Juliet turned 2 on July 21. We celebrated with family and friends in our backyard with some water play, BBQ and cupcakes.
She is growing up before our eyes and her development is going at warped speed these days. Here's a little insight into who she is at this moment in time.
Stats: Juliet is 37 inches (>99th percentile) and 31 lbs (90th percentile), so proportionally she's slimming down as she's lengthening out. She is VERY tall. She's in 3T clothes and size 8 shoes.
Teeth: She starting cutting her first 2 year molar right after her birthday and it's now all the way through with the 2nd bottom one breaking the skin as we speak. She seems fairly ok during the day (but her baseline is kind of whiny in general so who knows), but sleep is whack-a-doo. So after this tooth breaks the skin we will have 2 more to go until all 20 baby teeth are accounted for.
Schedule: I really shouldn't discuss fight club. Every time I start to feel some confidence about her sleep she goes haywire and the past 2 weeks have definitely been all over the place. Plus, F starting school will also shift her schedule times as we have to pick him up at a time which will cut her naps short. But for now:
6:30/7 Wake up
1-3 nap
7:30/8 bedtime
She's been waking up early and resisting naps with these molars coming through. She started preschool on MWF from 8:30-12:30 and we are signed up for a bible study on Tuesday and Hiking class on Thursdays for the fall (covid permitting). Juliet is extroverted and busy busy so just bumming around the house with her is zero fun for all involved. Keeping her schedule busy and engaging is a necessity.
Feeding: Juliet is feast or famine. She will go a few days where she literally will not eat anything followed by a few days where she's eating everything on her plate and asking for more. She's very picky and doesn't like sweets other than ice cream and popsicles. Her favorite foods are tortellini with pesto sauce, scrambled eggs with shredded cheese, apples, cucumbers, French fries, and anything dipped in ketchup (including apples).
Favorite book: She currently loves this Hello World Dinosaurs book by Jill McDonald. She's low key interested in dinosaurs and I'm here for it. She also loves Sandra Boynton 'oh My oh my Oh Dinosaurs' and 'Dinosnores', so she's definitely loving anything dinosaur themed lately. We showed her the trailer for The Good Dinosaur and the excitement on her face was pretty darn cute.
Favorite toy: Duplos for sure! And she loves to color. Getting her to color on paper vs herself/the couch/the floor is an issue, but we're working on it. She also loves her scooter, her balance bike and her cozy coupe car.
Words: I stopped counting at the 500 word mark but she's well over that. She's speaking in sophisticated sentences and able to repeat most words she hears. I feel like Forest had a more robust vocabulary at this age but yet she's talking *more* and in a more conversational/social way. Like Forest would just memorize the names of 100 animals in a book, whereas Juliet might mistake a gorilla for a monkey but will say 'That monkey is black. This one is brown.'' She's definitely more outgoing and extroverted than he ever was so she just talks nonstop. She knows most of her letters and a few letter sounds and occasionally successfully counts to 10, but mostly skips around. Colors she has down though, as well as many shapes.
New skills: Speaking mostly in sentences. Coming along on her balance bike. Hanging on a bar. Taking herself to the potty and actually going several times a day. We haven't officially started potty training but she's got a good head start going!
Other favorites: Cocomelon (though she'll still only watch TV for about 10 minutes). Preschool. Playing outside. The color blue.
General observations: She's such a cutie with a hilarious and dramatic personality. She loves attention and unfortunately seeks it in some negative ways. She's *very* destructive and prone to injuries so I feel like I have to watch her very closely or something will end up broken/destroyed/hurt.
She has days where she is sweet. cooperative, and easy going and other days where she is whiny, defiant, and opinionated. I never know what kind of day it will be. She's super high energy with a short attention span. She likes to be out and about and to do things by herself. She's charming and outgoing, friendly to everyone we come across. She's a thrill seeker who loves to have fun and is a sensory seeker to the max.
