is 3 the new 13?

painting at home

kalia's masterpieces
she did all of these on her own since maya was fussy and i was walking her around

dress up (princess maya, mommy rabbit and fairy princess kalia)

watching the surf at lahaina harbor while we wait for the library to open

don't take the picture now mommy, it's in between sets

Kalia has definitely been testing her boundaries this week. I think it has definitely put the fear in erik - the year when kalia is 15 and maya is 13. Or does it all happen earlier now?

Of course we've had a dance party in the living room this afternoon and kalia's been so sweet. In between dances she would run and give maya kisses and pick up her toys that fell on the ground (maya was in bouncy seat). Then I got called the best mommy ever because i washed her favorite dress and let her wear it - plus, hugs and kisses. I need to remember these times when she's not being so sweet.

Strange things are happening around the house: Yesterday Kalia didn't want to go to the bathroom in the potty because there was a pterodactyl in there. Today Rosetta (Tinkerbell's friend- a small action figure) had a "small accident" on the couch. Although later kalia told me that in fact both herself and Rosetta had a small accident on the couch.

Maya had her 6 month appointment on wednesday. I was prepared for the worst this time since last time she felt so horrible, I even had erik work a night shift so I would have back up during the day. But she did pretty well - I think giving her the tylenol before the appointment helped. She is 14 lbs. 14 oz. and 25 1/2 inches. She has gone down in percentile - 25% for weight. Maya is starting to wean. I started giving her a bottle of formula after her nightly feeding to make sure she was getting enough and it was love at first sight. Both my girls are the same, the first time they found out there was something faster and more...it was all over. I'm going to keep it going as long as I can, but she is already frustrated with me.

Maya is babble girl, at 4AM this morning, she was awake and talking loudly to herself in her crib. I thought about going in, but after about 10 minutes she went back to sleep. I put Maya down for her first nap this morning and she just wanted to play at first, then she started fussing, so I went in to soothe her and she just gets the giggles when she sees me. Then she put her head down and had the biggest smile, while sucking her thumb and went to sleep. It was really funny- she really is my happy girl.

Kalia starts pre-school on tuesday! I am so excited, nervous and a little sad. She's going to be in school now until she's an adult! My little buddy is going to school and for the first time in her whole life, I'm not going to know exactly what she has experienced all day long.

the hendrickson family band

Here's some video from today of the girls playing instruments. Unfortunately, the only person in the family with music talent (as of right now) was working. Next time we'll get the whole family in with erik on guitar or ukulele. It might add a little something, but the girls did great despite missing the band leader. Kalia was really getting into her drums and maya did some nice pounding. Last video has some of maya's push-ups. No crawling video yet.

maya is army crawling!

feeding herself a rice rusk

On saturday we went to a baby shower at airport beach (with bouncy castle that kalia loved!) and we came home and maya started crawling. She's doing the army crawl, using her forearms and her legs, but she can really get to what she wants. She still uses this with a little bit of rolling, but she's quite fast when she wants to be. Maya is much more aggressive than kalia ever was at this age. Kalia has this Baby Einstein The World Around Me - Ocean book and it unfolds and if you connect the ends, you can sit inside a circle that has a 360 picture of the ocean. Kalia loves it, even though it's for 9 months and she just got it for the last Christmas, she pretends it's a pool and she fills it with her pretend hose everyday. We put Maya in with her and Maya attacks the pictures of the fish and other sea animals. She loves it, but scares me because she's so crazy sometimes! Maya crawling means that I really need to cleaning up around the house. The other day Maya just wanted to practice her crawling on the floor, so I let her go in our room while I read stories to kalia on the bed. Next thing i know she's grabbing the cable wire and a picture frame that I don't know what to do with is toppled on top of her (it's small)...I'm not ready for this stage. I thought I had more time! OK, that story just makes me laugh because it's just one example at how lax you get with the second one. I always heard that and I thought it would never happen to me, but it's true. You're just too busy to go crazy over all the little things the second time around. Sometimes I find Maya chewing on something and I think, well, that's not too dirty and I need to help kalia go potty, so chew on that for a minute.

Maya is basically a totally different animal than kalia. When I used to feed kalia, she was so neat! She would see the spoon coming and open her mouth and I didn't even get a floor mat for under her highchair until she was much older because she was not messy at all! After Maya eats, she has food everywhere. I have to wash food out of her nose, off her eyes, off her ears and hair. She's always grabbing for the bowls and spoon. So far maya has been eating: sweet potatoes, avocado, banana, rice cereal and pears. I have also given her rice rusks - kalia likes to eat them too. Tomorrow we start mangos and I need to grind up some brown rice too. I've been using Super Baby Food by Ruth Yaron - same as I used with Kalia. It's funny because with Kalia I tried to give her avocado, but after a couple tries and she didn't seem to like it, so I gave up. With maya I just kept trying and after a week she eats them now. I was pretty much thinking, maya I just bought this $3 avocado and you're going to try it again! Erik was right, I just always said kalia didn't like something after two or three tries, but it just takes a while for them to get used to the flavor. So see Erik, I'm admitting that you're right once in a while!

