the stasher

Emma is a busy 3.5 year old. She was born busy. She's always moving things, stashing them here, stuffing them there. She's always finding a bag to carry her things in, and when her bag is full, she adds stuff to her doll's purse. Some people call her the "hoarder". We'll find stuff stashed inside drawers, hidden under pillows, and shoved between doors. I'm not sure where this falls developmentally. Is it spatial recognition? Fine motor skills? Precursor to being a cat lady?

I finally decided to document the randomness I find on a daily basis.

When she does slow down, she loves to build hot dog bridges.

these are dog days

We have two sick popsicles here - Em is the only healthy one. One sinus infection and one Type-A flu is really cramping our pre-spring style. This is pretty much how we're feeling these days.



Luckily, the medicine is helping and everyone is napping. We are SO ready for sunshine!!

we love Love.

In preparation for Valentines Day, her teachers at preschool asked the kids to list one thing they love. They posted the list outside the classroom for all the parents to read. Lots of love on that list - I love my brother, I love my mom & dad, I love my bed, etc. Emma's answer? "I love the whole, wide, everything".

We love Love!

Em the cooking gal

Lots of love this week! We cook in a tiara, do you? :)



P.S. the weird flatulent sounds come from focusing my camera. got to remember than next time! heh!

Brotherly love from P-funk:

Woman.....Woman.....who do you see?

I FINALLY got the HD video on my mark ii figured out and thought I'd give it a shot tonight. It really is pretty fun to know that I can take a video and stills using the manual features of my camera. In other words, I can adjust the aperture, ISO and shutter speed of the video settings too! So, for tonight's example, I had really low light, but I just adjusted a few things and was able to capture what my point-and-shoot video probably wouldn't have. Kinda fun!

There's always a price to pay for technology, and in this case, the HD videos take up an ENORMOUS amount of space. The clip below takes up almost 600MB of space. Compare that to one, unedited jpg coming straight from my camera at 2MB, you can see how I will eat up hard drive space fast! It seems I have to go through an extra step of converting the video in order to upload it to my smugmug...and in the process of converting/compressing it, I think the quality got reduced, bah!! I'm not sure I'm doing it right, so I'll keep trying.

It's still pretty cute. Here's Emma's rendition of "Brown Bear, Brown Bear". Some of you probably know this book by heart, but if you don't, the "woman, woman" part is funny, because it's supposed to be a teacher. :)

oldie but goodies

Happy New Year!

You can expect to see some changes around here, since I'm doing a lot of consolidation. Despite my track record over the last year or so, I love having a blog. In fact, more nights than not, I lie in bed thinking of funny and clever things to write about (this is usually whilst trying to fall asleep. Isn't that always the way it works?!) I want to get back into making regular occurences, but I think I'm going to stick to one blog (my photo blog) for the clever wit, and use our neglected smugmug account to fill in alllll the gaps. You see, I got to a point where I was taking SO MANY photos, that to stop and pick a few, edit a few, and come up with something interesting each time got to be overwhelming to me. And if I got behind, the perfectionist in me wouldn't allow me to just skip over stuff so I just did nothing. I know, brilliant plan.

Anyway, to anyone who might still be reading this blog, just know that there is tons of stuff to check out still. I am in the process of backing up allllll my photos onto our Smugmug page (you can check them out here if you have a *lot* of free time). This solves my problem of having to pick anything in particular or 'significant'. It's our day-in-day-out pictures, so that I don't feel like I am missing anything. I am combining photos from my camera, photos from Roger's camera, photos from 2 video cameras and from my cell phone. This way I can get the whole shebang to document our life. It will serve as my virtual scrapbook, with this one thrown in for variety.

Shamefully, I have been walking around with over 300 pictures and videos stored on my Blackberry. Sometimes, the phone is just easier to grab! It never really occurred to me to do something with them. I kinda forgot about them, but OH! I can download them onto my computer! In about 2 minutes! There are some great stories in these files. Weeding through the last 18 months of crackberry pics/vids, I came across this little video from last March. It's hard to believe this was almost a YEAR ago but it's a classic. Tia (my sister) and Margot came to visit us, and Margot had just turned 6 months old. Emma and Margot took their very first bath together (first of many) and it was one that neither Anna nor I will ever forget. These cousins are exactly 2 years apart in age so it's going to be fun using these videos as blackmail when they get older and even CONSIDER stuffing pillows under their covers and sneaking out...