She makes up her mind and sticks to it and its very hard to get her to comply if she's set against it. After witnessing the breadth of her personality in a 20 minute long well check, her doctor remarked 'These are the kind of kids who grow up to be CEOs' while I secretly thought 'yes, CEOS or terrorists.' And you know I wouldn't mind raising a toddler where the doctor says 'this is the kind of kid who is going to enjoy a quiet life with a possible knitting hobby or perhaps fostering cats.' I bet THOSE toddlers aren't aging their mommas at warped speed. Not my lot in life. So here we are with our diabolically cute, classically terrible 2 year old. She is the best snuggler, an amazingly sweet sharer and turn taker, tough as nails, adventurous, passionate about road safety, and an over the top extrovert (at least compared to the rest of her family).
We recently took our first proper vacation since moving to California. Since we had planned to take Forest to Disney/LEGOland/Universal in Japan while we were living in Thailand, and that of course got canceled due to Covid, we promised him we'd hit up those destinations in Cali once Covid cleared up a bit. California dropped restrictions on June 15 and we left for Carlsbad/San Diego on June 20. The drive took us about 7 hours total with stops. Our good friends met us down there and we did the major attractions together.
Traditionally Juliet is not a fan of the car and we can't count on car naps so I was nervous to take on a lengthy road trip. She would do ok for about 40 minutes after each stop, but then would start to get fussy. We had a basket full of tried and true toddler entertainment (water wow books, magic marker coloring pads, fidget toys, puffy stickers, poke-a-dot books, etc) most of which she thought were nice projectiles to throw at her brother or just a fun thing to completely destroy.
Juliet is also not a snacker, so this strategy doesn't work for placating her either.
Honestly, this has been one of her more challenging traits. She hates to sit still and she thrives with interaction- so being strapped in rear-facing with independent activities is just not gonna fly for 7 hours. After spending about $100 on various car entertainment options, the biggest hit ended up being the happy meal toy from Wendy's that she got for lunch. That kept her entertained for a good 45 minutes! It was like an interlocking lego type animal thing. We tried to find a good Wendy's to stop at on the way home when she was really having a hard time but no luck, and the McDonald's toy did not cut the mustard. She fortunately did nap on the way down, which I was really grateful for because our resort room wasn't ready until 6 pm (check in was 4 pm).
Other then that hiccup, we loved our resort, Marbrisa and would definitley recommend it to anyone going to LEGOLAND California. It had great spacious family style rooms (separate bedroom(s) and living room) with a full kitchen, wonderful pool and recreation facilities, and was walkable to LEGOLAND with it's own private back entrance.
trail behind our resort that lead to the back entrance for LEGOland.
resort pool with waterslide and various other games and amenities
Forest loved the water slide and ping pong tables. We grilled out one night at the community grills and made smores at the community fire pits. Our two days spent at LEGOLAND were also super convenient as I could take Juliet back to the room easily for a good nap and then take her back to the park afterward.
As you can imagine, Forest looooved LEGOLAND. He has been dying to go since he became obsessed with LEGO around age 4. That obsession has only deepened with age and it was fun to see his excitement and joy seeing all of the LEGO creations come to life. He also loves thrill rides so enjoyed the coasters as well.
I mostly hung with Juliet and even though she loves thrill rides too, she was unfortunately too small or young for many of the rides the big kids wanted to go on. This lead to a lot of whining.
Unfortunately, she's also at the tough age where she has zero patience or understanding of why you have to wait your turn in line, so that involved more tantrums and wallowing on the ground. I ended up just taking her on rides without a big wait, so we did the Fairytale Brook ride and carousel several times in a row while the big kids chose rides with longer lines or height/age restrictions.
LEGOLAND also had some great playgrounds and displays where she could get out of the stroller and play and explore so we did a lot of that too.
my covid baby- favorite Legoland attractions were the self serve hand sanitizer stations
I sure hope that Cargo ship doesn't sink...