The other day I was telling kalia that i wanted to eat maya up and started pretending to eat her because she is just so yummy. Kalia said, "no, mommy maya needs her skin!"

Kalia also has been repeating everything i say to her back to me. The other day we were in kalia's room and she was cooking with her kitchen. I was holding maya and didn't have time to let go of an arm, so i turned my head to sneeze away from the girls. Kalia said, "You need to cover your mouth when you sneeze. You just sprayed our lunch!"

Thanks Auntie Kim for reminding me that I have to teach kalia to trade a toy for a toy with maya, instead of snatching it away. I've been doing that with Maya, but didn't show kalia until the other day and she's pretty good at it. Maya just started screaming when kalia takes something away from her and maya is pretty scary when she does that - kalia thinks so too.

Maya has also been doing a lot of "yayayaya" and also "dadadada". In the morning she will just babble, babble for a long time. Unlike Kalia who would always cry for me the minute she woke up from a nap or sleep, Maya plays in her crib and will stay in there for a long time. Erik loves to go in the morning and see the first look she gives when she sees someone. I sometimes take advantage and let her play for a while.

maya is our little mover!

maya playing with kalia's kitchen supplies and kalia put the chef hat on her

now i'm cooking (kalia put peas on my back!)

cheese!

we were totally being the proud parents and took a photo of her chalk drawing of birthday candles, but we were really impressed!

So maya is really getting around and i believe might be crawling soon. She can make it from the middle of kalia's room to the door. She will get her knees underneath her and then lift up her body to her knees and push forward. Her arms can't respond yet and she does a face plant, but it gets her going in the direction she wants. Sometimes she does this move and just rolls to one side or the other, but she's getting to the things she wants to get to.

I also believe that Maya is getting her two bottom teeth. Although I don't think anyone else believes me including Erik. I admit they are hard to see since her tongue is always in the way, but I do see the gum starting to split and she's had a hard week. She's been using her pacifier this week, but only to put in her mouth, bite down and rip is out.

I took the girls to the otherside by myself for a costco/walmart trip on sunday...and I survived. They were both actually really good. We had a gift to exchange at walmart from kalia's birthday and she had a little birthday money, so kalia got to pick out a toy for the first time from the store. She really took her time deciding what to pick and we ended up with a tinkerbell tea pot house and bought a couple of the other fairies to go with it. She's been playing non-stop with it.

july fun

maya with her plastic book and mr. quack

our evening picnic at s-turns

maya and me (thelma and louise style)

kalia and daddy

kalia doing karate kid exercises - really just looking at her shadow

kalia wanted maya to sit in her lap...again

our coldstone field trip with mommies group

scarlett and kalia

now i get to make mine, maya's happy- she's going to be eating this in a few hours!

kalia told me that she needed to go get dressed and left for her room and this is how she was when i found her...well, i helped her with the wings.

We started back at the gym this week and so far so good. Maya did cry a little the second time, but she did pretty well overall and i just need to keep taking them. Kalia has been a big help and has only agreed to go to help keep maya happy. One little girl at the gym wanted to play with maya's toy and i guess grabbed it from her and kalia told her, "that is my baby sister's toy!"

The kitchen that tutu and grandpa got kalia for christmas when she was 18 months old, she still plays with literally every day. She's really gotten into making us different dishes lately, mostly soups (recipe soup), cakes, sandwiches and the other day cereal. I didn't realize how many steps there were in making cereal, i usually just pour it out of the box. Today Maya was playing with the food from Kalia's kitchen and a spatula, so Kalia put her chef's hat on Maya. It was pretty cute.

Kalia has been really into asking, "and who gave me this?", "where did i get this?" "who made this?" The other day she wanted to know who gave her the crackers and i told her that i bought them at the store, but then she wanted to know who made the crackers.

Last saturday was erik's only day off and we were really lazy all morning. So in the afternoon I took the girls on the ironwood hike and erik went fishing. Kalia was climbing all over the lava rock, she's getting really good- but also scaring me at times. Then we met erik down at s-turns for a dinner picnic and fun at the beach. Maya even ate her sweet potatoes and rice cereal there. Then erik did a little fireworks show (with the fireworks we didn't use on the 4th) for us and some little girls that were also at the beach. It was really fun - kalia really enjoyed the fireworks and so did maya (she was yelling at them).