I'll set the stage for you. Picture it, Sicily, 1941....ok just kidding (a little Golden Girls reference for ya). Since they were bathing in the big tub, Margot used the bumbo to keep her stable. Well, the bumbo was also Emma's bath "toy" and she wasn't real interested in sharing it. But she did, and Margot got to sit next to her in the bath. However, every time Emma would get upset and raise her voice, it would scare Margot, who would then get upset and start to cry (and raise her voice). Emma finally got to sit in it at the end (yes, she still fits into it!) We made this little video to send to Gigi so she could see them interact. You might want to grab your volume controls so that you can adjust accordingly. It starts out really loud and then quiet and then loud again. Hope you find it as amusing as we did! :)

PS - Check. out. those. rolls.

PCS

hop on over to my photo blog to learn more about the phenomenon known as "PCS". :)

I know, you're beside yourselves that I've actually updated the blog. Nice of you to join us again, Erika! :)

You'll be double excited to know that my piece de resistance, after a 3 month hiatus, combines two of Emma's favorite things: rubber duckies and being a complete goofball.

News

I'm such a blogging slack these days. In case you're wondering why, you should check out my new photography blog!!! :)

www.erikahoffphotography.com/blog/

And as always, make sure to check out my photography website:
www.erikahoffphotography.com

vacation

just one for now - my beautiful mama and her girls' girls

naptime FAIL

Soooooo....this is how much destruction one little pixie can make in 30 minutes. She was told, as is the custom every afternoon, to take a nap. I even let Parker sleep in her room (a new development - he helps 'protect' her at night). The painter was here, the house was untouchable and I had to get some work done.

After 15 minutes, I heard her thump out of bed, and she quickly informed me she was NOT tired and did NOT want to go to sleep. She was hungry. She had to go potty. She needed another story. She had to change clothes. She wanted Barbie instead of Kitty. She couldn't find the orange paci. She wanted me to give Parker a high five......... You know the drill.

Finally, I gave into the reality that this little firecracker would not rest, so she was told she could have 'quiet time'. The rule was she had to play quietly and safely by herself. She couldn't bother me or Chris the painter (her new best friend). The door stayed open, but no matter what, she had to stay in her room.

She did.

I came back to find she had been very busy 'or-danizing'.

just because...

she makes me smile :)

Fun in the Florida Sun

Happy Friday everyone! I'm trying to be better about updating this blog. I got so clogged with photos, but thanks to a lovely compositor script I found in Photoshop, I can now make collages with all my photos. No more just picking 3 or 4! What a difference my life and this blog will be! :)

Emma and I took a trip to Tampa to visit my dad (also referred to as Pache) and believe it or not, found it refreshing to be in Florida. In July. Yes, it was warm, but not as hot as it had been here. We had a great time and spent lots of time outdoors. Emma loved playing 'jewelry store' and showing us how to wear a necklace properly. We went swimming every day, as well as to the playground/swinging. I didn't take my camera to the pool, but I do have a few snaps right before, of a little goofy, gap-toothed grin showing off her new goggles :)


We also made local outings to the Lowry Park Zoo and the Florida Aquarium. They were both AWESOME! They are interactive, which is especially fun for little kids her age. At the zoo, she got to feed the goats and the budgerigars (parakeets). It's funny, because for such a fearless kid, she gets nervous around things that fly - bugs and birds. I did most of the bird feeding. She also went on her first pony ride - that was my favorite part! I grew up riding horses and I hope she will too. She acted like she knew exactly what she was doing and McCormick was very sweet to take her for such a wild ride (it was a big circle). ;)

At the aquarium, we saw lots of native sea animals. My favorites are always the seahorses, but the giant tank with turtles and eels and tropical fish was pretty cool too. She got to touch the pacific sea stars, the stingrays and the sea anemone. We missed the shark-feeding demonstration, but it was a great visit and very colorful.

