Twice Packed Tight

We spent Christmas with Jeff's family in Maryland this year, meaning we actually had access to a working digital camera for a week! Mine is broken, and Jeff's is half broken and missing a charger. The packing and the flights were mediocre, both tighter than we'd hoped, which is pretty normal. It was worth it to see Grandma and Grandpa Tucker though, plus all the aunts, uncles and cousins she's never really been around.

This is Paige's cousin Lily, who is just over two. The closeness in age led to an interesting dynamic between the two of them as they oscillated between being sharing and competing for the same toys. They also went back and forth on whether or not Lily was old enough to "help" Paige and boss her around (usually not).

For church on Sunday we borrowed some hairbands from Lily, and tried putting Paige's hair into pigtails for the first time. They don't stay in long, but they are adorable! In case you can't tell, Jeff is saying,"So Cute!"




We didn't get pictures of much else since we were having so much fun. Thank you, Grandma and Grandpa for a wonderful Christmas vacation!! We sure love you.

More than Words

Jeff and Paige were having a discussion last night about whether one of the animals in Paige's picture book was a pony or a cow, and whether another one was a bunny or a doggie. It got me thinking that it might be good to write down all the words Paige knows right now. It's growing pretty long--43 words! In case you're curious (and since we haven't taken any pictures lately):

mama
dada
grandma
baby
hi
hello
go
cuppy
yellow
bye-bye
car
no
wow
bum
cool
key
eye
nose
ball
pretty
home
Jesus
please
cheese (Jesus and please both sound similar to cheese)
juice
banana ('nana)
apple
yummy
tasty
coat
hat
shoes
boo
cow
doggie
fish
bear
pooh
night-night
"what's that"
"what's this"
"it's a..."
and
Rawr!

Jeff says that kids are ideally supposed to have around 200 words in their vocabulary by age 2. At this rate, I think we're a shoe-in!

Better Late

In honor of Thanksgiving, I give you: Paige's Halloween costume! Happy holidays!

In Lieu of Costume Pics

We realized after the fact that the only picture that we took of Paige (Piglet) on Halloween was at the Ancestry carnival photo booth thing, and those pictures haven't been posted to the company network yet. I would put her in her costume again, but she got some food on it, the lines were drawn in washable marker, and the ears have gone missing. So we'll just have to wait.

However, Mom finally decided it was time to take the knife to her pumpkins. She only grew three of them because they turned out to be...large. Paige gives me this face a lot. She must feel threatened by the squash that's four times her size.

Literally, four times. The pumpkin was over 70 pounds.

Grandma was pretty excited. Paige was too.

Of course, we had to take the opportunity to shoot some pictures of our little princess before going off to the ball, aka: fondue party at the Cooper's. We sure love this girl.

Meet Charlie

We were supposed to clean the bathroom yesterday afternoon. Instead, we went to the pet store! This is Charlie.

Paige is learning to say 'fish' and trying to remember to be gentle as we watch him eat his lunch and build his bubble nest. We like Charlie.

Just Silly

If you give a Paige a plum....

She'll need a bath. If you give her a bath, she'll want to see herself in the mirror afterward.

Of course, she'll start making faces at herself,

and eventually just get downright silly.

When she's finally ready for bed, she'll want to play dress-up first.


And playing will make her so hungry that she may just ask for a plum before bed.
Some days are just plain silly.

Diapered Defiance

Grandma Cooper's been admiring our new car for a little while now, and talking about getting one herself. She came home from Costco with this beauty last week. Somehow I was expecting something a little bigger.

Paige has been enjoying it though. It's the first toy she plays with when she wakes up, and she rides or pushes it around for quite a while, stopping to rev the engine and dance to the music every once in a while. She even gives her dolly a turn...sometimes.

I'm afraid though that with all this new freedom Grandma's car has given her, she's gone a little bit wild.
I guess it was only a matter of time before our baby would come home with wild accessories,

crazy hair,

and absolutely no manners.

*Sigh*. Our little rebel. It's just a phase, right?...Right?

