Storm damage

Here are a couple photos I took of the some of the storm damage in our neighborhood. It looked at lot worse when I was walking around, but we really didn't have it bad compared to some places.

A lot of people, my mom and Kent included, still don't have power and they are saying many people won't get power back until the end of next week. There was some extensive damage to some of the powerlines and there were quite a few power lines down in the roads, even up here where we live. We are actually lucky to have power at our house as the power company says that our zip code won't have power restored until sometime AFTER next Thr. Most of the houses in the neighborhood directly behind our house still don't have power.

I have some misc. photos of Lila and or stay in San Antonio. I'll put those in another post so as not to make this one too long.


Our holly tree; we were able to save it though



Our neigbors on the corner lost a big tree







Notice the sidewalk

Going out of our neighborhood this whole section of brick fence is gone

We're in San Antonio

Well, we survived hurricane Ike! Our neighborhood was a big mess, lots of trees down, a couple of them hit houses, but all in all we did okay. I took a bunch of photos of our area, but forgot to bring the cord to hook the camera up to download them onto the computer. Many of the areas southeast of us were not so lucky. I'm sure you all have seen pictures online or on the news. A big Chase building downtown lost half of it's windows so they're saying there's paper and computer equipment all over downtown. They estimated abut 40% of the residence in Galveston (the city on the coast where the hurricane hit) decided not to evacuate, which is VERY scary! And most of the areas of Houston and the surrounding are without power.

The power went out early in the a.m. Saturday morning and is still out. It was already so hot in our house without AC that we decided to leave yesterday afternoon. The utililty company is saying it may take upwards of two weeks to get all the power back on. My step-dad's brother and his wife recently bought a big house in San Antonio, which is about 2.5 hours from Houston, and they offered to let us all come and stay. Even doggie Manolo! So we figured rather than suffer in the heat, eating peanut butter and banana sandwiches and canned tuna, it would be better to take the drive and stay here where there's AC and internet!

As we were driving west out of Houston we passed convoy after convoy of vehicles going into Houston to help. There were tons of military vehicles, semis with food and supplies, and other vehicles with generators and equipment to help return the power. We also passed at least 50 empty tour-style buses. I imagine they were going to take people who lost their homes or who wouldn't get power back, to other cities. We had to throw away everything that was in our refrigerator and freezer so it wouldn't rot, and so will everyone else who is still without power.

Once we get our power back and we get back home I'll upload the photos I took. Until then Roman's going to try to do some work and Lila and I will relax. San Antonio has a lot of great things to do as well so hopefully we can have some fun while we are here. Here's a link to some photos from the Houston Chronicle. Thanks to all of you who were thinking about and praying for all of us here!

http://www.chron.com/news/photogallery/Ike_blasts_Houston_Galveston.html

First day of "school"

Lila had her first day of Mother's Day Out yesterday. She was fine in the classroom until I left. As soon as I walked out the door I heard her start crying, "MOMMA, MOMMA, MOMMA!". She'd never done that before. When we leave her at church she's just sort of protest cries, so the "Momma" part was hard for me. I stayed out in the hall a minute and then I peaked through the little "parents" window they have, and I think she saw me. After a minute she stopped though, so I left.

When I came to pick her up in the afternoon she was sitting on the floor by the teacher and she just looked up and smiled and said "Momma". Some of the kids were still napping, but of course, Lila had only slept 30 minutes and woke up crying. This woke up some of the others, and the teacher said she wouldn't go back to sleep. Not shocking since she almost never takes a nap longer than 45 minutes.

The teacher said overall Lila had a rough day. She was only happy when they were eating or outside playing. She cried on and off the rest of the day. Mrs. Diane (the teacher) said if she kind of ignored Lila she'd stop crying and play some, but then she'd cry again and start saying "Momma", which then upset the other kids. My baby is an unknowing troublemaker!

Hopefully next week will be better. My moms' group starts meeting again on the 15th as well, so we're going to have quite a few things to adjust to. Two of her friends will be in the same room as her for the moms' group though, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it will distract her. Although at this age, she could probably care less. Here are the recent photos...




Her first day outfit. The school says to dress them in play clothes since they do some painting things and go outside for recess. We actually had to go shopping for play clothes since someone (who shall remain nameless, but isn't me) is a baby clothes snob and doesn't allow us to have anything that isn't nice in Lila's closet!



Happy as a clam!


Her new, school shoes.





She LOVES shoes, and is always in the closet, pulling mine out and trying them on.


