Courtney & Aria Louise

My Little Cowgirl

2008-11-03T19:45:00.000-08:00

We wanted Aria to be Mickey Mouse for Halloween, but the only costume I liked was sold out. So...we decided that she would probably love to be something from Toy Story since that is one of her very favorite movies. Obviously Buzz Lightyear and Woody were out since she is a girl, so the next best choice was Jessie! There was an adorable costume on the Disney website so I ordered it. My Mom found her matching cowboy boots, a hat, and a stick horse! She wanted nothing to do with the hat so I ended up carrying it the whole night, but the boots were a hit. She is still wearing her "jessiboots" all over. Here are some pictures from Halloween. We went trick-or-treating downtown Gresham then went and visited family and friends. Aria loved getting candy from people that SHE decided weren't scary, but anyone she didn't feel comfortable with she wouldn't hold her basket out and would pull us past them. A couple of people who were dressed up in scary costumes tried to put candy in her basket and she would take the candy out and throw it! Kind of embarrassing!!!! She would yell "I don't want it!". This kid has opinions about EVERYTHING. But...I must say she makes a pretty darn cute cowgirl :)

Many Many Faces

2008-09-16T17:40:00.000-07:00

Aria loves to "help" cook. Last time I baked cookies (which is rare) I let her help me. Really, I just gave her her own bowl and dumped a bunch of random stuff in there and let her go at it. Otherwise I would have never finished! I decided to take some pictures of her because she was having SO much fun stirring the "batter" and helping Mommy. I just had to share the faces that I caught her making in a matter of minutes!

Enjoy...

Happy Birthday Miss Aria Louise...

2008-08-31T12:00:00.000-07:00

My little princess is 2! What a joy Aria has been in my life. I don't think I could have ever imagined how much love I would have for my daughter before she arrived. She has become Miss Independent "I do it" and watching her grow up is so much fun!

10 things I love about my daughter!

10. The way she has to play with someone/any one's hair when she is tired (I will be lucky if I'm not bald in a couple years.)!
9. The way she pronounces her words and says "Yeah" to everything you ask her.
8. When she buries her head in my shoulder and says I yuv u mama...with a squinty grin on her face.
7. Her little obsessive compulsive behaviors that makes cleaning very easy. She has to put toys away when she's done!
6. That she already bargains with you when she doesn't get her way!
5. Watching her closely observe and then turn food away because it has "yuckies". (Yuckies are ANYTHING out of the ordinary on a piece of food, i.e. a speck of pepper, a string or jagged piece of food, a seed, out of place crumb, etc.)
4. When she sleeps with me and has to wedge herself in as close as possible, with her head on my pillow, even if she has her own.
3. When I pick her up from school and the moment she sees me she sprints towards me and jumps in my arms.
2. How she is afraid of little things like shadows, statues and sounds...but will jump head first in a lake with no hesitation.
1. Listening to her sing familiar songs, but with whatever words are on her mind. (example: singing the tune to Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, but putting "Happy Feet" in for all words).

Thank you Aria for bringing me endless joy and for making all the stresses of everyday life disappear when I see your smiling face. I LOVE YOU!!!

Here are some pictures from her 2 year "Princess" Party. Please excuse Aria's white shirt that got completely stained in the first 20 minutes of her party from Watermelon juice and bright pink stamp ink. Thank you to all of our family that made this day special!

Cousins...

What a lovely white shirt!

Presents!

Chubby princess cake

Singing Happy Birthday (she was a little bit nervous!)

Enjoying her new books.

Eating cake.

Yes, We Are Still Alive!

2008-07-09T22:34:00.000-07:00

So...as expected...I am officially a blog loser. May 27 was my last post - almost 6 weeks ago....sad. Life is flying by so fast it amazes me and every day I pick my daughter up from school her conversations about her day are getting longer and clearer. I can't believe that I almost have a two year old. Aria continues to blow me away with how fast she is growing up. Sometimes I wish I could freeze time and have her stay small forever. Having a child is quickly helping me learn how critical it is to slow down and enjoy my life where it is at right NOW. I'm working on it. Its so easy to get wrapped up in the "busy-ness" that life throws at you every day and it scares me how fast my days go.

Our lives have been, like I said above, crazy. Since my last post we have gone through two more colds (Aria and I)! I was starting to think we were past the cold season...finally...but apparently not. Aria gets over them faster and faster...Mom isn't always as lucky. My brothers turned 29 on June 2nd and we were able to spend time with both of them which was wonderful. Mom turned ____ on June 23rd (your welcome Mom).

