Child Labor Law???

Yesterday, Shayna helped us out in the yard. It was a blast! She is so funny! I would trim the bush and she would pick up the clippings and put them into a bucket. What a great little helper! She was out there with me for an hour... just picking up the leaves as they fell! As you can see by this picture, she was so good at it that she did it with her eyes closed! Today was the day we wished we had triplets! We could've had the whole yard covered!!

That bucket sure does look heavy! I am so glad that we got her to wear her hat. Even though she looks like Mark, she has my Eastern European (Russian-WHITE) complexion. We are so very nervous about prolonged time in the sun. It is stated on her antibiotics to avoid prolonged sun exposure. We're just cautious anyways!

Shayna has really begun to imitate everything that we're doing... including saying, "Hello," everytime the phone rings. It is so cute! She plays with her "pretend" phone and runs around the house with it attached to her shoulder and ear saying, "E-L-L-O."

Shayna is becoming this little person. Every day she says a few new words. She can now point to her ear, eye, teeth, and hair - and tell us what each part is. It is awesome to know that Mark and I are the first people to hear her say words.

We are just totally in love!

<--- Check out this cute video (click on this picture)

Bath Night

I love giving Shayna her bath. She loves to splash her toys around and she absolutly loves her bath crayons! We received these as a gift from my frind, Lori, and she has to have them for every bath.
After Shayna's bath we head to the changing table to dry off and lotion up (my favorite part!). Then we get her PJs on and brush her hair... Growing up, I never played with dolls that had hair, so this is a first for me... I don't know how to brush someone else's hair, let alone mine! Anyways, I'm a quick learner and it's so much fun playing with and even styling Shayna's beautiful blonde angel hair!

Seinfeld Episode???

Hmmm...where do I start? Well, for one thing, what is the deal with ironing? No, this is not a Seinfeld episode. I was going to write in my Blog tonight about how cute Shayna is, but then I remembered that I have a meeting with a big client tomorrow morning. It then hit me that I haven't done some ironing in, well... quite a while! So I broke out the ironing board and plugged in the iron. I then went to my closet and picked 3 or 4 shirts out - then walked back to the ironing board. While I was pressing this very hot/steaming plastic handled iron I totally thought to myself, "what the heck are you doing?" As soon as I get this shirt on tomorrow morning, I'm heading out the door, coffee in hand, and jumping into my car - where my shirt is going to get totally wrinkled because I have to sit in 1 1/2 hours of traffic to go 21.5 miles! Well, here I am - iron still sucking power out of the outlet (our lights dim when it powers to stay hot), one more shirt hanging on the ironing board... writing in my Blog.

Did I already mention how cute Shayna is?

Here she is last Sunday with her Grandpa meeting a Llama for the first time.

Ahhh... Actually I'm kinda stoked it didn't spit on her!

They also had some newborn goats in the pen next to the Llama. We were told that they were actually only a couple of days old! Ahhhhh..... They were so cute and little! It made me think about how it will be a whole year since I stopped nursing Shayna. Time flies!

Then Shayna and I decided to do some "Spin Art."

These guys put a plastic frisbee in a spin art box and for $5 you can squirt paint and make pretty designs! Yipppeee - what a blast!

It made a for a pretty fun Sunday at the Sherman Oaks Fair with Grandma & Grandpa!

Shayna's New Video!

I bought Shayna this ball a couple of days ago and she loves kicking it around the house. We took her outside to let her go with it! Check her out!

Easter Has Come and Gone...

Mark and I spent Easter Sunday having fun with Shayna. For those of you who do not celebrate Passover, a Yom Beytzah Sameach (that means happy egg day in Hebrew). I put some Rice Chex cereal into little plastic eggs and placed them throughout our lawn. Shayna had a blast "finding" her Easter eggs and putting them into her "Easter bucket." I just didn't have time to go out and find a basket, so we had the next best thing! What do I know...I'm Jewish!

Shayna was so cute looking for her Easter eggs! Here are more pictures of her on her hunt! She's so cute with her bonnet!

