Palm Springs

I am so late posting this but better late than never, right? In May I headed to Palm Springs for a reunion with my freshman college roommates! Jonah stayed with the Ribeiras and did fine without Mommy and Daddy. Ryan had mandatory meetings and classes and such so it was very nice of the Ribeiras to help out. I hadn't seen one of my roommates in ten years and others for five or six years, so it was a true blast from the past! Liz I see regularly since she's pretty close to us but it was crazy how we were all able to pick up right where we left off. I love these girls!

Most of the weekend was spent eating...



relaxing at the villa...



and chilling by the pool.


We did get a spa day too which was very rejuvenating, but I'm not allowed to post pictures of it. :) Here's some more fun shots of our time together:




It was a wonderful and much needed vacation! This is a tradition that we plan to continue. And we don't want to wait ten years until the next!

Family Photos

Moments before these pictures were taken, Jonah had a little incident. I had gone out to the car to grab a coupon so Ryan took Jonah on the escalator to keep him occupied for a few minutes. Jonah tried to climb up the descending escalator and tripped and got a nasty gash under his chin. I'm glad I missed the minute of intense crying that followed his accident. Jonah was very calm when I saw him and he was a trooper through the photo shoot. And fortunately you really can't see his chin in most of the pictures, though there is a minor discoloration on his vest. I'm counting these as Jonah's two-year-old photos, even though his birthday was three months ago.







Ryan needed some professional head shots so this was a good excuse for us to get family photos too. Here's my favorite of Ryan's shoot:


I never enjoy the thought of going and taking family pictures but I'm always glad when it's done and we have the pictures.

Easter!

Here's some pictures from our Playgroup's Easter egg hunt last Friday:




Here is Jonah on Easter discovering his new sand toys. Thank you Merilee for giving us that great gift idea!


Here is our family easter egg hunt in the front yard.






And finally, pictures from dying easter eggs.




This is what happened when Mommy and Daddy were engrossed in their own egg creations:


I still think it was worth it! :)


It was a fun Easter. But the highlights of Easter for me happened the weekend before when I got to see "Savior of the World," a musical production put on by my Stake, and "Lamb of God," a multi-stake choral and orchestral production in Oakland that my mom, sister, and brother-in-law were involved with. Both were powerful in different ways and I'm grateful that I got to see them back to back because one focused more on the events leading up to the crucifixion while the other begins at the tomb where Christ is buried and reenacted Christ's appearances to his disciples following his resurrection. I felt the love our Savior has for us. I felt the love our Savior has for women. Isn't it interesting that Christ appeared first to women? (Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome.) It was their testimonies that gave the apostles and other disciples hope that Christ had indeed risen. I hope you all had a wonderful Easter!

Help

I try not to whine on my blog but Jonah has been testing my patience to the max lately and I need some advice. It's amazing how quickly kids change. Things that worked like a charm for weeks are no longer working! He was responding so well for awhile when I would give him choices. For example, when walking outside I would ask him, "do you want me to carry you or do you want to hold Mommy's hand?" He would always choose to hold my hand and it was wonderful! We could walk places and I didn't have to hold him. But lately when I ask him the same thing and he says, "hold hands," and then tries to run away two seconds later. I understand that he is two and this may be normal behavior but it still stresses me out! Today when leaving the library, I had one arm full of books and one hand grasping Jonah's hand and we needed to cross the street to get to the car. Jonah of course wriggles free of my grasp and dashes off down the sidewalk. I hurry after him and scoop him up and of course he starts screaming for me to "hold hands." We make it across the street and he is climbing up my body until his head is way higher than mine and I'm terrified he's going to fall. But we are almost to the car so I carry on. And of course there are people around but I pretend I don't see them. I drop my books near the car and then set Jonah down firmly and hold him tight (honestly probably too tight in my anger) and start lecturing him about safety and why he needs to listen to Mommy and he bites my arm. I was so not happy. But I can see why he was unhappy too. I know that when I have a big reaction, he gets more riled up but it's SO hard not to react in anger! How do you Mom's keep your cool when your toddler just won't listen?! I won't even tell you about our other excursions to Target and the dollar store.

