Desmond at 16 Months

We wanted to capture a glimpse of what Desmond is like these days so that we can remember in the years to come. He just turned 16 months old two days ago. We have noticed that he is a very shrewd observer and picks up things on his own very easily just simply from observation. He's got a lot of street smarts about him. He is soo much fun these days that sometimes we just want to freeze time.

Developmentally speaking, the biggest thing is that he has been growing in leaps and bounds when it comes to his vocabulary and language comprehension skills. Here's a list of all of the words Desmond can say these days in the correct context...this list is by no means comprehensive, but includes words we can remember at this moment.

1. poon - spoon

2. shooze - shoes
3. jacket
4. walk (will say this when you are carrying him and he wants to get down and walk)
5. thit - sit
6. mip - milk
7. beshoo - bless you
8. brefest - breakfast (one morning Des came up to Mama & when Mama asked him what he wants, he raised his arms to be picked up and said "brefest")
9. waffles
10. bubbles (will say bubbles when he is going to take a bath)
11. brush (for brushing teeth or hair)
12. no - snow
13. nose
14. eyes
15. ahrk - yuck (he will often pick up small debris from the floor and show it to Mama and say "ahrk")
16. Des for Desmond
17. No
18. kaa - car
19. sockths - socks
20. Maymo - Elmo
21. pawdy - potty (when Stella goes to the bathroom, he will say "pawdy")
22. hi
23. ba bye - bye bye
24. phone
25. Bobo - Oboe (name of a monkey on the Baby Genius DVD)
26. Baaney - Barney, the purple dinosaur
27. dwaw - draw (when he wants to color with crayons or draw on his magnadoodle)
28. djuice - juice
29. mo mo - more (accompanied by the sign language)
30. baba - baby
31. bottle
32. baw - ball
33. bapple or apple - apple
34. gofish - goldfish (refers to crackers or the real thing)
35. nacks - snacks
36. wacklick - chocolate
37. wader - water
38. bana - banana
39. bre - bread
40. buppoms - buttons (refers to belly buttons or buttons on clothing; Stella said the same thing when she was little)
41. wefent - elephant (his favorite animal by far)
42. daw - dog
43. fooot - foot
44. woff - off
45. pider - spider
46. tar - star
47. moon
48. sun
49. beddie - birdie
50 wotion - lotion
51. bup - burp or up (will say this when he wants you to pick him up or he wants to get up on the couch or bed)
52. down
53. noodul - noodles
54. fry - french fries
55. bafwy - butterfly
54. fawer - flower
55. tat - hat
56. boon - balloon
57. puple - purple
58. Pooh - Winnie the Pooh
59. Gover - Grover
60. mine (he uses this a lot when he and Stella are fighting over toys)
61. paydoh - playdoh (he is obsessed with this)
62. boos coos - Blue's Clues
63. fowel - towel
64. muppin - muffin
65. oval (calls circles and oval shapes oval)
66. cheeyos - cheerios
67. poop
68. mote - remote control
69. bud - bed
70. boott - book
71. ay - the letter "A"
72. two - the number "2"

And this doesn't even include all of the words he knows that he just can't say yet. He is very good at understanding what we say to him and following simple commands like "Go get that book over there and bring it to Mama" or "Do you want to come up here and sit on Mama's lap?"

One night back when Des was 15 months old, Mama had asked Dada to get Stella's hair brush, which Dada didn't hear but Desmond did, and upon hearing Mama's request, Des immediately went to the bathroom, got Stella's brush and brought it over to Mama. Mama was so amazed and proud of her sweet little guy who was so eager to help.

And who says boys are slow?!?!?

Stella the Piano Girl

Stella loves playing with her toy piano and has learned to play a lot of songs on it, thanks to her Dada. Dada shows her the keys to play and Stella just picks it up rather quickly. This is a list of all the songs Stella can play on her piano:

Twinkle Twinkle Little Star
Mary Had a Little Lamb
Row Row Your Boat
London Bridge is Falling Down
Happy Birthday To You

Mama's Birthday

Stella, Desmond, Dada, and Aunt Sil helped Mama celebrate her 3... th birthday! Dada and Stella had made Mama a yummy German chocolate birthday cake. As usual, Stella was very excited to help Dada make the cake.

