amusements, abajian girls edition

the last week or so has been filled with random acts of amusement, here they are:

i got new crocs for myself in the garden. at first i bought some drab khaki-colored ones, then had to exchange them for a different size. walking into a store emboldened me to get some bright blue ones, and i love them. apparently, so does ani, as she insisted on wearing them around after i showed them to her. the color struck me as funny and i had to post these photos side-by-side, after showing ani and nissa the photo first to explain why i was so amused:
a little later, the girls had been playing nicely on the bed on the ipad and i tried to jump in the shower. no sooner did i pull the shower curtain across, did ani walk in and say hi. i suggested she go back and play with nissa some more, but she insisted she watch me shower. "i see you!" she'd repeat as i bathed, laughing at the bubbles and trying to move aside the clear shower curtain. she even pulled up her stool to comfortably supervise. no amount of encouragement could dissuade her from watching me shower, she was too amused to see me in action. oh, ok.

my watch-ability continued on tuesday when our toilet overflowed and i was cleaning up the "damage." the water was mostly cleared away, i was just mopping the floors to remove the ick factor. nissa insisted that she "loved" watching me mop, that it was the best thing ever. maybe because i don't mop very often, like maybe once every few years, was why this was so appealing? nissa carried on and on about how great it was to watch me mop. weird kid.

the highlight of the last few days was nissa reading from "go dog go." she has been reluctantly reading here and there, but frequently gets overwhelmed and frustrated. she gets it, and i know it, i just struggle with trying to get her over that "hump" and show her she's actually really good at reading. the three of us had been sitting on nissa's bed reading a bunch of stories before we started on "go dog go." nissa has heard the book a few times, but not enough to have it all memorized. she did some "sight word" work in preschool this year, so she is starting to recognize words as a whole, not just after sounding out the letters. on a whim, i just pointed to words and had nissa read them. she assumed a couple incorrectly, but i could count the times on one hand. she got all the way through 25 pages, which seems impressive (and is) but some pages only have a max of five words per page. only 35 more to go! i really played up my excitement after reading the rest of the pages myself and tried to get her excited, too. i think it worked and we'll be trying more again soon.


on a related note, i'm proud of myself for thinking up a new "game" for after dinner. we have a semi-habit of enjoying treats after dinner, so i decided to capitalize on it. we have long, narrow white boards with two sets handwriting guidelines on them, where i write a sentence about a treat. nissa has to copy the sentence then read it to me, and she is rewarded with the treat. apple cake is sweet. raspberries are red and bumpy. strawberries are not blue. watermelon is juicy. she actually enjoys it!

Ani's new favorite word: awesome.

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summer fun

so the weather is not promising a very consistent temperature, but i am going to try to not let that stop me. my goal is to do something fun every friday afternoon this summer. we will see how that goes.

yesterday we went to the zoo to take advantage of our newly renewed membership. not only did we get rare rock star parking, but we had a fabulous picnic lunch, walked a lot and ani did great without a diaper. cant wait to go back and see the other half of the zoo, with all the construction. 

i need to write down three funny things that ani does that i will likely never be able to record, because she will not do them by request. first, she runs like an anime character: with her arms stretched out behind her. it is really funny to see. second, she gives different-pitched voices to her toys, including low, deep voices. nissa seems to keep to the upper registers, but ani goes up and down- really funny to hear. third, she will randomly perform, you never know when or where or how, but you know she did because she will bow like a gentleman and say, "tank ou, tank ou" a couple of times when she is done.

I had a fantastic dinner tonight. Homemade spaghetti carbonara with prosciutto. Spinach and granny smith salad with gargonzola and strawberry-orange-balsamic vinaigrette. Fresh pineapple for dessert. Delish!

dinosaur poop

last night the girls were finishing up their baths and ani asked to poop on the potty. after a few minutes, she was successful and looked in to inspect her work. she declared that it looked like a dinosaur by exclaimining, "dinosaur poop!" nissa and i laughed pretty hard and i have to admit it was the silliest thing i had heard in a long time. it did kind of look like a little alligator to me, so wow. 

potty training has not been as easy as i recall it being with nissa, so that could be it is trickier this time, we've inadvertently done something differently, or my recollection isn't correct. to be frank, it's likely a combination of all three.  i feel like nissa had a three day weekend to get started, that following week was rough, but then she was fine. dryness while sleeping (nap/night) came a few months later. ani does ok whem i am around, will even ask some times. what is weird is she doesn't go often, despite trying to encourage her to drink often. potty checks can be a fight, but have proven to be worth fighting over. pooping is denied nearly every time, but because she is slightly dehydrated, it is a hard thing for her to hide. 

this weekend was a monumental success for our yard. earlier in the week, nissa and i started seeds for  veggies we want to grow and almost all have at least one little sprout now. i weeded and mowed while adam turned over the vegetable garden bed on saturday. on sunday, i picked up a few herbs and flowers at the store and planted them that same day. the same day! that has never hapened. the garden actually looks presentable and i accomplished evertything i wanted to in the yard this first go around. i am so proud of us. i hope we can keep it up, because both girls love being outside and i want to make our yard worth being in.