Peanut, Peanut Butter and Jelly!

Today Eliza wanted peanut butter, and she knew just how to get it.

Helping Eliza

She has turned into such a big girl over the past couple of weeks. Very rarely does she actually ask for help. She LOVES to try to get into her car seat all by her self, even though it now takes over 5 minutes. It's so cute though, and it gives her a chance to grow. She loves to help push the grocery cart. Every time I go to the store I get at least 2 comments on what a good helper she is.

This morning she helped:
Ryan shave
me make pancakes
set the table (her dishes)
take the milk to the table
clear her dishes
take the milk to the fridge...then back to the table where I ended up taking it to the fridge.
said "bubbles" which in essence means she wants to help with the dishes.



She is a good helper and I am excited to see what new and fun things she will want to help with.

More proof

When we went to Eliza's 15 month check up the doctor mentioned how she would start to move furniture around and rearrange it to get to what she wanted. At that point in time she could move small, children's furniture, but nothing more. I didn't realize how soon it would be that she could move our kitchen chairs.

She has also become completely OBSESSED with bubbles, whether they are bubbles from the bath, kitchen sink, boiling water or bubbles that you blow. She loves them. She has lately to taken to saying bubbles when she is upset in order to calm herself down. It is rather funny.

Because she loves bubbles so much I find that it is very easy to entertain her while I do dishes. I just plop her up on a chair beside me and she plays while I wash. However today, she decided to do the dishes by herself. She moved the chair all the way across the room to the sink, crawled up to the sink and proceeded to "do the dishes." She ended up breaking a bowl and cut two of her fingers. Not badly, thank goodness.

She also had a cut thumb from finding mommy's razor in the bath tub this morning. I'm beginning to wonder if I will be able to survive being a parent of a toddler. I know she will, I just might go insane in the process.

Toddlers Climb EVERYTHING!!

Here is proof that Eliza is officially a toddler.

I was reorganizing some boxes of baby clothes and school stuff when Eliza discovered, to her immense enjoyment, that she could crawl up on the boxes and they became perfect seats. I decided to be a nice mom and build her some stairs that were safe to climb up. She LOVED it! When I finally put all the boxes away, she started crying. Poor girl. I'm sure she'll find something new to crawl onto tomorrow.

Our Growing Girls!!!

That's right...girls! It looks like Eliza will be a big sister to a little sister! We are very excited for this precious new princess to join our family. Everything looks great in the ultrasound and the doctor says our girl is growing and developing really well.

On another note, Eliza is learning new things to do and new words to say everyday. It is really fun how interactive she has become. Here is her latest and greatest.




She learned this just by me singing the song a couple of times. I am always impressed by how fast she catches on to new things.

San Diego Zoo

A few weekends ago we planned a trip to the San Diego Zoo with some friends from BYU/fellow coworkers at John Deere. They live and work in San Diego so we are quite close. It was a great time to be with them. I think Jessica and I enjoyed talking to each other more than we did seeing the different animals while John, Ryan and Eliza were more fascinated with the animals than with talking. It was perfect for everyone.

Pointing to the Elephants

Pointing to the monkeys.

Playing on some stairs.

Our family

Eliza was fascinated with the Koalas. We spent a good half an hour watching them.

It was a long day, but a lot of fun! Thanks Johansens for letting us come visit!

Yummy Food

I have a dear friend who is a fantastic cook. I wish I could venture out with different foods like her and still have it taste excellent. Anyway, she frequently blogs about the yummy, yummy food she makes. It reminds me of the days when I too was newlywed and made a meal for Ryan every night for the first three months. Sometimes I wish I still did that, but alas, life if different.

I do cook, however infrequently it might be. I also, however, rarely take pictures like my friend and my older sister. As I was going through pictures from the last few months I found some of food that I did make. Ta-da. Proof.

These burgers turned out to be incredibly huge but Oh!, so delicious. Homemade burgers are always much better than those from a burger joint. Our trick, grilled onions as well as chili powder on top of the burger as it cooks. It add just the right about of flavor.

I have another dear friend from South Korea, and before I moved to California, she taught me how to make Chapchae. It turned out amazing. Eliza even couldn't get enough of it. My friend would be so proud of me, I ate my entire meal with chop sticks. That's right, no fork or western utensil. It was hard and took a long time, but that meant more time to enjoy.

While living in LA, Ryan and I have decided to try to eat lots of ethnic foods that we would not have the chance to eat elsewhere. We rarely go out to eat, but on the special occasion that we do, we try new foods. One such place was Veronica's Kitchen, a Nigerian place.

This was so much fun to go to. We were the only white people in the entire restaurant. It was awesome. Ryan ordered us some fu-fu (foo-foo) with some chicken soup. Fu-fu is a mass of what looks like and has the consistency of play dough. It is made from crushed melon seeds. You break off of piece of the ball and form it into a spoon. You then dish up some soup with it and eat the whole thing. It sounds weird, but is really quite good. Beware, it is very spicy and not for weak tongues. We even got mild and it was almost too much for me.

Me demonstrating how to eat fu-fu.