Sabrina's Room

Sabrina moved to her own room last night. About time, right? Until now, it was just easier to have her in our room because we didn't wake eachother up and she was already right there when I had to feed her at 6. But the past few days she has not been sleeping well and she's hyper-aware of our presence. So, out she goes. She woke up once and put herself back to sleep within five minutes. We have all sorts of fans going downstairs so the girls didn't wake eachother up. They both did great! Hope it keeps up.

And if you're wondering why the mobile is blurry in the above picture, it's because this is Sabrina's new favorite thing to do:



She also spent most of yesterday trying to get up on her knees into crawling position. Luckily, every time she succeeded, whatever was under her hands would slide out from under her. Too early to crawl... she just sat up. The sitting-up-not-crawling stage is the greatest.

Easter!

Easter hit this house (maybe literally judging by the mess in the pictures). Celia came upstairs and found her Easter basket and then found all the eggs the Easter Bunny hid. She thinks his name is "Easter" and refers to him as such. "Easter hid another egg!" Celia brought Sabrina her Easter basket as soon as she woke up, so Sabrina got to play with it in her bed. Sabrina got a toothbrush and LOVES it. She took it to Church and giggled the whole time she chewed on it. The girls are cute in their matching dresses even though Celia wants to play with Sabrina's flower and Sabrina wants to play with Celia's silly putty. Funny girls.




Last night, Tom and I went on a date. Neither of the girls took their afternoon nap, so we put them both down at 7 after dinner. Celia fed Sabrina a hearty dinner of rice cereal mixed with pears and the two of them were quite enjoying the interchange. And the good news was the both girls went down at 7 and gave the babysitter an easy night (she had to stick Sabrina's binky in her mouth 3 times). And Tom and I enjoyed some improv with friends and delectable desserts after.

Dear Earth,

With Earth Day yesterday, we always like to reevaluate how we're doing on our adventure as environmentalists. As pictured, our latest adventure is cloth diapering. We just started this week, so we have no idea what we're doing yet, but we'll let you know how it goes. We've also started to eat less processed foods (for health and environmental reasons... though mainly health). Here's a picture of the 7-grain cereal that we usually eat (Tom's making us some pancakes currently... and can I just tell you that homemade turbinado syrup is the greatest thing ever?).


I'm also planning on making granola this weekend so healthy breakfasts can be more transportable for Tom to take to work. Which brings me to Tom's bike commuting. He commuted 1-2 times a week all winter with his studded tires. Sometimes, he would walk into the house and his balaclava would be covered in ice because his breath would freeze. During the beginning of break-up season, he commuted in galoshes so he could get through the deep ice puddles. And now that break-up season is coming to an end, his tires have been changed back over to regular ones and he's biking 2-3 times a week (gas prices are up to nearly $4.15). I am now on the condo association board simply because I mentioned I wanted to get recycling for the association and showed up to a meeting and was immediately voted onto the board. Still working on the recycling... (Tom currently has to load up the whole car once a month and drive it to the recycling plant on the way to work). Celia learned all about Earth yesterday. One of her favorite movies is Wall-E so she talks about Earth a lot. Yesterday, she learned that we can help Earth by "turning off things... like water and lights... the two things!" That's how she phrased it.

So Earth, we're trying to be good. CFLs and reusable grocery bags are a usual part of our lives. So stay beautiful so we can enjoy our many camping trips we have planned this summer. And can we ask a favor? Our household salmon limit this summer is 55 fish... can you give us that? Oh, and the rhubarb is growing back and the tomato plant is starting to sprout... but the peas haven't come up yet. Help them grow too. Thanks.

Love, the Stocks.

PS - Thought you'd like to see a picture of Sabrina falling asleep in between bites of Tom feeding her rice cereal because it's cute. Notice she's holding a mini sham-wow that have replaced paper towels for cleaning up our children.

Sabrina Sits!

The first picture was taken on April 17 (just last Sunday) which was the first time Sabrina sat up on her own for ten minutes. She only fell over when she got so tired that she took a 2.5 hour nap. It didn't happen again until yesterday when I sat her up, jumped in the shower, and when I came back out, she was still sitting up! She then sat up all day. I didn't take another picture. Though I did take a picture of the girls in their cute matching jammies. And for good measure, I added a picture of Sabrina eating her feet in the bath. She LOVES eating her feet this week. It's a new thing.

Celia's Animal Party

Yes... I know. The suspense was killing you. And now that it's been nearly a month...

On Monday, March 28th (thanks to Seward's Day), we had Celia's animal party. We bought foam animal masks for all the kids and Celia made me be the lion and Tom be the bear and she was the giraffe. The girls played Duck Duck Goose (really didn't understand it but had fun nonetheless), pretended to be animals (Sophie as a bunny and Celia as a birdie are pictured), and their favorite game was feeding the elephant. I made a cardboard elephant at 11PM the night before and hid peanuts around the house. They played it three times and then Celia played it another three times after the party was over. Big hit. Overall, successful party (thanks to Emily for the cute cupcakes) and Celia still sometimes asks to feed the elephant.

Celia: She turned 3!

Celia turned 3 three weeks ago. A little behind as a mom, but here's my tribute to Celia now:

Celia is still great. She's hilarious and creative. She's always playing with characters from movies that show up to our house or imaginary friends (always named something like Hahn or Hashie-Hahn). She remembers everything she learns and is a great help with Sabrina. She loves Sabrina so much. When she hears Sabrina wake up, she gets super excited, stops everything she's doing, and runs in there yelling: "It's Sabrina! I want to see her!" She loves to hold her hand.

