Easter and More

Hello all and happy Easter! Yesterday we decided to have an Easter Egg Hunt for Nora in the grassy area behind our apartment. What surprised me the most was that she was excited to look for them even before she knew they contained candy. 

This is Nora tasting a starburst for the first time.

And this is Nora after she decided starbursts were good, and was settling into a sugar coma.

Also, earlier this month, our friends who also happen to live in our complex, stopped by and left a message. This was the view from our balcony.

At least five times a day I hear Nora say something like: "Clara's house?" We're so lucky to have friends so close by. Thanks Sponsellers!

John became the new work center supervisor for his division and has been working some pretty long hours. I think it's definitely stressful but it seems like every week he is more comfortable. He also built a quadrotor in his spare time and has been having a good time programming and flying it. Nora loves going down to mission bay park and watching all the other rc planes and helicopters fly around with daddy.

Not much else going on. We have been "beaching" and hiking and enjoying perfect San Diego weather.

Nora has been talking a lot more. But now that she knows how to express her desires, it is a constant power struggle. She will ask to go swimming, or to the beach, see friends, go for a walk, to the park, etc. sometimes all in the same day and there can be some serious tantrums when she doesn't get her way. Advice please? 

But Easter was fun and we were lucky to spend the entire Easter weekend as a family. I hope you guys had a good Easter too! 

Well it feels like it's time again! Where should I start?

Valentine's Day was great! If there's one thing we as a family know how to do, it's celebrate. A week in advance I set out a bowl of chocolates and told John that for every chocolate we took we had to write something nice about the other and put it in the bowl next to it. At dinner we opened up all the notes and read them. It was a really amazing experience. And I also decided to make a card. It was like being in fourth grade again - but better. I was pretty sure the boy I planned on giving it to liked me enough not to use it to make a paper airplane or try to eat the paper discreetly during our science lesson.

We went out for dinner the next night at our favorite Italian place Parma in Hillcrest and we got all dressed up. John got me some pre-flowers and I got him a box of his favorite donuts.

 

I like growing things and so the seeds were awesome. I just got a garden bed planter for our balcony. We did all the transplanting a few days ago and our balcony is so happy. All our plants are doing well except for our strawberries which I refuse to grow ever again. This my second attempt at growing them and this time gnats got to them. I guess I'm just not cut out for fruit. Oh well. 

 

In better news... After a few 70 hour work weeks John caught a break and is in school. While he's in crypto school on the dry side of base he usually is home by lunch time! Since he's had all this free time he decided to take up hockey again. Today he got home earlier enough for free skate so we decided to try it out.

John's pretty I mean deathly sharp ice skates

 

Towards the end of it she was getting the skating motions. I have to say that it was surprisingly cold in that ice rink considering all the hearts that were melting at the sight of John and Nora skating together.

 

Nora is pretty great. I can't imagine spending all of my time with anybody else. Her favorite word as of late is "happy." When I get her out of the crib in the morning "happy!" When I ask her "How are you?" she replies: "happy!" When I put her in timeout she screams "happy!" I think she's just a super sweet happy go lucky kind of gal. Her favorite toys are her animal tree house and her stuffed monkey. Her favorite foods are white rice, berries, scrambled eggs, dried seaweed, and ice cream. She likes hearts. She can do an unassisted though haphazard somersault. Her dislikes are diaper changes, holding my hand, and getting her head wet. Her favorite game is "chase you." She has a talent for dancing, singing, pretending to read, and falling/miscellaneous injuring of herself. So who wouldn't want to spend their time with somebody this clearly awesome?

 

 

 









Hello friends :) I'm finally home! well actually I've been home for a week and have been putting off writing about our holiday festivities. But better late than never, right?

For Christmas we went to my parent's house in El Paso. I love El Paso. That must sound silly to everybody else but I really missed it. Random women calling me "mija," crisostomo's burritos, dry desert air, the orange glow over the city, mountains, the giant sky, and seeing my favorite people. Also, this is the place I met and fell in love with John. He proposed to me on the Rio Grande for Pete's sake.We have lots of memories  here.

