Amaya the Baby Model

Amaya has some fun news to share. She is now officially a baby model. She had a professional photo shoot with Dillard's on Thursday and she will be appearing in newspaper and online ads for them in early March. The ad will be running in papers in "our region." I am not sure which states that all includes. It's like AZ, CA, CO, UT, NM, etc. So, for those of you here in the valley, watch for it in the Arizona Republic in early March. It is an Easter attire ad. I will post a link to the online ad when the time comes and/or scan in the newspaper ad so that you all can see Amaya's modeling debut.

Baby Steps

Yesterday, February 13th, Amaya took her first steps. Very fun and exciting! Amaya and I were playing in her room after naptime. She was playing with her books, then decided to go check out her big picture book of animals on her side table. She stood at the table a moment, then looked over at her crib. She must've decided that she wanted her pacifier, and that it would be easier to just WALK, rather than drop down and crawl. The distance from her side table to her crib is exactly 2 feet and it took her four perfect little steps. Mommy was soooo excited. After dinner and after getting Amaya ready for bed, we decided to see if she would do it again for daddy and she did...several times. Of course, we discovered our video camera battery wasn't charged, but since our digital camera can take video clips, we captured one of her walking events. A shorter one, with shorter steps, but equally precious. Please forgive the picture quality. The lights were dimmed for bedtime and our digital camera obviously doesn't automatically compensate like our video camera. I'll post more clips later from our video camera.

Happy Valentine's Day

Amaya and Daddy...Valentine's Day Storytime

Amaya says, "Hi everyone. Happy Valentine's Day!"

Amaya at The Elephant Bar

On Sunday, Amaya got to go out to dinner. She went to The Elephant Bar with mommy, daddy, Grandma Kim, Grandpa John, and friends Tom and Jean. She had a fabulous time, as you can see from the pictures. We are blessed to have a child who enjoys dining out as much as we do. She's always so good.

From the moment we arrived, Amaya was enthralled with the huge, lit, palm trees outside the window.

Here she is pointing at those very trees. She continued to look/point at them throughout dinner.

Amaya also made friends with the people sitting behind her. She checked on them throughout dinner. Luckily they were very friendly and seemed to enjoy Amaya. We asked if she was bothering them, and they insisted no.

Dinnertime. And rest time, too. Amaya hasn't been to table manners 101 yet. She was tuckered out from all the excitement, I guess, so who can blame her for needing to rest.

Still keeping her eye on the trees.

Amaya in her elephant mask. Sooo cute!

Like daughter, like father.

One too many martini's. I think it's time to take her home!

Playdate in the Park: more special times with friends

Friday Amaya and I had another playdate with our "play group." This time we met at the park since our "cold winter weather" is gone, then we ventured over to the pond to feed the ducks. The high for Friday was 74 degrees. It was a beautiful day. We kicked the playdate off with some swinging, Amaya's favorite. It was Will's first time swinging, and Emma's second, but they were naturals. They were even good about sharing a swing, since there were only two. Every so often Will would reach back and pet Emma's head, but she would push back against him and put him back in his place.

Amaya let us know when it was time to move on to the slides.

Here the kids are playing at the slides. It was fun to see them interact. This is the only picture I got of them once they were "at the slides" and exploring on their own. At that point, cameras got put down and we stayed busy following the little ones around, keeping them safe, and keeping stuff out of their mouths.

I didn't get any pictures at the duck pond because I stayed busy feeding the ducks. I could hardly keep up with their demand. They are getting to know us, that's for sure. Until we started bringing bread, they pretty much avoided us. But now that we bring food, they come a running...er, uh, make that a swimming and a waddling. At first when we arrived on Friday I thought maybe they had forgotten us, because they didn't come right away. But they must have just not seen us at first, they were on the opposite side of the pond, because all of a sudden they headed our way and they swam so fast they made waves. Mr. Laid Back (aka Will) enjoyed sitting in the grass, chilling, and watching the ducks. Miss Assertive/Aggressive (aka Emma) wanted to play tackle with the ducks, so her mommy had to hold her back. Miss Don't Touch Me (aka Amaya) was happily dangling from the baby bjorn so that mommy had her hands free to do the feeding, so she just enjoyed the view.

As you can see, all the activity wiped the kids out! They all fell asleep on the way back from the pond. Even Miss Amaya in the baby bjorn. Too cute.


It was a fun day. The only thing that could've made it better was the missing members of the play group. Mae and expectant baby Stephenson were unable to join us because Mae was sick and didn't want to be around the babies. Miss Ellie and her mommy Joo were missing because Miss Ellie needs to get a little bigger so she can hold her own in the play group. And Jaxon and his mommy, who plan to join the playgroup, spent the day bonding with daddy. We'll look forward to them joining us next time!!! Happy playing everyone!

Park Time Again

"The slides are sooo fun!"
"I want to go again, dad."
"Yeah, here we go."
"This is tooo much fun! Let's go check out the swings now!"

"The swings are my favorite!"
"I love to go very high and very fast!"

A SHORT WHILE LATER...
"Oh no, it's time to go. I hate it when it's time to leave the park!"




LATER THAT SAME DAY...

"Yeah, the sun is out. The rain is gone."
"We should go back to the park."
"Can we go back to the park, mom?"
"What do you mean no?"
"That's what I thought."

Amaya the Animal Lover Visits the Ducks

Amaya just loves to go to the "lake" in our subdivision and watch the ducks and birds. It's really a pond in our eyes, but it is referred to as a lake in our subdivision newsletter. Kind of funny. Anyway, we could never get very close to them, so we finally brought some bread so that Amaya could get up close and personal. She enjoyed seeing them close. I think she even wanted to join them in the "pond." Don't worry, even though she can "swim", we didn't let her.