I think this was Emma's 12th roundtrip airline flight and it was probably the best one we've done together. It's not exactly relaxing to travel solo with an almost-3 year old, but at this age she can finally sit relatively still in the seat coloring, playing or looking out the window and she makes friends with everyone around her. It's almost embarrasing. By the end of our first flight, she was giving everyone kisses on the cheeks and whispering secrets in their ear. Now that we're back home, she looks up at passing airplanes in the sky and asks me, "Are they going to Flordia too?" (that's how she pronouces it) I have fun with my little traveling buddy! :)

Happy 4th!

We celebrated with the good stuff :)

potty training: check! toddler bed conversion: check!

It's been a banner month here at Two Popsicles. First, Emma potty trained herself (practically!). We've had a potty out for months. On days when we weren't going out, I'd let her run around sans diaper and ask her if she wanted to go, and if she did, she could get a treat. It worked about 50% of the time. Naturally, there was lots of praise and peepee dances when she did. It was very exciting to know that she was making the connection. After that, she'd tell me that she wanted to go peepee, but it was usually after the fact, which was ok. Everything I'd heard said to let it be their choice and to not force it so I just didn't make a big deal out of it.

Well, something clicked about 2 weeks ago and all of a sudden, she just decided that she didn't want to wear diapers anymore. We were using pull ups almost exclusively at that point, so the mechanics of diaper changing was just like that of changing underwear. I bought her princess underwear one day, and after that, it was all she wanted to wear (in fact, I had to go back and get a 2nd pack in case Snow White happened to be in the washing machine!). I got nervous about what I would do if we went out, but it went swimmingly. I suppose some people think think this is a credit to parenthood, but from my perspective, this was all her. I mean, I know that kids eventually get potty trained, so it's not like it was a test for me as her mom. But she truly did this on her own. She just decided that she would rather wear the underwear, and she tells me every single time she has to go. We've had 1 accident in 10 days so far. No accidents for #2. Amazing to me. I know we'll have slipups along the way, but it's probably been one of the easier transitions we've made so far (the whole bottle/sippy cup thing was way harder!). She even goes diaper free at naptime! The only diaper she wears is at night, and she's woken up dry 8 out of the last 10 mornings so if it weren't for my unwillingness to change sheets in the middle of the night, we'd be totally diaper free. :) It's definitely a new dynamic though. I'm not entirely sure that kids out of diapers are easier than kids in diapers. I have to be prepared differently now (change of clothes at all times - including socks) and I have a potty in the back of my car. I have to scope out the bathroom upon arrival in every new venue. But we'll get the hang of that too. At least now I'll have some company when we go to the bathroom together, lol! :)

Speaking of transitions, TODAY was another big day!! Emma's always been a great sleeper, but lately naps were becoming a chore. I had taken off the front rail of her crib a few months ago and she had absolutely no interest in that. So it was a little surprise to me that she said three times this week to "make my bed little again". I wasn't entirely sure if she knew what that meant, but today at naptime I spontaneously took off the front rail and she hopped right in, as if it were an overdue lover's reunion. I threw in the princess pillowcase that cousin Morgan passed down to her this week, read a few books, told a few stories (our usual ritual), kissed her goodnight and walked out. I waited. And waited. I was expecting the thud, and the footsteps and the little buck-toothed grin at the door when she turned the handle. 1 minute went by. I couldn't believe it. Another minute went by. Surely by now I would have heard stirring. I waited another 5 minutes and all I heard was the clanking of her paci's together. After 10 minutes I bravely opened the door and O. M. G. My child is asleep, in her bed, alone, with no rail. Is it supposed to be this easy?!?! Granted, it's only day 1, but here's the proof:



