January Little Things

He's half-asleep in the picture below, but he was so happy when we woke him up at midnight on New Years so that he could see the fireworks. Poor Belén did NOT want to be awake, but was rudely awoken by the fireworks blasting, literally, right outside of her window. She laid in bed with her ears plugged having no desire to get up and see anything. 

I quickly learned that ordering bananas on the grocery delivery app was not the smartest thing. 

 The one time I try locking my bedroom door while editing, in hopes of getting a little bit of quiet without interruptions...didn't end too well. I've learned my lesson. "I just putting makeup on mom." 

 Belén learning to play badminton with some kids in the neighborhood.

 Hanging out at the pool, she says, "Dad, I'm Miss Frizzle. This is our school bus. Let's go to the moon." 

 Date nights are always in-house these days. This particular one was us waiting to order food until the kids were in bed and sharing some Indian curries with the biggest piece of naan either of us had ever seen.

 The second I get out of the pool, she comes out as well, to keep me company. 

 A normal day for us right now looks a lot like, swimming at some point, walking around the "neighborhood." Sometimes stopping at the old creaky see-saw.

 Usually always throwing balls around the tennis, soccer, or basketball courts.

 We usually try to do some form of school together. Most days we work on reading, writing, and math. Sometimes we will do art projects, or watch science videos. This particular day we read a story about cinnamon and then made our very own cinnamon clay.

  When she falls asleep during quiet time you know she must have REALLY been tired. 

 Trying to distract Belén with selfies on our way to church one Sunday as her brother screamed and yelled on the taxi floor because it wasn't the taxi he wanted, which was added on to the frustration of him not being able to take cars to church, but the root of the problem (I found out after sitting in a classroom with him still yelling and crying halfway through sacrament meeting) seemed to be that he struggles with his primary teacher and his son who is "not very kind" and he didn't want to go to class. I'm sure it was causing him lots of anxiety on the way to church which led to meltdown after meltdown and total confusion and "what do we do?" from the parents. Phew. It was so nice to figure that one out and be able to discuss it with him calmly. 

 Hard to tell from the picture, but I tend to be DRIPPING in sweat after my short runs here. Iiiiiiiit's hot here.

 We had a week in January where we REALLY felt the rainy season upon us. It rained, most of the day, every single day. Most days it rains, but just for an hour or two and then clears, but not that week. After 4 days of staying inside due to the rain we finally just got our bathing suits on and went out and played in the rain.  

  Things that you don't realize you are signing up for when you become a parent: Saving match box cars that slide on to dead rats while playing outside. 

Another day, another mall. 

 She really enjoyed Shae's haircut. 

 Then a quick stop at the toy store so that we could play with their legos since we are missing ours so much.

 We were going to go see How to Train Your Dragon after the haircut, but it wasn't showing (even thought the web-site said otherwise), so I caved and let the kids play in one of the "kid zones" in the mall. They are everywhere, in every single mall. Besides the part where a kid started throwing up on the stairs without us realizing it until we were already walking up said stairs to the trampoline where he was...it was really fun.

 A lot of the toys were duct taped together and the bouncy houses were half deflated, but the kids didn't seem to mind. 

 

 Going grocery shopping after the zoo, we stopped at new mall. I just can't get over how big and beautiful and FANCY they all are. This one had a cool display for the Lunar New Year, and a really sweet see-through elevator that we (of course) had to try out just for fun.

 And then off to check out the Lamborghini store, because, why not? 

   We occasionally do a Cosmic Kid (on youtube) yoga video for exercise and I'll just let you guess how excited Shae was when he discovered that she had just recently posted a Pokemon yoga workout video.

 We're really loving the charts these days. We had pretty good success with a behavior chart for Shae last month, and now we're helping Belén see the fun in trying (putting on clothes, shoes, wiping herself after going potty, etc.)