On the second day, after riding a few more rides in the morning, we headed to the waterpark inside LEGOland. They have bigger slides for the big kids and a smaller splashpad with small water slides for the younger ones in the DUPLO waterpark. Well when we showed up to get our tickets the DUPLO area was unexpectedly closed so I decided to skip it for myself and Juliet and just Jon and Forest along with our travel buddies did the waterpark. Juliet and I napped and then went with Forest and our friends for just a few more park rides while Jonathan went back to the room for his own nap.
We also hit up the world famous San Diego Zoo while we were in the San Diego area. It really is such an amazing park and the animals were all showing off (unfortunately my computer is having technical difficulties and won't upload any of the cool videos).
Juliet really enjoyed herself. Unfortunately, we couldn't walk back and forth to the zoo so she had to push through nap time there. She will not nap in a stroller, only in a baby carrier, and only while the person carrying her stays moving. So I was charged with walking up and down steep San Diego hills with a 31 lb toddler strapped to my body. Luckily it was a cool day! But dang- it was a workout. When she woke up I texted Jonathan to see where the rest of the group was and they were just chilling with refreshments at the beer garden. Ha! Dad vacation vs Mom vacation, am I right?
I took the kids to see some more animals while the men polished off their drinks. We hit the gift shop for an obligatory stuffie souvenir (Kangaroo for Forest and Tiger for Juliet) before heading home for early bedtimes.
We had one down day while in Carlsbad. We spent the morning at the resort visiting the playground and pool (where Forest made some new friends which always makes pool time easier for us!) and then Jon and F met up with our friends at Encinadas Beach while Juliet napped in our room.
This is part of the problem with the big age gap- we are always going in different directions, and since sleep schedules are a priority in our household, this means I often get left behind on adventures. But I get lots of reading time in!
After Carlsbad we headed to Anaheim for a day at Disneyland. The plan was to book a resort close enough to walk like we had at LEGOLAND, but my heart sank as I realized I'd booked the wrong Residence Inn which was .7 miles farther away (1.2 miles from the entrance) so not as convenient for a midday nap for Juliet. We decided the plan would be for Jonathan (who isn't Disney crazy) to take her home for a nap at 1 and then come meet us for dinner at Downtown Disney and we'd all leave together. With a general gameplay in mind we decided to park in the parking garage and then realized the walk from the freaking parking garage was almost as far!! It was .8 miles and we paid $25 for it. So crazy! Normally they have shuttles from the parking garage, but COVID....
Disneyland was supposed to open at 9 so we got to the entrance at 8:30 and the rides were already running! We were stressed the waits would be long and zoomed to Galaxy's Edge to ride the Millennium Falcon, but it wasn't too bad! A 15 minute wait vs a 2 hour wait when we went at Disneyworld, plus a rider swap so Forest got to ride twice in a row. We had a boarding group entry for Rise of the Resistance later that day, which we hoped would be pre-nap time and pre Noon so that we'd be able to try for a boarding pass for the new Webslingers ride at California Adventure (you couldn't have a boarding pass for both at once and our park hopper passes wouldn't allow us to switch parks until 1 pm).
After riding Millennium Falcon twice, we did the rider swap again for Thunder Mountain railroad and I walked right onto Winnie the Pooh with Juliet while I waited on Forest and Jonathan to finish. We swapped riding with Forest and Juliet since we really didn't want to wait longer than 15 minutes for a ride with little J. I ended up inadvertently taking her on Dumbo which was a 25 minute wait. I was not prepared! But I sang my way through the Sesame Street and Cocomelon catalogs to keep her happy and distracted and fed her an uncrustables sandwich when that started to fail. We also heavily relied on lollipops on our Disney day which was a big sticky hit! I mentioned that Juliet doesn't like snacks. The only convenient foods she will eat on the go are whole apples (DO NOT slice them- you've been warned) and uncrustable pinwheel sandwiches which I can only find at Target.
