For Fun...watching Cinderella

"Arella"

Lacy has really taken to Cinderella. She watches it at least once a day (yes, I know, couch potato!) She sings and dances to the songs. Its actually amusing to me to see her be so girly. I mean you can't get much more girly than loving princesses. Last week, I took her to get some new shoes and was trying to get her excited about a pair of Dora sandals, but she had a far off look and mumbled "Arella." She spotted a pair of princess sandals behind me with Cinderella on them and would only have those!

We were at Target last night and she had to carry everything Cinderella through the store with her. She found a backpack in the back to school section that she put on and it went from her shoulders to her knees. And when she walked up to Cliff I told her to show daddy, she turned around and stuck her butt out, as to properly display the Cinderella backpack. She got a new Cinderella nightlight from the Target trip last night, and she was so excited to see it in her new room. She kept pulling it out of the wall and saying "Arella Light."

Sorry, no pictures. The move has delayed things for a bit.

Funny Lacy

Lacy put on Daddy's dress socks ("shoes") and pranced around on her tippy-toes. What a poser! She is ready for the Paris fashion runways.

On another note, the other night, I was in the kitchen making dinner. Lacy was running laps around me through the kitchen with one shoe and as a result kept tripping. I wasn't too worried...but what made me laugh was that everytime she fell down, she would say "Are you ok?"

And to complete the theme of this blog. Lacy and I stopped for some Panda Express the other day and her fortune said "YOU ARE A CHARMER!"

Our day at the pool

We had a cool but humid Saturday morning and decided to go down to the pool. Going down to the pool is quite an excursion. Cliff loads up the wagon while Lacy runs wild in the street and I try my best to chase after her. Then we lug all our junk down to the pool.

Lacy gets very excited when she's in her bathing suit and grabs her floaties and puts her mouth on them and pretends to blow them up.

Lacy has also warmed up to the pool since she has now discovered how to not swallow all the pool water that comes in her mouth and how to use the arm floaties to keep her head above water.

However, the pool steps are still her safety zone...
until Shamu, the killer whale, gets beached on the steps.
(ok, its not Shamu, its just big, fat, pregnant Leah)


Lacy lets us dunk her, throw her around and glide her along the surface of the pool. She hasn't figured out how to kick so when we tell her to swim to mama or daddy she instead kicks her legs out rigid and just floats in the one spot. Of course, like any properly raised girl she keeps her legs crossed at all times.



Today, her new achievement was floating on her back. She thought that was very cool, and just had a look of pure bliss on her face...like she was sunbathing (yes, she did have a thick layer of sunscreen on per her doctor daddy's request).

We are both excited that Lacy is lots of fun in the pool, but Cliff likes to push her to try new things. That always leads to cries of "mama!" as Cliff keeps pulling her away from her steps because he wants to play and swim with her. And mama's the lazy one that lets her just hang out on the steps. ;)


We had a very exciting morning and Lacy is taking a nice nap now before we go out apartment hunting all afternoon.

Mission Complete

We had about a 2 week period where Lacy would wake up in the middle of the night and come into bed with us. She was allowed to stay because we were too tired to put her back to bed in her room. So I (along with Cliff and other friends and family) worked really hard to wear her out during the day to get her to sleep through the night. As Cliff was leaving for work one morning, he got the camera out and took these pictures. Note the butt cheek hanging out. (Her bed is currently next to her crib, which her dad has been too lazy to break down and take to the garage. I think he has been hoping that we would move soon so he could take it straight into the moving van instead, saving a step).

Visiting Dad

There are 3 things Lacy likes to do best when we visit Cliff at work.

1 - Con stickers from all of the medical assistants. When kids go in for check ups, etc., they get a sticker. Well Lacy, she knows where the stash is and if they hand her just one she whines and points and asks for more. She has been known to empty the whole box.

2 - There's a little fountain outside the building and Lacy likes to throw pennies into it. The one time when we were sitting outside waiting for Cliff to get out of a meeting, I maxed out on pennies. She was inconsolably upset...until I told her to throw leaves in the fountain instead. I felt bad for the guy that would have to get all the leaves out of the fountain...for like 2 seconds. Really I was doing a victory dance in my head. I got Lacy to stop whining at no cost to me.

3 - Lastly, Lacy likes to press the buttons when we get into the elevator. However, the first button in her reach is the bright red alarm button. On other elevators, I let Lacy be a big girl and push the button, but I always forget about the alarm button at Cliff's building. Fortunately, the alarm button just rings a bell (that sounds like a school bell) for as long as you press down on it. We both get startled after 1 sec and that's that. Princess Lacy always has to make her grand entrance.

Growing up...

Lacy has been full of surprises the last few weeks. Her vocabulary has expanded, without a lot of coaching. Every once in a while, she'll say a new phrase or word and dumbfound us. When she watches her TV shows or a movie, I've caught her gasping and throwing her hand over her mouth for dramatic effect--in cue with the plot of whatever she's watching. Or she'll say "NO!" when something bad happens in the plot. She makes her toys kiss all the time. She puts people in her toy cars and rolls around. Her favorite is a little people bus that she likes to put the people in and out through the door as opposed to the hole on top. She helps us pack her diaper bag before we leave for an outing. She dances to music. She sings. She does the hand motion to songs when we sing, because she can't quite sing and do the hand motions at the same time (think itsy bitsy spider). She recognizes family members in pictures and yells out their names when she sees them. She notices when people are gone and asks "where'd they go?" or ex. "where's noah?"