He is also very much into the word "no" right now. When it's time to brush teeth, he just won't open his mouth. And I find myself threatening him with time-outs, or withholding his beloved blankie and binkie, but I know that this is not good parenting. What has worked for you? How do you reach a child that says no without threats and anger? Timeouts haven't really been working either. He doesn't put up a fight about going to his "time-out corner" but he will not stay in the corner. If I remind him to stand in the corner he just yells "NO!" Hopefully today was just an extra bad day and that I will be blessed tomorrow with an increase of love and patience. But man, the thought of two kids today was a bit overwhelming!

Baby #2

Ryan and I wait a long time to announce our babies-to-be. After our initial ultrasounds with both pregnancies we were told that our babies showed signs of chromosomal disorders. The first time we were told this they said there was a very good chance our baby wouldn't make it. You can imagine our devastation. The second time we were much more prepared for this type of news and decided not to worry until after our second ultrasound. Gratefully this baby is following the same pattern as Jonah did. The neck thickness has shrunk considerably and all other organs and body parts are in the right places and appear proportional. The doctors will still keep a watchful eye on our little one but they are very optimistic that things will go smoothly as before. We are so happy to be pregnant again and look forward to the end of Sept. when they expect our little one to arrive!

We didn't remember to take "pre-belly" shots so I sucked in really hard for the first picture. And then for fun I pushed out for the last just so we could have a cool sequential shot. :)

Basketball Nerd

I know I said that my next post would be of Jonah's birthday but we don't have the video montage ready. In the meantime, let me share with you Jonah's newest obsession: basketball. We considered getting him a hoop for his birthday but they were pretty expensive. Fortunately we live in Sacramento where you can find all sorts of junk sitting on curbs. That's where we found our hoop. It's old and broken, but it was free, and what matters most is that Jonah LOVES it! It's the first thing he sees when we get out of the car at home and he always wants to play. Now that the weather is nice we've been playing basketball daily. Sometimes more than once. I really try to get him excited about soccer again but it just isn't happening. So I just need to be patient until he goes through a soccer phase again. I guess my son is allowed to like things that I'm really bad at. :) Here is also a slideshow from our photo shoot today. There was such great light when we went out to play basketball that I had to run back in for my camera.



The other day Jonah noticed that the seat of one of our chairs was loose so he turned the chair into a hoop and the seat into a backboard. He's a creative little guy. Here's a four minute video of Jonah playing indoor ball. He cracks us up. It's a little long but hopefully some of you and your kids will like it.



Ooops, that wasn't the video I meant to upload but it shows his shooting skills. Here's the longer video:

The Big 3-0

Things were too hectic at the beginning of the month to really celebrate my birthday. And to be honest, I wasn't very eager to celebrate the big 3-0. I liked my twenties. I liked being a young, edgy, emerging artist. Now to be 30, I feel that I should be established or something. And shouldn't I have three or four kids by now? Hahaha. Anyway, I told Ryan that what I really wanted for my birthday was to see the new Jane Eyre movie. It wasn't released in Sacramento until March 25th so we postponed our celebration until this weekend and it was worth the wait. Joey and Elise came up from Oakland Saturday morning and we went with them to the new Crocker Art Museum. I was anxious to see an exhibit by Gottfried Helnwein: Inferno of the Innocents. Check out this enormous painting that we got to see from life.


After we got our fill of art, we met up with Jen and Wes from our ward at Queen Sheebas, an Ethiopian restaurant close to our apartment, and enjoyed a delicious meal. We used a restaurant.com coupon and were able to feed six people for $44 plus tip. I forgot my camera so I found this picture online that looks a lot like our meal:


They had baskets of very thin, slightly sour, spongy bread, and a huge platter of entrees. You tear off pieces of the bread to scoop up the meat and vegetables. It was a fun way to eat, and a little more sanitary than the communal fufu soup bowls in Ghana. Jonah didn't care much for the food but he really liked their music.

After lunch everyone came back to our house and we played Ticket to Ride while Jonah napped. It was a crazy, high scoring game! And finally, we got to see Jane Eyre at Sacramento's historic Tower Theater. Thank you to the Andre's who worked it out to watch Jonah for us while we went to the movie! Derek and Rachel from the ward also got to join up with us Jane Eyre so it was quite a party.


The movie was great. I could nit-pick a thing here or there but overall I was pleased. It was simply a wonderful day! Ryan also surprised me with a gift that he had been working on for over a month. He transferred and organized all of our photos online and cleared up 54 GB of space on my computer so it functions again! I feel optimistic that I can get back to my blog now. Thank you, Ryan!!! My next post...Jonah's birthday!