Desmond digging into the cake with a fork. He loves to use utensils and will ask for a "poon" or "pok" if we forget to give him his spoon and fork at mealtimes.

Desmond was soo excited to blow out the candle, and whenever he was successful, we would all clap very excitedly and that would make him so proud and happy. It's the simplest things that make kids so genuinely happy and it is so sweet to see their innocent eyes light up!

Little Miss Fashionista!

Stella got her first professional haircut at a trendy hair salon here in AR. Mama had been talking about getting a wedge bob for our Stella (a la Katie Holmes) and the hair dresser, Molly, did a great job giving her one. Stella did great too sitting still and following directions well as to how to hold her head.

She even got her first blowout at age 31/2.

Dada and Des waited patiently for us girls to finish up. I guess Des is learning a valuable truth...men will always be waiting on women for their entire lives =;) When he wasn't sitting on his Dada's lap, Des was running around the hair salon, providing a lot of entertainment for the rest of the staff and clients.

The final result was awesome...we love it and so does Stella. We were joking that even Mama and Aunt Sil don't have such trendy hairdos like our lil' Stella!

Happy Valentine's Day

To celebrate Valentine's Day, we made cupcakes today and decorated them with red, white, and pink heart shaped sprinkles. Stella was super excited about helping Mama make and decorate the cupcakes...she had been asking for days to make cupcakes.

Mama's lil' helpers up on the step stool, all ready to help out.

Say Cheese! That's exactly what Des is saying in this pic when he saw Aunt Sil come up to him with her camera.

Umm, yummy cake batter!

The finished product.

Stella sharing her cupcake with her lil' brother. So sweet!

We also decorated our front door with window clings a few days back. The Gup knows that these are hearts and will point to the front door if you ask him or talk to him about hearts or heart shapes.

Aunt Sil Visits

Aunt Sil is our first official visitor here in Arkansas. She came in Thurs morning and will be staying till Mon evening. We are having lots of fun hanging out with Aunt Sil.

M.I.A.

We are still here! We know that we have been MIA for awhile but we have been going through major life changes that left very little room for blogging!

In short, David accepted a job as Assistant Professor in the School of Engineering at the Univ of Arkansas and we moved to Arkansas on Jan 29th.

We drove down from DC with the kids and a few of our stuff (the movers moved everything else) on Mon Jan 26th and made it to our new home by midday the 29th. The drive out here was quite an adventure with bad winter weather and Arkansas being hit by one of the worst ice storms ever knocking out power in many neighborhoods, including the one we were moving into!! But luckily, our power was restored right before the movers finished moving our stuff in.

We have been settling in but both of the kids were hit hard by a nasty cold a few days after we moved in. Stella is on the mend with a lingering cough, but poor Des was just miserable today.

So far we are really enjoying Arkansas and the town we live in. Weather in the 60s for the past few days in Feb has been very nice indeed.

So as you can imagine, we have been quite busy with the move and settling in, but we hope to catch up on posting soon. So stay tuned for a ton of retro-posts while we try to get the blog up to speed.

A New Chapter

Below is a basic account of our big move from Maryland to Arkansas.

Day 1
After the movers finished loading up the truck with all of our stuff, we said goodbye to Maryland and started of on our half cross country trip out to Arkansas. We left Mon (1/27) afternoon and headed to Richmond to spend the night at our friends Scott & Danielle's house. We hadn't seen them in a long time, so it was nice to catch up with them. Stella had fun playing Wii with Uncle Scott. We unfortunately didn't have our camera handy so we have no pics to post from our stay in Richmond.

Day 2
The next morning we headed out after breakfast. We were going to head out in a southwesterly direction towards Charlottesville, but bad weather forced us to travel directly south to Durham, NC...Mama & Dada's old stomping grounds. We had lunch on Duke's campus at Mama & Dada's favorite place...the Armadillo Grill...they have the best Tex-Mex food, hands down!

After lunch, Stella got an ice cream cone from McDonald's which she was nice enough to share with her brother...

Des and Stella got to stretch their legs a little bit while walking around the Duke Student Center, and Des even held court with the ladies while his Dada was getting some coffee. Unfortunately, Dada didn't have the camera with him to document the lil' ladies' man in action =;)

We then said goodbye to Durham and headed west to Asheville, NC. The weather was still bad with lots of dreary rain, but we managed to make good time.

