Tag Archives: firsts

Andrea’s First Ski Trip

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It’s been a while since I’ve posted, and I have a lot of updates, but I figured I’d jump right back in first with a recap of Andrea’s first ski trip!

We just returned home from a fun ski vacation in Park City, Utah, where my parents live. We thought this would be a good year to get Andrea on skis for the first time. We signed her up for a private ski lesson at Deer Valley the first day. We went first thing and got her rental gear, then I took her down the child care area, where the kids play while they’re not in their lesson. Her equipment was just about the smallest they make – it was so adorable! (For my records, her boots were 16.5 and skis were 70’s.)

We had been talking about skiing a lot in the week leading up to our trip, and watching YouTube videos of kids skiing, and she was really excited, but I was still a little nervous that she would get scared at the moment it was finally time for the lesson. But she did FABULOUS!!! She was eager to get her skis on and head up the “magic carpet” (a conveyor belt type of lift for small training hills). The first time down the little training hill, the instructor just pointed Andrea’s skis down the hill and Andrea skied right to her! I was so impressed.

Having so much fun!!!

We got some video of her first run down the hill, and a couple of other runs from her lesson.

Even though she was having a blast, she was done after 45 minutes of skiing. I think she was just getting hungry and tired, since it was noon and we flew in late the night before. She had already learned how to ride the magic carpet, do a good “pizza”, and even stop on her own, so we considered it a success for her first day. Once we knew she was really going to ski, we went ahead and bought her her own helmet. She’ll be able to wear that for years, so it’s cheaper than renting, plus she LOVES her pink helmet. 🙂

The next day, we took her up to the trainer hill at Park City Mountain Resort with Granddad and Aunt Alicia. It was warm, so she didn’t even need her coat. She got better at starting and stopping on her own, and every time she would stop, she’s bend over and draw a line in the snow between her skis to make her pizza shape into an “A”. She also loved falling down on her bottom after she stopped. Silly girl! Before she was done for the day, I told her to try just slowing down and speeding back up by making bigger and smaller “pizzas” instead of stopping all the way. She started doing that and then it was like it just clicked and she was really at ease on her skis.

She loves falling down. Hahaha

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For her third day of skiing, I took her back up to Park City Mountain Resort, and she rode the “magic carpet” all by herself. She saw another little girl go up without a parent, so she didn’t want me to go up with her either. Little miss independent!  After a little while, we were joined by her Daddy, Uncle Thor, Aunt Alicia, and my cousin. After Andrea showed Daddy how to do the magic carpet, we thought we’d try Andrea’s first chair lift, aptly named, “First Time”. Uncle Thor and Daddy went with Andrea, with Aunt Alicia and my cousin right behind them. They lifted her up onto the chair and went up the lift, with her smiling all the way. She skied down the ramp at the top of the lift, and then without hesitation went right down her first real ski run. I wasn’t skiing, so I waited toward the bottom with the camera. When I saw her, she was cruising down the hill without hesitation. My cousin was skiing in between her and the edge of the run, blocking so she wouldn’t accidentally go over the edge, and Uncle Thor and Daddy were skiing backwards in front of her and she looked just as happy as could be.

Day 3 - Andrea decided she wanted to ride the magic carpet by herself. She thought it was funny to ride the whole way bent over like this. LOL

Skiing with Daddy :-)

Excited about her first lift ride!

So proud of herself!

She was tired after three days of skiing, even though it was only an hour or so each day, so we took the last day off to just play at Grandma’s house. But Andrea is already excited about skiing again next year!

We rode the train!

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We flew out to Washington State last week to visit Paul’s family. Flights were a lot cheaper to Seattle than to Portland, so we flew into Seattle and then took Amtrak down to Vancouver, WA, near where Paul’s family lives. It was quite the adventure.

We got into Seattle and figured we’d eat and hang out at the airport for a bit before heading to the Amtrak station, but we found out that there isn’t really any food (or anything else) outside security. So we made our way to the light rail station at the airport and took the light rail up to downtown Seattle where the Amtrak station is. Andrea was fascinated by the light rail train, and even more excited to be going on “Thomas” (the Tank Engine) for our next train ride. (We kept trying to explain that the next train wouldn’t look exactly like Thomas, but she had already made up her mind that it would be Thomas.

