"Name's Andra" - 2 Years 6 Months

The end of summer and her approaching 1/2 birthday seemed like a perfect time to do a real blog update. However, it is now October and I am finally posting! We certainly were busy over the nine weeks that I was on vacation, but now I have already been back to school for eight weeks.

First let me mention that we purposely did not use a nickname with Alexandra because we wanted her to choose for herself when she was older. Apparently older was this summer, because she now introduces herself as Andra. I personally love it because it is pretty and unique!

Over the summer, Andra and I took a tour of the different parks of Corona to see what we liked best. We decided the Deleo Sports Park was our favorite. It has the only covered playground and has a very nice splash pad. Plus it is in the neighborhood.

Because it was so hot during the day, we busied ourselves with indoor activities, including trips to the library, painting and reading. Now that I am back at work, we have continued evening trips to the library once a week. She loves to play with the building blocks, the horse and dinosaur figures and the puzzles. Alexandra continues to love books and has quite the library of her own. Her favorites are Dora the Explorer, Go Diego Go, Curious George, Sofia the First and Clifford the Big Red Dog. She has many books in each of those series, including some Seek & Find which she is very good at. Before bed each night we also have to read The Little Blue Truck and Little Blue Truck Leads the Way.

On a few different weekends, we took Alexandra to the beach in Redondo where Grandma Sara lives. Alexandra loved having the waves hit her feet. We also went to a park in Orange County and one in Riverside with Sara...a continuation of our summer park tour!

We took a few trips this past summer. One was to Reno to see Uncle Bob and Aunt Sarah. Along the way, we stopped at Manzanar National Historic Site, Lake Tahoe and Mammoth Mountain. It was a fun road trip and nice to see family! Another girl's trip was out to the desert in Rancho Mirage for a few days. We spent most of the time swimming - no surprise there! And in August, we took a quick weekend girl's trip to La Jolla to escape the crazy heat when it was 107 in Corona and Dave was in Vegas for a Toastmasters Convention!

Grandma Janet continues to take her to swim lessons once a week and Alexandra is very good. Her instructor even uses her as a "teacher" for others sometimes! She made a video that is posted on this blog. I am impressed at how far she has come in the last 15 months! Everywhere we went this summer, people would stop us out by the pool and comment on what a good swimmer she is.

Miss Alexandra is quite a chatter box! And sounds so grown up in some of her comments. I have started writing down some of her sentences and comments. Here are a few:
- I am not tired. I am hungry. That is all.
- Casey (the car) is clean. She is not dirty.
- I wiped my own face. Now it is all sparkly and clean!
- I want to wear the Halloween shirt. I love Halloween. It is my favorite!

In July, we transitioned Alexandra to a big girl bed. She now sleeps in a full size poster bed that was my grandmother's and thus a family heirloom. She loves it! Here is a picture of her the first time she saw her new bed. Her grandpa Stacy came to California to help move it from the guest bedroom and left her the stuffed dog as a gift. She calls it "Papi Puppy." Daddy picked out the sheets and comforter which went nicely with the orange and pink tropical theme we already had in her room.

Overall, it has been a great six months (and a little more) full of activities and growth (physically and mentally) for Miss Alexandra. As the holidays approach, I am even more excited knowing that this year she can appreciate them so much more than she did last year.

Twenty Three Months

And then there was just one month left until Alexandra turns two! TWO! Wow! Where has the time gone. When asked how old she will be, she even answers "TWO!" This has been quite an exciting and busy month for Alexandra. She is developing into an intelligent, independent young lady. She wants to sit at the table with adults now and we just bought her a booster seat to make that easier.

As of this typing, Alexandra has almost 50 words that she can use to express herself. While some are not completely perfect sounds (more, please, down) she can use them in context.There are many, many words (at least 25) that she says completely such as stay, stop, up, off, duck, pay, buy, read, bye, mom, eat, dad, two, five, hi, go and see. For example, once I take a picture of her, she says see. One day we were out shopping and let her look at a book at Costco. When we started to put it back, she got all teary eyed and said, "buy." She can also now tell us to pay for something when she holds a credit card. I am amazed at how rapidly she has added words over the last two weeks. Many people don't even believe me when I tell them how many words she says, but we have started keeping track in order to count. Just today, she started trying to say stuck and pull.

With all the warm weather, mid 80s, we have been spending more time outside. Alexandra can say "side", but does not quite have the whole "outside" down, but she asks to go out a lot. She loves going down the slide at the park next to our house. She can't say slide, so says "whee" to indicate slide. It is so funny as that is what she says when she goes down the slide. When outside, she also likes to help water the lawn and pull weeds at Grandma's house and play with her toddler lawn mower at our house.

Mommy had a four day weekend, so we spent Friday at Sea World. She loves the animals. She got to get close to an African hedgehog and was quite intrigued. We both had a fun time watching one of the polar bears swimming. Because I am a teacher, I get a free annual pass and so plan to take her more this summer. Then on Saturday, we went to Orange County to have lunch with Grandma Sara, Grantie Lorel and Uncle David at Corner Bakery Cafe. It was a fun lunch!

