Mireya does not seem to get this little tidbit of information though, as she has decided that naps are for babies and she is two now after all. Who knew? All grown up at two. You don’t need naps anymore, you don’t need to be told what to do, and you can boss your parents around instead. I mean, come on, who has a better idea of what I should be doing every second of the day? Certainly not me, so thank goodness Mireya’s around!

I love my daughter. I love my daughter. I love my daughter. I do not believe in spanking. I do not believe in spanking…. or smacking sense into children… they are just kids… she’s just a kid… the crying has to stop eventually… she won’t always hit me when she’s angry… it doesn’t do any good to yell at her… don’t yell… but she’s yelling…. no, that’s grade-school logic… she’s just a kid…. &*%#%*^#* I just *#i**$ want a quiet &$**# moment… *deep breath* I’m fine… This is an example of the conversation I have in my head several times a night, after about 4:30pm every day. *super sarcastic happy voice* Yaaaayyyyyy….

Ok, I really do love Mireya. However, I love her even more after she wakes up from a nap and is happy. (I’m sure Jason will second that!) She has not napped in two weeks! I cannot get anything done and she is ornery all evening and all night long. I have tried everything and I just hope she grows out of it.

My wife and I have put so much work into our home that we cannot bear the thought of anything ever happening to it. We just finished an extensive renovation, and spent a lot of money. We gutted most of the house, and make it just the way we wanted it. Our kitchen and bathrooms are state of the art, and all of our appliances are top of the line. We also bought all new furniture, and the place looks great. It’s so nice to finally have the home we always dreamed of. We knew we needed to protect our home, so we looked into getting ADT Security Gaylord. We hope that hooking up an alarm system will give us the peace of mind we need not to worry about our home when we are at work or on vacation. Our neighborhood is safe, but you never know what is going to happen. My philosophy is that we can never be too careful, and I think an alarm sounding off would be enough to deter even the most persistent burglar. ]]> http://www.mireyaruesch.com/2012/04/03/extensive-renovations/feed/ 0 http://www.mireyaruesch.com/2012/03/18/talking-in-bed/ http://www.mireyaruesch.com/2012/03/18/talking-in-bed/#comments Mon, 19 Mar 2012 03:23:02 +0000 Jason http://www.mireyaruesch.com/?p=1884 Continue reading →]]> I’m sitting here listening to Mireya talking, through the wall as I sit in the office, and she’s in bed for the night, suppose to be sleeping.

She’s saying things like: Elmo, how are you?; Elmo, sorry; HI Landon; Scared of the dark?…

It’s the cutest thing, but also frustrating because she should be sleeping and it’s way past her bedtime.

I was going through Mireya’s clothes this morning and figuring out what fit her and what doesn’t. I needed her to try on some clothes to see if she had grown into them yet. She was sitting in her rocking chair reading and I asked her to come try them on really quickly. She looked up at me and said, “No mom. I’m busy!” Aaaallllrighty then! lol

The other day I was snuggling Mireya on the couch. She stared at me and started tracing my face saying, “Pretty nose. Pretty eyes. Pretty mouth. Pretty cheeks. Pretty teeth. (when I smiled)” She stroked my hair, “Pretty hair, mom.” I nearly cried. She is such a sweetheart!

One of my favorite things Mireya says is, “How ’bout _____.” She will ask fill in the blank with: more, we eat, we play, up, see Landon, and anything else she wants to do. It is the way she says it that is just so darn cute! I LOVE IT! Oh! The other thing she says that melts my heart is when she tells me she loves me out of the blue. It is so sweet!

Mireya got a doll house for her birthday and she loves it. It came with some furniture, including a toilet, and a little family. A couple of days ago I was doing the dishes and I heard her say, “Mommy, pee pee potty? OK!” I looked over, thinking that she was telling me that she needed to go pee pee on the potty, but she wasn’t. She had taken the mommy doll and put her on the toilet. She made a pee pee sound and then said, “Good job Mommy! You pee pee on the potty!” Then she started grunting! I was trying to giggle as quietly as I could, because I knew she would get shy and stop if she saw me watching. She actually had the mommy doll go poo poo on the potty! She said, “Mommy poo poo! YAY Mommy!” She clapped her hands and then helped the mommy doll flush the toilet. How cute is that!? She is such a funny little girl! She makes me so happy!!

