just us.

the last Wednesday

Today is the last Wednesday (for a while) that Keira will be home with me.

Starting next week, she'll be going 4 days to preschool rather than just 2.  She wasn't transitioning very well (or as soon as I had hoped) going only 2 days, and with schedule changes at work coming up fairly soon for me, Mike and I decided it was time.

Besides, there will come a day that she will be in school all week, so might as well get used to it now.

 While I'm getting used to have some time to myself to run errands or put-put around the house, I still miss not having her around.  I'll admit there are days where she is home with me and I wish she was at school, but my girl is growing up and I feel like I'm going to miss out on something.

(I hear some heavy footsteps upstairs.  She is probably up to something..)

I thought about going out and doing something special with her today, but seeing as though we are both still in our pajamas, we may just stay home.

Preschool is doing some wonderful things for and in her.

She is singing a lot more, and singing new songs at that.  There is a lot more imaginative play going on, and she has since learned how to use scissors (they cut magazines at school).  She has added a lot of new words to her vocabulary (I just heard her say tyrannosaurus rex) and talks about her friends at school too (for a whole week, she was telling us how one little girl lost her paci at school).  There are days where she doesn't eat OR nap, and will come home starving and cranky, but the teacher says she seems to enjoy herself anyway.

Well, enough time sitting here blogging.  Off to spend some quality time with the little booger.

I mean, the little princess :)

it's a birthday thing

We celebrated a milestone birthday for Mike yesterday..his 35th!!  And in true Lieu style, we started it off the right way...with a trip to urgent care.

 

(Keira was excited to bring home a special picture to her daddy for his birthday :) )

I took Keira to urgent care first thing Saturday morning, to have her wrist checked out.  Friday afternoon, we went shopping for Mike's birthday gift and I was holding her hand in the parking lot.  Keira was in the middle of a "I want a ball, a tinkerbell ball" tantrum and started pulling herself in the opposite direction while I'll held steady.  Long story short, she wasn't using her left arm much the rest of the day and would complain anytime she had to.  Per the after-hours nurse, we waited until morning to see if the situation would change and because it was more of the same, to urgent care we went.  Turns out her wrist was fine, but what she suffered was a dislocated elbow (otherwise known as nursemaid's elbow) and after a quick manipulation, it was popped back into place.  Thankfully, we spent only an hour and a half between triage, x-rays and examination and were home in time to have lunch with Mike.  She was bouncing around, flailing her arms within an hour after we left the doctor.  We had hoped to keep the whole situation under wraps, but when you have a 2-year old with no filter on her mouth, that doesn't happen.

Needless to say, we were able to have an awesome fiesta to celebrate Mike's 35th birthday.

 

 

I hired a taco lady (Josefina was her name) to come, and it was a hit.  It was our first time doing so, and she stayed for 3 hours serving up yummy street-style tacos.  The smell of the meat cooking was enough to make my tummy growl, even though I had eaten lunch earlier.  Mike and I decided later on that it was nice not having to prep and cook the food for a party and it allowed us to enjoy ourselves and have a good time.

 

We also had beer (Pacifico and Corona) and margaritas (did you know they have margarita mix with the alcohol already in it?  Takes out the guess work and is so easy!!) and celebrated with an Oreo ice cream cake (the birthday boy's favorite).

(Click here for more pictures from the party.)

Mike sends a big thank you to all that made it out to celebrate with him.  We are thankful for our family and friends, and look forward to many more years of celebration!

today's feeling: content

while in the busyness of making tonight's dinner and getting the dishes washed, a sense of contentment came over me.

I am happy with where my life is right now.  Not that I was unhappy before this, but things just felt like they are where they should be.

 

Keira: for the first time ever, she went pee-pee in the potty last night. I sat her on her Dora potty seat, like I've done many times before, but this time she actually made magic happen.  And this morning, she ate cereal with milk for the first time.  And the preschool drop-off went better than usual.  She walked to her classroom (rather than being carried in), wasn't crying like she usually does when we went in, and managed to let me leave her with just a look of "I'm going to cry some more" on her face.  She also learned how to scoop the water, climb out of the pool, and went under the water too this weekend at swimming lesson #2.  Baby steps!

Mike: He'll be turning the big 3-5 this weekend, and I'm throwing him a little fiesta at home.  He's been working tirelessly at getting our condo ready and rented out...which lucky for us, happened very quickly.  The previous renters moved out Saturday and the new ones moved in Sunday.