At the beginning of month 23, we went to Arizona. Alexandra earned her 14th flight and we met Daddy in Phoenix. We spent one day in Tucson visiting two of Mommy's former students who are attending U of A and seeing the campus. On Sunday, we drove back to Phoenix and had a nice visit and lunch with Grandpa Stacy and Nana Kathy. On Monday, we all drove home, making one stop at the General Patton Museum. Poor Alexandra had the sniffles, but managed to enjoy the tanks at the museum and even pose for the camera.

Miss A loves playing with the neighborhood kids! Besides Dylan
who she adores, she also enjoys spending time with Zoe and her brother Zack. Zoe reads to her all the time and the four of them often color together at Marivel's house. Brianna from across the street is always happy to see Alexandra and today they had a good time playing in the park. As you can see by the pictures, Brianna took time to go down the slide with her. Its nice to have some older kids who always look out for her and include her in their play time.

Alexandra continues to excel in her swimming lessons. Soon I will be taking her for Saturday lessons when my mom is busy during the normal Tuesday time. I am very excited to see how far she has progressed and am even more excited for our trip to Maui!

In addition to playing outdoors, Alexandra has grown to like watching Dora the Explorer on TV. Her attention span is quite short, but she definitely likes things related to Dora and her monkey sidekick, Boots.

If you have not had a chance to check out the blog entry for months 21-22, please do so here. And I am also posting a photo of the week every Thursday!

16 Months

What a busy 16th month it has been for Miss Alexandra as you can see from all the photos! Let me try to cover everything that has happened from June 17th to July 16th.

In June, one of our neighbor's was moving so we were able to acquire Miss A a toddler picnic table, a slide and a little kitchen. So far, she has really only played with the kitchen and she likes it. It came with tons of plastic food and cookware. She can't reach the top "cupboard" yet, but enjoys opening and closing the bottom portions. She also has a "new" water table thanks to her nanny, Marivel. We played with it the other night and she loved it.

This "month" involved a lot of travel with visits to Northern California and Nevada. We even had several little trips within Southern California.

On June 22nd, we went to visit Grandma Sara after she returned from her cruise to Iceland. We went out to brunch with her and some of her friends who were visiting.

On July 2nd, Alexandra had her 10th flight as we flew to Oakland to meet daddy and Grandma Sara for the beginning of our road trip to Redwoods National Park. For the first time, she had her own seat on the plane as it was not full. She had three more flights before we finally got home on July 11th, each time having her own seat! There is a cool website called Flight Memory that allows you to keep track of flights. By the end of her 13th flight, Miss Alexandra had flown 14,111 miles since she was born. She is definitely on track to becoming a world traveler like much of the rest of her family.

July 3rd to July 6th we were in Arcata, CA for the Troy Family Reunion. Alexandra finally got to meet her cousin Stephen and also saw all of the rest of her cousins, aunts and uncles. Cousin Darren was even there all the way from South Africa. It was a great time. Alexandra loved spending time with Grandma Sara, who rode in the back seat with her all the way to and from Arcata. Cousin Sarah introduced her to a pay phone (it might be the only one she ever sees) and helped her push her stroller around. Everyone enjoyed seeing her and how much she had grown in a year.  Most of the family had not seen her in a year (except on Instagram and Facebook of course). We finally put the baby carrier to use at both airports and in the national park when we went on a short walk through the redwoods. Daddy carried her back pack style and she seemed to enjoy it!

On July 6th, we drove to San Francisco, where we spent two nights. We introduced Miss A to Ghiradelli, although she had strawberry ice cream. She did get a taste of mommy's mint chip sundae and daddy's shake. She loves ice cream!

On July 8th, Alexandra and I flew to Reno, NV to meet up with my mom and see my Uncle Bob and Aunt Sarah. We spent three nights there visiting with them, as well as going to Virginia City and Lake Tahoe. Alexandra LOVED Lake Tahoe. At first she just put her feet in, but soon it became clear she wanted to really go in, so we took off her clothes, put on her rash guard and she had a blast! While in Reno, we did lots of swimming. Alexandra LOVES swimming and is getting very good at it.

Twelve! That is the number of teeth that Miss Alexandra now has since her four 1st molars all came in. Alexandra has added a few more foods to her list including pizza. She loves fresh sliced strawberries and got upset with me the other day when I did not have any more for her.

She is now back to sleeping really well....sometimes almost 12 hours! While on vacation, she was a great sleeper because of the dark rooms. The only challenge was that she did not want to go to sleep until 10:30. We are going to have to fix that when mommy goes back to work.

Favorite things to play with include her musical teapot, credit cards (or any plastic cards in mommy or grandma's wallet for that matter), walking her stroller (so we bought her a baby doll one finally), car keys and as always her stuffed animals. I am so thankful that Alexandra loves books and hope it continues.

Alexandra has several words that she now says besides her favorites up and uh-oh that she was saying a month ago. Last night she said "ice" in context. She also is close to saying bath, dog. She says "mom" for more and "eye" for her ear. I think the letter "r" is a challenge for her. When asked, she can correctly point to her ear and tummy. She touches my eye while saying "eye." She also says "hi" while waving at people.

She is very smart. We have given her some expired cards and call them her "credit cards." The other day when she found her "card," she went and found her purse and put it in. She understood where cards go. She also can find a ball in another room. She also is quite proficient with zippers now, frequently opening both purses and her diaper bag.

Here are several more photos from this month of fun!