Playing with Christa

Vacation part 3 (last one)

Vacation was a month ago but it's still fun to look at videos we took then. This is a clip our Thanksgiving celebration. After dinner, the kids were running around, kicking balls to get the adults to clap hands. Amanda came up with this dancing move to get everyone going.

Vacation Part 2

We went to the UCLA store and picked up some outfits for everyone. Amanda picked out a set of balls for herself. The football was her favorite. She really got into throwing the football with Daddy. Her celebration dance after the catch is very cute.

Vacation part 1

We took a nice long vacation down to see our parents. Here is the first leg of our trip at Grandpa and Grams' place. Amanda enjoyed using a magnifying glass. She also specially requested Grams to read her during her bedtime routine.

New Hairdo

For the last several Thursday at church, Amanda's babysitters have been doing different hairdos on all the girls. This is one of the more elaborate ones.

Timeouts

The other day she took her out stuffed animals which she rarely played with and gave them lots of timeouts on the chairs. She is sitting in her timeout location.

Nice Smile

Count to 15

Amanda loves to count, except she counts to 15 before she jumps, as opposed to 3.

Fort

Lucy helped Amanda build a fort with blankets, pillows and chairs. Amanda then brought in a lot of books and asked Lucy to read them to her. It's quite adorable.

Grandma Crawford

Grandma Crawford visited us for several days, and she and Amanda Jo had a lot of fun together. A.J. makes Grandma laugh a lot.  
 

Face Painting

You can't see if very well but Amanda does have a balloon on her cheek. Caitlyn drew that on her face at Noah's Birthday Party.

Uncle Doug

Last month, Uncle Doug visited us. Amanda enjoyed him a lot.

Daddy and Me

Sorry, I have been lazy about keeping the blog up. Here is a picture with just Amanda and Daddy.

Go Away Monster

Go Away Monster is Amanda's first board game. We bought it for her for her birthday. She's been playing it multiple times a day.

ABCD

Whenever Amanda read her books on the alphabet (she calls them ABCD, as opposed to ABC), she always sings the alphabet song. For some reason, she seems to get stuck on "S".

Grandparents visits

We enjoyed visits from the grandparents during the week of Amanda's birthday. She had a great time charming everyone!

Lakeport vacation part 2

We spent most of the vacation swimming. For the first few days, Amanda sat near the edge of the pool playing with toys. On the last day, we forced her to come into the pool with an inner tube. She had a lot of fun floating around the pool and watching Daddy dive from the diving board.

Strawberry Picking for Amanda Jo's 2nd Birthday

Amanda Jo is two years old today! We're so grateful to God for her two years of life.

This past weekend we went strawberry picking with some of Amanda Jo's friends and their families. Strawberries are A.J.'s favorite fruit. She did a good job of picking. She only ate two strawberries while we were picking, even though it looks like a big mess on her face.

 

Her friend Christa helping to pick strawberries too. After berry picking we had a picnic lunch. There's an old tractor for the kids to play on. Amanda Jo is sitting with her friend Ben.

 

Lakeport vacation part 1

Last week, we spent 5 days in Lakeport with two other families from church. It was a lot of fun but also kind of crazy with 6 adults and 5 children. Amanda had a lot of trouble sleeping in a new place.

We spent couple mornings at the park. The weather was perfect, not too hot.

Gigi and Ed

Our friends Ed and Gigi came over for dinner and games the other night. Now, Amanda Jo loves to sing Old MacDonald with their names in the song: "...and on that farm he had a Gigi, ee-ii-ee-ii-oo. With a yoo-hoo here and a yoo-hoo there..."

Apparently there are lots of interesting characters on Old MacDonald's farm, and A.J. always decides what everyone says. Gigi usually says "yoo-hoo," Ed says "sleep," Daddy says "I love you," Mommy says "Wuh ai nee" (I love you in Chinese), and lots of other people say "'allo" (hello, but A.J. says it with a French accent). Old MacDonald's farm also generally houses a lion and an elephant and sometimes a ball (bounce, bounce, bounce).

Keyboard artist

Amanda loves to dance to music. Here is a favorite from her keyboard.