 


We left on the eighteenth and the twelve hour drive was actually pretty easy. This was the first Christmas in a while that my whole family has been together so that was really neat. Nora loved it. She has three older cousins on my side of the family. To be honest I thought that they would probably like playing by themselves and doing "big kid" things, but they were awesome at playing with Nora. She went everywhere with them and talked up a storm. She also learned how to say "ga-ma" which was so cute I nearly died. On Christmas day she got a dog that sings and tells you the names of its body parts when you press them. Currently it is in a diaper and a pink polka dot skirt. It's like Nora's baby. She also got a car that you can ride around on and my brother got her a turtle book that makes sounds. That book was a total lifesaver on the airplane ride to Wisconsin.

John had to leave the day after christmas so he could be at work the next day so he drove the car back to San Diego while I stayed for my niece, Nadia's baptism. It was a special day for a very special girl. I left the day after with Nora for Wisconsin. They were nice enough to meet me at the airport in Chicago and drive us Richfield. I think Nora knew we were leaving my mom's house because even though she hadn't warmed up completely to a few people in the house, as we were saying goodbye she gave everybody a big kiss on the cheek.

The plane ride would have been okay if Nora wasn't such a creature of habit. We left during her nap but she is used to a pre-nap routine and was too excited to go down so there were tantrums and panicked/desperate breastfeeding attempts. It was a mess. Luckily the people around us were so patient with us. While we were in El Paso my Sister Valerie had taught Nora to squeal "weeeee" really loud as she was going down the slide. And when Nora wasn't crying, she would look out the window of the plane and scream "weeeeee!" So thanks Valerie for that.

At John's parents' house things are always more relaxed. They have a basement for the kids to run around in, so most of the time I got to read my books and let Nora do her thang. Which is weird for me because before I went to school I remember playing a lot with my mom and at home I play a lot with Nora. So this whole "independent play" thing is kind of nice. Nora sits and plays with her toys and now I can actually get stuff done. Who knew? (Everybody but me #MomNoob)


New Years was fun. John's mom celebrates with appetizers and I ate so much! Did I mention my Mom-in-law and Sister-in-law Laurel are pretty much the best cooks in the entire world? The only downside to the whole vacation was that I didn't get to be with John. Weather was terrible in Chicago and since we fly standby we couldn't leave Chicago until last week. So Nora and I were away for close to a month. Our friend and neighbor Kristina picked us up from the airport and we hung out at her place until John got off work. Her husband arrived home first and Nora started crying - I think because there was a lot of talk about Daddy coming home, and she naturally assumed it was hers. So when she found out it wasn't him she started feeling sad. Luckily John showed up a few minutes later and she was crazy happy. I can't even describe how happy we were. Maybe it's strange to miss each other so much. But with a deployment coming up I feel like every second matters.

So thanks to our family and friends who spent time with us over the last month! We miss you and love you!

Best Dad Ever

So yesterday I was in the kitchen cooking dinner when I heard some singing coming from the bedroom. This isn't unusual but I thought I needed to get some proof that Nora really does have the best Dad ever. One that will sing songs and show you videos from Brave so that you can do an interpretive dance.

To Nora

I was introduced to Charles Ives in my High School Music Theory class. We sat in a kind of gross storage room just outside the choir room that sat the six of us. We spent most of our talking about Sarah Palin or gossiping about our teachers. I honestly didn't learn a whole lot in that class about music theory (that was my own fault) but if all I took away was Charles Ives, than that class was still worth while. We listened to a recording of Variations on America (1891) which is also known as his 4th of July Symphony. If you listen to it, especially the last two minutes of it you will realize why as a teenager I thought it was wild crazy awesome. For the last couple of years I listened to other works of his and have a soft spot for his art songs. He's like a happier, more sentimental, less surreal Ned Rorum. And when I became pregnant with Nora and listened to the songs he wrote for his daughter, they touched my heart.

