Selah at 19 months

I meant to do a post about her turning a year and a half - but we did a quick less than 24 hour trip to Santa Barbara for our friends' annual New Years party and then Finn had a birthday...yada yada yada. You get the idea. So here she is, at 19 months now, our precious little handful.



This is Selah exactly one year ago


And here she is now. In the past year, she has completely transformed from "baby" to "little girl".


*Selah likes to color, on everything.


*She's into shoes big time. Taking them off, putting them on, wearing everyone else's.


*She's a talker. She is exploding with language right now. Though, she sometimes seems a little dyslexic. When she talks fast she has been known to call herself Lisa instead of Selah and calls a kiwi a "weeky". She's so cute. Finn is "Thin", Grandma Summy is simply "Summy". She can name nearly all the animals in a book we have, though if you didn't know her, you might not understand her.


*She loves books. Currently she is glued to "Polar Bear Polar Bear What do you Hear?" She can recite some of it on her own now - real words mixed with mumbles. Finn was particularly drawn to that book too when he was this age.

*She sleeps ALL the way through the night now.... and so do I, ever since I weaned her a month ago. Yay!

*She has always had a strong personality, and now that she's talking, she'll let us know EXACTLY what she wants and when she wants it. The other morning, I brought her to bed with me in the morning, hoping she'd sleep in with me for another 1/2 hour. She laid on my pillow for about 5 seconds and then sprang up and said in a booming voice, "Mama! Get up! Oatmeal! Oatmeal!"


*She LOVES Dora the Explorer and all the characters in the show, Backpack, Map, Boots, and Swiper. We don't have cable but we do have a few VHS videos, so the kids have seen the same Dora episode a million times now. They don't seem to mind.

*She likes baby dolls, pretend cooking, pushing a chair over to the sink so she can help, pulling all the books off the bookshelves, singing and teasing her brother by getting dangerously close to his train set.

Selah is feisty and fun, smart and silly, cute and cuddly and all together tough as nails. I'm excited to see what she'll do next. We love our Selahbob.

snip snip!

Happy Birthday to Finn!

Finn turned 4 yesterday. After the long night of coughing, sniffling and low-grade fevers, we decided to postpone the big party for Finn that we had planned for the day. It was the right decision. He spent most of the day in his pajamas and did little more than just lay on the couch or the floor all day....slowly pushing around a small train on his new birthday train set. Poor Finn.


Here's the train cake that I hope will survive a week in the freezer.



Finn has been such a joy to us. He's such a fun little guy, and like some of my family members say...he marches to the beat of his own drum.

As a 4 year old, Finn...

*spends hours daily just talking talking talking in his make believe world of whatever scenario he has made up at the time....church, preschool, trains, planes and skyscrapers that talk or make believe lands like the planet "zark". (We are soooo happy that he has seemed to drop his alter-ego "Bumbo" the freshwater snail. Bumbo had a very whiny voice and was banned from many outings. Adios Bumbo.)

* is getting more gutsy. the first thing he will want to show you when you come over to our house is the different ways he can jump on his new bed or climb high on the play structure.


*defines things by their "place" now. That's a Santa Barbara thing, and that happened in Woodland, and that friend is from Yuba City. I'm glad he's keeping all of it straight, because sometimes I can't.

*loves peanut butter, and acts like I have cut his left arm off if I make him eat something different for lunch.

*is almost done taking naps. Almost.

*still LOVES books. Favorites are Richard Scary, Dr. Seuss, Curious George, and anything with tractors and trucks.

*doesn't yet care much for art....unless it's performing arts! He has taken up drumming lately, thanks to Uncle Josh's kit which we are happily babysitting for him. (thanks Josh!)


*loves story-telling. That is, he loves it when Nate and I make up stories for him at bedtime. Nate started this (Nate has a gift of storytelling) adding a different chapter every night. We take turns with every other chapter, which means we end up making a game of it, getting our characters into odd situations that the other person will then have to get them out of. Finn enjoys it and so do we.

*loves preschool. He adores Ms. Anita and will forego all of the table activities that are set up each day and just play with a puzzle or read with Ms. Anita.


*is very polite usually. Recently another mom at preschool asked if we could get together for a playdate because she wanted her son to be around Finn because he was so well behaved. That was so nice to hear.

*has a new 4 year old hair cut now! (stay tuned for pics)

We love you Finnegan Jack!

Blooper Reel!

A Wicked Weekend!

GIRL'S WEEKEND! Woo hoo! It's been so fun having my sister (and her four kids and hubbie) visiting from Kentucky. My sisters and mom and I decided the best way to catch up was to get outta town. We spent a night away in SF and it was so fun! We ate good Thai food, window shopped and walked around enjoying the Christmas decorations still up in the city. Oh...and we saw WICKED!

If you haven't seen Wicked yet....go see it RIGHT NOW! It's so good! I might be a tad bit partial to this musical in particular because one of my long-time friends from Yuba, Marcie Dodd is currently the lead in the National tour of the show, as Elphaba, the green witch....and she's amazing. I saw her in the LA production and since then she's gone on to play the role in NY on Broadway and now the tour. (shout out to Marcie!) The cast in San Francisco was equally awesome.

This is a shot of our hotel room view. When I noticed that there was no screen on the slightly opened window, my mom promptly backed away from the glass and never got within 10 feet of it again.