And our other big news...drumroll...we are moving! I found a really cute two bedroom apartment downtown Gresham and we are moving this weekend. I am very excited to have our own place and give my parents a break from mountains of toys and laundry. I am curious to see how Aria responds...she is a creature of habit and LOVES her routines. Things will be very tight for us with affording her full-time school and a commute to Beaverton every day, but I feel like I have to make it work at some point. This will be a good first transition for Aria, we will still be close to her Papa and Wawa (Grandpa and Grandma) that have been such a huge part of her life and will still be at the same school.

No pictures for today's blog, but I have taken quite a few in the last few weeks so I will be posting them soon!

Bowl of Cream of Wheat in under 2 minutes!

2008-05-27T21:33:00.000-07:00

Wow...its almost been a month since I have blogged. Time is just flying by. Aria and I are finally over our nasty colds that seemed like they would never go away. Her immune system better be resistant to every cold germ that exists after how many colds she has had in the last 6 months.

This video is from awhile back, but it still is one of my favorites so I wanted to share. Aria absolutely loves Cream of Wheat. She would eat it 3 times a day if I would let her. She calls it "BABA-EAT", and requests it daily. I decided to record her eating it hoping I would catch her saying "MMMMM....NUMMY NUMMY" which is what she says now when she likes something, so obviously with cream of wheat we usually hear this phrase quite often. This video also shows what a dainty eater she is (HA!). I have to be careful letting her eat with a "big girl" spoon, as her bites seem to get bigger and bigger. She likes it so much that its very hard for her to wait till it cools, as you will see when she struggles through the first few bites. (Sorry for the clicking sounds...our camera is getting old!)

Arizona Paradise - Part 2

2008-05-03T23:05:00.000-07:00

After our crazy weekend Aria and I flew to Arizona for my conference which started Tuesday morning. Mom's conference in Anaheim ended on Wednesday, and then she flew and met us in Phoenix and we all stayed there till Sunday. After how our first flight went I was so nervous to take another one...especially since my Mom wouldn't be there to help! I had to return the rental car, catch a shuttle to LAX, take another plane ride, catch another shuttle and rent a car once I got there. But everything went wonderfully. Aria was a dream on this flight! She got her own seat, which she thought was VERY cool.

She took off her shoes and made herself at home...

And shortly after her nutritious snack (cheetos), she slept the whole way. My little angel! (today anyway).

Since my last blog was so long and most of it was me complaining, I will keep this one short and let the pictures do the talking. The Glisson's were nice enough to let us stay in their house in Avondale, which was only about 15 minutes from my conference. Instead of staying in a hotel I got to stay in an amazing house and relax by the pool in the sun. Linda was there and watched Aria while I was working. THANK YOU SO MUCH GLISSON FAMILY. This was a MUCH needed break...we love you guys so much!

Here is where we were lucky enough to stay.

This is what Aria spent a lot of the week doing...

She watched the Bee Movie and Toy Story II many times...but since it was her vacation too I didn't worry too much about time in front of the TV. I am still paying for this now, however, as I am getting daily requests for "Woody".

There was a park a couple blocks away, so we spent some time there during the weekend and Aria LOVED it.

Here are some more pictures of our week in Arizona. I was very sad to leave the sun!

It will be a long time before I take another solo adventure with this little one again...but we truly did have a wonderful time away from work and our busy lives!

The Trip - Part 1

2008-04-27T22:14:00.001-07:00

We have been home from our trip for a week now and this is the first night that I have had the time or energy to transfer pictures from the camera to the computer and write this blog. Needless to say it has taken some time to get back into things. But, our trip to California and Arizona was fun (well...most of it) and it was WONDERFUL to be in the sun.

Instead of trying to write about our whole trip in one blog, I thought it would be better to split it up so it won't be so long. So...This blog entry will be part 1 of 2...our trip to California, Disneyland, and getting to see Daddy!

Mom and I both ended up with conferences for work during the same week. Hers started on Sunday in Anaheim and mine didn't start till Monday evening in Arizona. So...Ari and I flew down to Cali on that Saturday, stayed with my Mom till Monday at her hotel (right across from Disney), then flew to Arizona on Monday afternoon.