By the last day of our vacation we were down to one apple and one uncrushable pack. Ha! French fries are another love language of hers so we did make sure to pick those up when available as something to keep her happily contented in the stroller. But lollipops were a surprise hit that got us through some rough patches of waiting.
Our time for Rise of the Resistance was creeping up around 11 so everyone went to check out one more ride before heading back towards galaxy's Edge. We were perfectly situated to use our passes before noon which would give us a chance at Webslingers AND give Jonathan a chance to ride before having to leave for J's nap. Unfortunately, the ride closed down for like an hour which rendered both of those things impossible. We decided to have Juliet nap at the park if possible.
After 30 minutes of rocking and swaying and walking a 30+ pound toddler in an Ergo carrier she finally fell asleep right as I was giving up all hope. It also coincided with our 45 minute window to board Rise of the Resistance. We were able to get F a rider swap pass to ride with me once they were finished but I still had a time stamp on when we could do this by. Normally Juliet sleeps 40ish minutes on the go but this nap was still going strong when our rider swap window was expiring. We just went up to the workers and explained and they said to come back whenever she was awake and no longer attached to me. Phew!
I found a little scrap of shade tucked away at Galaxy's Edge where I let J nap. Soon a I was joined by 2 other families with napping toddlers. Ha! They all appreciated my white noise app on my phone and one of the dad's was walking around with a spray fan to help cool off the baby wearing moms. It was actually a nice little moment on human connection after the long covid slog of the past 1.5 years.
We decided to head to Pirates since the line was 25 minutes long and figured she'd certainly be awake by then. Wrong! She was still snoozing hard when we got on the ride but she woke up just as we were plummeting down a river and suddenly were surrounded by pirates. I can only image what she thought was going on upon waking!
After Pirates we switched off and I took Forest to Rise of the resistance and then Star Tours before meeting the rest of our group at California Adventure park to close out the day.
The big kids rode the Guardians of the Galaxy ride (Forest's fave of the trip) while the little kids headed to Little Mermaid and then we all met up for ice cream. By that point the Perry Family was ready to grab some dinner and call it a night, but our friends stayed to cash in on shorter wait times as closing time neared. I was proud of Jonathan and Juliet hanging on until 6 pm!
The next morning, Jonathan said his usual 'I'm never going to Disney again.' but at least he didn't say 'I'm NEVER going to Disney again.' Of course, the never become more emphatic as Juliet cried and whined the entire way home and didn't sleep a wink. Zero fun. But with air travel being even more of a nightmare right now, and being strict about 2 year olds wearing masks the entire time, I think we will be sticking to road trips for the foreseeable future. So either she miraculously becomes cool with the car... or we all miraculously become chill with hearing a baby cry for hours on end... or we all just suffer through it...or we all just stay home until she's 5!
Life has been such a whirlwind lately! Once we finally got into our house and got my computer set up we went straight into the 18 month sleep regression. I'm really hoping my nap times become a bit more predictable at least for a few months (hopefully years- c'mon Juliet!).
Anyhoos, I realized I never really blogged about our house hunting/buying experience. It was super nuts. So the last info I gave was that we made an offer 50,000 over asking price and were told it wasn't even close. It turns out, we actually were pretty close, but whatevs- it all worked out!
The next day our realtor let us know that another house on the same street was about to come on the market. This one was a tad bigger, with a tad better yard, a separate mother in law suite and didn't back up to a semi-busy road. So it was an even better house for us, but it was also more expensive, of course!
I remember when our realtor toured us around via FaceTime before the house was officially on the market. It seemed like a no brainer- of course we wanted this house! But I feared we'd be outbid even at the tip top of our strongest offer. Luckily, we had a way in- the family wanted to stay in the house until January (it was October). We had an air bnb already lined up until mid-December and my parents graciously offered to let us stay at their place over the holidays so we were able to come in with a strong offer and accept the terms that they could stay through Jan 5.