A lot of people told me that this is the best age (around 18 months) and I just have to agree. She is SO fun and so full of surprises. She is so impressionable, loving and intelligent. I hope it doesn't go by too fast...

Today while Lacy was playing with her little people we found two of them in her shoes where she had put them and thought it was a hoot. Here's the pic

Celebrating the 4th

We spent the afternoon at my aunt's house for a family BBQ and some swimming. We got Lacy a bathing suit with the life jacket built in since she wouldn't stay in her inner-tube. She borrowed the arm floaties from my little cousin Nathan when he was done swimming. Lacy was over-inflated...she got in the water and would get stuck on her back or on her tummy swallowing water. But she loved it and refused to take either safety device off. On the other hand, it was good that she had so much cushion. At one point while she was climbing up and down the stairs up to the hot tub she lost her footing and bounced down the stairs and literally walked away unharmed. It was hilarious.

Unlike our cousin Nathan, who is 3 months older than Lacy and takes to the water like a fish, Lacy prefers to hang out on the steps where she can firmly plant her feet. If we ever took her further into the pool she would start yelling "Help me! Help me!" What a goober.

We also drove to a good secret spot to watch fire works, but Lacy didn't last long as it was past her bed time and she missed her nap. So we went home about 10 minutes into the fireworks.

Aunt LuAnn bought Lacy some cool gaucho pants the other day, so I got some cool fat pregnant lady gaucho pants to match with her. There's a picture of me and mini-me down here too.

New Pirates Ride

We met some friends at Disneyland today. It was SO HOT! But we still had lots of fun. We got to ride the 'updated' Pirates of the Carribean ride--very cool. And to top it all off, we had a very exciting celebrity sighting. COREY FELDMAN. Cliff was the most excited though, haha. He tried to casually take a secret picture of him, but it didn't work out so well. We also unsuccessfully tried to convince our friend's 4-year-old daughter to go up to him and ask him if his name was "Mouth" (Goonies anyone?). Anyway, see if you can tell that that's THE Corey Feldman. Oh yea, and there's pictures of our cute little lady on pirates too.

Grad Week

We celebrated two graduations last week. Cousin Kortney's and Uncle Noah's. Unfortunately I don't have any pics of Kortney's graduation because we were in charge of the video camera (so someone email me pictures!) but here's some pictures from Uncle Noah's graduation. We're proud of both of you. And a special Good Luck and I Love You to Noah as he begins Basic Cadet Training tomorrow at the USAFA.

Independent Woman

While I slaved away at traffic school at the Courts in Santa Ana for 8 hours...Daddy and Lacy had a blast hanging out with family. I was even told that Lacy was more enjoyable to hang out with without the distraction of me :( I was more dissappointed when I finally saw her at 6PM that evening after not seeing her since bedtime the night before and all I got was a quick smile and then right back to her business. Well at least Cliff took lots of cute pictures.

She played piano and sang 'Popcorn Popping' with Great-Grandma. And had lots of fun with her cousins in the pool--even though they were teaching her bad things (like drinking beer and inappropriate vocabulary...ok, fine it was rootbeer, but the vocabulary is still not excusable)

She just keeps growing up!

HOORAY!

LACY WENT PEE IN HER TOILET this morning after she got out of the shower. We were so proud and excited and we were saying "YAY!" and jumping up and down. So Lacy got very excited too and sat right back down on her toilet again to get the same reaction. I know it's just the beginning, and we have a long road ahead of us for her to be really potty trained...but we are too excited and had to tell everyone!

Stickers!

Lacy's latest new hobby is playing with stickers. She mostly sticks them on daddy's face (as you can see) but thinks its hilarious. Yesterday in her Sunday school class, they made a little paper with stickers and crayons and Cliff helped Lacy put it together. But it was the first piece of artwork that she claimed ownership to, she held it the whole way home from church and sang and played with the stickers on it. And when we got home from church and put her down for a nap, she insisted on taking her artwork to bed with her.

Disneyland again...

We recently got Lacy a potty to see what she thought about it...and well, I have some cute pictures and videos, but Cliff thinks they are a little too risqué for the internet. But anyway, if you want to see our little girl's cute naked bottom, drop me an email and I'll send them your way.

However, we did go to Disneyland last night and took some pictures of Lacy shopping--and let me tell you--that girl is a little poser. 18 months going on 18 yrs old! She did better on the rides but still not a big hit. She was falling over herself excited about the parade. And we stopped for dinner in Tomorrowland where they play techno music in the background and she was rockin' out.

Lacy's First Trip to Disneyland

She didn't cry, but she was tense and nervous. Hopefully, she'll warm up to it more the next time we go (we finally got passes, YAY!). When we first got there it was hot and sunny, so we put on sunblock, sunhat and her cool garage sale shades. Surprisingly, she kept them on all day, she loved it and she looked 'SO HOLLYWOOD.' She liked KC Junior, taking pictures in Toon Town, the parades passing by, and her mickey mouse ears that we got on the way out. So she had the most fun that day after we left the park, running around outside with her ears on. AND the next morning, the first thing she wanted to do was put her ears back on (even before breakfast!)