Here’s a picture of her on the light rail:
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We checked in at Amtrak, then walked to lunch at a nearby restaurant. Of course it was cold and rainy. (We were in Seattle, after all.) Andrea loved the adventure though. We packed her rain boots and raincoat in the top of our suitcase and got them out for her to stomp around Seattle in. She was so adorable!

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Birthday Party Fun

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Yesterday morning was supposed to be Andrea’s last day of soccer, but the game was rescheduled for next week due to some rain we got Friday night. At first, Andrea was pretty disappointed, but she quickly forgot about soccer when we reminded her that she was going to her friend Ryan’s 4th birthday party. She started talking non-stop about Ryan after that. It was a Halloween themed party and the invitation said to wear a costume and be ready for pumpkin painting. I didn’t want her wearing her good Cinderella dress, because I was afraid it might get paint on it, but I realized we had a second (machine washable) Cinderella dress that she could wear. It was a good trial run for her hair and I got to try out the Cinderella headband I made for her. Her hair looked good, but I found out I really needed to pull out the hairspray to get the updo right for our church’s trunk-or-treat on Sunday night.

When we got to the party, we thought it was a little weird that there were no cars out front. It turned out that parents weren’t staying at the party – a party for 3 and 4 year olds! I was pretty freaked out, but the birthday boy’s parents and his aunt and uncle were all there and in costume, and we were the only other adults standing around. I wasn’t worried about Andrea, but I felt really strange just dropping her off for someone else to deal with for a couple of hours. The mom has a few kids, and I see her at pick-up and drop-off all the time, but I don’t actually *know* her. Andrea told us to leave, so we ran an errand, got some lunch, and wondered what else were supposed to do with our unexpected free time. When we picked Andrea up later, she was having a blast. She said they painted pumpkins, opened presents, and played in Ryan’s playroom. And apparently, they served pizza for lunch, but the mom told me that Andrea said she didn’t like pizza, so they made her PB&J instead. (She will eat pizza, but it’s definitely not one of her favorites. I usually have to encourage her to eat it.) At least she knows how to speak up for herself!

I just snapped one quick photo on the way in, but it’s not great because the lighting was all wrong. I knew at the time it didn’t turn out, but I didn’t think it mattered, since I’d take more at the party, but obviously, that didn’t happen.
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After the party, Andrea talked even more about Ryan, and sounded like a little girl in love. It was hilarious. She told us that she can go to Ryan’s house any time she wants. And then she told us that next year for Ryan’s party she wants to be a hula girl. I thought she was going to give Paul a heart attack! LOL. She was so worn out after the party that she told us she was tired and asked us to take her “straight home.” We did, and she went down for a nap almost the moment we got home.

And just a cute funny from later in the afternoon… Paul was cleaning out his wallet and pulled out his Delta AMEX credit card (sample image). Andrea immediately pointed to it and said, “That’s for travelling!” (Well, it sounds like “trabbeling when she says it.) We were a little shocked, and asked her how she knew that, so she pointed to the (triangular) Delta logo on the card, and said, “Because that arrow!” Then we asked where she saw that, because we really weren’t sure why she knew the Delta logo at all, and she said, “At the airport!” Of course she did. She hasn’t been in an airport since we flew to Missouri in April. We did fly Delta then (we usually do), but still… she remembers a logo from 6 months ago? Crazy.

Tonight we had a blast at our church’s Trunk-or-Treat. I’ll post more about that tomorrow after I have a chance to go through all the pictures. 🙂

READING!?!?!?!

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WOW. Andrea just read her first word.

Last night, we read the book Pete the Cat. It’s a cute book, and it has some simple words in big print, both upper and lower case. So I tried pointing to the letters, and getting Andrea to say them in order and then we’d say what word it was, like red, blue, brown, shoes, etc. Then she wanted to say all the letters on the cover, so we pointed to the words in Pete the Cat and some others. When we spelled, “C-a-t”, I told her that the word was cat. Then I said, “And b-a-t spells bat! And f-a-t spells fat! And r-a-t spells rat!” because she’s really into rhyming words lately.