Now....lest I get all cocky on you, I'm already WELL aware that the final transition will be the hardest. It will be the true test of my fortitude: The Paci. Girlfriend doesn't leave home without it, and for such an active child, it's one of the few things that physiologically slows her down. It goes in the mouth, and the eyes roll back and her whole body goes limp. That's how powerful it is. I have not made up my mind about when this iron standoff will take place. I'm certainly not ready yet. Sure, it's annoying to have to round up all 25 glow-in-the-dark silicone nubs before bedtime, and in the car, and when she goes for a bike ride, or to the playground, etc etc. But it soothes her, and that soothes me. I can't be lucky 3 times in a row to have her miraculously give it up on her own, but maybe a gradual phase out some time in the fall (coinciding with her first visit to the dentist). We'll see....for now I'm just relishing (and slightly mourning) how much my little big girl is growing up.

lollipops & bubbles

she was in such a good mood yesterday. Wanted pictures taken of her and the outfit she picked out "all by myself!" We started inside, enjoying a lollipop she got as a favor from Cailin's birthday party.

Then, we had a little patch of sunshine, and went outside to blow bubbles


She tried SO HARD to blow her own bubbles. She just figured, the harder she tried, the bigger the bubbles. At one point, she was practically spitting. But when it did work, and a little bubble popped out, she was so excited!

...and play with our neighbor Ella and her dog Sasha.

And hands down, my new favorite picture of her. Ever. Yes, it's huge. That's how she is to me. :)

a two-fer!

Two blog posts in one day!! I think I'm finally back on the wagon. The snow is melting, the sun is finally coming out, spring is around the corner and just this week, completed project #5 out of the 18,274 we have set out to accomplish. We have new lighting on the main floor now, and every little bit of change inspires me.

I hadn't picked up my camera in a verrrrry long time before this week. A couple snaps here and there, but my November 2009 folder is completely empty of family pictures. So sad. I was taking so many client pictures, that I got burnt out. December has a few, but not my usual plethora. January and February are sporadic. A couple here and there, but they didn't feel exciting to me, so I just kept putting off any real blogging. Throw in a heck of a lot of snow, the stomach bug, more house projects and the daily grind that saps your energy, and the last thing I want to do at 8pm is use my brain.

Well I think I've found my mojo again. :) And just in time! I'm trying out some new editing styles, and using more storyboards that seem to be trendy in photography these days.

On Tuesday, we went to the library (at emma's request) and were there right when it opened. We found a few books to read, had a snack and found out that Dr. Seuss story time was about to start. The older, grumpy librarian looked over her glasses at Emma and informed me that this particular class was for 3 years and up and I just said thank you and we grabbed our ticket. She had no idea! Emma loved it, and sat through the class, participating in every activity.

we're baaaack

From 4.5 awesome days in Park City, Utah!! The trip was a blast and Emma was a fantastic traveler. For going that far away, for such a short trip (and a 2 hr time difference), she really held her own. There were fifteen of us staying at the condo too!! Girlfriend is now a bona fide 'party girl'.

I didn't take my SLR camera with me, but we got some wicked good videos on our point-and-shoot. Did I mention Emma was awesome? She went ice skating, snowmobiling, hot-tubbing, bus taking and overall enjoyed everything we threw at her. What memories we'll have of this trip!

I think I was the luckiest one of all, because I did all the skiing!! Emma was too young for ski school - they don't start until 3.5 years. Roger had a bad back from shoveling our way out of Snowmageddon 2010 AND a round trip drive to Miami. He and Emma hung out while mama learned to carve her way down Park City Mountain, thanks to the olympic training she received, courtesy of one Katie Fabian. You rock, girl!!

Here are a few EKH digital shorts:

In this video, Emma is proudly displaying her pink butterfly goggles. She wore these EVERYWHERE. It was the cutest thing ever. The first thing she asked for when she woke up in the morning was, "goggles!" followed by "hot tub!" Roger had planned on taking her on the Alpine Sled - a gravity-assisted roller coaster. After psyching her up and waiting for it to start, the cautious employees made the call that there was too much snow to operate. She looks so bummed, doesn't she?!




