Wednesday, January 23, 2013

3 Day Weekend!

Our little family lives for the weekends now with Johann being gone so much during the week.
You can imagine how exciting an extra day in our weekend is then!
Friday we watched movies and worked on rockets.
Saturday we went to Calico with Johann's family including his cousin, Gaby, who was visiting from Uruguay.
I think I went to Calico once as a kid.  I now know why we didn't go more. It is a weird place.
But Henry had a good time and Gaby got him a now much beloved tomahawk.

 The tomahawk

Henry requested this classy picture 






By far the most exciting part of Calico-the Mystery Shack or 'crooked house.' Henry is still talking about it. 

Everything in the house seems to defy gravity.  

panning for gold

It was at Calico that I had the realization that I could never be a celebrity. I should have thought the lack of hollywood looks or acting talent would be convincing enough, but just in case it isn't, I don't handle massive public attention well it seems. I am use to kind people coming and "oooh"ing and "awwww"ing Dorothea, but nothing like happened on Saturday. There must have been a couple tour buses worth of asian tourists there and they were unabashed about trying to take pictures and videos of her and sometimes Henry as well as trying to touch them. I actually almost had a mini-melt down when there wasn't a let up for about 15 minutes straight. It took me snapping at a little girl for trying to touch Thea's face and pulling off close to one of the buildings to finally calm things down for at least a little while. The cowboy crooked house tour guide kept offering to take her home but after that the incidents were much fewer and far between thankfully. 

After Calico we went to Giuseppe's for dinner then headed home and did a little more work on the model rockets. 

Sunday we went to church then to Riverside to have dinner and a last visit with Gaby before she left. She made some of the best cannelloni I have ever had. 

After getting back Sunday night, the finishing touches were put on the rockets so we were all ready for launching Monday morning.


We found out there is an official model rocket launch site where they shoot off rockets every so often, ones that break the sound barrier, night time rockets etc, and decided to go there.
Getting set up

 Friends Todd and Luke getting ready to launch 

 Grammy and Thea (Thea is practicing flying)

Friend Jessica being a boss and launching the Mean Machine  

The boys coming back from retrieving the Mean Machine. Donuts and rockets-kid boy heaven. 

All the males chasing after one of the rockets 

We ate donuts and launched about 12 times between the 5 rockets. The boys mostly liked running to 'catch' the rockets. They also ran about halfway out to the mountain when I told Henry to stop being a pain and burn off some energy by running to the mountain. He got mad and just kept going and then Luke followed. Thanks again to Jess for retrieving them. Henry still talks about his awesome 'surprise' of getting to sit in the front seat on the way back. ha! 

That afternoon my brother came over and we hung out and had dinner. I think it had been awhile since I had legitimately cooked. Pork roast with steamed carrots and green beans. mmm. 

So now we are back in the middle of the week. sigh. But only 2 more days until the weekend! =) 

Wednesday, January 16, 2013

It's a tooth! er, kind of.

I know you can't see a tooth or anything like it in this picture, I guess I just felt it's obligatory to have a close up picture of her mouth when talking about her teeth...mommy blog rules internalized or something...

It seems like Thea has been teething since she was 3 months. The bumps on her lower gums just kept getting bigger and bigger but no teeth. Finally on Friday when she woke up I noticed something sharp in her mouth-ta da-the very tip top of a tooth on the left side. This one likes to take it slow.  
 
And look! I got her hair to stay down (for about 5 minutes)


then for a few more minutes after bath. Dwight Schrute baby, anyone?

Monday, January 14, 2013

Rocket Boys

Around October or November Johann decided he needed to take up a hobby of some sort that he could also include Henry in. I should ask him because I'm still not completely sure why but he decided building and launching model rockets would be a lot of fun (like October Sky).

Fast forward to Christmas, both Henry and Johann got lots of model rocket paraphernalia and set to work on their first rocket.

By New Year's Eve they had finished their first rocket, the Amazon, and since it is a lower flying rocket we decided to launch it in the backyard.


Success! I still laugh when I think of all of us running around like morons, fearing the rocket would land on us.

We then took the rocket to Johann's parents in Riverside the next day and launched it. Unfortunately we all got a little too excited, put a bigger engine in this time and underestimated the affect of the on and off breeze. Johann's parents live on a hill top so when we launched it, it went pretty high up, caught the breeze and then flew about two to three blocks down the hill. We thought we saw the backyard it went into and sent a search and rescue party but after being allowed to search the yard, they came back empty handed.

Since the first rocket had been so successful, the boys went ahead and started work on another rocket, this time one over 6 feet called "The Mean Machine." They finished it Friday night and we decided to steer clear of any residential areas and went out to Lucerne and found a dry lake bed to launch.




