First Finger Painting

Awesome family members sent us some non-toxic, washable finger paints recently, and a friend sent some throw-away plastic smocks, so Maya and I had a crafty morning.  Right after she got started I had the thought that we should use a canvas to capture Maya's first attempt at painting forever.  I'm so glad we did--it turned out GREAT!

 getting warmed up . . .

 This is messy!

Can I paint the other side?

A new color!

How does this stuff taste?

Ew, it feels squishy!

Clean up is FUN!

Water, water, WATER!

I forgot to take a picture of the final product, but she's clearly a little artist in the making :).  She also sang the entire time she painted.  FUN!

Taking a Dip

Hello people who read my blog.  I have missed you.  I had great plans of uploading all sorts of video to the blog while we were in another country last month with faster internet.  And then it didn't work.  I have no idea why.  I'm not techy.  I'm too old.  We had to have search engines explained to us in college.  And my husband is even older.  He typed papers for a little extra cash when he was in college.  And when I say typed, I mean on a type writer.  And yes I know that you're not supposed to start a sentance with and.  And I probably just spelled sentance wrong.  And today I don't care (and I usually really do).  I just want to get this post posted so all of you can smile at how cute my kid is.  Or how cute her little bikini is.  Or how cute it is that she is still in the running between the two of us to win the "biggest belly" contest.  I love her.  Some day soon I'm going to write a belated Father's day post.  And a year and a half post for Maya.  And some other posts.  But in the meantime, hopefully this will tide over my mom, and anyone else who finds their way over here to Life Over Here.

The Picture to Prove It

To read what posessed this self-inflicted humiliation, read this post. 

Bangs and a Perm

I just woke up from a dream (nightmare, really) that I got bangs and a perm.  It seems that I did it in order to witness to someone (gallant, I know).  With no thought to the child in my womb being completely poisoned by the fumes and the chemicals, or the fact that I would look really dorky, I plunged bravely into this new style!  This woman needed to hear the Good News, after all, so let's spend the next two hours or so together.  It turned out very similar to my very first perm/bangs attempt.  I knew instantly that it was a huge mistake.  Those bangs fell right in my eyes.  And they were so itchy.  And hot.  And annoying.  And I immediatley doubted my ability to rock the bangs look.  It's so cute on other people (my sister and half of my sisters in law, to name a few), but with the heat of summer about to descend upon our beautiful but humid city, I was in no position to be getting bangs for the first time since. . . . . . middle school?!  I remember the process of growing my bangs out being quite socially painful.  A boy in my basic studies (Cane Lyons, a skater boy whom I had a crush on) telling me that I wore my hair pulled back too tight.  He also called me a hoe.  Pretty sure he was the first and last to ever call me a hoe.  But his comment about my hair hurt just as bad.  I wore my hair pulled back too tight.  What he didn't understand was that my generation of girl was on the tail end of the big bang phenomenon, and it was time for us to move on to something bigger (well, smaller, really) and better.  But growing out your bangs is so awkward.  Either they are too long and in your eyes and in your face, or you slick them back into your half-pony to keep them out of your face, but they are really too short and so you have to keep them kind of tight.  That and I have really flat/smooth/body-less hair so it appears tight just because it lays very flat when pulled back.  All that to say--I knew that bangs were a mistake and as soon as she cut them, they immediately started to itch my eyes and feel like a combination of my mom's allergies, and Chinese water torture.  And then I woke up (well actually, then I dreamt that I went and played volleyball with some girls I played with in high school, forgot that I was pregnant, and attempted a dig--all while wearing a long prarie skirt, and having bangs in my eyes).  I am so relieved that it was all just a dream.  While I really could use a trim, and possibly something new to make my long, straight and boring hair look like I actually have a style, the bangs and a perm were all just a bad dream . . . (as was the pregnant volleyball in the prarie skirt, thankfully).  Tomorrow, when my husband is not in bed asleep in the room where I have an old photo album, I will try to find a picture of myself so you can see the days when I rocked the perm and the bangs (as well as the big red glasses).  Until then. . . sweet dreams.

20 Weeks

Well folks, we're halfway there!  20 weeks down, 20 to go.  I have heard of women who just love being pregnant, but I can't say that I'm one of them (I have to admit I have questioned the sanity of such women at various times over the last 5 months).  I'm fairly certain we will never need a wide angle lense just to fit all of our children into a photo . . . )  To celebrate the fact that I am finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, here's a look back at how things have gone so far--just for "fun"!