Then they came back and said Jan 15. Ugh. That meant we had to move out of an air bnb (including all our air shipment possessions), travel to Lafayette for 2.5 weeks and then move into another air bnb. I'm not gonna lie, it was ZERO fun. Like probably the most zero fun I have ever had. All that moving and traveling in the midst of Covid numbers soaring was just fan to the flames. With a feral toddler. Y'all. I'm barely alive to tell the tale.
One of my best friends, Talia, spoke this truth to me during the midst of some hard times and said 'I'm fairly convinced that God doesn't want our lives to be easy.' It's been a mantra I replay in my head. Life is hard. DUH. (James 1:2-4 My brothers and sisters, consider it nothing but joy when you fall into all sorts of trials because you know the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its perfect effect so that you will be perfect and complete, not deficient in anything.)
Hard times refine us, make us more humble and compassionate, make us more into a reflection of Jesus. Our sole purpose in life is to glorify God and to be in awe of him.
Do I do a better job of that when I'm well rested and living with my head above water? Probably. But if I was always well rested and comfortable and had naturally compliant and calm children then I may loose sight of the critical fact that I am a mere pion in the universe and would maybe stop constantly bowing before the Lord with a broken and contrite heart. Trust me, he's tried to teach me things the easy way but it just does not take.
I just read a scathing article criticizing Meghan Markel and Prince Harry about their fleeing of the 'abuse' of the royal family and British press and how no one feels sorry for them as they were offered shelter in million dollar homes complete with security detail. I realize when I complain people probably look at me a bit like this. So while I feel tons of compassion for the ousted royal couple, I also think it's healthy to keep a good perspective about all of the resources I have at my disposal. It's also good to reflect on the fact that despite these resources, my mental health and marriage and parenting went through some pretty dark hours over the last few months.
Does that make me weak? Absolutely. I am weak. I am SO weak. I've never said otherwise. But I can also admit that this isn't easy. Covid has made this one hell of a tough year for just about everyone. Add in an international move and all the stress that goes along with resettling and it's just been HARD.
Juliet only just started watching TV a few weeks ago. She loves music so we generally have a youtube playlist full of Sesame Street and Disney songs. Without ever seeing Frozen 2, we saw the video for 'The next right thing'.
We had a chuckle at how dark Disney had gotten and Forest made the hilarious comment, 'get up Anna. This is nothing. Rey has been through way worse and I never saw her cry about it.'
Then we actually watched the movie and saw the context for her hopelessness and her paralysis in the face of unthinkable choices and grief. Still dark for Disney, but when Jonathan called with the news about our shipment possibly going overboard when I was already barely getting through the days until we could finally get settled, my first thought was, 'I feel just like Anna in that cave'.
But truly, what could I do other than just keep taking the next step forward, even in pitch darkness? At church this past weekend our Pastor imparted similar advice saying 'Don't forget in the darkness what God called you to in the light.' We prayed over our move and we prayed over our home and our neighborhood that God would put us in the right spot. There have been tons of hiccups but also tons of signs of God's providence- with Forest getting a spot at our church's school which has a waiting list a mile long, with losing out on a house in a spot we loved only to find a house more suitable for us just down the street.
And now the market has only skyrocketed more and we feel good about having claimed our little stake of land here! Especially since it seems like Jon's company is going to move away from moving people around the world like chess pieces so this may be where we get to stay for a while.
So now a little bit about our house!!! It's a cute cape cod style, yellow siding with brick accents.
When you come in there is a stairwell with no banister (eeeeek).
To the right is a front bedroom which we are using as playroom and to the left is a formal sitting area or dining room.
sitting room
Playroom space. We are gonna have to donate or burn most of what's coming in the shipment!
We currently have very few possessions so for now our second living room is just space! But it will be a sitting room based on the furniture we have coming.
Our kitchen is great! Lots of built in storage and tons of counter space which was rare based on the houses we looked at!
It overlooks our family room which right now is also serving as a playroom since it's just easier at this age to keep Juliet in this part of the house where I'm usually getting things done.
