Happy "Trimpattins" Day!

Happy Trimpattins Day....  Happy Simpattrips Day... Stimpackits... oh, just watch the video!

 

 

Wordless Wednesday: Happy Hallowe'en

The Stall

Well friends, it was always inevitable, but I still can't believe it's happening: my baby is leaving babyhood behind and becoming a real kid.  As if her burgeoning independence and repetitions of the mantras, "I a big girl" and "I do it myself" weren't proof enough, she is becoming more and more proficient at that most ubiquitous of childhood accomplishments, the bedtime stall.  I wouldn't say that she has become "master of the stall"or even reached "expert level" just yet - she still hasn't figured out a few of the more manipulative techniques that I remember employing in my own youth - but she would certainly fall solidly into the "apprentice" category.

One way in which she is able to delay her bedtime by several minutes is to request additional verses of her bedtime song (which we totally stole from Addie and her family, by the way).  Usually we sing it to all the friends she has seen that day, and often her grandparents get a shout-out.  And of course there is the obligatory verse each for Mommy and Daddy.  But lately she has figured out she can sing this song to pretty much any person or object on earth.  When I see her eyes starting to cast around her bedroom looking for items to sing to, I know it's time to pack it in and get the kid into her crib before we name every. single. object. in. the. universe.

Here's a small sampling of the things she deems worthy of their own special verse of the Night-Night Song:

Verse 1: Picures

Verse 2: Shirt

Verse 3: Firetruck

Practicing her latest stall technique in the car.

(Singing by Lilah, video by Mommy, driving by Daddy)

What is your kid's go-to stall technique?  I'd love to hear all about it so I can see it coming and nip it in the bud!

Linking up with:

Quirks.

I know everyone thinks their kid is the cutest, funniest, smartest little being there ever was...

But that doesn't stop me from finding everything (okay, scratch that - most things) Lilah does hilarious and unbelievably adorable.  Two is such a funny age.  Even the tantrums are comical.

(Sometimes.)

Here are just a few of the  irresistibly amusing things Lilah has been doing lately:

"Making a house." Apparently this involves sequestering herself in the remotest little nook she can find in our tiny condo and surrounding herself with toys or other random junk.  Perhaps this is how they keep the kids entertained at daycare?  I'm not sure, but this has been an obsession of hers for quite some time now.


Lilah "in the house," caring for her naked baby.

 If this is what her house looks like, then I really am concerned about her future as a hoarder.  This is "Buried Alive" material, people!

Developing a strange fascination with balloons.  She is half terrified, half mesmerized.  The terror part wins out when it comes to touching balloons or having them anywhere near her person. We're still hearing about the Elmo balloons from her birthday, but God forbid anyone should try to actually give her a balloon or even touch one in front of her - that sends her shrieking and running in sheer horror.  I kid you not.  I know I shouldn't be amused by my child's phobias, but I have to bite my lip to keep from laughing when I see the look on her face.

Singing "Happy Birpay To You Lilah." At the most random times.  And at top volume.

Answering questions in a very confusing manner.  This is a sample from a conversation we had recently:

Me: "Lilah, do you want to go outside?"
Lilah: "No."
Me: "You don't want to go outside?"
Lilah: "Yes."
Me: "You do want to go outside?"
Lilah: "No."
Me: "You don't want to go outside?"
Lilah: "Yeah."
(And so on and so forth, until I finally figure out what she means.)

Claiming everything as her own.  I realize this is not particularly unique, given that she is a toddler.  But Lilah being Lilah, she takes her possession obsession to a whole new level.  It's not just "My turn" and "No, my do it," which are entirely de rigeur with the two-year-old set.  It has escalated to possession of people ("No, my Uncle Jon!") and even snippets of conversation.  Yesterday, as we were driving in the car, the Hubs and I were talking in the front seat and I trailed off a sentence with, "...when we go in August."  A small voiced piped up from the backseat, "No, my go in August!"


