Standing

I mentioned in the previous post that Cami pulls up to stand. I finally got a picture of her not only standing, after she just pulled herself up, but actually trying to climb up the couch. She's also recently discovered the stairs, and has attempted to climb the first one.




Don't be alarmed, that's not a pee spot on her outfit. She had just sat on her pear.

Where's Cami?

Do you see her?



Where could she be?

Seriously, that's my life these days. I'll turn my back for a second, or walk out of the room for a bit, and when I come back, I find myself saying those words. This girl is not only crawling, she's pulling up to standing. Now, she usually falls once she stands, but I'm guessing she won't be falling too much longer. These things don't take long to master.

And for the record, she's 7 months today. She's definitely trying to catch up to Sister.

So, did you guess where she was?

There she is!




She crawled through the end table, just to play with our dusty lamp, electrical outlet, and cords. That's safe and clean, right?

In other Cami news, I've started feeding her little bites of banana. A week or so ago, she was still kind of gagging when I would give it to her, but now she's actually chewing, as opposed to sucking.






We're basically following the same timeline with food as we did with Kendall. We started both girls out with pieces of apple and pear in these awesome mesh bags. That allows the baby to suck the pulp out of the fruit, without the possibility of choking. They're awesome. I also put ice in them and use them for teething. My mom was the one who told me about them when Kendall was about 6 months old. They're by Munchkin.



I'm just amazed by how quickly time is going by. I mean, her first birthday is just around the corner! I try to not think about that, but it really will be here before I know it.

A Little Nursing Won't Stop Me...

...from getting really funny video of my oldest. At first, I was just enjoying watching her, but then I realized I really needed to get this on video. So, even though I was nursing Cami at the time, I still broke out the camera. That's what I call multi-tasking. So please excuse the lack of good focus and the burps and slurping you hear in the background.

Mini-Me from Kelly Spear on Vimeo.

Oh, and right after I took this video, she accidentally broke those sunglasses. I had to refrain myself from laughing when she said, "Oh, dear. I so sad!" when I told her they were broken. Wish I had gotten that on video, too.

Happy Mother's Day!

I just watched this video probably fifty times or so while I was editing it, and I swear, every single time, I got tears in my eyes. I'm so glad I took more video than pictures, because I will love to go back and look at this years from now - to hear the words, the voices, the laughter...those are things that pictures can't capture (and I totally didn't mean to rhyme).

I love my girls.

I love my husband.

I love my life.

Mother's Day 2010 from Kelly Spear on Vimeo.

Lucky Number 7

Grant and I celebrated our 7th anniversary on Saturday. I was going to post something about it on Saturday, but because we were going to be doing some cool things for our anniversary, I figured I'd wait until I had pictures.

Well, I grabbed the camera, got my telephoto lens, but neglected to get the memory card. Awesome. So, no pictures.

At the recommendation of my friend, we went to this really cool sushi restaurant in West Hollywood, The Izaka-ya. While the ambiance was not at all suited for a romantic anniversary dinner (Grant and I were seated at a small table, but we couldn't even hear each other talk), the sushi was killer! We started out with this weird lotus root stuff for an appetizer, and then we got the crispy rice with spicy tuna (which seemed to be a favorite on yelp), the tempura rock shrimp (which was AWESOME!), creamy salmon rolls, yellowtail with scallion, creamy blue crab, and a honey roll (which was spicy tuna, avocado, and something else).

Grant joked that we might see a celebrity there, but I didn't think this was a place that a celebrity would come, because it was kind of a hole-in-the wall (albeit, very popular). But, we did see one! Jeanne Tripplehorn. It's not like she's super famous, but when I saw her, I recognized her right away, and thanks to my wealth of useless celebrity knowledge, I thought to myself, "Tripplehorn? Is that right?" And then at the table next to me, I heard them say, "That's Jeanne Tripplehorn!"

Anyways, it was an awesome place, despite all the noise.

For dessert, we went to Diddy Riese in Westwood, basically on UCLA's campus. This place is awesome. Grant's brother, John, told us about it shortly after we moved here, but we hadn't been there until I went a couple of months ago with friends, but Grant still hadn't been. I think this place has to be the best deal in town - amazing ice cream sandwiches for $1.50 flat!!! It doesn't get any better than that! You can mix and match the top and bottom cookies (and they're freshly baked cookies) and pick whatever flavor of ice cream you want. It's a good-sized portion, too. Even Grant, who is notoriously frugal, thinks they could easily charge more for these and you wouldn't feel cheated. This was my third time there, and I got the same thing I got the other two times - chocolate white chocolate chip cookies with cookie dough ice cream. That's where it's at right there! Grant got chocolate chip walnut cookies with mint chocolate chip ice cream. By the way, this is when we discovered that I forgot the memory card. Boo.