Plus it overlooks our yard which I love love love! The kids can be outside while I stay in and have a whole wall of windows to keep an eye on them. our backyard is a great size with both grassy areas and hardscape and decking. We have an outdoor kitchen complete with a kegerator! It's awesome!
great yard for an egg hunt
we finally got our backordered table so we can dine outside on those perfect California evenings!
Juliet's bedroom is also downstairs, along with a small guest bathroom. This is probably my least favorite part of the house. Not only do I hate that she's on the main floor while we are upstairs but upstairs is soooooo creaky and our room is right above her. Lots of times Jon wakes her up when he 'leaves' for work in the morning.
We have an amazing master suite with a built in office- plenty of room for an elliptical or peloton- but yet we are scared to move in this direction because using such equipment would undoubtedly wake her.
I would love to move her upstairs but there is no way Forest would give up the better room!
He has a finished attic space off of his bedroom that he uses as his 'fort'. It basically carpeted in LEGO all the time which is fine by me because I can just close the door and pretend it doesn't exist!
Once our shipment comes, we may have to annex some of this space for storage. We have a finished attic space off of our room as well but we really don't have much more in terms of storage.
That's the biggest bummer about the house for sure. It's a 2 car garage that our 2 cars don't fit in together. The driveway narrows toward the street so we can't even park one car in and one on the driveway because the person in the garage wouldn't be able to back around the person in the driveway. So Jon has to park on the street most of the time. Even with my 1 SUV we barely have any extra room for storage in the garage.
The closets in the downstairs bedrooms are tiny! Once we have a dresser for Juliet I'm sure it'll be better but right now her closet is overflowing. We have a decent sized walk in closet in our bedroom but not nearly big enough for us to share once all of our stuff arrives. Forest is the only one who probably has adequate storage space with a small walk in closet and another little closet space.
Our mother-in-law suite is another amazing find for our area. It's attached to our house but has a separate entrance. It has a small bedroom and closet, it's own full bathroom, laundry facilities, full fridge and kitchenette with a small living room.
This is the previous owner's decor- not our naked lady poster;)
There is a Murphy bed in there now but we will remove it once our shipment comes and put a standard bed in there.
It has been perfect for Jonathan working from home and will be so nice for having visitors! Who's coming to visit us first? Hint-hint, wink-wink;)
We really do have a great house! And a great location! We love the area we ended up in. It feels like it's in the country, just at the bottom on the Mt. Diablo foothills. Two miles away are trailheads to climb the iconic mountain.
We see wildlife and breathtaking scenery every day. I definitely pinch myself feeling so blessed to live here. Our backyard makes us feel like we are on vacation. It's so nice just to get to have a little space for our kids to run around while we get to enjoy the gorgeous weather and a beer from our kegerator!
We live in easy walking distance to our 3 neighborhood schools. Forest is attending our church's private school for the time being and we have no plans of pulling him out, but the schools are top notch and close by if we ever change our minds. Juliet can start attending preschool at our church when she's 3 so it will be nice to have them together. They used to have a 2 year old program but COVID restrictions meant they had to use the 2 year old classroom to instead space out the 3 year olds. Ugh. Anyways, the church/school is only a 8 minute drive so it's pretty close too!
We've decided to go ahead put Juliet in a different preschool instead of waiting to start her when she's 3. She will start in July when she turns 2. She's so super social and confident that I know she will love it. She's been going to the church nursery on Sundays and pulls our hands dragging us to the classroom and then rushes in without a backward glance. She says 'church!' whenever we drop Forest off at school and throws tantrums when we bring him for his midweek youth group and she doesn't get to stay. I wish she could go there for school next year but I'm sure she'll be happy where we found her a spot too!
Alright, that's an update on our house and lives currently! Oh- our shipment is officially on it's way and set to be here by the end of April, but we were told to expect major delays because of covid backups. Maybe we'll get it this summer? What's a few more weeks after waiting 6 months?