Since the Alpine Sled was a bust, Roger took her over to the ice skating rink. She rocked it!! She even helped her new friend Dani take a lap around the rink with a walker. Dani was younger than Emma, but Emma was trying her best to help Dani by putting her arm around her back. After the video, Dani got sad/frustrated, which you'll hear about in the next video.




This video makes my heart just BURST. I cry every time I see this video. My little girl is ice skating!!! All by herself!! I can't stand it. I am so unbelievably proud of her. She is willing to try anything. I would never have pushed her to do anything she didn't want to, because I can completely respect a healthy dose of fear. She didn't bat an eye. In fact, she asked to do it. I just adore her adventurousness and confidence. I hope I can continue to encourage and empower her to try new things and feel strong and independent. Ok, I took my mommy goggles off now. :)




A big group of us went on a 2 hour snowmobiling tour. It was sooo much fun. Emma was pumped the whole ride over and couldn't wait to take off. Every time we stopped, she'd say, "more!"




Shout out to our peeps!




Always Miss Independent, Emma wanted to work the throttle. BY. HER. SELF. :)




She had sooooo much fun that she decided a quick nap was in order. The guide even warned me it could happen, but I thought, "Oh no. Not my kid. Never happen." Well, here's proof:




Finally, nothing like ending an adventure packed day with a people packed hot tub. She would have stayed in here allll night long if we'd let her.



More pics to come! But lots of great highlights! I'm so excited for next season so we can get her on some skiis. :)

snowed in

I was changing the sheets in the guest bedroom when, naturally, my little friend came in to see what I was doing. I threw her into the pile of pillows and all of a sudden, four days of being cooped up inside during a snowstorm came bursting out.

We broke all the rules during the snowstorm of 2010. Stayed in our jammies all day, ate breakfast for dinner and dinner for breakfast. We watched more tv than usual (including mama!) and were allowed to jump on the bed.

I'd say this monkey had a great time!

Last week, Roger and I both looked at Emma's static-y, wispy baby hair that had grown into about 5 different layers, all of different quality, and most of it landing in her eyes. I had never cut her hair, and part of me was so reluctant to it, for fear of losing her precious, trademark curls. But it truly was time. The ends were getting matted and it just wasn't doing her beautiful face justice.

So I took her to the 'cartoon cuts' place in the mall. I wasn't sure how she'd do since having her hair touched is one of the few things she really gets grumpy about. But luckily for her, they had non-stop Dora videos! Our hairdresser showed me how much she thought we need to cut off, and I almost had a heart attack. We girls are so attached to hair! But she promised me she'd leave the top long and that it would look MUCH healthier. I'm so glad we did it and she was so right! Her hair looks amazing, the curls are still there, and now they're bouncy and shiny and Emma loves telling people she got her hair cut!

Of course, the wooden heart necklace, the new polka dot bow and the cup of Maggie Moo's helped a little too. :)

All done!! Beautiful!! :)

new header!

I mean honestly, it was time. We haven't lived in San Diego for over 6 months now - a detail I prefer not to think about right now!)

A huge shout out to my designer friend Sara for making us look spiffy! :)

emma's hair in review: 2009

January - blowing bubbles with dada, outside in our San Diego backyard.


February - happy valentine's day!


March - playing on Black Walnut, with our friends Mei-lin and Keili!


April - snack time with dada


May - a snarky face. Out front, waving to our neighbors (Hi Chris & Jean!)



June

July - Basin Harbor, Vermont. Opa's 60th birthday weekend celebration!


August - Lake Elkhorn, Maryland



September - 2nd birthday!


October - Tampa, Florida. Modeling her dress from Pete & Bonita!


November - my *only* picture of her from the entire month, and I didn't even take it. I was sooooo busy that month!


December - Xmas time!

conversations with a 2.25 year old

Emma: (walks into the kitchen after playing in the playroom)

"So. What's going on?" (no really, she said it just like that)

me: "Just putting the dishes away. Are you having fun playing with your dolls?"

Emma: "Yeah, but I need to do something."

--- silence -----

Emma: "Here you go, mom" (hands me her freshly-picked booger, and skips back to playing)



Aaaaah, the joys of two year old milestones :)