Thanksgiving Recap

Well, I think our Thanksgiving dinner turned out great! My dad commented that it tasted almost like it would if we were home, so I think that says a lot considering we can't get all our usual ingredients.

We started off the day with a bang by setting off the fire alarm in the kitchen. Totally my fault; I was cooking bacon and let it get a little too crispy. The security guy showed up in less than 5 mins, which actually makes me feel good that they get here so quick.

Lily is going through a phase where she absolutely LOVES being in the kitchen, but throws a fit when she can't see what's going on. She wants to be held, but then gets mad when I pick her up and nothing is going on (because my hands are busy holding her). We set her up in the high chair in the kitchen so she could see, and that made her happy for a little while.

Jim was in charge of pancakes.

Jim told me he was taking this picture so everyone could see I had a cheat sheet. I'm pretty sure no one actually thinks I don't use recipes!

The turkey! It was delicious. The best part of the meal I think.

Dad and I admiring our work. Actually, we were debating on whether we really thought it was done, which we discovered it wasn't. The breast was done but we had to throw the legs back in the oven for a bit.

Our little helper! I think Lily ate her weight in turkey. She kept pulling on my sleeve and signing "more" for more turkey. 

Dad carving the turkey.

It's not easy making an entire Thanksgiving meal with one oven, but we figured it out. By the way, those rolls in there turned out awesome as well, and the recipe is pretty fool-proof. If you are an inexperienced bread-maker I would recommend it. (recipe in my last post)

We also had our new neighbors over, and we had a good time. They have a three year old daughter that Lily loved following around, so the adults actually got to talk for a while.

It was a lot of work, but we have enough leftovers to last a week!! 

Thanksgiving Prep!

Somehow this is our first time to plan a Thanksgiving meal since we've been married! The first year we had just gotten married and were at my parents house in Dickinson. The following year we had just gotten back form our trip to Australia and kept it simple. The year after that we were invited to our friends place in Taipei to celebrate. The next year I went on a girl's trip to Vietnam and Cambodia and Jim went to Colorado by himself. Then last year we were living in Houston and spent Thanksgiving at my parents again.

I'm a little sad we didn't get to do all the fun pumpkin patch pictures with Lily or dress her up in turkey outfits. Remember this from last year?

Those legs!! What a chunk!!

Anyways, this is what's on the menu for our Thanksgiving:

For breakfast:

Pumpkin Pancakes If this recipe turns out well, this may become a family tradition. It's no secret I love everything pumpkin!

For Dinner:

Turkey. I'm using this as a roasting guide: click here

Stuffing. This is a source of conflict in our marriage, and I've been able to avoid it until now. I grew up with white bread dressing (aka the best kind) and Jim grew up with corn bread dressing. So, I think I found a compromise thanks to the wonderful Pioneer Woman: click here

Mashed potatoes. No recipe, this one is easy!

Green Beans. I'm keeping this one easy and using the traditional cream of mushroom soup version, but subbing bread crumbs for the fried onions because we can't get those here.

Rolls. I'm going to try Pioneer woman again on this one. I've read her recipe for dough several times and it seams easy enough but I've never tried it: click here

Deviled Eggs. A tradition for me and super easy: Eggs, mayo and dried mustard with a little paprika. 

Pumpkin Pie. Nothing fancy, just using the recipe that was probably invented by Eagle Brand: click here

It's pretty much just the basics since it will only be a few of us (and our first time to make a lot of these things). My dad is coming and I invited our neighbors over that just moved in (they're American) and they might bring something as well. I just bought our turkey this morning since we don't have the freezer space to store it, so it will immediately begin the slow thawing process in the fridge and then the counter top. 

Well, I was going to post a few random pictures of our own little Punkin, but blogger is telling me I ran out of space for more pictures! Tragic! I'll go fix that stat (i.e. call Jim).

I'll be sure and take pics of all the food and let you know how it turns out! Have a fabulous Thanksgiving!

Halloween

Better late than never! You can blame Colorado State for the lack of blogging the last few weeks. I'm taking two classes right now and they are taking up any free time I have. 