Oh! Mireya is an information sponge! She is always asking, “What is this?” and ”Who’s this?” She then easily repeats every single thing I say. She can tell you the names of everything! She can count to 5 with ease and she can sing, “A, B, C, E, I.” I have no idea what happened to D, F, G or H. It is super cute anyway! She speaks in sentences quite a bit and when she does, she can form grammatically correct six word sentences. I’m amazed at how fast she is learning. She can write most of the letters in her name and she can almost spell it. She is so smart!

Mireya is a budding photographer. She figured out how to take pictures on our iPhones a long time ago, but now she fully understands what she’s doing. She learned how to open the camera app, turn the phone sideways, point it at the object she wants a picture of, and press the plus button on the side of the phone. She even makes sure that she is not covering the lens before she takes the picture. She doesn’t understand how to focus the camera yet, but I’m sure she will before long! Her are some photos she took with my phone:

Yesterday, I caught them hugging, so I hurried and got my phone out to take a picture. Of course, by the time I got it out, they had stopped. Landon ran off and Mireya made kissing noises and puckered her lips at him. Jaquete told Landon that Mireya wanted to kiss him, so he ran over and he put his cheek toward her for a kiss. She changed her mind and turned her head away. I figured that was the end of it. Right as I was ready to put the phone away, Landon decided to kiss her!

It was the CUTEST thing I have EVER seen!!!!!!! It lasted several seconds and they both grinned afterwards! It was like a perfect little toddler Romeo and Juliet kiss!

Jaquete (my best-friend and Landon’s mother) and I both jumped up and down squealing at how cute our kids are! I cannot believe I caught it on camera! How perfect is that!? I LOVE OUR BABIES!

• Weight- 21 pounds, 1 percentile
• Height- 33.5 inches, 42nd percentile
• Head Circumference- 18 inches, 11th percentile

All of her stats are extremely consistent with how she has been growing in the past, which is great. (I still think that the reason her weight is the lowest percentile is because so many children are overweight and obese these days.)

Mireya’s next wellness visit is not until she turns three. I can hardly believe that we are past the baby stage and into the kids stage! I was even told that she is safe to ride forward-facing in her car seat.

She thought it was the coolest thing to ride forward-facing! She stared out the window in silence with huge eyes. The look of awe on her little face was so sweet. I prefer it too, because now I can see what she is doing or what she wants much more easily. This is one of the perks of being two!

Well, yesterday the day for her Elmo Party finally came and she had a blast! We invited three families with children her age: her best friend Landon and his family (our best-friends); Sage, Jade, Hunter and their parents (their mom is my close friend); and Kaylie and her family (her mom is my friend too). Kaylie and her family were not able to make it to the party, but they came today. Mireya’s Grandma and Grandpa Ruesch came too!

I decorated the house with a Sesame Street theme centering on Elmo, of course.

We decorated with this blanket and then gave it to her as a present that Mommy and Daddy made!

I wrapped our presents in Sesame Street wrapping paper!

I made homemade cupcakes: coconut and chocolate strawberry shortcake.

I also bought Sesame Street snacks. I found two kinds of toddler-size snack bars that had Grover and Big Bird on them and two kinds of crackers: one kind was shaped as Elmo and Big Bird’s faces and the other was the alphabet. I even found Sesame Street toddler juice boxes!

Mireya not only didn't want to pose for photos, but she also didn't want to stop eating a giant mouthful of Sesame Street crackers.

I was not sure what activities to plan for toddlers, so I decided on coloring with the cool Crayola markers that only write on special paper for the first activity (they don’t stain anything!) The kids all had their own markers and paper and they got to take them home!

Mireya and her friends also played place the nose on the Elmo.