We woke up on Saturday morning at 3:30am to make our flight down to LA at 6:30. I scheduled my flight through work and of course I didn't pay attention to the actual kind of airplane that we would be on. We flew a Delta "Express Jet", which apparently means THE TINIEST AIRPLANE EVER FLOWN BY MAN. It had one seat on one side of the aisle, and two on the other. I had one of the "one" seater rows, which would have been somewhat bearable, but they wouldn't let me sit there with Aria because it didn't have two oxygen masks. I got re-assigned to a window seat. I couldn't even begin to stand up straight in this plane, and with Aria and our giant diaper bag (filled with every kind of distraction toy and snack that I could think of), the feelings of claustrophobia began to set in. I was praying that the seat next to me wouldn't be occupied, but of course every seat on the micro plane was full. Thankfully the man next to me liked kids. Phew. We got seated and I quickly realized that this seat was much smaller than the seats on a normal human airplane. The combination of being six feet tall and holding an over-sized 1.5 year old on my lap wasn't a great combo. And to add to it all...the heat was on. Blowing strongly on our feet. Even after we took off it stayed on. Aria did good for the first 45 minutes because she got to play with all the buttons and try to figure things out. Then we both started getting a little stir crazy. Numerous passengers asked the flight attendant to turn the heat down and she kept trying to tell us that the heat wasn't on. But for some reason it still was blowing on our legs. The man behind me took off his shirt half way through the flight because he got so hot and annoyed. I could write a whole blog just about this flight, but I will cut it off and just say it was the longest two and a half hours of my life.

I met up with Mom at LAX and after fighting and wrestling with Aria through one of those tantrums where you feel like every person in the ENTIRE world is staring at you and judging your parenting skills (all because I wouldn't let her run wild in the airport) we managed to get our bags and catch a shuttle to get our rental car. We get to Enterprise and there are about 50 people in line. It took us over an hour to get our car, and they brought me a carseat to use that was completely laced wrong and twisted. When I tried to explain this to the woman helping us, she told me that I just needed to put the seatbelt through the carseat and click it in. Wow..really? I didn't know that. By this time Aria had lost it from being so tired and hot, so I just strapped it in as best I could so we could get out of there. We had planned on going to Disneyland that day, but by the time we got to the hotel and Aria had taken a nap it was already late. We did go in the hotel pool, which she absolutely loved. That evening we went over and ate dinner and watched the Bee Movie with Deonta. Aria was excited to see her Daddy and it was really fun. Wow...only day one.

We woke up Sunday and ate breakfast, then caught a trolley to Disneyland. We heard it was going to be hot that day, but of course the one day that we decide to go it ends up being a record high 102 degrees in Anaheim. I was really excited for Aria to see the Disney characters since that is her favorite cartoon, but it got SOOOOO hot. We did one boat ride, let her play around in toon town, and she saw Minnie, Pluto, Pooh and Tinkerbell. After three hours we were done. Aria's cheeks were beaming red, and I was worried about us all getting heat exhaustion. She loved it there, she talked nonstop and was just fascinated looking at everything. I was kind of bummed that we couldn't spend the whole day there, but it just got too hot. I can't wait to go again and I will be sure to try and plan a day that is a record high!

After a nap, we got ready and met up with Deonta again. We drove out to Long Beach and Aria got to visit with her Grandma Ragina and Auntie's Janae and Janelle. She was a little hesitant as I expected, but she did really well with all of them. Overall it was a great visit.

Here are pictures from part 1 of the trip. (don't worry the next part is much more relaxing and stress free).

Aria all ready for the pool

She had a smile on her face the whole time!

Having fun with Mommy. She didn't want me to hold her or help her kick and swim, so we swallowed a lot of water!

The hottest, I mean the happiest place on earth!

At "Mimi Moush Housh," as she called it

Tired Moush

Eating one of her favorite foods, a "frefri"(french-fry)

The scowl...papa taught her this face, and she has been doing it ever since she was a baby!

Phew...stay tuned for Part 2 soon.

Hair Clips Recommended!!

2008-04-02T09:23:00.000-07:00

My co-worker Cindy has been making adorable clips for her daughter for some time now and has mastered how to make them stay in! These things do not slip out...like EVERY other baby clips I have tried for Aria. She has had so many people request them that she decided to make a website and start selling them. Check them out...they are very reasonable and SO cute. There are tons to choose from, but she will make them customized too with whatever colors you want! Here are pics of a few of my favorites:

She also makes cute flower clips like this:

If you have trouble making clips stay in fine hair I really recommend these! Here is her website:

http://www.maddiegraceclips.com/

Enjoy!

My Easter "Donkey"

2008-04-01T10:34:00.000-07:00

Aria's daycare had quite the fun day on Good Friday. They made bunny ears and painted their faces with bunny noses and whiskers. The toddlers got to wear their bunny ears around for the day. Of course, my little fashionista (who has recently decided that she has opinions on her shoes, clothes and hair) decided that she only wanted to wear her ears upside down. According to her teachers, if anyone tried to turn her ears the correct way she would instantly flip them upside down again. So they called her the Easter Donkey all day. I am starting to get a bit apprehensive about the days when she's old enough to dress herself and decide what looks 'good'.

