Holly's Changing View of the World

One of the toys Holly got for Christmas was a REAL Tonka truck. Not one of those hokey plastic ones that will break, but a tried and true metal one! She loves to do two things with the truck. One of them is to use it as a seat and sit in the "dump" part of it, although it almost always dumps her out when she does that! The other thing she likes to do is push stuff around in it. This is what girls do with a dump truck - fill it up with purses and push it around looking for "monies" to put in the purses. What you can't see is that her cell phone, keys, money, and other crazy things are in her purse ready to go at a moment's notice!
One of the most thoughtful gifts that Holly got was a handmade doll from one of Nana's quilting friends. It is just adorable and Holly loves to play tea party with her and help her drink milk. Holly hasn't gotten attached to one specific doll yet, but when she does, I hope its this one!

Holly was "helping" J. do a friend's hair at the basketball game the other night. When she was done, J. put Holly's hair up in a clip. I'm not sure any almost-two-year-old has a right to have this much hair, do you? That's a lot of hair to be able to twist up and put into a clip like that!

And now for the meaning of the title of this post. This morning when I put Holly in the car to go to daycare she said "ouch" and "hurt." When I asked her what hurt, she said "leg." I looked down at her legs, and sure enough, they were getting a bit scrunched up against the back seat when I had put her in her carseat. So, this afternoon before I went to pick her up, I had to re-read the instruction manual about umpteen times and finally put the carseat in the forward facing position. Yes, I know, that is shocking to most of you! She's 22 months old and was still in a rear-facing car seat! I thought for a minute about moving her to forward facing at about 15 months, but was glad that I didn't when I took her for her 18 month checkup and she was not even 22 pounds. I'll be very interested to see what she weighs when I take her for her 2 year checkup at the beginning of April.

Anyway, she was very excited to be able to swing her legs, kick the back of the seat and annoy Van, and look out the window at what is coming and not what has already gone by. Now, I just have to get one of those little mirrors that I can see her without having to turn around.

Turning her carseat to front facing also made me realize that I need to clean the back seat of the car more often! There were an awful lot of cheez-its and french fries wedged between the seat cushions of the car!

Saturday, we are off to Van's third ice skating lesson and Chinese New Year! I hope I remember to get some good family pictures during the festivities.

Back into the Swing of Things

The New Year always brings lots of changes, both expected and unexpected. We rang in the New Year around here with a big change for Holly. I knew the night we got home from Christmas break was going to be a long, trying one. Holly had been sleeping with me some of the time, had been spoiled rotten, and had been getting all the attention for two weeks.

I put her to bed the first evening and she went down just fine. She woke up in the middle of the night, I let her cry for a little bit, and then all of the sudden (and I mean ABRUPTLY!), it stopped. I was perplexed as to why, because Holly doesn't just decide to plop down and go to sleep without a little fuss. I was just crawling out of my nice, warm bed to go see what was wrong, when in trotted Holly saying "Mom! Mom!" in the most pleased manner ever. In my mind, I was thinking "What the heck is she doing out of bed?!!!" and how did she get out? I took her back to her room, rocked her for a bit, then put her back to bed. She woke up one more time during the night, and proceeded to get out of bed and come into my room.

So, the sad news in this new year is that I had to move Holly from crib to toddler bed. I was hoping that we could wait until she was closer to three instead of not quite two. Her new big girl bed does look cute though.

And here is the little angel taking her first nap in her crib. When she woke up, she even yelled at me to come get her and just barely had her toes over the edge of the bed, like she wasn't sure if it was ok to get out by herself. That has changed now, and she hops right out, but at least I have a gate at her door so she can't go get into mischief during the night!

Van gave Holly a Hokey Pokey Elmo for Christmas. She was scared to death of him for the first few days. I guess she didn't think Elmo was actually supposed to talk and dance. She has gotten over that fear, and now thinks that doing the hokey pokey with Elmo is super cool! She does it a lot. Here is a picture of her "turning it all about" with Elmo.

Yesterday, Van had her second ice skating lesson. She improved a lot! She spent far less time falling, although still a fair amount. Afterward, we went to the mall for lunch and to let Holly run off some energy at the play area. She really loves to go down the slide. Here she is climbing up the steps, but was kind enough to stop and smile at me while she waited for the little girl in front of her.

And then going down the slide!
She did try to take off out of the play area once after she saw another girl leave and go into the store next door. Actually, some other lady had to come over and tell the mom of that girl that her daughter had left and where she went, because the mom was just looking at a magazine. When Holly tried that, she and I had a little talk about staying inside and that she couldn't leave without her Mama!

Recently, Holly has been smiling on command. Here she is showing off her pearly whites for me. Her real smile and her posed smile are so different, but the posed one cracks me up!After rearranging the family room, Holly has a lot more room to play. She likes to sit on the coffee table to play. Whatever makes her happy, I guess! Here she is making her little girl climb up the barn after visiting all the animals inside. The little girl had quite a conversation with the horse and the cow before getting up on the roof of the barn.
Holly must have thought something was funny about this! She laughed and laughed that her little girl was up there. I often find myself wondering what is going on inside that little brain of hers!
Anyway, things are back to our usual routine and the little miss is as fun and happy as ever!

Van's Christmas Present

Earlier this winter, my family went to a Spokane Chiefs hockey game. As we were watching, Van mentioned to my dad that she wanted to learn how to ice skate while she is in the United States. I figured that there is no time like the present, so I signed her up for ice skating lessons at Eagles Ice Arena in Spokane as her Christmas present! She will have five lessons on Saturdays throughout the month of January. Her first lesson was on the 3rd and here is a little snapshot of her first time on ice.