Picture This

I would say that we don't have any pictures because our SD card is not in the camera right now, but the truth of the matter is that we're really just bad at remembering to take pictures since we've been back, even though a lot of things have happened that would have been worth photographing (like, oh, my sister's wedding and the birth of my new nephew). At least those two biggies are covered on the other blogs, right?

So while a post with pictures would obviously be preferable, it could be a while before we got one of those, so just...imagine for second, kay?

Paige is becoming more and more of a toddler every day:

- Grandma Tucker gave her a little pink tutu and some plastic bracelets, which she's been wearing non-stop for the last week. She loves hats, glasses, necklaces, shoes, talking on the phone, and she's been stealing my hairbrush and headbands.

- She's talking up a storm. Her favorite word right now is "doggie". We're working on "please," but she doesn't think that one is as useful.

- She loves to explore and to disobey lately, and is increasingly independent, going up and down stairs and insisting on feeding herself. She has a baby-sized rocking chair in her room where she loves to sit, because she can do it herself and it's her size.

- The real kicker though is I was checking my email the other day and I looked over at Paige and she was reading Grandma Cooper's AP Calculus book...

We might have our hands full with this one.

Last Looks

The last couple weeks have been pretty busy, and though we're already back in the US, we thought we'd give you a few glances at our last week in London.

Paige was definitely ready to go. Or just loving additions to her jungle-gym.



We walked past this every day on the way to the store or the doctor or the library or anywhere, and every time it made me think, "Just to be on the street where you live..." I love window boxes, and especially loved them in London.

Ah, Cathedral Mansions. You were good to us. I'm glad that we've been added to the list of people that have lived there in its hundred years of existence.

Five, Four, Three, Two....

One of the reasons why we haven't blogged for a while is because we're in that awkward phase of moving where you feel like you should be doing something productive like packing, but you're using all the stuff that you have left to pack, so you end up watching movies instead.
Actually, we've been doing quite a bit lately, including going to Wicked, and out to tea, getting Indian food, going to the park...but we don't have any pictures because we're bad about that sometimes. By way of a last send-off, my friend took me out to get a fish pedicure, and she took a picture, so there's that, at least:

It was an odd experience.
Hopefully we'll get some final pictures in before we leave. For now though, you'll have to make do with an old picture of us eating sausage rolls. Sorry.

The Cow Goes Vroom

As soon as Paige sees that we're actually going to get her in the morning instead of rolling over and pretending we can't hear her, she picks up Lovey-Bear, gives him a hug, and tosses him over the side. She looks over to make sure he made it, looks at us, and then points to go down too. Partners in crime are awake.

Jeff let Paige play with the cell phone the other morning and made the mistake of not watching her very closely. When I went to take the phone to the store later in the day, it was not to be found. Three hours later, we'd torn the house apart and still not found it. Jeff looked up how to email a text, and we played Marco Polo for a while until we found it in...the cereal box. Jeff leaves it on the floor when he eats sometimes and Paige will usually swoop in for the kill if we don't pay attention.

I was feeding Paige raisins, of which she is fond, and she very deliberately took one and hung it over the edge of her highchair to throw it overboard. Before I could say a word though, she cracked a smile and shook her head, saying, "Uh uh," and popping it in her mouth. Psych! This happens pretty often now.

Jeff went to put on his shoes yesterday and found a spoon in one. As he put on the other, he found a teething ring. My shoes were in the in box where we keep the vacuum, along with a stuffed koala.

Paige has been learning some little words and sounds lately. Somewhere along the line, she picked up that the car goes vroom, and the cow goes moo, which is what she has them say most of the time. But sometimes, we catch the cow driving down the road, the car chewing its cud and softly mooing in the pasture, and little Paige giggling to herself in the corner.

First Steps!!

Okay, well maybe not the very first, but pretty darn close. Paige has been standing on her own for a couple of weeks now, but it's been spotty - a few seconds here, a few minutes there, and nary a clue from us as to when she'd do it. She's got strong little legs though, and Rebecca and I have been telling each other for weeks that we'll wake up one day and our little girl will decide that she's finally ready to walk. Well, today was that day - or at least today was the first time she's been willing to walk for us. Usually our pretty little miss is quite content to sit on her bum and laugh at us - but today she thought she'd put on a show, so we decided to get out the camera.