 

Neighbors: we are blessed with having really nice neighbors.  One of them is celebrating Ramadan right now, and brought us some Ramadan inspired Banana and Dates Bread.

Home: I made dinner for tonight using some stubby carrots and zucchini from our garden.  And the other night, I used our batch of tomatoes to make tomato soup (adapted from this recipe) and grilled cheese sandwiches.

Work: there are days were I could do without it, but there are days that it is my break from home.  I'm just thankful that we both have jobs that aren't so bad and help us maintain the life we live.

Me: Overall, I feel like I'm finally getting into my groove.  I'm getting into a rhythm at home, whether its getting the laundry done, or putting the clean dishes away every morning, or picking up around the house.  At work, I've been doing a lot of purging, mainly because we have a remodel coming up fairly soon.  I'm starting to make use of the time I have while Keira is at school, whether its to do chores or just have some time for myself.

Life is in a good place right now.  And that makes me feel good all around.

from one kid to the next

ah, a sleeping child.

The bed frame that Keira is sleeping on used to be mine when I was a kid.  My brother had a matching one, and if stacked on top of each other, would be bunkbeds.

I still remember the time my brother and I were bunking together, with me on the top bunk, and a pillow fell on top of a lamp below.  I can still see the round burn mark on the pillowcase, all because I didn't see the rush in picking it up.  oops.

I can still picture the Disneyland bumper sticker that used to adorn the footboard and my dad removed when I went to college.  You can't, after all, be taken seriously in college with Mickey on your bed.

I've slept on this bed for as long as I can remember, and it followed me to my first college apartment and then pharmacy school.  It consists of just 7 pieces (two side rails, the headboard and footboard and 3 wood planks that hold up the mattress) and requires absolutely no screws to assemble.  It's so easy to put together that one person can do it.  I think it came from Scandanavian Designs, a furniture store that made really good quality furniture and my parents were fans of.

A piece of my own childhood is now a part of Keira's.  Nice.

hmm...

we have a 2.5 year old in the house:

 
who has new Princess sheets to sleep on and is now sleeping on a twin mattress OFF the ground:

 
and who had her first official swimming lesson yesterday:

 
 
as for the parental units, we enjoyed dinner at a new crawfish place in Irvine:

 
I'm not usually one to eat crawfish, mainly because it takes so much work to eat a small piece of meat.  But this night, I totally held my own (and surprised both Mike and myself in the process!)  I ate a majority of the pound of shrimp and maybe a 1/2 pound or so of crawfish.  Can't forget the order of garlic fries too.

We decided to walk off our dinner the usual way...at Target.  Well, Mike spotted a food truck in the parking lot of an apartment complex across the street:

 
so, the tub o' lard in me decided it was time to eat again.

I ordered their combo #1: 3 tacos and a drink.  You get to choose the meat for the taco, so I opted for 2 short rib and 1 spicy pork.  I only ended up eating one, because...duh!...I was still pretty full from dinner.

our garden as been doing pretty good, and we were able to pick our very first tomato off the vine:

 

I was able to pick two more yesterday, and we are up to our knees in cherry tomatoes too.

so that's it for us for right now.  Our vacation to Oahu is all booked for October and we can't wait!  The last time we were in Hawaii was for our babymoon in August 2008, so this will be Keira's first time there...well, outside the womb at least :)

August already?!

our August family picture.  I was hell-bent on taking it on the 1st, even if it meant being fresh out of bed for two of us.

I bought Keira some watercolor paints so she can get her artsy fartsy game on.  I used a baking sheet to hold everything, especially the bit of water she needed for the paint (got the idea from Jo). It makes moving her supplies from one place to another really easy too.

I went for a haircut last week (my second of the year...a record for me!), and although its a bit shorter than I had intended, it's starting to grow on me.  I've gotten quite a few compliments on it, so the Asian mom haircut might be here to stay.

love this picture of Keira and her older cousins.  Brushing her teeth is usually a battle between parents and kid, but if your cousins are doing it, then its fun!

Keira was all about her papa this morning.  He was leaving to do field work in Vicotorville for a few days, and she didn't want to leave his side.  She also didn't want to go to school today, but there was no way I was going to let my money go down the drain.  I plan on picking her up in a bit and doing something special with her since I'm home today.

that's about it.  I was able to change up my schedule a bit this week to account for Mike being away, so I'm looking forward to spending the next few nights with my girl :)