A "My do it!" moment

  Stripping down to her birthday suit at every opportunity. She'll say, "Get naked?" and start clawing at her clothes until we help her take them off. Once the clothes are off, she figures the diaper is fair game, and she can get that one off by herself, so we need to have the potty nearby at all times. Of course, another one of her "quirks" seems to be sitting on the potty for half an hour only to pee on the floor the moment she stands up! She prefers her dollies naked too (see photo above).

Running around the house topless making strange noises while holding my bra, which she must have fished out of a nearby laundry basket:

(Okay, so it was really just the one time, but still.  Quirky.)

But then again, maybe I'm being too hard on the poor kid.  It's really not her fault she's so weird.  I mean, look where she came from:

Lilah Got Da Blues

On Wednesday I showed you sickeningly cute photos of Lilah's 2nd birthday.  And now I'm going to up the ante on this whole Mommy blogging thing and subject you to a video of her first music recital:

The audience participation element really enhances the performance, don't you think? 

(Sidenote: if a two-year-old ever offers you a turn on her harmonica, you may want to accept the offer only if you are directly related to said two-year-old.  And then prepare for a saliva bath.  Consider yourself warned.)

Special thanks to Theo (and his parents) for this totally inspired birthday gift!

Jump!

Here's a video of Lilah and her friend Oscar "winding down" before bedtime. 

I think this would do House of Pain proud, don't you?

Wednesday of Few Words: Evolution of a Friendship

I like photos.  And I like music.  I especially like photos set to music.  Yep, I loves me a good slide show. Creating slide shows is one of my favourite things to do with the millions of photos I take.  If I could, I would spend my days making slide shows of all of the momentous occasions of our life.  You know, birthday parties, weekend getaways, play dates, tooth extractions, trips to the gynecologist, that sort of thing.  Unfortunately (fortunately?), I don't have that kind of time on my hands, so I am restricted to only creating a few each year.

I knew when Lilah's best-friend-in-the-whole-wide-world's birthday was coming up that I wanted to give her family a DVD that showed the evolution of our girls' friendship.  Lilah has lots of friends, but this little girl holds a very special place in her heart, and the Hubs and I have built a wonderful friendship with her parents.  I had an inkling that they might, like me, prove to be total suckers for a good slideshow, so I pulled out all the stops and preyed on the heightened sentimentality that parents typically feel around their children's birthdays.  Yep, I had them bawling into their birthday cake leftovers.  If I'm going to be a total cheeseball, I'm taking everyone around me down too.  'Cause I'm just a good friend like that.

Photos by Amanda and The Hubs

Music by Brandi Carlisle

More Lilahisms

• "Beak up" - wake up (as in, "Sit up, Mommy, quit lazing around, I want you to play with me!")
• "Bap" - lap (as in, "I want to sit on your")
• "Nahnaht Mommy, I seena mohning" - Night-night Mommy, I'll see you in the morning (from the goodnight song we sing every night before bed)
• "Shawsh" - wash (as in, "I want to play with the soap, splash around in the sink, spray water everywhere, and then you can clean up my mess for me.")
• "Beego" - mango (as in, I want to eat some)
• "Lilah okay!" - I'm okay (as in, I just tripped over my own feet and smacked my face on the cement, but I'm okay)
• "No chay buhbum" - No change bum-bum (as in, under NO circumstances are you to tear me away from my ever-so-enthralling play for something as mundane as a diaper change.  Puh-lease!)
• "Lilah ayee toe" - Lilah owie toe (as in, I cut my toe two weeks ao and I'm still talking about it. In fact, it's my current favourite topic of conversation)
• "Fofie" - Sophie (as in, one of our cats)
• "See-see" - Cereal (as in, Raisin Bran, the only cereal she will eat)
• "No my, know my ADD, no my, know my ADD" - Now I know my ABCs, Next time won't you sing with me (As in the alphabet song, with a few creative amendments)

Lilah sings her ABCs

Blueberries: Then and Now

Lilah's love affair with frozen blueberries continues.  Last April I posted this video titled Blueberries Unplugged.