Anyways, this little munchkin got to dress up three times for Halloween! Lily didn't have daycare the entire week of Halloween due to the Eid holiday, so we tried out a different little daycare here in our neighborhood (because mama still had lots of work to do!). I've been wanting to try out this place for a while because it's so convenient, and I've heard from a lot of other moms that they allow you to just drop off your kid for a few hours in the afternoon. I need something like this for the times when both Jim and I are sick (that happened last month) or if I need to take an exam and my proctor can't do it during her day care hours. I found out they do a two day free trial, so Lily went on Halloween and wore her tutu! I figured they could just take the tutu off if it got in the way.

Later that afternoon I got her dressed up in her real Halloween costume...A Flemenco Dancer! Lily's Granny and Grandpa got this dress for her when we were in Spain this summer. She was definitely the only toddler flamenco dancer we saw :)

I got her dressed super early so I could take pictures, and she would not stand still, then she threw a fit because she wanted a cracker.

Lily and her friend Silas looking out at the construction. I never figured out why Silas wasn't wearing any pants...

We go to the playground almost every evening from about 5-6 pm. It's almost always the same moms/kids there everyday, and it's been nice to get to know other people in our neighborhood.

The mom of these two little Pooh Bears was trying her darndest to get a pic with her girls and Lily but Lily would NOT STAND STILL. Story of my life lately.

This is Lily and her friend Harry. Harry is in her class at daycare, and Harry's mom is my proctor for school.

The day after Halloween we had a party with some of our swimming buddies. I didn't take many pictures because I was barely alive. I had food poisoning the night before and was barely hanging on, but I really wanted to take Lily to this party and see some of the moms that I've become friends with. I made some pumpkin muffins for the party right before I got really sick the night before, and they were a huge hit. I even found some cinnamon chips to sprinkle on top! I don't think having pumpkin as a sweet/dessert is very common outside the US, so everyone was in love. Like seriously, I don't think I've ever had people rave about anything I've baked before like they did with these muffins.

Someone brought a ball pit to the party and Lily spent the entire time in it (here she is playing with her friend Callum). She was either in this pit or walking around stealing food off everyone's discarded plates the entire time.

It will be a few years before we get to go trick or treating, since no one does that here. In the meantime, I'm thankful to have found some friends to celebrate with!

Lily James is 15 Months Old!

My poor neglected blog! I promise this won't become a blog that is only updated when Lily turns another month old. However, that is the topic for today :) Instead of pictures for this update, I added some videos. Two are of her "talking" and one is her throwing a fit, which has become a new occurence lately!

- She can say quite a few words now: Mama, Dada, Baby, Ball, Bye-bye, Ni-night, Dog, Duck, Babo, Hi, and Up. Sometimes she gets on a roll and just keeps saying "mama...dada...mama...dada..." over and over again.

- She can also say "no" and knows how to use it! I told her to sit down on the couch the other day and she looked at me and said "NO!"

- The morning nap is officially dropped. I thought it would be a hard transition, but I kind of like it. It's easier to get out of the house more and do something in the mornings before we come home for lunch and a nap.

- She's started taking 3 hr naps almost every day. Especially after day care or swimming lessons.

- She's started sleeping a little later in the mornings, usually until around 7. Bedtime is still 7:30.

- She's becoming quite the social butterfly. I've noticed lately she prefers to play with other kids than toys when we go to the playground. Only problem is most kids her age are not quite at the stage of interacting yet, and the older kids want nothing to do with a "baby."

- We went through a rough patch a couple weeks ago. She decided she wanted to challenge everything we said and threw a fit when we didn't give in. Everything from not letting her stand on the couch, run towards the street while playing outside, playing in the trash, hitting/pinching mama. She would just sit on the floor and cry and keep trying over and over. It's hard not to question everything when that happens. Is daycare a mistake? Am I too hard on her? Too soft? I just need to learn everything is a phase.

- She's still a great eater, but she needs more teeth! Still only 6 teeth, and the poor thing needs some help chewing all this yummy food she sees that she wants.