Here is Aria with her Easter "Donkey" ears after daycare.

Easter Sunday after church our family came over and the kids got to color Easter eggs and do an egg hunt (inside of course, since it was FREEZING). The girls had lots of fun and by the end of the day, after Aria had opened all her eggs, she decided that M&M's are now her favorite food.

Here are the girls eating their macaroni Easter dinner and getting ready to color eggs.

A Fun Look Back...

2008-03-18T13:36:00.000-07:00

Just a fun look back at the last 19 months... This little girl has changed my life in a huge way, but I could not IMAGINE life without her. What an amazing gift from God she is!

More fun stuff...
Aria is talking so much now and we are just getting a kick out of the way she pronounces words. Here are a few of my favorites:

Cream of Wheat: ba-ba eat
Rainbow: bee-bow
Mickey Mouse: Mimi Moush
Pluto: Bubo
Paci: bobby
Juice: joosh
Stars: starsh
Aria's house: Ya-ya housh
Raisins: ray-rays

"Ya-e-ya" (aria) on the "POBBY" (potty)

2008-03-08T20:41:00.001-08:00

We have started to let Aria sit on the potty since she has been pronouncing to the world when she goes to the bathroom for quite sometime now. While I have no expectations or strict time lines for having this kid potty trained, I figured it can't hurt to get her used to the idea of what it is and what its used for.

We have quickly figured out that Aria LOVES to sit on the potty! At least 10 times a day I hear "Ya-e-ya poopoo pobby?" Which translates to can I sit on the potty. She has gone peepee a few times in the toilet, but most of the time she just sits there. We handed her a book the other night while she was sitting up on the potty and luckily was able to catch this on video.

I know when she is older that she will probably hate me if she finds out I posted a video of her on the toilet on the Internet..but seriously I couldn't resist.

My baby is not a baby anymore!

2008-02-27T11:27:00.000-08:00

I got pictures of Aria done this last weekend, and after getting them back and seeing how big she looks I have realized that my baby is growing up too fast! Makes me sad, but I have to say it has been incredible to watch her advance in the last six months. Her vocabulary and ability to understand and follow directions has grown so much...she is quite the little character now.

Here are the best pictures from her latest session. Well really these are the ONLY six good pictures from the entire session. By the end of this appointment I was so exhausted. Aria thought everything in the room was "mine" and decided from the very beginning that she was going to try and control how things went. All of the stuffed animals, props, blocks and cars (which were all in plain site and within her reach) were now her toys. Instead of sitting nicely in the rocking chair, she wanted to rock "her" ducky in the rocking chair. Then they wanted her to sit on a high stool for close-ups and that just wasn't going to happen. She wanted to push the stool, and arched her back and screamed at any attempt to sit her on it. Then she wanted to play with the legos in the lobby...cue next tantrum. 80% of the shoot we couldn't even get her to be in the vicinity of where we could take a good picture. Needless to say I was pretty happy that we got a few good ones. Hopefully 2 year old pictures are better.

And this last one is not one we chose, but i still think its cute.

Children's Museum

2008-02-25T20:12:00.000-08:00

A few weekends ago we took Aria to the Children's museum. It was so much fun and Aria was in heaven! I highly recommend it for a rainy Portland weekend.

Here are some highlights...

Aria learning how to brush.

This was Aria's favorite area...water works. She was a little short for everything and had to stand on her tip toes the whole time. For some reason she thought she was supposed to put the water in her hair, so she ended up being soaked. The wettest kid there by far.

Aria getting caught trying to drink the water after Mama told her NO 50 times!

Trying to help her reach the water guns.

Painting her face.

Aria was very proud of her paint job.

Mommy is smiling while you know who is investigating...

Christmas 2007!

2008-02-24T22:15:00.000-08:00

This post is obviously a little late, but I wanted to share some pictures from Christmas. Aria was tons of fun and caught on VERY quickly that the things underneath the wrapping paper were hers! However, she didn't like to tear the wrapping paper, but hovered over anxiously while I opened them. We had lots of fun with Mamaw, Papa, and Uncle Chris and Jason.

Silly...

Playing with her new kitchen from Papa and Mamaw.

First baby doll and stroller from Daddy.

Aria and Papa reading.

Decorating gingerbread cookies.