Monday there was a BBQ for our mom's group and erik was working so I took the girls. I had help watching maya and took kalia in the pool. I was standing near the center of the pool and she would stand on the steps and push off to reach for me and a few times I caught her a little late and she went under and she was fine with it. We definitely need to take some swimming lessons. I took the girls to the aquatic center this morning for our mom's group, luckily the kids pool was open since it's hard to have both girls in the pool.

We also had a field trip to coldstone the other day and we got to make our own. It was really fun. Kalia enjoyed it very much and we even came home and played ice cream shop. We also came home and acted what had happened during the day since kalia wasn't feeling like saying hello or goodbye to anyone and so we came home and made her stuffed animals greet everyone...it's a constant work in progress.

A couple weeks ago I could not get kalia to wear clothes, she wanted to just wear her undies all day. Now as soon as she wakes up she wants to get dressed and then later on do a whole change of outfits. She's really into wearing long dresses right now and before she would only wear shorts and shirts, it's funny how it all changes from week to week.

Kalia loves Max and Ruby. It started out with the books, we had a couple from the Dolly Parton imagination library and now whenever we go to the library we check out whatever they have. She memorizes all of the books and is constantly re-reading them. Then we found the show on TV and she loves those too. I was so proud the other day, she was cleaning up and asking me to put some things away and then I realized that she was acting out "Max cleans up".

Maya crawled backwards a little bit today, but i don't think she meant to. she had lifted up her whole body with her arms and her legs happened to be moving at the same time and she went backwards, i don't know if she could repeat it.

happy 4th of july!

morning play in Kalia's room

i took this one thelma and louise style - maya making a face at kalia

the girls with morning hair

playing in kalia's room

maya eating bananas in the high chair - her first meal in the high chair

july 3rd star gazing, kalia was soooo excited to go outside and stay up late

july 3rd sparklers outside -
erik had to work on july 4th, so we did some sparklers the night before.
i did a "light show" for kalia.

We had a pretty mellow 4th of july. We really celebrated more on July 3rd since Erik had to work the night of July 4th. Friday I took the girls to meet up with our play group and Shannon had a nice 4th of july craft for the kids, then kalia played down at the beach - they made stone soup and she shopped at Deveraux's store down at the tree on the beach with the huge roots the kids play in. That afternoon we drove the girls down and ended up at Launiapoko, since traffic was pretty terrible and seemed like the best place for everyone. I got a quick session in and kalia played in the water. Then home to put screaming maya to bed and we stayed up late and did sparklers in the front. Erik bought some fireworks, but I was being chicken since there are signs all over saying "no fireworks". Kalia kept asking me to do a "light show" with the sparklers and I was really getting into it.

4th of july I took the girls to Kalia's friend Deveraux's condo and we swam in their pool. Then we really just hung out at home. Maya still goes down so early, even if I try to put her down later, she still gets up early or earlier than if I put her down early. I put Maya down and then took Kalia outside to play- I kick the ball, we both run to get the ball and Kalia gets the ball every time. I think Erik made up this game, but he said she only gets it 95% of the time. I don't have the heart to do it, especially since she does the full body dive for the ball.

Funny story, when we were at Launiapoko and talking a woman next to us, who was asking about our girls and she had a big group with her. One person was the guy who owns Ba-Le at Lahaina Cannery Mall and he came up to us and said, "hey, 15 chicken". At first I had no idea what he was saying and then it dawned on me that #15 with chicken is what I used to order religiously there. I'll have you know that you can now call me lemongrass chicken sandwich, I've changed my order! But still that was pretty funny. I am a creature of habit, what can I say.

We had gotten take out from Oscar's take out wagon the other night and my burrito came with rice and beans and I don't like beans. Kalia looked at my plate and said, "mommy, you have to eat your beans. If you don't eat your beans, you won't be able to run fast and catch my shadow."

Maya now eats bananas too and has been sitting in her high chair. She is so funny, of course she only wants whatever Kalia is playing with. I even have Kalia pretend play with some of Maya's toys, but she still wants Kalia's stuff. Maya is getting pretty good in her exersaucer, she's starting to be able to turn around to all her toys and pull all the different toys down to put her in mouth. She really seems like she's going to start creeping a little bit, erik says she was scooting on the bed today and erik swears that she held up her hands for him to pick her up a couple of times. Could be just a coincidence. Maybe he's trying to get me back for feeding her first meal while he was sleeping and putting her in the high chair when he was outside- he caught the end of both of them!

Sydney came over today, so no nap for Kalia. Both girls down early, so done for now, going to go get some ice cream and watch some mindless tv...