"To Edith" is a song he wrote for his adopted daughter Edith. The words were actually written by his wife Harmony and Ives put it to music. Not everyday here is smiles and kisses but this song encompasses the best part of parenthood. In the video they give a more detailed background for the song. The music begins at 1:10 and don't worry if by the end of this there is a swelling in your chest and a few tears at the corners of your eye - that's totally normal.

So like a flower,
thy little four year face in its pure freshness
That to my bedside comes each morn
in happy guise - I must be smiling too.
O, little flower-like face that comes to me,
each morn for kisses -
Bend thou near me while I inhale its fragrance sweet
and put a blessing there.

Thank yous and Pumpkin Station

Thank you to everybody who commented on my last post. I was trying to figure out how to write this without sounding cheesy but I couldn't... So get ready, here comes the dairyfest. I love you guys for taking the time to watch me and then taking more time to comment. I wish I could devote entire posts to each one of you and the individual talents you have that I admire but I think I might use up my word limit and reveal my inner creeper/people watcher. But it really did mean a lot to me. I realize the song is far from perfect. And the more I listen to my recordings the more things I hear wrong but that's what recordings are for right? So thank you thank you thank you!

So, since this blog isn't just about me - John is liking his classes. He's taking Artificial Intelligence and Computer Architecture. I like watching him do homework sometimes because he will just sit there and think for a while. He has this face that is so John. I can't describe it well but John's eyebrows will furrow and his eyes will fixate on a certain point and I swear that he can stay in the same spot sitting indian style and thinking for hours (intermittently reading). It's pretty amazing. Then out of nowhere he'll return from whatever realm he was in and talk to me about what he's learned from his trip to the beyond.

Work is okay but it's the Navy and we both don't care for it. I feel like his mom when he goes to work. I fear that his shipmates are being a bad influence and that they aren't feeding him well enough and keeping him up too late. John doesn't like the Navy because the job he signed up for isn't really the job he is doing, he doesn't have any of the resources to do his job, nobody else wants to do their job, and the whole place is a dirty grey prison on water where "rec time" is PT. But to focus on our blessings...

 

Nora is amazing. She's beautiful and happy and smart and a total wild thing. I used to think while I was pregnant that John and I would have a quiet child who was like us and liked to sit and read. Nora does love to read I guess but she is nothing like I thought I wanted and I'm so happy about it. She is a climber and a runner and she is so social. If you give her the smallest bit of attention she'll return it with smiles and giggles and hugs. When she is angry she is angry and I am still trying to get used to that side of her, but her wide range of emotions keeps things interesting. To celebrate fall last week we took her to "Pumpkin Station."

True to Nora's style, she would only try to pet/chase the goats that were running away from her and not the docile ones that were sitting and eating hay.

 

For some reason the dump truck was her favorite. 

She also went down the giant inflatable slide and climbed haystack mountains. It's a hard thing to wear her out but we succeeded! After all was said and done she came and crashed in front of the tv with us and snuck some popcorn.  

 Yes I know, we spoil her.

I Am The Neighbor You Hate

I've been away from school and voice lessons for about a year and a half and it's been rough. I've been trying to keep up my chops and I really feel like despite being away Heavenly Father has blessed with a will to practice and a desire to get better. I'm actually really proud of my progress. So that's one part of why I wanted to post this video. The other reason is that I have had a really difficult time performing. I get so nervous and I feel like I can never show who the real singer inside of me is. (Wow that is so cheesy) So what better way to overcome your nerves than performing in front of the people you admire and respect most! (Oh my goodness what am I doing?) This song is a work in progress and I will be singing it for my audition recording. I would love some feedback from you classical music buffs. The beginning is flawed. I was having a hard time figuring out how long to take before I came in. But if you have any tips or suggestions I would love to know! This is me laying it all out there. This is the dream you have when you accidentally go to school naked. (I'm not even wearing make-up in this video guys! yikes).