baby proof

Ahhh, child safety locks. We have entered into the stage where we lock up everything nice and tight so Mary can be safe or at least more safe. Such a curious little thing...and smart. I wondered why there were 3 different kinds of cabinet safety locks at the store. Now I know. Once the kid has figured out how to get past the system, it's time to upgrade to something else. Unfortunately, I don't have the energy to remove and replace, so Mary's going to have to learn to leave it alone. Right now, she opens the cabinet as far as it will go, reaches her little hand in and releases the catch so the door swings open. She always seems very proud of herself and gives me a huge grin. The oven door seems to get pretty hot when I have it on and since I can't logically put a huge barrier around that, I have resorted to the strong "NO, HOT". It seems to work for now.

Let's dance

It's so cute, almost every time Mary hears music she dances. She can be in the store, the car seat, high chair, walking around in the house, and even at church.

Beach

It's beach time again! This time we decided to stay closer to home and hopefully avoid the $30 that it cost last time. I have been scoping out beaches across the street. They look pretty good, but crowded. I figured that we'd head to one of those this weekend, but Doug wanted to try the military beach. We've heard from many people that it's a great one. Wow! So much bigger than the one we used to go to on Hickam. Covered picnic tables, volleyball nets, a long stretch of beach, rental equipment, even a humongous slide. It was great. The wind was pretty strong, so we never felt hot, but the water was kind of rough. Well rough for a 14 month old, so we only let her get her feet wet. She didn't seem to care. Mary had a good time playing in the sand with her new beach toys and looking for shells. I think this will definitely become one of our new "go to" spots.

A new favorite video: After the beach, Mary had a bath to wash off the sunscreen and all that wonderful sand. Apparently, she found me quite funny. Enjoy.

sleep

You know you have a sleepy baby when she's whining and trying to climb into her crib. How funny. I would have thought that she would drop a nap soon. She's 2 days shy of 14 months and sleeps 11 hours at night and still takes 2 naps a day. The morning nap is 2 hours after she wakes up (on the dot- I could set my watch by it) and she'll sleep about 1 1/2 - 2 hours. Good computer time for me. The other nap is in the afternoon and she'll sleep another 1 1/2 hours (nap time for me!). It's a pretty nice schedule, but I find it difficult to get out and do errands cause she's either 1) asleep, 2) about to go to sleep, 3) hungry. I know I shouldn't complain about the sleeping/ napping. Many mothers would love to have a kid that sleeps so much. I think she gets that gene from me...or Aunt Carrie (the champion napper). I know one day I will look back at this time and wish Mary would rest. Here's a video from the other day when she only had a 30 min nap in the morning, then Kaye, Melissa and I took her shopping. She was actually pretty good, not too whiny. She slept so hard in the afternoon, that I could hear her sucking on her pacifier in the other room. Sorry it's so dark, but you can hear her sucking. I've asked for a new camera for Christmas, so hopefully the videos will be better.

Mmmm

Well, it's been 2 months and we finally broke down and succumbed to the lure of Japanese McDonalds. We have one not even a mile away from the house. We could walk there if we wanted. I could say that I was curious to see if there is a difference between American and Japanese. Maybe that was part of the reason, but mainly I didn't feel like cooking and I LOVE McDonalds. Thank goodness Doug was having the same craving. I went by myself and decided not to go through the drive thru. Good thing because there wasn't a lick of English on the menu. There were about 10 choices and I had to go by pictures. The Big Mac is pretty easy to recognize, so I figured that would be a safe choice. There was a strange looking fried patty with what looked like shrimp in it. Not sure about that one, but I'm sure it's probably tasty. I didn't see my favorite chicken nuggets, but I was in a burger mood, so all was well. 2 Big Mac meals and a cheeseburger for the munchkin. Besides looking slightly smaller and the Big Mac put together so neatly (not a single errant glop of goodness), everything was exactly the same. Even the fries had that same addictive flavor. Here's Mary enjoying her dinner.