Later in the day, my parents came over to watch Shayna for the afternoon. Mark and I needed some alone time so we drove over to the Edwards 26 Movie Theaters... Mind you, there are 26 theaters and all we could manage to agree on was the wonderfully huge hit, "Bench Warmers." Nice... we were the oldest people in the movie theater! Oh well it was kinda funny, but I won't even recommend it for a rental! It was a fun day and Shayna didn't even notice we were gone!

I took this picture of Shayna on Sunday and I just had to post it!

Rainy Day Schedule

Another Spring storm hits southern California and it's time to find something to do, other than sitting in the house all day! Shayna and I decided to venture out into the rain with the Lindsay Twins, accompanied by their mom, Lisa. We met the trio at the La Habra Children's Museum. I have never heard of this museum before, but it looked like fun on their webpage (www.lhcm.org). It's weird how things come full circle...about 10 years ago I worked on a huge grading job (for 6 months) just a few miles away and I never even knew this place existed...

Here's the museum on a nice sunny day!

We had a blast! There were tons of things for toddlers to touch and feel and play with! They even had an indoor carousel!

Shayna, my little Paleontologist, even got to sift through some rust colored sand. She uncovered lots of dinosaur bones and even an unhatched dinosaur egg! Look out, Jack Horner... Here comes Shayna Beth Marie! It's too bad that every time Shayna had a little bit of fake sand on her hands she ran over to me to wipe it off. It's OK... it was fake sand. Can you blame her?

Then we headed over to the taxidermy room. Shayna really liked petting all of the dangerous looking stuffed animals. Here's a picture of her pinching a hyena's nose while making an oink noise. Those things have some pretty terrifying looking fangs! Then she headed over to the coyote (doggie) with Mason (one of the Lindsay Twins).

They really liked petting it, even though it had some pretty gnarly fangs! Whatever, it was soft! All in all, it was another stellar day, even though the weather didn't cooperate!

Here's Shayna cooking for Camille and Mason Lindsay! Look out, Emeril Lagasse!

What To Write?

I am sitting here in front of my home computer wondering what to write... First off it's really hard to think about anything else other than a crying baby. For some reason tonight (during Survivor) she woke up crying after only being asleep for 15 minutes. This is such a rarity that I dashed into her bedroom and picked her up - well, after picking her up and convincing myself that there is nothing physically wrong with her, I put her back down in her crib. Shayna then stood up in her crib, also a rarity, and started yelling at the top of her lungs, "Mamamamamamama Waaaaahhhhh." Now how could I NOT pick her back up... well, I did it again. The Cardinal sin!! Now she definately will not go back to sleep. I even tried lying down in our bed with her. All she wanted to do is play with the remote she found on our headboard. Well, to make a long story short, I decided to put her back in the crib and let her CIO (cry it out). It has probably been 8 months since she woke up right after putting her to sleep for the night. Wait a minute.... I think that's silence.... yep, as I am writing this....she's asleep. And, YES I still feel guilty and I want to run in there and check on her....but I know she's fine and I'll check on her in 5 minutes. What can I say.... I'm a first-time mommy.

Tonight is Passover!

Well, 'tis the season once again, where, much like the vast majority of professional businesses choose to "passover" my wishes to take the day off tomorrow, we the Jews find the time to schmooze n' eat unleavened bread (a.k.a. Matzah) and celebrate the holy holiday of Passover (Pesach, Pesah, No-bread-week). No real bloggin' here 'cept to say "Chag Sameach to you and yours and all of theirs this lovely year" - translation - HAPPY PASSOVER! To my non-Jewish readers.

A Happy Passover to All!

A Happy Passover to All!
Top Five Things I Love About Passover:
1) Matzo ball soup
2) The Seders
3) Charoset
4) Manischewitz Concord Grape Wine (only on Passover!)
5) Did I mention drinking A LOT of wine.

Top Five Things I Don't Like About Passover:
1) Matzah
2) Constipation related to #1
3) Not being able to eat alot of things I like.
4) Manischewitz Concord Grape Wine (gotta drink it on Passover)
5) why we eat parsley in salt water.

First Post!

Ok...so I copied Jenna - I guess imitation is the sincerest form of flattery! I just love reading her Blog, so I thought I'd start my own. I'm not going to tell anyone about it - we have a website for Shayna already so this is kind of redundant.