Closing out the year

I cannot believe that this is the last week of 2011.  I feel like a broken record when I say "time flies" but every day seems to go by faster and faster.  We left for Gatlinburg on Christmas to get-away and spend some quality family time.  I love the moments I have to see EV experience new things and also to just spend time with her, but it also makes me sad when it ends.  It makes me wish that I had more time, or that I did more when I did have the time.  We did as much as we could on this trip; I think the highlight of the trip was taking EV ice skating.  First of all, little skates are the cutest things ever!  EV looked at us with uncertainty at first and fell a couple of times when we first put the skates on her, but got the hang of walking on ice skates on the ground.  I wish I could say the same about the ice.  It was fun for us, though poor thing, she was in a pretty bad mood afterwards.  I think it was a combination of falling, frustration, and hunger.

Christmas this year was also a lot of fun.  Since growing up my parents always worked and coming from an immigrant family, we never really had too many Christmas traditions.  I want to create traditions for EV to remember.  So, after Thanksgiving this year we bought a real live tree.  I also participated in an ornament exchange for an advent devotion.  We each were assigned a devotion and we had to create an ornament and make 24 of them.  Then, we exchanged the ornaments, so that we had 24 unique ornaments that went with a devotion leading up to Christmas.  The devotion was nice because it's meant to be done with kids.  Although EV was too young to do most of the activities in the devotion, she had a lot of fun putting up an ornament on her advent tree, and it was a great way to explain to her the true meaning of Christmas.  It was also really nice to go to Christmas Eve together as a family (although we do this every year, for some reason it was particularly special this year).  I think next year I want her to sit with us in service.  Then we came home and I let her open up all her gifts, although she was a little shy about opening up all the wrapping.  As she gets older, I look forward to making gingerbread homes, doing service projects together, and sing Christmas carols.

I can't wait to see what 2012 will bring.  Evangeline, you can be such a mischievous little girl.  You have this look on your face when you're about to cause trouble.  It's the cutest thing ever.  Although when you knock over a box of shoes in the shoe store or run and push a stack of sweaters it's a little annoying, I see so much of myself in you that I can't get too mad.  You challenge me and push me to be a better person.  You teach me patience, love, and compassion.  You are also a little comedian like your pappa.  You know what you want, when you want it, and how you want it.  You don't take "no" for an answer and you are stubborn and persistent.  I love the fact that you now speak in phrases and although sometimes I have no idea what you said, I love how you are persistent and patient with me and how you keep on repeating and show me what you are trying to say.  We are only 2.5 months away from your 2nd birthday.  I don't want to sound like a broken record but time sure does fly!

Terrible Twos

I am so behind with my posts (again).  There is so much to share, remember, and track.  I don't know where to start.  So, I'll just recap the last week, since that's really only how far my memory goes.

Evangeline is now 21 months and although she was having a mild case of the terrible twos a month or two ago, it has now become full fledged, outright, pushing boundaries, always saying "no", testing momma's patience terrible twos.  The thing that drives me absolutely nuts is that she KNOWS that she's pushing my buttons.  For example, I work from home on Monday's, so I was in my office doing my work when I hear little footsteps approaching the room.  She comes into the room and starts pulling things off the bookshelf.  I tell her to stop and to go to pappa.  She smirks and continues to pull things off the shelf.  So, I get up, put some of the folders back on the shelf, and firmly tell her that she needs to stop and go to her dad.  She smirks again and this time puts her hand on the folder, looks up at me, and pulls her hand away just as I'm about to lose it.  She pretends to walk away, as I start working again, she stops and looks at me, I see her out of the corner of my eye and she catches me glancing at her.  So then she approaches the bookshelf and this time just puts her hand towards the folder, pulls it away immediately, and runs out of the room laughing.  I'm annoyed that my 21 month old is mocking me and knowing how to push my buttons.  I work with my door closed the rest of the day, which then I get occasional knocks on the door, and a little loud voice, yelling, "MOM?" knock knock knock, "MOM!!!"  I ignore it and wonder why is her grandmother letting her annoy me while I work?  Those are the "cute" examples of her terrible two behavior.  The not-so-cute versions include kicking, screaming, throwing, and repeatedly swinging her arms around.  And no matter how much we discipline her, all she does is laugh and continues with her poor behavior.  Oh boy, I hope this phase passes soon.

Onto better news.  We got back from New Orleans last week.  I was there for work but Jimmy and EV came along so that I wouldn't be away from EV for so long.  Unfortunately, I did not get to do anything with them and poor Jimmy, he had to be a full-time dad all week (which is not easy with a toddler going through her terrible twos and who is teething).  But, they had a great time regardless (that's because Jimmy is an amazing dad).  They went to the children's museum and EV had a blast in the play supermarket, they went to the aquarium (although I think EV may be a little spoiled by the GA aquarium), they went on a ferry, they took a trolley all around town, and ate lots of yummy Cajun food.  However, this is how Asian EV's taste buds are--after a couple days of Cajun, she wouldn't eat any food and started asking for rice.  We found a Japanese restaurant and she ate as if we starved her for the last couple of days.  When we got home, she inhaled her kimchi, rice, and tofu.

Here are random pics of things that have happened since our last blog:

This girl loves books.  She's always saying "read books!!" This pic just melts my heart :)

Here we are picking out our first Christmas tree.  Hoping we can create holiday traditions and memories.

This little one is such a ham!  She is so goofy and she's constantly cracking us up.

Here she is being goofy again.  She was having so fun wearing this hat.  She just looked silly.

There are moments when she stops being tomboyish and becomes a girly girl.  She has an obsession with putting on and taking off her shoes.  Grandma and grandpa from MD bought these pink shoes from Korea and she has been in love with them since the moment she laid eyes on them.  She is constantly putting them on and wearing them.

These are ornaments I made for an advent devotion ornament exchange.  I'll blog about that more once we finish our devotions and have all the ornaments up on the tree.

One of my co-workers gave me these zebras to give to EV.  She has been loving them since.

I made this bag as a gift and loved how it turned out.  I also recently made my sister a super sized pencil case/toiletry bag.  I just hope these don't fall apart.  That's my biggest worry with making things for other people.

EV made this Christmas tree at our d-group family get together.  I was quite impressed with her patience as she slowly and systematically placed each m&m onto the icing on the cone.

One of the reasons I've been so bad with my blogging is that things have just been super duper busy, but my goal is to blog at least once a week.  I will have tons of things to blog about in the coming weeks--Christmas, road trip with grandparents, and New Years, not to mention all the things EV is doing and saying, and if I have nothing else to say, then I definitely have sewing projects to share.