After Diddy Riese, we made our way to the Griffith Park Observatory. In our two years here, that's one place that we have been meaning to go to, but just hadn't made it there. We almost didn't make it there on Saturday! I put the address in the GPS, and it wanted to take us up one of the mountain roads to get there. Well, that road closed at sunset, and at this time, it was almost 9. We got lost in a very hilly, very windy Hollywood Hills neighborhood, and then we decided to try to find another way into the park. We did, and were finally able to see this place! It was really cool, but we felt a little rushed - mainly because we didn't want our friend who was watching the girls to have to stay up too late. So we want to go back again.

Then it was home! It was a great anniversary celebration - a perfect way to spend it with the man I love, and the best husband in the world!

New Mexico on my mind

About this time last year, on our way back from our San Francisco trip, we went to this restaurant that I saw on "Divers, Drive-ins, and Dives," in a town called Pescadero. On the show, they mentioned this cream of artichoke soup that sounded really good, and they're kinda famous for. So I had my heart on trying that.

Well, when we got there, I saw that they had cream of green chile soup.

I was torn.

Thankfully, they brought us out a sampling of four of their awesome soups, so we could make up our minds.

As soon as that cream of green chile soup touched my lips, I was in heaven! I did not hesitate to order a bowl of that.

It was so good, I just wanted to bottle it up and take it home and eat it every day! But I didn't.

I kind of forgot about it until the other day, and I randomly remembered that delicious soup. So I decided to see if I could find a recipe for it.

I searched for "Duarte's Tavern cream of green chile soup recipe," and sure enough, I found it! From what I can tell, this person basically tried to recreate the soup, and this is as close to the original as she got. Since it's been a year since we've had it, it was hard to remember how close the taste actually was, but nevertheless, it was delicious!

To make it, I had to do something that I never did in the 3 years of living in New Mexico - roast green chiles. I mean, when they have a roaster at Wal-Mart doing it, why do it yourself?

I probably looked a little strange at Von's picking out 20 anaheim chiles, but I was excited.

The roasting definitely took some time, especially since I could only fit 5 chiles on a baking sheet at once, but it was well worth it.

Here are some of my chiles ready to go in the oven.


And here they are after roasting.


This is after they had been peeled.


And here's the yummy soup, with crushed blue corn tortilla chips to add some color! I'm not a food photographer, and I'm not at all happy with these pictures - I tried, but I failed. But I did not fail in making the recipe. If you're a fan of green chiles, I highly recommend it.

New

I'm starting a second blog.

The end.

Things starting with the Letter "P"

Potty. Pee pee. Poo poo. Panties.

These words have been used more times than I'd like to admit this past week.

That's because Little Miss Kendall has decided to be a big girl!

For some background here, this all started about a year ago. Last summer, she was giving me some clues that she was ready to start potty training. At that time, I was also pretty pregnant with Cameron, so my mobility was limited. We tried really hard for about 3 weeks, and then I had to give up. Those weeks were extremely stressful for me and for her.

She wasn't ready.

Since that time, every now and then, we'd pull out the potty chair, but she never really was interested.

Over the last couple months, we would try to get more serious about it, but again, she showed very little interest.

I really thought I was doing it all wrong. After all - most of the books say that when you start, you have to be consistent, and just do it! Oh, if only it were that easy...

We made HUGE progress a couple of weeks ago. I was changing Kendall's diaper after her nap, and she (in her words) told me she didn't want to wear a diaper, she wanted to wear her panties. I told her if she did, then she'd have to sit on the potty and try to go pee pee. She excitedly said, "Okay!"

We went downstairs and she happily sat on the potty for a long time. But nothing happened. Then Cami woke up from her nap, and I really needed to go to Target. So, as much as I hated getting Kendall off the potty to put a diaper on her and take her to Target, I had to. I told her that when we got back, she could sit on the potty again.

While we were in Target, she said, "Only big girls wear panties?" I said yes. As is typical in toddler world, we repeated this answer and question about 50 times. I didn't think too much of it.

When we got home, it was about 5:00, and I had to get dinner ready and feed Cami. So I'm rushing around the kitchen, putting things away, getting things ready, and not really paying too much attention to Kendall. She started saying, "I go potty! I go potty!" Up until this time, she had never actually gone on the potty, so I thought she just wanted to sit on it. So I said, "Yeah, you can sit on the potty," still not really paying too much attention.