- She understands a lot. One day I told her to run into our bedroom and say "hi, dada!" and she did it! I was shocked. Another time she was wearing one shoe and we were going outside so I said "where is your other shoe? go find your other pink shoe and bring it to mama," and the lil stinker ran into our bedroom, went around the bed, found her shoe and brought it to me. Again, shocked.

- She's getting more generous with giving hugs and kisses. She almost always gives me one when I ask now.

- She wears anywhere from 18months to 2T tops, and 18 month bottoms. Size 5 shoe, size 5 diaper, and 24 month PJs.


- She's about 27 lbs (90th %tile)

**A note for Christmas: If anyone is reading this and plans on getting this punkin' a Christmas present, don't get anything smaller than 2T or size 6 shoe. And as far as toys, she's just not that in to toys. She still loves books, and her favorites are the ones that make sounds. She has started sitting long enough to watch some cartoons on youtube, so she might like Dora the Explorer DVDs or she likes Peppa the Pig. 

Lily James is 14 Months Old!

I'm thinking I'll still write these summaries so I can refer back to them, but probably not every month anymore. Hopefully I can still remember to do them every other month, but time is flying by so much faster now. Most of these pictures were taken on October 7th and 8th while we were playing outside at our neighborhood playground.

- She goes to daycare Sunday, Monday and Wednesdays from 8-12:30. She cries when Jim drops her off, but is quickly distracted once he leaves and they pull out her favorite toys. I think she likes getting out and playing with other kids and new toys. She's always happy when I pick her up.

- We are in the process of dropping the morning nap. She doesn't take one at daycare or on Tuesdays when we have swim lessons, but by the end of the week the lack of a morning nap catches up to her and she really needs two naps on Thursday, Friday and Saturdays.

- She says Mama, Dada, Bye-bye, Ball and Bottle.

- She signs milk, bye, more, all done, diaper, please, eat, and sleep. Last night we ate out at Chili's and we gave her one bite of mac & cheese and she got super excited and signed "more, please." We were so excited to see her put two words together!

- She can tell you what the sheep, monkey and elephant says. For elephant she doesn't make a sound but raises her arm like an elephant trunk.

- She can point to her nose, ears, head, hair, butt, toes, feet, hands, neck, lips and belly button. She can also show you where a bow goes.

- She still has 6, 4-5oz bottles a day. I thought about consolidated to 4 6oz bottles but I changed my mind. This schedule works and she's used to it.

- She's starting to pick up on patterns and does not like when we deviate. The biggest issue right now is bedtime. Jim doesn't make it home for bedtime during the week, so I always put her down. When the weekend comes and Jim takes her to bed she throws a fit sometimes and only wants me. I think she would be fine if I wasn't in the house but she doesn't like knowing I'm around and not putting her to bed.

- She's still doing swim lessons and is the most advanced in her class (in my completely unbiased opinion!). But I should add that everyone else in her class are first-timers so it's not a fair comparison :) We still love it and the best thing about Dubai is we can continue year round, even at the outdoor pool.

- Bedtime is about 7:30 now and she wakes up about 6:30am.

- It's finally cool enough in the late afternoons to go play outside at our neighborhood playground (and by cool enough I mean <100F). I'm learning that our girl is not shy at all yet and just walks up to every kid. She's usually the youngest one out there, but she loves running after the bigger kids (18-24 month olds) and helping them share their toys :)

- She's doing better at going out to eat. I think that's because she eats more and she takes almost as long as we do to eat, so she's not finished in two minutes and clamoring to get down and run around right away.

- She has 6 teeth! 4 top and 2 bottom

- She weighs somewhere around 25-27 lbs

- She wears size 18 month clothes, 24 month pjs and bathing suits, size 4 shoe and size 5 diaper.

I love watching her grow up and become more "with-it." I'm definitely not the type of mom that wonders every day "where did my baby go??" I love this fun stage of playing outside and watching her interact with other kids. Happy 14 months Lily Bug!!

Pictures from the Boat

Sorry about the blogging hiatus! I'm hoping to get back on track. I enjoy going back and reading about our life here, but I can't do that if I don't keep writing about it :)

Are you sick of seeing posts about the cruise?? Well this is the last one! I have just a few pics we took while hanging around on the boat. If you're not sick of cruise talk, there's one more new post below this about Naples.