 *****Video Coming Soon*****

I handed out party favor bags and the kids thought they were pretty great, especially the Sesame Street stickers, which ended up all over the house.

Big sister Sage put stickers all over baby sister Jade's shirt. It was so cute!

Other than that, they all just played with her fun presents and ate lots of treats!

Hunter playing the triangle.

Landon enjoying a snack!

Mireya’s favorite part was opening the presents of course!

Everyone got along beautifully and other than a few tantrums over sharing (typical toddlers) the party went great! Of course, she had to have a birthday cupcake to celebrate her turning two!

Mireya will not turn two until tomorrow, but it already feels like we have a little girl instead of a baby girl. *sigh*

We stayed at the most amazing hotel, the JW Marriot, courtesy of Jason’s company. I was flabbergasted at the interior! It was HUGE! Our room had the most amazing bathroom. It was bigger than ours and it had a fabulous jetted tub. (Mireya and I had a jetted bubble bath the last night there and she giggled non-stop the entire time and then she talked about the “fun bath” for days afterward!)

In the hotel lobby.

The view from our room's balcony.

Mireya enjoying the view.

Jason had to leave early every morning to attend his work meetings, so Mireya and I ate breakfast at a little cafe in our hotel:

I had originally planned on taking Mireya to see some of the family friendly sights in Vegas, but I had to do school work while we were there, so that limited our free time. Mireya also did not want to do anything but go outside and watch the koi in the lake that wound around part of the outside of the hotel. It had gigantic koi and waterfalls and little bridges. Mireya thought it was more fun than just about anything there. Every morning, the first thing she would ask is if we were going to go see the fishes.

Mireya even found puddles to splash in:

We did manage to fit in a couple of hours of shopping at the Fashion Show Mall. It is the biggest mall I have ever been in and it was fun, but exhausting. Mireya LOVED shopping and she told her Daddy all about it when we got back. (Jason was in meetings all day every day that we were there.)

As a family, we got to go to a chocolate factory, which was not as exciting as we had hoped. We also went to the Shark Reef at Mandalay Bay. It was really cool. We thought Mireya would love it, especially considering that she was best friends with the Koi, but she was not as thrilled as we expected. She had fun, but she was pretty much done after the first 30 minutes.

Komodo Dragon

The last thing we did before we left was show Mireya the fountains at Cesar’s Palace. She had been obsessed with the small fountains in our hotel, so I promised her we would check out a BIG fountain before we went home.

At this point she was full of beans and exhausted.

What is that you ask? It is a crummy photo of the bite mark that her best friend, Landon, got to wear around for a few days. Yep. Mireya BIT someone. I was HORRIFIED!

Landon had been pestering her the entire time we were there and I guess she just got fed up. He tried to take her sippy cup away from her for the 50th time and she snapped… and bit him. I tried to pull her off and she was locked onto his arm like a crocodile! She seriously would NOT let go! The whole time Landon should have been screaming, but instead he was looking at her with this look that just said, “But why Mireya? I love you so much and you bite me!?” It was toddler heartbreak.

She has not done it again since, but I dread the day that she does. I would love to say that there is no way that she will ever do it again, but I never thought she would do it in the first place, so what the heck do I know? Oy.

After they filled her two cavities and a slight depression in a third tooth, they brought her back to me to wake up. I held her while she woke back up and she was so out of it. Her little eyes jumped back and forth and I could tell that she really wanted to talk. When she finally could speak, she said, “Landon?” Of course, the first thing my baby thought of was her best friend! The second thing was, “I love you mommy.” As soon as she was awake enough, she started begging to see Landon, so he came back. She calmed down after he was in the room, but he kept looking at her like, ‘what is wrong with you?’ Poor guy could tell that she was not herself.

Overall, everything went great. She did get a sore spot on the outside of her cheek, because the thing they use to hold her mouth open pinched her. Other than that, everything was fine. She did not even have to be numbed up, becuase the cavities were not that deep. I am so relived that it is all over and I hope that this is not the beginning of a lifetime of dentist visits. Jason and I are way too familiar with dental work and we do not want that for Mireya.