amelie will cry pathetically with the "but I'm the baby!" look on her face.

Amelie enjoys fairly bland, simple foods. Turkey lunchmeat is still among her favorites, along with smoked Gouda cheese, yogurt, macaroni and cheese, and cheese pizza, and ripe pears and avocados (which she calls Da-Does) are sure to please.

Amelie has made it through her first ear infection. Poor thing catches everything Alia brings her from school. Amelie is a leaner version of Alia right now....she ranks in the 95th percentile on height but 75th percentile on weight. And her hair is starting to show signs of coming in...finally! A couple of months back we eliminated bottles and she ajdusted well and easily. Alia held on to her bottle for let's just say much longer.

Amelie is very sweet natured. Since Alia loves all things Froggy or green, Amelie is on a constant quest to gather such items and run them to her sister. Green balls, green crayons, green bowls, green legos...nothing makes her happier than sharing her newfound booty with her sister...who promptly shouts at her for doing so. Poor Amelie. But did I mention her latest favorite trick? She has conquered the zipper on her pjs and undresses herself in her crib. Every morning I find her looking up at me pathetically with one arm out and a look of distress on her lovely little face.

Amelie hugs and kisses animal pictures in her books, and her current favorite book is a new counting book her babysitter brought for her. She loves Mickey Mouse, Dora, and blowing bubbles. Amelie loves to paint, and basically wants to do everything Alia does. She loves going with me to drop off Alia at preschool. She is always so excited to see all the neat things at Montessori. While she could technically start in January, I'm not sure I'll be ready for that. I absolutely love her age...it may be my favorite age...she's still a baby but can do so many things and is happy all the time.