When Celia turned 3, diapers "didn't fit" her anymore. We had 2 days of accidents and now she's totally potty trained (pull-ups during naps and at night). It's helped with her fear of pooping, but she still has total breakdowns before she'll poop. We're praying this continues to improve...

Celia is a reader. She always has been. She can memorize any book after me reading it two times. We watched some old videos of her as a baby/toddler and found it hilarious that she's exactly the same except now she uses words to tell her stories. She's always talking about something.

Celia still takes an afternoon nap around 2 and sleeps for 1.5-2 hours usually. She went through a phase of only sleeping about half time time, but now she sleeps everyday. And Saturdays have been odd for her. Last Saturday, she went down for her nap at 4PM and didn't wake up until 8:30 the next morning. Yesterday, she took a 5 hour nap. Silly girl.

She reasons very well. Which makes disciplining really difficult because she try to reason her way out of it. But the pro to this is that she thinks things through. She had an animal birthday party. I asked her what kind of party she wanted. I figured she would say "princess" because she's been to two of those. Instead she said: "I want a camel party because I already had a ladybug party and a princess party" (I had to broaden her horizons to "all animals" - more on her party later).

Celia, you're great. I hope your 3s turn out to be as pleasant as your 2s. You're silly. As she would reply: "No, I'm great!" We love you.

Sabrina: Six Months

Sabrina was officially six months five days ago. And she's a cutie. This is her signature move pictured above. When she's really excited or tired, she will do this little side flip. (Don't worry, I'm holding her in this picture.) She's still not sitting up. Even in the Boppy, she still falls over pretty fast. It's frustrating for her because she really wants to just sit up and play. She won't stay on her back for more than a few seconds at a time. She rolls right over. As pictured, she also found her feet this month (right after we got to Hawaii on March 19). She smiles at everything and everyone.

We started her on rice cereal on March 28. She ate the whole bowl. Nothing came back out. She just eats and eats and when she's done, she just arches her back away from the spoon. Then she slept like a champion that whole week from 9-9:30 and I fed her at 6:30. It was perfect. Then she got a cough and has coughing attacks at night, poor girl. She now eats sweet potatoes for lunch and rice cereal for dinner. She still nurses, but only for about 10 minutes every four hours. Not sure if that's because of the current cough/cold or because she gets distracted so easily. She still nurses for 30-40 minutes right before bed.

Through a series of rolls, flails, and scoots, Sabrina is capable of movement. In the picture where Sabrina is eating the corner of the kitchen counter, Tom set her about ten feet away and then went to cook in the kitchen and found her there. Funny kid. Tom and I can get her to laugh pretty easily, but Celia is the only one that can get her to whole-heartedly cackle. It's hilarious when those girls start laughing. They can't stop. And Celia is teaching Sabrina to be a baby Princess and let her borrow her princess sunglasses. As you can tell, Sabrina is ready.

Hawaii: Polynesian Cultural Center

We stopped to see the temple. Then when we got to the Polynesian Cultural Center, Sabrina slept like an old man in the stroller, it rained on and off, we saw a man climb up a palm tree (Celia still talks about this frequently), Sabrina learned that grabbing my face and forcing my nose into her mouth is her new favorite, and we enjoyed the luau and night show.

Hawaii: Honolulu

The best part of our Honolulu trip was these pictures with the birds. And the cute Hawaiian matching dresses I bought there for the girls (that they're wearing in those family pictures of us). We started at Chinatown where Tom and I bought some yummy things at the Asian market and drank sugarcane juice. Other than that, Honolulu was not that great. We drove around for an hour to find parking. Then we ate at the mall food court. Walked around. Spent 45 minutes on the super crowded beach. Then went home and Celia threw up all over in the car on the way back. Luckily, she had a towel in her lap so it wasn't that big of a mess but it just made the whole day kind of a joke. She enjoyed the movie she got to watch on her bed afterwards "because I'm sick."

Cooking with Kids: FAIL

Let me just start by saying that last week, I was Super Mom. It was the first time that I was capable of getting up before my kids and working, playing in the snow, grocery shopping, doing school time with Celia, and straightening up the house and all without feeling tired. Well, Super Mom left town this weekend. This week has been long, hard, tiring, and my patience is gone. Awesome time to decide to make cookies with Celia. (Let me also add that me in the kitchen is not that great anyway. Unless there are no distractions, something major gets left out of the recipe.)

I decided that no-bake cookies (my favorite) are quick and easy. Celia and I could whip up a batch during Sabrina's short morning nap. And we did. Turned out perfect. But they looked a little odd. And just as Sabrina woke up, I realized we forgot the sugar. Yup - main ingredient left out. I got Sabrina out, put her in the Bumbo with toys and set out to whip up another batch while the girls entertained themselves. Nope. Out of oats. At this point, I would have claimed defeat... happily. But you can't do that when you've promised the 3-year-old of the house cookies. (We tasted the other no-bake cookies and learned the word "bitter.") So a Trader Joe's mix (thank you Sue!) of Christmas cookies (Super Mom was not around at Christmastime) had to save the day. By the time I got the dough mixed and rolled out, Sabrina was screaming and Celia was whining about cookies. The mix came with three cookie cutters. Celia made one of each shape and proclaimed she was done. In the chaos, I stomped on one of them so hard I now have a bloody star shape on my foot.

In the end, Celia ate three cookies (enough to entertain her while I wrote this) and I ate enough dough to make me sufficiently queasy. I'll put Tom in charge of baking the rest of the dough after all us girls go to bed tonight.

Super Mom, please come back.

Hawaii: Dole Plantation

We saw some pineapples, rode the Pineapple Express, took pictures of the girls as Pineapples, and enjoyed delicious Dole floats (as is usually the case with notable food... eaten to quickly to be pictured).