Videos

Well, since I posted my pictures for this month yesterday (Kodak- if you're not on my mailing list and would like to be then let me know), I thought I'd post some of my favorite videos that you may not have seen. These are from when she was 7 months old. They change so quickly. Enjoy.

And here's a new favorite from last week...

hats

Why is it that whenever I put a hat on Mary she immediately pulls it off if it doesn't have straps to secure it, but she'll put her own diaper covers on her head and run around like that? Maybe she likes the way they match her outfit perfectly. Maybe they smell good. Maybe she's just goofy. Ah, the craziness of kids.

I'm having a dilemma about my pictures. I download most of them to Kodak and send those out to family and friends once a month, but if I'm going to start posting them on the blog, should I stop Kodak? I don't want to be redundant. Let me know what you think I should do.

Boyfriend?

I have Mary signed up for "lapsit" at the library. It's for ages 8 mo. - 30 mo. So, every Friday for 30 min. we get together with other kids her age for reading, songs and socialization. There are times during the program where the kiddos have to sit in the parent's lap (hence the name). This past Friday was our 3rd time and for the first time a father brought his son. It was nice seeing a man in the group. I guess Mary thought so too, since she decided that his lap looked more comfortable than mine. Every time I would put her in my lap, she would squirm out and walk over to him and sit down. So there I was singing to myself while my daughter shared a lap with a 19 mo old little boy and his dad. At first I thought she might like the boy, but she didn't even look at him except to try to push him out of the way. As for the man, he didn't even slightly resemble Doug, so I have no clue why she was drawn to him. He said he didn't mind, but at the end of class we had the opportunity to sign up for next month and I heard him discreetly ask the teacher if he could sign up for the class that meets an hour earlier. I guess she'll have to start looking for a new boyfriend.

Hello, hello?

Being born to 2 parents who don't talk on the phone very often, you would think Mary would have inherited the trait. Nope. She loves to walk around with toy telephones to her ear pretending to talk. Of course, when the actual phone is put up to her ear and someone wants to talk to her, she clams up and doesn't want to talk. Silly stuff.

growing up fast

Ever since Mary was born I love desserts. Actually, I started craving them when I was carrying her and the craving never went away. Since I had a box handy (which I always do), I decided to make some brownies. I put a piece on a plate for Mary and handed it to Doug to give to her. I assumed he would break off pieces and feed them to her. I walked into the living room and there she was sitting at her little table with her plate in front of her happily munching away. Oh, my baby is growing up so fast.

What an adventure

Well, here's my first attempt at the blog. I've been meaning to do this ever since we arrived on the island, but you know how daily life gets in the way and before you know it it's time to go to bed and start all over.

Okinawa is beautiful, frightening and definitely an adventure. I'm finally getting used to driving on the left side of the street, in the right side of the car and having the turn signal on the wrong side of the steering wheel. Yikes. I can't tell you how many times I've turned the windshield wipers on when I wanted to turn left. I can honestly say that I've only tried to drive on the right side of the street a couple of times and that was while I was on base. Thankfully, there weren't any other cars on the road at the same time.

We decided to go on a little adventure with one of our friends to visit the island of Sesoko (northwest of here and attached by a bridge). Getting to the island was easy. Finding the beach was another story. You would think we would just drive until we ran into the ocean, right? Wrong. The road ran out...well it turned into a very narrow dirt road and driving a big station wagon, I was daunted. We finally found it (the long and difficult route) and we just wanted to hop into the water. Nope, not gonna happen. After some miming with the locals and narrowly escaping scraping the side of the car on a metal sign we found the parking lot ($15 to park), rode a van to the beach and found out that we couldn't get in the water there, but had to walk to a roped in area. It was a long walk with a squirmy baby and all the necessary beachy items. They had lounge chairs and umbrellas set up. I wanted an umbrella for the shade and was willing to pay whatever it cost (another $15). So yes, it was an expensive adventure to the beach, but the water was crystal clear and felt wonderful. Would we do it again? Probably not, but now we can say we did it.