Pizza Party

She arranged boxes of sodas and set up a "pizza party" all by herself. It's fun to see her imaginative ways.

Falling Down

Matt has a bunch of cards that he is not using. Amanda enjoys slipping and falling down on them. I don't really understand it.

Feeding Monkey & Snoopy

Recently, Amanda started to do more pretend play with her stuff animals and play kitchen accessories. Everyday, she must feed monkey and Snoopy a slice of pizza.

Reading with Ben

Amanda loves to read with Ben. She loves to watch this particular video as well. Ben is reading "Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?" by Eric Carle, except it is a cross between that book and "Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What Do You Hear?" Of course, he can't really read at his age yet, just recalling from memory what the book is about.

Outfit

Amanda is quite opinionated about her outfits. She likes to pick out her own clothes. While it was 60 degrees outside, she decided that she wanted to wear the plaid tank top with the Hawaiian shorts.

I also trimmed her bangs so you can see more of her face now.

Pajamas

Resident Librarian

Sorry for not blogging for a while.
Jensa comes over and hang out with Amanda and I every now and then. Amanda loves it especially since Jensa always carry stickers in her purse and give them out to the kids. She also brings over books to read with Amanda.

In the Block Bin

Amanda Jo had this idea one night to sit in the block bin after dumping out all the blocks. Then she started to clean up the blocks, putting them into the bin with her in it! We fit most of the blocks in there, and she thought it was funny.

Play with Daddy

Here is something that Amanda has always enjoyed doing with Daddy. I love her giggles.

More fun on the slide

The slide is her favorite item at the playground. She can go up the stairs and down the slide all by herself. We also tried to put her hair in pigtails.

Tire Swing

Couple weeks ago, we took Amanda to the playground while Matt played baseball other church folks. She went on the tire swing with Katia and Claire. But she didn't like it too much.

Drawing

Amanda likes to draw but most of the time, she ends up asking us to draw. Here she is, tracing her hand. It's fun to see her focus on a task.

More pictures of Rhys and Amanda

Here they are playing in the backyard.

Cleaning

Amanda likes to put on the gloves and scrub the floor (and other things) with the unused sponges. Apparently Ben just follows suit.

Slide

At the playground, Amanda loves to play on the slide. She especially likes the circular slide and wants to go on it again and again.

Here she is on the slide with Christa, her little friend.

Playing the "window game" with Rhys

We have two bay windows at our place. When you look our one window, you can see the other one. The kids think it is the funniest and funnest game ever. Here are Rhys and Amanda going at it:

Haircut

I gave Amanda a hair cut a week or so ago. It's not the best but you can see more of her face now. Here is the face she likes to give when we are taking her picture.

Poncho

Here is a picture from several weeks ago where she wore her poncho that her aunt Mimi bought her, as well as the dress Deb knitted for her (you can't see the dress very well).

Camera

Amanda loves to play with the camera. So we let her have our old film camera as a toy.

Amanda's House

Lucy made a little "house" for Amanda with a blanket, pillow and some stuffed animals. Whenever we ask Amanda about her house, she would visit this little spot.

More family photos

Some more photos from our L.A. visit.


Amanda, Presley and me


Amanda played with Legos a lot.

A.J. and Her Cousins

A.J. visited her cousins Presley and Elvin this past weekend. We did our best to line them up for a photo shoot.  

Cutting Food

This is Amanda's newest toy which she really enjoys, thanks to Grandpa and Grams.

I Like It When

Amanda Jo's favorite book from the library is I Like It When by Mary Murphy. She knows every page and has actions that go along with each one. And trust me, we know every page too. It's a lot of fun.

"I like it when we play peekaboo."

"I like it when you dance with me."

Climber

Amanda is going through the climbing stage. She loves and wants to climb everything. A window ledge is a fun place to climb on.

 

Playdate with Ben

I watch Ben once a week. Amanda loves Ben's company. She used to just follow him around everywhere. Now that she is a little older, they actually play together and fight over toys. Here, Ben puts the tupperware on her head.

 

Sick

Not the best way to start the new year. Amanda has had a cold for a while now. She developed a dramatic cold-related rash/hive while we were visiting family. Here is a picture of her with it.