It looked like Van and maybe one other student had an instructor to themselves, while LOTS of other kids shared the various other instructors that were there. When she asked why all the little kids who have never skated were better than her, I tried to explain to Van that little kids are fearless, lower to the ground when they fall, and have a lower center of gravity. Plus, they've grown up around ice and snow in the Pacific Northwest, and not in the tropics of Vietnam. I'm not sure how much that helped, but it is the truth!

Van is in the center here.

Ouch! Just one of many falls that occurred during the lesson. I kept telling her afterward that it would get easier and she would fall less often. I'm not sure she believed me!Always a smart idea to follow the side of the rink and have something to hang on to if you need to! Plus, all those little speed demons that were zipping around the rink aren't as likely to plow into you.

Even though this was only her first lesson and she took quite a few tumbles on the ice, Van said it was really fun and that she was looking forward to her lesson next week. I forgot to mention that she would probably be sore from skating the following day, but did remember to give her some ibuprofen today when she said her butt and hip hurt! I think she will be amazed at how quickly she improves, though.

With her lessons, she also got a card for 4 free public skates at the ice arena and she got 4 tickets to skate at the Riverfront Park Ice Palace for Christmas. Its an outdoor rink in downtown Spokane at the site of the 1974 Expo center.She said that she wants to take Jenna because they would both have a great time! I'll be sure to post some pictures of her from her last lesson later on so you all can see how much better she gets. She's gonna have lots of great stories to tell when she goes home!

A Merry Christmas to All!

I know that this post is sooo late! But Christmas time just sucks you in and doesn't let ya go until well after the New Year! I'm truly impressed with everyone who actually got posts done while they had family around or doing all the crazy things that the holiday season entails.

When we got to my parents for the holidays, they had everything decorated beautifully. Holly especially loved the full sized nutcracker that was holding a little nutcracker in his hand. She wasn't totally loving when the large nutcracker opened his mouth for her, but she liked opening the little one's mouth and sticking her finger in it. A very fascinating concept for a little bugger like her!

In case you haven't been watching the news, its been snowing in the northwest! A LOT!!! Every time the news said it was going to snow, my parents would get another foot at their house. They are definitely in a snow belt where they live. My dad has been using the neighbor's tractor to plow the neighborhood after he (the neighbor) fell off his roof when he was shoveling the snow off and fractured his hip. :( We hope he has a speedy recovery and is up and around soon.

Holly loved to watch Pop Pop plow with the tractor or use the snow blower. She would stand on the bench at the window and watch as he went by.

I can't remember if I put a picture in of Holly from Christmas Eve when we were on our way to church, so if I didn't, here it is! She looks so adorable in her pretty dress and "fur" coat. Her favorite part of the outfit is her sparkly shoes, though! They are a smidge too big and fall off occasionally. When they do, she says "Uh-Oh" and wants them back on immediately.

Holly must have been a good girl this year, because Clause (Santa Clause, that is) showed up at Nana & Pop Pop's house and delivered big time! Holly got a dollhouse with both a Caucasian family and an Asian family. I think I'm going to ask a couple friends if I can use their addresses and get a Hispanic and African American family sent to me, too. Might as well have a well rounded, large family! It was interesting to watch Holly play with her dollhouse. If you asked her which doll was Mama, she picked up the blond adult lady. If you asked who Holly was, she picked up the Asian baby. If you asked who Van was, she picked up the Asian adult lady. Smart girl!

My brother and his wife got Holly her first tricycle! Its super cute, but WAY too big yet. They lowered the seat as far as possible and put blocks on the pedals, and Holly still can't make it go by herself. She loved to be pushed around the house by anyone who she could sucker into that. She also liked to sit on the top step and use the seat as a table. She's a little daredevil on it and is going to scare the crap out of me when she actually can make her tricycle go!

All those presents in the picture are hers, too, btw! She made out like a bandit. It took Holly two days to actually open all her presents. We thought we would get up early and open some, then open more when the rest of the family got there. Unfortunately, it snowed Christmas Eve and Pops had to snow blow in the morning so that everyone would be able to get to the house! Then, it was lunch & nap time, so Holly didn't even get started until well into the 2 o'clock pm hour! Here she is opening a Dora dish set. (Mark, if you are reading, your REALLY need to get Nick to start producing Kai Lan toys...)

One of the biggest hits that Santa brought was the shopping cart. Holly has spent hours playing with it and trucking around Nana's house with all her loot in it. Its really funny to watch her. She's in her "hoarding" phase and puts the strangest things in the cart to push around!
My mom spent the last couple of months making Van a quilt for Christmas. Since green is Van's favorite color, Nana made the quilt mostly green, with different colored leaves on it. It turned out beautifully and Van absolutely loves it! She thinks its so amazing that we can make a quilt out of a bunch of different fabrics like that. Here she is cuddled up in the chair with her quilt.

Last year, my mom and I took pictures of Holly in a little sleigh at Christmas time. It was her first Christmas and she was absolutely so precious standing there in the sleigh. We vowed that every year we would take pictures of Holly in the sleigh, at least until she gets too big to be in it. Then, maybe she'll have to be next to it or something. Here is last year's picture.

And here is the best of this year's pictures. Its so amazing to see how much she has grown and matured in just one year. Oh so beautiful!

We had an absolutely fabulous time at my parents, but all good things must come to an end. As we were leaving, Van said two things. A) She didn't want to leave and go back to school, and B) when were we going to come back again? Obviously, she loves our family as much as we love her! We talked a lot about how much we will all miss each other when her school year is over and she goes home. Of course, she is always welcome to spend her holidays with us when she comes back to America for college, and we will welcome her with open arms!