Diaper Surprise!

Yesterday I was at a wedding all day. After the ceremony Jared brought Aubrey back to the hotel to try and get her to sleep, he put her in her crib and closed the door. She was quiet so he thought she had gone to sleep, but hadn't checked on her. After a while she just started talking and wasn't sleeping so he brought her out, played with her, fed her some food - a good 30 mins. had passed and as he walked past the entrance of the room he notice poop on the ground! He was very confused and asked Aubrey where this had come from! Then he went into look at the crib and on the ground was her diaper, he looked under her dress and sure enough it was gone! She had pulled it off in her crib and had been playing around with a diaper! I thought it was pretty funny since it didn't happen to me!

Moving to the Hotel

Are plan was to move into the Empress this Friday but now we are moving in tomorrow night! I guess the night manager is off sick and Jared volunteered to be the on call night manager if we could move in sooner. We'll still be moving our stuff in to storage this week but we will be staying at the hotel if anyone needs to reach us, please call there and ask for us. They might give us a cell phone to use while we're there, our has ran out of minutes and is too expensive to use as our home phone. Our email is still the same as well.
If anyone is on Skype, let us know or add us to your contacts as that would be a great and free way to talk to everyone!

To Paint or Not to Paint?

(sorry this is the best photo I have of it!)

I have this hutch (the bottom half of a hutch) that I really like for the functionality. Appearance wise it's a little dated and worn. I like the shape of it, it kind of has a vintage look to it, it has clean lines etc. I wasn't planning on moving it with us because we're going to be buying new furniture and I want to change styles slightly and go a little more modern/vintage/traditional mix and I didn't think it would really fit in. But here's what I'm thinking . . . painting it high gloss white, inside and out, making it feel more modern - what do you think??
I really like using it, it has front sliding doors and on one side it has two pull out drawers: one with lined compartments for cutlery and another open drawer for glasses and smaller things.
Does anyone have any suggestions for paint type? I'd love to send it out and get it painted with a sprayer to get a nice smooth finish ($$) or I could just spray paint it but that sounds like it might take a lot of cans! What should I do?
I kind of want to do it before we move out of the house this next weekend while I still have a driveway to do it in or it might never get done - anyone want to help??

Some Journalling

Aubrey's baby book is packed away so I thought I'd blog a few things so I have it written down where it can't be lost.
Aubrey has been talking up a storm lately, she seems more interested in saying words now then she ever has before. Some words she is saying are: Da da, Ma ma, Ba - bottle, fish, please, bye bye, ni-ni - night night, dog, ball, more, side - outside, wa wa - water, bubbles, diaper, and I'm sure some more I can't think of right now. She definately comprehends more then she can say as she can follow almost any instruction (except for no!). She can point out almost any animal in a book and knows most household objects. We haven't gotten to colours yet.
She does well at communicating without talking as she knows and points to things she wants or grabs our hand and puts in on things or directs it to do something.
This morning at 4:30 she woke up unhappy, probably teething. I pulled her into bed with us and she laid down between us. She looked at me and said ba? (bottle), and kept repeating it as she pushed me away from her as to say go and get it.
The other morning in bed she grabbed my hand and put it on Jared's hand and then said yay and clapped.
She likes accomplishing things and usually rewards herself with clapping. She likes taking on and off lids of things and putting objects in and out of boxes etc. I need to get her some more challenging toys or puzzles.

She is starting to tantrum but it doesn't last long, if she doesn't get her way she gets very frustrated and sprawls her body and flops it on the ground and then sits and pouts for a few seconds and then it's over. She usually on does it when she's physically restricted, she doesn't like to be held still.

She is pretty cautious about almost everything, new textures to stand on (she was getting better at grass, but now has gone back to not liking it a little), getting close to edges, always needing someone or thing to hold onto when stepping over an uneven surface. I don't think it's a bad thing as I don't have to worry quite so much about her getting hurt. She is getting better at playgrounds, but they are still a bit nerve-wracking. She can climb the stairs and slide down by herself and even likes to grab on bars, lift her feet off the ground and swing - found that out by surprise! It just means she is getting more confident in her abilities and her cautiousness keeps her safe.

She really likes dancing to music and can usually find a beat in anything, even non-musical.
Yesterday she found tennis really amusing as Jared watched it on TV. Every time they hit the ball with the racket she let out a laugh or a "ooooh". She is very expressive about everything she feels and thinks, she doesn't sit and take things in quietly or meditatively. I'm sure everything she is thinking she expresses in some form.

She just saw the photos of Owen eating watermelon (really cute) and called him Ojo.
She also calls her new nephew Roland - ro ro.

Cousins

At Grandma's house

Easter

My Sweet Petite

Well, I call her my sweetie petitie, but Jared didn't like it so I changed it for the page's sake.

Finlly walking!

These are really out of order, I think this was around 17 months when she finally started walking.

Meet Roland, Marlow - my new nephew!

Taking time to smell the flowers

18 Months

Back in Victoria

We drove down to the Peace Arch border yesterday, got there about noonish, waited in the line for about 1.5 hours then went inside to apply for Jared's work VISA. We waited in line there for about 45 mins and then once he submitted everything we waited for another 2.5 hours after which they came out and said we are denying your VISA, we can't tell you why and we're sending you back to Canada. Meanwhile, it was a new building with no open washrooms, no water, no garbage cans and we weren't allowed to leave the building the whole time! This was all during Aubrey's nap time and she was a bit crazy. I used up all my diapers and all my food. They took Jared into a room with cells, finger printed him, took his photo etc. and then sent us back into Canada. After some prying, they said they didn't think that the job he was going to meets the requirements for getting the VISA, which is ridiculous because they do this in Fairmont all the time. One of the guys Jared will be working with in Seattle did the exact same thing - move from the Empress to Olympic - to the same or lesser position. He called the hotel there and talked to this guys (mentioned above) and he said that someone in their accounting department traveled all the way from Alberta and got denied at the border and had to go all the way home - but they are obviously there now. So the case goes to CIS - Customes Immigration Services and they get the final say if the VISA gets approved or denied, but that could take up to 3 weeks.
So now we have to leave in a packed house for 3 weeks and will have to put our stuff in storage down there which means we might end up moving it all down ourselves, putting it in storage ourselves as we'd have to pay for the storage.
It was a 12 hour round trip and we never got farther then the border.
Aubrey has pink eye so we couldn't let her play with the toys on the ferry or touch anyone, and then the same thing at customs which was just a big cement room with one big hard wooden bench. Fun times.