A Little More than 3

(This picture showed the remnants of halloween week "paint face" as Amaya calls it)

Amaya's hand went through a growth spurt. One day I'm holding onto a hand that fits almost entirely within my grasp, and yesterday I notice that her fingers actually wrap around to the back of my hand. It feels way more like hand holding than before. Before it was like baby dragging. I think she likes holding hands better now, too.

The other night we were in our house and I could hear distant sounds of a show being watched at Pam's. I couldn't tell what it was and was just ignoring it. She perked up her little ears and said, "I think they're watching Colbert."

She was right.

This morning when I dropped her at pre-school (YES! I know it's a furlough day, and I feel entirely guilty, but I do have tons of work to do and I plan on picking her up early, and yes, I know I'm blogging right now but I'm going to stop the second I'm done with this...) she had me lean down and said, "Mom? Can you give me a favor?" I said, "A favor? Do you know what a favor is?"

She said, "Yes. Can you give me a favor? I want a goody when I get home after pre-school."

I think her skills at workin' it are only getting better.

Halloween

"Amaya, what are you going to be for Halloween?"

"Pit-bulls."

I guess the bone is dog related anyway.

And Aaron was a tiger (which came from the treasure trove of the humongous Yuen family collection). I quite think he makes a handsome Goku myself with that hair.

Jake made the ceramic bone, and it worked pretty well, even though I was skeptical of the idea.

And Pam sewed the millions of poorly cut out (by me) deltas and basically made the whole thing while I watched.

Mikey's beard is from one of those 25 cent machines. And it looks real!

Minami wore her hair in braids for most of the afternoon to achieve this look. Love the teeth, too.

Tru's costume was super professional. The shirt/hair/hat combo was perfect-o.

I didn't eat any sugar. I have to admit that the candy itself wasn't too tempting. But the pumpkin pie that the Yuens brought over for dessert... I probably would have eaten a piece if no one was watching. Sigh

Rediscovery

Jake got me this bike for my birthday.

I know. Don't you love it? I mean, LOVE it? With cute little hearts instead of Os?

Amaya loves it almost as much as me. We've been biking every day and only almost biffed it 23 times. (It's very hard to hold a bag and bike with a baby on board. I guess there's a reason the xtracycle is too expensive.)

I told Jake I wanted a bike for my birthday after I rode around the waterfront in Portland this summer, with a couple of old high school friends. I remembered how much I liked biking.

I mean, wouldn't you just really love biking after going with these guys?

And here's Cody with his GF just in case this picture freaks you out.

(Sorry, Dan, she's just way cuter.)

Anywho, we went biking to Voodoo Doughnuts, which is Norwegian for "We are doughnut geniuses and you have to stand outside in a line if you want them." I got a mango doughnut with mango sparkly sour sprinkles on top and an oreo cookie doughnut with peanut butter drizzled over the whole thing. My friends only hassled me a little for buying two doughnuts (because look at these guys-- you know they only ordered one each) when I really wanted to buy 10. I hope I didn't confuse my sudden urge to bike with doughnut satisfaction. Sigh.

Here's Serious Cody, for the road.

Good Day, Bad Night

To-Day: Amaya gives lots of kisses and hugs all day long. She likes to sing "Ain't it great to be crazy" and say "Ska-doosh" when she's holding our hands as we walk to church. She pretends to be a cat (which is one stage of toddler-dom I have always somewhat disliked, but I try to humor her) and when you ask her what she's going to be for Halloween she says "trophy." Which in Amaya language is "Dorothy." She babbles "katchakatchakatchakatcha" when she knows she is being naughty. She requests we take a walk in the rain on Sunday afternoon and she makes a little "fire" out of sticks so we can roast our kukui nut "marshmallows". We throw and kick kukui nuts all over BYUH parking lot.

To-Night: We get a whiff of something strange, and come in to find that she has pooped her diaper but is asleep. When we turn on the light there is poop all over her mouth, her hands, on the wall, and on the bed.

And this is the 10th time that's happened this month, so we are none too pleased. This also reminds me of all the disgusting things I had to sweep out of her mouth today (and some of them got swallowed quickly).

If she would wake up at 7am instead of 6am, I might be able to forgive her. But I already know that tomorrow morning, when it's 6 am (or before) and I say, "Amaya, go back to bed!" she is going to say, "I want to wake up EARLY!"

It's a good thing she's got all day to make it up to us.

All By My Self

...don't wanna be... All By My Self...

Please come to my cooking blog and join my almost no sugar challenge.

What's your incentive?

Hmmmm.

I'll get back to you on that one.

How about, if you live around here, I'll make you something extra duper special on my birthday. How's that sound?

If you live far away you'll have to make something extra special for yourself on my birthday.
Not such a bad deal.

Plus, you can whine all about how hard it is to do this, and everyone will feel sorry for you. So it's like a win-win situation. And we can complain about it together while keeping our eyes on each other. Not in a weird sultry way, but a "if you mess up I can mess up too" kind of way. And then we can blame each other for slipping up and accidentally putting oreos in our mouths when really we meant to eat granny smith apples. Mmmmm. Apples dipped in milk. That's what we meant to do anyway.

Otherwise I'll just shame you into it, so you might as well get on now, before I tell everybody that big secret you told me that one time.

HA. You totally know what I'm talking about, don't you.

There's time to eat sugar later. Even Nutella can wait until Christmas, Sydney.