Pretend City

In my previous-public-accounting life I had a client who financially supported a kids' place in Irvine called Pretend City. I ended up with a couple of free tickets and have been holding on to them for about a year, waiting for JD & Maia to be old enough to enjoy it. A couple of coworkers and I decided to go last weekend and I LOVED this place. We were there for close to 3 hours, which is a pretty good attention span for both kids, and the layout of everything was such that I could reasonably keep track of both kids simultaneously.

 

Here is Maia in the pretend library with real books. There was a checkout area with a pretend computer where JD spent about 20 minutes just hitting all the keyboard keys (he's not allowed to touch the computer/keyboard at home).

The "central square" 

The grocery store - this was one of their favorite places 

 They both LOVED all the little cars, motorcycles, and other riding toys

 Maia filling her car up with gas - she actually knew to put the nozzle in the right place on the car and made her "sssshhhhh" noise like she was pouring liquid. Smart smart smart.

 

 JD loved watching the baby chicks at the pretend farm area. He even said 'cluck cluck cluck" without any prompting, which surprised me because these baby chicks don't look a whole lot like those in his animation-style farm books. Also smart smart smart. :-)

 

 Maia in the checkout line at the grocery store with her "purchases"

 

 Picking out produce....

 

 Weighing our produce....

 

Digging in the garden. Yes, JD was possessive and a little scary with the rakes.....the pictures stopped here because his jedi-fighting-style of playing with the rakes required some serious intervention

Truck games

Dear Grandma and Grandpa, thank you for the Cat truck you gave me/us for Christmas. Maia and I both love it and spend a lot of time riding around on it every day. My new favorite game is to put the lego container over my head and ride my truck blind. I'm happy to push myself around without being able to see, and I'm happy to let someone else push me while my whole head is covered. Don't worry, I don't personally run into anything - the truck takes the brunt of any collisions I have. Love, JD

Growing Up

 

 

I was re-arranging the toys and cleaning up a bit tonight, and was actually putting all our puzzles away because I didn't think the kids were old enough for them. I started separating out the pieces so they were at least organized when I put them in storage, and suprise, Maia picked one up and started putting the pieces in. She has to turn each piece quite a few times before it snapped in but she did this one about five times and a couple of others as well. She would bring the completed puzzle to me every time she finished one and was so proud.

 

Other cute kid moments this week........they won't eat avocado but they inhaled the guacamole I made on New Year's Eve. I am pretty sure they are both saying "ga-ga" for Grandma and Grandpa. JD has been afraid of the pier the past few times we've been there - he seems to have realized he's up high and there is water underneath. We've been trying to teach him it's ok, he's safe, etc. Today I went the tough-love route and told him I wouldn't carry him, he either had to be in his stroller or walk on the pier. That solved it.....he likes being carried but not stroller-confined. He jumped down and walked, no problem. Smart kid.

Dana Point

Friday's weather was gorgeous so we walked around the harbor with the kids- they love being able to walk (not be in the stroller) and like to look at all the boats coming in and out. There was a guy down there with all his birds and we got to take some fun pictures too....

JD & Mama....this reminds me of the bird I used to have at home... 

Grandma, Maia, JD, me 

 JD ducked behind me so it looks like the bird-guy's head is on JD's body....this would have been a great picture if JD was looking!

 

Debbi is an animal-charmer, the animals at the petting zoo a couple months ago loved her too

 

Kimber

Christmas Morning

I was having too much fun with the kids to take very many pictures on Christmas morning but we did get a few....we had a big Cat tractor that the kids can sit on and ride out and unwrapped already when they came out of their bedroom, as well as a stroller with Maia's new doll in it. My parents got to our house about the same time the kids were waking up, and both my sisters and Allison's husband were there too, plus Debbi, so there were 8 adults to watch and spoil JD & Maia. :-) I think we spent about 30 minutes just playing with the tractor and stroller/doll before we even started in on the rest of the presents!

 

I think once you are over 50, it is hard to be suprised for Christmas! We thought we had done it this year by getting my parents snowshoes, and then the day after Thanksgiving they started talking about how good the sales were, and were ready to go out and buy snowshoes. So we had to tell them they couldn't and would just have to wait until Christmas.

 Also notice in the above picture that my shoe-girl Maia is already wearing the new purple tennis shoes from  her stocking, even though they are about 2 sizes too big.

We had to help them get the paper started, but they figured out how to pull it back and get the present inside pretty quickly. 

 JD was stoked about his new cars from Debbi.

 

 The kids were very excited to get bottles on Christmas morning (we've stopped bottles at this point) because Mama wanted some milk protein to balance out the early-morning Christmas candy & cookies. :-)

 

Our kids are too smart, we didn't want them to figure out how to turn the sound on and off, so that we could control whether we were listening to truck noises all day, but engineer JD had figured out how to turn the sound on so the buttons work by lunch time.

Christmas

Grandma, Grandpa, Aunt Alli, Uncle Ammon & Aunt Kimber are all visiting us this week for Christmas....best Christmas present this year is having my whole family together and getting to spend a lot of time together playing with the kids. Merry Christmas!

 

Christmas

Little Miss Maia-girl said "Merry Christmas, Santa" (or maybe it was something more like "My mama said if I sit on your lap, you'll give me some candy.")

 

Mr JD-boy took one look at Santa and said "Candy cane or not, I am not getting close to that strange looking man and don't you DARE put me on his lap!"