Friday, November 30, 2012

Capish?

Inara enjoys painting and often says "mool?" (paint). A couple of days ago, I asked what she was painting and she said "pish" which is her word for fish. Is it just me, or do you also see a couple of sea creatures:


It started snowing a little bit, so we're heading out to explore. It's not sticking yet, but enough to catch on your tongue.








Wednesday, November 28, 2012

No Mountain too High

Inara loves the ipod, but there might be one thing that rivals this love: Climbing. Everything. All the time. Often her adventures are prefaced by a matter of fact statement of "klättra" (climb).
One of her favorite spots for the last week has been the pantry. She climbs a chair, takes everything out of the cupboard and then climbs in.


She never sits still for more than a few seconds, but why should she? Use your energy while you have it, I say. None of that left for her poor, old parents. 

As a bonus, she's has been exceedingly polite as of late. She says "tack, tack" (thanks, thanks) 50 to 100 times a day. She thanks us for holding the door, giving her things she wants, helping her and even says thank you when she gives us something. Although we have not trained her to do this, I was beaming after she thanked the swim teacher at the end of class. 

I've been meaning to post her preschool picture for a while, but haven't really been in the mood to blog lately. Here it is finally:
Otherwise everything's well with us. The last few weeks have mostly consisted of seeing lots of people and starting to get ready for Christmas. I had my second interview yesterday and it might take about a month before they get back to me, so I'm probably just going to try not to think about it too much until I know. 

Monday, November 19, 2012

Call of the Wild

Inara loves the ipod. So much, in fact, that every morning she wakes Andrew up by taping his chest, saying: "ipa, ipa, ipa" until she gets what she wants. We limit her time with it, but I don't see anything wrong with her using it a little bit. Andrew has an app where she can scroll through a bunch of animals and touch the screen to hear their sounds. She's getting pretty good at imitating them and it's fun to see her attempt the blue whale or the rattle snake. It's really dificult to catch her on camera nowadays, because every time she sees it, she just wants to watch videos of herself on it. This time, I managed to sneak up on her while she was talking to granpa Barney on skype:


Wednesday, November 14, 2012

New Challenges

The other day, I realized that Inara has entered a new stage in her development where she's able to do all kinds of big kid stuff, while she's not necessarily very aware of the importance of being careful with others and other people's belongings. I took her to an "open preschool" we hadn't been to for about 6 months and she was the oldest kid there. As I was sitting in the other room talking, I saw out of the corner of my eye how Inara was throwing a ball at a two month old laying on the floor. Luckily, the baby's mom was right there to catch it, but I ran in to explain to Inara that babies are too little to play and that you can't throw stuff around them etc. She listened (it seemed) and I got her interested in something else at the other end of the room. 

A little later, she went back over to where the baby was and chucked a plastic apple right at the baby's head. It bounced off with a little "clunk" and although she was fine, I felt really bad. I don't think Inara meant to be mean, she just wanted to play, but I again tried to explain and showed her that the baby was sad. She seemed to be taking it in, agreeing that throwing stuff at people was bad, but who knows. 

The point of this story is that it was the first time I had to protect other kids from her and the first time she really did something that was not ok. On top of it all, about ten other parents were watching me as I did so. All of them had younger babies, so I'm sure they were thinking that they were going to do it totally different when their kid reached Inara's age (or better yet, that their kid would never behave like that). So, an older Inara brings a whole new set of concerns, but also a lot of fun. I have to say this has been the best age so far. 

Inara's language has just exploded in the last few weeks and I can't list all the words she knows now. A couple of new ones sprout up every day and she's getting much better at mimicking. If I say: "Do you want a tomato?" she says "I want a tomato." If I say: "Is your carseat tight?" she says "is tight." She also had a few days when she, in her cutest voice, would say "mamma, pappa" about 300 times a day. Just as a statement of fact. 

Here's the little rascal:


Monday, November 12, 2012

Under the Surface

Another round of swimming lessons and here she is again, this time all by herself:



As usual, I'm a little irritated to have seen Christmas decorations in stores for weeks now, but I'm also very excited this year. I normally adopt a "take it or leave it" kind of an approach to the holidays, but this year, I'm just so happy for Inara and about all the fun we're going to have. I can't help but think about what she'll experience this Christmas and for years to come. I'm also super happy that she's going to get to see grandma and grandpa Kartchner in just a few weeks. Finally those faces she's got used to seeing on the computer screen will be here in real life. Like last year, we'll give people almost all homemade gifts. This year, I've got an early start on making everything, so hopefully I'll get it all done with some time to spare. 

My interview went pretty well, I think. I'll find out in a couple of weeks weather I get a second interview. 

Sunday, November 4, 2012

Inara Style

I guess this is what goes on at home while I'm at work:


In all honesty, she's watched this video way too much since BEFORE it became popular (like back when it only had 40 million views). She is a total hipster.


Friday, November 2, 2012

Good News

We're pretty excited to say that Andrew got a part time position at the university! This works out pretty well since he'll also be able to continue his Swedish classes part time.    

I'm borrowing most of these pictures from our friend Reagan who really made our impromptu Halloween celebration by bringing decorations and the cutest little gnome.