Then this morning, during breakfast, she wanted to say all the big letters on the butter container, then the milk container. She pointed to “M-I-L-K” and said “Milk!” but of course, that was kind of obvious. Then she spelled “O-R-G-A-N-I-C” and I told her it said, “Organic.” Then she pointed to “L-o-w” and I told her that said, “Low.” Then she pointed to “F-a-t” and I asked her if she knew what that said and she proudly announced, “Fat!” My jaw must have dropped to the floor at that point.

Then I asked, “What does C-A-T spell?” and she said, “Cat!” And I asked, “What does B-A-T spell?” and she said, “Bat!” I’m stunned. I mean, I get that we just talked about this last night, but only once as a passing thing. We didn’t like sit and practice all the -at words or anything.

Aaaaaggghhhh!!! I can’t believe it! This is so cool.

Florida Vacation

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We took Andrea to Florida for a vacation last week. The only other time she had seen the ocean was two summers ago in Hawaii for my brother’s wedding and she was too scared to actually venture out onto the beach or into the water, so it didn’t really count. This time she was super-excited about the beach and the ocean, so it was really fun. We decided to stay in Cocoa Beach, at a family friend’s condo, but we also wanted to spend some time visiting with my grandparents, who live in Melbourne.

Paul invited a friend from Canada to fly down and go surfing with him, so we drove down Wednesday, and picked up Paul’s friend in Orlando late that night. Then I had the brilliant(?) idea to take her to Disney World the next morning (Thursday). That meant a late night and early morning for us, so we were seriously dragging at Disney, but I’m still glad we did it. Andrea probably would have preferred to have spent that day at the beach or the Disney Store, which is what she thought I meant when I said Disney World, but I think she enjoyed it. She didn’t smile much or get as excited as I thought she would, but she is still talking about it. She spent most of the day looking a bit confused and overwhelmed by the whole experience. And the Winnie the Pooh ride scared her of all things, which is all she talked about for a while. (She randomly muttered, “I got a little scared on Winnie the Pooh” for days after…) We only did 5 rides and had lunch before she fell asleep in my arms around 2pm, while waiting for the Jungle Cruise (which she slept through), then she eventually woke up as the parade started to pass. She is still talking about the parade, and yesterday, she even drew all the princesses she saw on the parade route. It was so cute.

We spent the rest of the trip at the beach, the condo pool, or my grandparent’s retirement community for the most part. Andrea called the condo “the beach house” and was completely in love with the fact that was so close to a pool AND the beach. She didn’t really want to go into the ocean, but we waded in to her knees a couple of times before she yelled, “Done! Done! Done-done-done-done-done!”

I have more pictures in the gallery and on Facebook, but here’s a few quick ones…

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Big week for milestones

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I thought I should post an update because this has been a big week for Andrea. She is a completely different baby than she was last week practically! In one week, she hit all of these milestones…

Tuesday – Starting rolling around the floor to get places. (She could roll over both ways since she was 4 months old, but she refused to roll on to her stomach more than a few times because she hated being on her tummy.) But all of a sudden, she realized she could roll from one end of the room to the other! We also moved her to her convertible carseat on Tuesday, and she seems a lot more comfortable now instead of squished in her infant seat.

Tuesday night – She slept through the night!!! (Edit: This would prove to be short-lived, but it was nice while it lasted.)

Thursday – Threw her first tantrum. She was sitting and playing with my cell phone, and when I took it away, she started screaming and flung herself on the ground. Her face was bright red and she was bawling her eyes out. My little drama queen!

Friday – Starting waving reguarly, often with both hands and for no reason whatsoever. She waved a few times before, but only with lots of encouragement and never enthusiastically. Now she waves a lot and grins from ear to ear like it’s the greatest thing on earth. She also waves repeatedly while nursing, so I think she may not know the difference between waving and the sign for milk (which I’ve been trying to teach her, but I’m not very consistent).

Sunday – Apparently Andrea wanted to make a big deal of SuperBowl Sunday, so she hit two big milestones in one day – she crawled for the first time AND she got herself into a sitting position from laying down! Here’s some cell phone video of her crawling on Sunday.

Other things she’s been doing lately… flipping pages in her lift the flap books, pulling up on things enough to grab things off tables and the ottoman and such, babbling a lot and making “mmm” sounds – not quite “mama” though, putting things in and taking things out of containers… I can’t believe how much she’s grown up!