Overall I thought the boat was great. The one area I would say was lacking were the pools. There were two main pools that were salt water, and were warm and small, and made you feel like you were taking a bath with a bunch of strangers. We lasted about 5 mins. 

We spent a lot of time on our deck, which was really nice. It was nice to sit and relax, and Lily couldn't get in to trouble or escape from us!

We had one full day on the boat, and we took Lily to a baby painting class. It turned out to be Dad, Mom, Granny and Grandpa doing all the painting, and Lily either eating the paint or trying to walk away. We left pretty quickly!

We made reservations at the Churrascaria restaurant on board, and it was delish! We told them ahead of time it was Lily's birthday, so they brought out this plate and a cake for dessert.

The munchkin enjoyed running up and down the hallways quite often.

We had a great time! However, if we do it again next year, we decided we are going somewhere cooler!

If you are wondering how Lily did....it could have been better, it could have been worse. One of the hardest things for her that I didn't think about ahead of time were eating breakfast, lunch and dinner at restaurants. She doesn't last very long in her high chair once she's done eating (what 1 yr old does?) and wanted out right away to either sit in my lap, or run around. Running around was not an option, so it was either stay in the high chair or stay in someone's lap, and she wasn't too happy about that most of the time. Being strapped in a stroller was a struggle as well, but most of the time she was in the stroller because it was too crowed to let her run around. However, she did great taking naps on the go, and even fell asleep in my lap quite often, which she hasn't done since she was probably 5 months old. She went right to bed every night too - I'm sure being completely exhausted helped.

Overall, if you want to see a lot of places with a baby, a cruise is probably the easiest thing. I think if we ever take a baby on vacation again, I will try to convince the hubs to stay in one place and leisurely explore one city. I think we could have spent just a week in Rome seeing everything there.

I hope we'll continue to be brave and take our kids on vacations in the future!

My Favorite Naples Pictures

What do I remember about our excursion in Naples? It was HOT! We booked this excursion through a separate company instead of the cruise line. It started out pretty chaotic as we were passed off between about 3 different tour guides before the tour event started. To make matters worse, it was extremely crowded, which I think made it feel even hotter. 

We started out in Pompeii.

This is us with Mount Vesuvius in the background. Pompeii was not what I expected. I thought it was going to have all the human casts from people who died in the eruption, but there were only two casts in glass cases. I guess you have to go to a city closer to the volcano for that, where everything was preserved better.

After Pompeii we were taken to Mount Vesuvius where we had the option to climb to the top. I didn't think we were going to do it after being so miserably hot in Pompeii, but Jim was really excited about it. Greg and Susan stayed back with Lily and Jim and I decided to try hiking up.

It's really not a difficult hike; it's paved all the way up, but I was carsick from the windy drive up, had no water and the sun was beating down the whole way up. I was going as slow as an 80 year old man smoking a cigarette (literally, he was walking next to me the whole time). It was pathetic, but I made it up and back down before the bus left!

Us at the crater! I didn't think I was going to make it! Jim made it before me because I told him to go ahead and I would either meet him at the top or on his way back down.

The next morning we got back off the boat, spent one more night in Barcelona then headed back to Dubai (and dragged Granny back with us!).

My Favorite Barcelona Pictures

This was actually my second time in Barcelona, I went in June 2009 with some girlfriends. Crazy enough, I think I'll always remember that first trip as when I found out Micheal Jackson died. Anyways, I think Barcelona was my favorite place we went to on this trip. I like walking down Las Ramblas and looking at the vendors and artists. 

We did Barcelona on our own as well. It's really easy to get off the boat and take a bus to Las Ramblas. From there we walked down the street, then took the subway to see La Segrada Familia, the Catholic Cathedral originally designed by Gaudi. 

Barcelona wasn't as hot as some of the other places we went, and Las Ramblas was actually pretty decent for the middle of August.

The munchkin took lots of naps in her stroller on the trip. Isn't she such a happy sleeper?? haha

After Barcelona we had a full day on the boat while we made our way to Naples!