Then I heard that sound. I quickly stopped what I was doing, looked at Kendall, and she had a huge smile on her face.

So, from then on, I just kind of followed her lead....if she wanted to wear panties, she wore panties. If she wanted to wear a diaper, she wore a diaper.

Again, this is totally contrary to what the books say to do. But, Kendall is pretty strong-willed (no idea where she got that from), and if I remotely suggested wearing panties or going on the potty, that was the last thing she wanted to do. It had to be her idea. There were a lot of accidents, because she still wasn't totally getting it. And every now and then I would suggest she sit on the potty, and she would. But there was still a lot of diaper-wearing. Basically, during this time, she got good at holding it for long periods of time.

Then, last Monday, she (on her own) went potty. Then an hour or so later, she went again! This was it, I told myself. She's ready. She's doing this on her own. She gets it!

So since then, the only time she's worn diapers is for nap time and bed time - we've gone to Target, the doctor's office, strawberry pickin', Ikea, and church! And I'm happy to say that she hasn't had an accident outside of the house, except for today at the park with Megan, Joey, and Hannah. She has had a few accidents at home, but really, very few.

Now, having a somewhat potty-trained toddler has brought up some issues that I never really took into consideration before. Like, what to do when we're out in public. Kendall's tiny. Her little toushie would fall through a regular-sized toilet. So when we went to the doctor's office the other day, I brought her potty seat with me (the seat that fits on the toilet, not her potty chair). It was big and bulky, and just didn't seem to be very practical to do on a regular basis.

So when I got home, I asked some people on a message board what to do. One of them said she used a foldable potty seat like this



but then I found this one



and it's a keeper! It will also be a great thing to take with us on our upcoming trips this summer - and really, everywhere. I can't say enough good things about this little product! It is small enough to put in the diaper bag. And it works well as a potty seat and a potty chair. Kendall has used it both ways with no problems. So, there you have it, those of you with potty trainers - the Potette 2-in-1 by Kalencom. I strongly recommend it!

Anyways, I can sum up my potty training experience like this: at first, I thought the random attempts throughout this past year were all for nothing. But I see now that it's all kind of worked together very well! One method doesn't work for everyone, and I'm not sure what I did was a method. She finally just got it on her own - it just clicked!

It definitely makes life different. If we're about to get in the car for a good bit of time, I tell her she has to go before we leave. That's hard for her to understand, and sometimes she doesn't really want to go. For instance, today as we were leaving the park after hanging out with Megan and the kids...we sat there for a good 20 minutes before she finally went. But I was not going to get in the car for an hour unless she went.

So, there's my potty training story. It wasn't by-the-book, but it worked for us!

One for me...One for you

Today we went down to Irvine to a farm to pick some strawberries. I wanted us to do this last year, but right around the time I wanted to go, I discovered that Kendall had a small allergy to strawberries. Since then, I've been giving her strawberries in small amounts, and she hasn't shown any reaction to them since.

My friend Ange met us there, and I think we all really enjoyed ourselves. We went on a tour of the farm, and got to sample some of their veggies. I even let Cami gnaw on some bok choy and a carrot.






Then we got to our strawberry pickin' stop. We each had our own baskets to fill, and they said we could eat as many as we wanted before it was time to get back on the tractor. Since it's pretty much right at the peak of the season, these strawberries were so delicious!

I wasn't sure how Kendall would do, but she absolutely loved it. I told her yesterday that we'd be doing this, so she was pretty pumped. We all ate a good amount and filled our baskets.










After that, we went to Ikea to eat lunch and look around. Less than 5 minutes after leaving Ikea, the girls were out.




It was such a fun day! I'm hoping to get back out to that farm in July or August, because that's when watermelon season is.

By the way - notice anything different about Kendall? She's got a little less junk in the trunk, because earlier this week, she decided she wanted to be potty trained. Since Monday, she's only had a couple of accidents. On our outing today, she was accident-free! I'm so proud of her!

That Girl Can Sing!

If you're watching American Idol this season, then you know that Siobhan Magnus is known for her "scream" that she made famous doing an Aretha Franklin song. Well, she got voted off this past week, so she sang that song as her goodbye. We were watching it, and as she got to the scream part, Kendall decided to try and match her.

Now, since we had no idea Kendall was going to do this, we didn't have our camera out. So this is the reenacted version of the whole thing, but you get the point.