  


And...not so much success. We had some issues getting the engine where it needed to be, Johann says he followed the measurements and should have gone by how it looked instead of what the guide said. He also thinks he probably needed to open the parachute and refold it more loosely before putting it in the rocket. Live and learn and all that.

Now that we've had a good go and a flop the boys will be spending some time this week getting some more rockets ready and hopefully we can launch them on Monday since Johann has the day off-hooray!

I'm glad he decided on this hobby. It's pretty inexpensive and Henry loves helping and launching them.  I'm looking forward to their next launch! 

Thursday, January 10, 2013

If only Joseph had been a transformer

This morning during scripture study Henry picked Joseph in Egypt. I was telling him about Joseph fleeing from Potiphar's wife and explaining how sometimes we just have to get ourselves away from a bad situation or someone who wants us to do something wrong. He seemed like he was grasping it and then he told me:

"Yeah, I would just start to run away and my arms would turn into gun and I'd go 'pew!pew!pew!' with the lasers and get out of there!"

I'm guessing this is how Quentin Tarantino would go about it if he ever did Joseph and the Amazing Technicolored Dream Coat on film.




BET YOU DIDN'T SEE THIS COMING MRS. POTIPHAR!

Monday, January 7, 2013

A day at the Huntington

Thursday January 3rd our little family, my brother, his wife, Granpa Simonds, Abuela, Johann's cousin Gaby (just here from Uruguay), sister, brother and sister in law and our two nephews headed out to San Marino to visit the Huntington Library. With the kiddies and babies we didn't do much looking in the library or galleries and mostly stuck to the beautiful gardens.













How I love this place. Now I just have to become a millionaire so I can live in the neighborhood. 


6 months





Sometimes I feel like she is SO big then I stand back and see how small she looks in this chair! 

Oh Dorothea, I can't believe she is already been here for 6 months! It's an exciting mark, kind of that transition from a little baby to mover, crawler and then toddler and also a sad mark for those same reasons. I think I may be safe for a while yet with her though because it doesn't seem like she will be crawling any time soon. She wiggles and worms backwards on her play mat and circles around it without rolling but she rarely moves forward or pulls into a crawl position. One of my favorite things she does when she gets really excited is plant her face in her mat, kick her legs furiously then look up and around to see if she has gone anywhere.

 We started her on rice cereal and she took to it immediately. I think her only qualm is the she can't put it in herself. She's been acting like she wants solids for a while now-making the most pathetic and hopeful faces while very intently watching us eat. Unfortunately, I am 91% sure she is allergic to it since she's developed a pretty big rash twice after having it. It's the rice cereal or sushi that I ate, but I had sushi before without her getting a rash so I am pretty sure (and hopeful) it's that and NOT sushi. =) So I am going to wait to do rice cereal until later to see if she will just grow out of it. Until then I'm not sure if I want to start giving her veggies or just hold off for another month or two. We also got her some of those gerber puffs. She loves getting to eat those at lunch or dinner when everyone else is eating too but again, I think she might be allergic.
We finally got her a crib the beginning of December and she transitioned pretty good for naps but still only sleeps there part of the night. I think I could get her to stay there all night and I will start now that things are going to be back to normal (read holidays over) but it is going to be a little bittersweet seeing her exclusively in the crib. 

We haven't been to the doctors in a while, working on getting her on Johann's insurance, but according to our measurements at home she is about 18lbs and just shy of 26 inches putting her somewhere between the 75th and 90th percentile for weight and 50th for length. 
Having family around for 3 weeks certainly helped my poor arms and wrists so they didn't throb every single morning,we'll see how it goes now they're gone. 

Her little hair patch and big eyes continue to garner her a lot of attention when we go out. Hopefully the rest of her hair catches up soon or at leasts gets long enough that we can trim and even it out. Until then we'll just have our little cabbage patch/dr suess character baby. 

While she still doesn't seem terribly interested in any locomotion except mommy, she is getting pretty good at sitting up and playing with toys on the floor. She can bend forward and grab a toy then pull back up to a sit really well. Her only problem is when she goes too far back to look and something and down she goes.
Over break while everyone was here she started using her pterodactyl (or pteranodon for those who really care...) screech excessively. Thankfully that has ended and she mostly just babbles now except for when she is really hungry or tired she starts to actually shout, "aaahhhhh" and whine to get fed or be put down for a nap. She does a lot of "blahblah," "hoohoo," "daadaa," "heh heh," "whaaa," and "mmmm," and general cooing. She is still pretty even and generally has a content look on her face or a smile. I am fairly certain she would be content all day just sitting up at eye level watching everyone around her. She loves being around people, especially when they are talking. Very much a girl, I suppose!

We are so blessed to have Dorothea in our family. Happy 6 months miss Thea Bea!