Well, here's the remix, a year later:

So many changes: longer hair, more coordinated movements, (marginally) less mess.  The biggest difference to me, is that she is purposefully going for the laughs.  She's not a baby anymore, and she knows how to work a room.  It's nice to know that amidst all these changes, some things always stay the same.  Lilah's love of the blueberry endures.

Wordless Wednesday: My Little Bunny

This little bunny loves carrots!

(Truth be told, she hasn't eaten them this well since, but I'll take it!)

Gun Show

No, we do not condone the use or ownership of firearms.  But that's what the Hubs likes to call it when he flexes his manly pipes, so this is what he has been teaching our daughter:

(Okay, I'll admit it, I helped.)

Wednesday of Few Words

She could have her own daycare.  She'd be the Nap Master (or a Napzi, like me):

Except I think sleeping on the job would be frowned upon. 

As would smothering the babies by putting blankets over their faces.  Meh, minor details!

2010 Reflections and Slideshow

2010 was a pretty awesome year for us Lilahbility folk.  We went to Maui for a friend's wedding in January, welcomed the world into our beautiful city for the Winter Olympics in February, watched Lilah take her first steps in February, celebrated our first Mother's Day and Father's Day as parents in May and June, threw Lilah a big first birthday bash in July, met up with family and friends in Ontario in August, got Lilah settled into daycare and settled myself back into the work routine in the late summer and early fall, took a long weekend family trip to Whistler in November, and worked on creating our own holiday traditions in December.  There were plenty of ups and downs, new teeth, runny noses, first tastes of cake and ice cream, and more than a few family dance parties.  We've watched her go from a worm/beached whale/commando crawl to a proper crawl to cruising furniture to wobbly steps to outright running, and from a couple of gestures and signs to her first spoken word to two-word combinations and carrying a vaguely recognizable tune.  Evolution in the microcosm.  And when you stop and think about it, all you can do is feel blessed to have been a spectator to it all.  And pleased that you managed to capture most of the moments on camera.

So, without further ado, here is a slide show of some of my favourite Lilahbility moments of 2010, set to "Dog Days Are Over" - the Glee Cast version, because I like it more than the original.*  I hope you'll enjoy it even a fraction as much as I do!



*And because I am obsessed with Glee.  I am also obsessed with watching this slide show over and over again, to see if I can do it just once without getting a lump in my throat and tears in my eyes. So far, no luck.

Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Lilah

This is probably completely boring to anyone who isn't me or the Hubs, but I finally caught Lilah singing on video.  It sounds vaguely like "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" to me.  Or "Baa, Baa, Black Sheep."  Or "ABC's." Take your pick.  To you, it may sound like none of the above, but of course I'm biased so I think my child is the next Charlotte Church.  Well, not really, I'm a bit more realistic than that.  But if she develops the ability to carry a tune and make it halfway recognizable, she will have done me very proud and will, in my estimation, be more musical than 75% of the North American population*. 

*Statistic pulled out of thin air and may be slightly skewed by the viewing of too many seasons of American Idol and Canadian Idol.  But still.

Wordless Wednesday: Breakfast Antics

Clearly she gets her sense of humour from her daddy!

Besties

A spontaneous moment of BFF love caught on video

on a recent outing to Science World.

(Sorta) Wordless Wednesday

A rare moment of calm had me thinking I should let Lilah "read" my

(embarassingly trashy) magazines more often.

But the aftermath reminded me why I don't!

*In my defense, this particular magazine was purchased for the plane ride back from Ontario.

Multi-tasking Baby

Walking and spitting, spitting and walking... two of Lilah's favourite activities of the moment.

In this video, my amazing baby does both... simultaneously! Now that, ladies and gentlemen, is pure talent.