Well, it all started with the Morning Sickness-puking morning afternoon, and night.  Just yesterday I was in the bathroom getting ready and Maya wandered in and leaned over the toilet and started making a puking sound--- if that gives you any idea of how often it was happening for a while.  I'm still taking medicine to keep things under control, but I am sooooo excited that I don't feel nauseous all the time anymore.  During the worst of it, I experienced a major change in my appetite and could hardly make myself eat anything--I didn't eat chocolate or drink diet coke for weeks, if you can believe that!  Next in line was constipation.  Not much to really say about that, other than, things got more than a little backed up.  Next up in the lineup of pregnancy moments to treasure--Restless Leg Syndrome.  This one has gotten worse lately--almost as if it's taken up the rallying cry of the Morning Sickness.  When I try to rest, my legs twitch and spasm to the point that I can't even stand to lay down and usually give up and get up (although I was reading yesterday about what you can do for RLS and one tip was to put a bar of soap under your sheet?!  Huh?).  I think the twitching legs have led to the next gem of being with child-extreme fatigue.  Between that, and the unmedicated Narcolepsy (which makes me have pretty interrupted sleep anyway), I just seem to feel tired all the time.  I keep reading that in the second trimester you should see a surge in your energy.  Liars, liars, pants on fire(s).  While we're on the topic of pain, I occasionally have a painful pinching in my low low back that shoots pain down my right leg as well and makes me groan out loud.  Much less significant, but still annoying are swollen fingers (I had to stop wearing my wedding ring at least a month ago--maybe that's not swollen fingers, maybe that's just fat fingers!), growing pains, and the fact that Mosquitos now consider me their very own all-you-can-eat-buffet (no screens on widows here).  How do women do this over and over?  I mean really.  The good news is, we're halfway there and the very worst (the morning sickness) has backed off enough for me to behave like a semi-human being!  I even cooked a big breakfast for our team the other day, including Cinnabon-clone cinnamon rolls (thanks to my amazing bread machine my hubby got me for mother's day)!  I am so thankful that God has given us the children that he has, and I'm sure as soon as I meet this little man, I will say it was all worth it. . .  until he becomes a teething toddler--but that's another post altogether!

New Adventures in May

 Maya really enjoys helping me bake.

 She tries to taste everything so she's had some funny surprises tasting things like salt and flour.

This is as close to the outdoors as we get around here, and our gardening capacity is pretty limited, but we do what we can to let Maya experience growing living things.

Maya insisted on being in control of the trowel, so the whole balcony got a dusting of dirt, but she had fun (until the clean-up bath happened, and then the fun ended very quickly).

 

Grammie sent this cute Easter card that came with a page of stickers.  She had never used stickers before and she had fun, but couldn't quite get the hang of how to get the stickers off of her fingers, onto the page.

This activity is called water painting.  My friend Laura's mom is a child education specialist, and Laura has all kinds of good ideas from helping her mom--including this one.  (I think she actually remembered this one from when she was a kid)  It's way less messy than actual paints, and Maya loved it.  Laura wanted to point out that we were painting with water, right beside the electrical outlet!  Safety here is defined a little differently . . .

Water painting soon became water playing.

 

The wetter she got, the happier she got (and it was not really very warm out at the time).

The water dish (once completely dumped on the ground and on herself) made a great hat too. . .

I am trying to learn to do more planned activities (like the planting and the painting) with Maya to keep from losing my mind with the monotonity and sometimes tedium of parenting a toddler.  She's been sick a lot lately too, so we've really needed some activities to distract us from feeling icky.

What's in a Word?

Less than a month ago, I was starting to worry about Maya's language development.  She was still barely speaking, and I was concerned that the two-language environment might be kind of skitzing out her poor little noggin'.  I had heard or read somewhere that kids who learn two language at once hit their language milestones more slowly.  On April 22nd I made a list of all of the words that she could say:

1. mama
2. dada
3. Laura (a friend's name)
4. shoes
5. no
6. baby
7. amen
8. ooooh
9. night-night

Now, less than a month later, she's got all of these new words:

1. toes
2. bird
3. book
4. please
5. peas
6. cheese
7. banana
8. Hannah (A friend's name)
9. stroller
10. water
11. Isla (Another friend's name)
12. stairs
13. row (as in row, row, row your boat--her favorite song)
14. nose
15. yah
16. bow

Plus all the words I'm sure I'm forgetting, or can't understand. . . Silly me, I was worried about her not speaking much--hah!  Now she's repeating all kinds of words that we say to her.  The day before yesterday, she said her first Arabic word--woo hoo!  She said, "tai" which means, "come", then today I'm pretty sure she added water ("mai") and let's go ("yalla") to her vocabulary.  Now that I've stopped worrying about her ability to speak, anybody know what to do about her being pigeon-toed and dragging her feet when she walks? :)