We sure do love our big little girl!

I made a chocolate cake on Wednesday without cocoa powder, and frosted it without frosting. I was proud of myself. Paige seemed to enjoy it too, when she wasn't dropping it on the floor. It made a good breakfast and lunch for the next couple days.


As for the birthday girl herself, she's been working on some new skills:






Just today, she's been standing by herself for a long period of time. She was pretty proud of herself.


To make matters more exciting, my friend who's been in London on study abroad stayed with us for a couple days before heading back home. Her friend Lauren also stayed with us for a night, meaning Jeff was outnumbered four to one. He put up a good front for our girl talk, and even watched a chick flick with us, but I think he's probably glad to be back to just two silly girlies in the house.

Almost as Good as Cartoons!

Vacation pictures still in the works. Just so's ya know.

Blue Screened

Sorry for the lack of communication on our part. Jeff's mom came to visit for a couple weeks and we have lots of fun pictures, but the day she left, my computer crashed. We've replaced the RAM, but I keep getting the blue screen of death unexpectedly. I guess it's what I get for using a computer that's upwards of 6 or 7 years old. The pictures are on Jeff's computer, so if he decides to post or my computer resurrects, we'll be in business, but for now we may be a little out of commission. Sorry...

Belated

I meant to post this on Friday, but it was a crazy day, and then Saturday was a special day, I taught Sunday school last-minute, and then I forgot while getting ready for Jeff's mom to get here. But now she's sleeping off her jetlag, so I thought I'd post some pictures from the Royal Wedding.
The wedding's been a big deal here, obviously. Everyone talked about it and everyone watched it. This is one of our favorite things we saw to celebrate.

The parade route was packed even the night before, so we opted to hang out with our old ward in Hyde Park where we could sit. We got there at 8:30, and there were already a lot of people.

By the time anything was actually happening, the park was packed. And then they released confetti!

It was an all day affair, so we made sure to bring snacks and an extra bottle. We were definitely Jonesing for this display though.


Paige missed both her naps, so she was pretty somber for the last bit. She takes her royal monarchy seriously. She borrowed a headband to go on the BBC news--look for us in the footage while they're in the palace, waiting for the kiss!

Carnivore

Paige now has five, count em', five teeth! And a sixth one on the way, maybe more! With all these teeth, however, some rather particular eating habits have developed. The little one will not be spoon-fed, with the exception of breakfast, when she's much too tired to feed herself and must be fed porridge promptly before she collapses for her morning nap.
Moreover, Miss Paige has informed us that she does not like carrots or broccoli or spinach or zucchini or squash, even though she used to eat them all without complaint. She only wants fruit, potatoes, rice cakes, and muffins, thank you. And while we're on the subject, meals could be served much faster because she's half-starved...until you strap her in her highchair and she can drop food off the side of the tray.
I went to feed Paige an orange the other day since dinner was running a bit slow. The orange had been zested earlier in the day though, so it wasn't peeling very easily. I handed the orange to Paige while I looked for a knife and a bib, but apparently was too slow.

She yelled at me when I tried to take it away to cut it, so I just let her be. At least she stayed in the kitchen.

For Ansley

My friend called me up this morning to tell me there was a playgroup meeting at a park in north London in an hour and I should come! It was a pretty day, so we took some pictures on the way from the tube station to the park.

You probably can't see where we are in this picture, so I'll show you from a different angle:

I'll give you another hint, just in case. I didn't have a pen on me, or I would have written something:

If you haven't guessed, Abbey Road just happened to be on the way to the park, so we made a little detour and walked by. It was kind of cool...and kind of just a crowded crosswalk. The church across the street was my favorite part. Make sure to look close and read the sign.


The playgroup itself was really fun. Paige got to chase bubbles, steal apples, and hang out on the swings with her BFF Hazel. What cuties.

I sure love this girl.