Funny story about Desmond...as soon as we got in the car and were driving, he would immediately take his shoes and socks off. I guess he figured if he is going to be in the car for awhile, he might as well be comfortable. Almost all of the pics we have of him in the car from the trip is of a barefoot Des!

He did this the entire trip and has been doing it ever since then, no matter how short the car ride is!

We got to Asheville by 5:30 pm and the weather was beautiful there with clear skies and no jackets needed. We ate at one of our favorite places...the Olive Garden. Stella was so excited about driving and getting to Arkansas that anytime we stopped to get out of the car, she would immediately ask "Mama, is this Arkansas?" Too cute!

The Gup enjoying his favorite pasta fagioli soup

Dada & Stella sharing a strand of spaghetti in the style of the Lady and the Tramp.

After dinner, we went to the nearby Asheville mall and walked around for awhile. Around 8 pm, we got back in the car again and drove another 3 hours to Cookeville, TN. The kids continued to do fine and eventually fell asleep in the car.

Once at the hotel in Cookeville, Des did not want to sleep in his pack-n-play. So rather than spend valuable sleep time convincing him to sleep in the pack-n-play, Dada and Des slept in one bed, while Stella and Mama slept in the other. Des was so surprised to be sleeping in the same bed with Dada that he would lay down for a few seconds before popping up and saying "Dada, Dada" very excitedly while patting Dada on his back. Then Dada would say "Lay down, it's time to sleep" to which he could comply, but only to pop up again a few seconds later. It was his way of saying. "I can't believe it Dada, you're actually letting me sleep with you?" He did this for awhile but eventually settled down and slept past his normal wake up time in the morning.

Since Des usually serves as our wake-up call, it meant that we all got to sleep in too. We were all so tired that we slept like logs that night.

Day 3
After breakfast at the hotel, we piled back in the car and headed out west once more hoping to make it to Nashville, TN by lunchtime and we did. We drove around Nashville for awhile and took in the sights and then stopped to have some lunch. The weather was still bad with a mix of rain and snow.

Amazingly enough, the kids continued to do well in the car. We were especially surprised that Desmond was not loosing his mind by this point, because we thought for sure he would. Watching DVDs while eating snacks really helped out.

These snack catchers that Mama bought for the trip really came in handy. The kids were able to eat their snacks without us having to worry about spills and messes.

Stella especially loved watching DVDs in the car and would often do so with her favorite blanket on her head. She was pretending that she was in a fort while watching the DVD.

After a leisurely lunch, we headed out west to Memphis, TN and got their by dinnertime. We got to see Elvis Presley's Graceland from the outside (not very impressive) and drove around Memphis taking in the city's sights.

We then had dinner and headed over to the famous Peabody Hotel to walk around for awhile. The hotel was very beautiful with gorgeous water fountains and gigantic flower arrangements that made for a fun time.

Stella thought these bronze dog statues were a hoot.

Stella really loves to through "wish" coins into wishing fountains and spent a lot of time doing so at this one.

We then said goodbye to Memphis and drove to Russellville, AR where we spent the night.

Day 4
We enjoyed a leisurely breakfast in the morning before we heading out west to our final destination...Fayetteville, AR. We had heard that Fayetteville was hit with one of their worst ice storms on Wed and that a lot of houses were without power, including the one we were moving into. As we got closer and closer to the city, we got to see for ourselves the extent of the ice storm. The following are pics that Mama took from the car while we were still driving. All of the landscape was covered with ice.

This pic below was the view from the end of our street leading up to our house at the top of the hill...wild!

Luckily, our house was still in one piece...no trees had fallen on it. It was just really, really cold inside =;)

The movers met us at our house on time and just before they finished unloading the last of our boxes, the power was restored...yippee!!!

We even got our cable hooked up in time to watch the Pittsburgh Steelers win their 6th Super Bowl! Of course, Dada had to dress his two good luck charms in their jerseys so that they could cheer on the Steelers properly!!!

"Touchdown!"

That was one heck of an adventure, driving 1400 miles cross country with two small children to move to a town left powerless by a nasty ice storm, but we made it. Now we are just settling in and are excited about this new chapter in our lives.