She's finally wearing some of the 18 month clothes we have for her. Auntie Michelle got Lila some cute hair clips with polka dots and they match this dress perfectly. She looked so cute!


This is what happens if you say "hair". She immediately touches her's. I've made this mistake during dinner time and it was NOT pretty.



Telling me "more"

I'm behind

I've been behind in updating the blog lately. I'm having trouble with my laptop not charging, so I've only had my old computer to get online. And it's VEEERRRRYYY slow. Roman was in Peru again this week so I had to wait for him to come home with his computer to do anything worthwhile. Hence, I have quite the backlog of photos and video of Lila. She does the craziest things now, and I only get a fraction of them all in photos or on video.

This week has been a lot of hurricane watching, and as I write today it looks like we will probably just get a lot of rain. Unfortunately, that could mean some flooding, but probably not up where we live. We also went to the open house for Lila's Mother's Day Out class. It's part of a private school at a local church. One day a week she will go from 9-2 and they will play, have story time, recess, do crafts, eat lunch, and have nap time. We thought it would be fun, and good for her to socialize with other kids. At her age there are only 5 or 6 kids per class to keep it manageable. We also got to go see the new room Lila will be in when my mom's group meets every-other Monday. She had a chance at both places to play and meet some of the other kids who would be there with her. Hopefully she will remember the fun she had when it comes time to drop her off in the coming weeks. She's does NOT like us leaving her anywhere, so it'll be interesting. She's gotten quite a bit better with us leaving her in the nursery at church on Sundays, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Here are the latest pictures and two of the videos I got of her since I last updated.

I guess she'd had enough of me taking her picture

One would never guess it was 95 degrees outside.


Our neighbor Jenna was over playing with Lila and wrapped her up after we saw Lila with the blanket. I haven't a clue what this face is all about though.

Lila's flock-of-seagulls hairdo. This is what happens when she goes to bed with wet hair I guess.

This first video is of her bouncing a big ball around the kitchen with my mom. She thought it was so funny, and was laughing up a storm.

I got a video of her playing her xylophone, both with the mallet and a hammer she has for another toy.

Chatty Patty

Lila is forming quite the vocabulary. What she's started saying is, of course, her repeating what we say to her. Since "bubbas" (see previous post) we now have at least another seven words or phrases. Here's my latest recollection.

more and help

no: esp. when we ask her if her diaper needs changing

stink: which comes from playing the stinky toes game. we'll ask if her toes (or manolo's or daddy's or mommy's or the doll's toes) are stinky, she'll smell them and laugh. also from us asking if she's stinky (as in her diaper), but the other day she got on my lap and said "you stink". which was funny, but won't be when she starts saying it to other people. she doesn't even know what stink is since no one's toes really stink when she smells them.

whatcha doin': it really sounds like 'whasu doon'

see you: which sounds like 'she you'.

ow: as in she has an owie. we have been trying to teach her the sign for pain so if roman or I get hurt we do the sign and say ow, owie. she put that together with me asking if she had an owie and now she points at her skinned knee, or bug bite, and says ow and does the sign for pain.

mama?, dada?: she's been saying these for some time, but now she will say mama and when I respond yes, she says dada? as if to ask where he is. or if she can't see one of us but knows we are there she'll say mama? to find you.

In the first video I got her saying "no". The second is of her and the bubbles. If you listen you'll be able to hear her say "bubbas" about half way through.

"Bubbas" and "Agong"

This morning Roman was holding Lila in the kitchen and she kept pointing and saying "bubba", "bubba". Roman couldn't figure out what she wanted and then finally he saw the bottle of bubbles and this little battery operated bubble blower we have. The funny thing is, we haven't used the bubbles in probably at least a month. So I suppose she's had the word in her brain all this time and just this morning figured out how to say it. We blew her some bubbles and she kept saying "bubbas". I took a couple pictures.

Her other funny word is "agong" which means food, at least to her it does. I haven't a clue where she came up with it, but that's what she says when she sees food.

She's into pressing button, any buttons! Here she's pushing the button on the bubble maker.

We saw this little stick bug while we were out water the flowers. I thought he was neat so I took a picture.

Being goofy

Nothing much happening here. Lila is getting over a cold, as is her mommy. It's still really hot, today especially! We got hit by tropical storm Edouard on Tuesday. The weather forecasters didn't know how bad it was going to be so many people in and around Galveston evacuated. It turned out to be much more mild than expected. Some people nearer to The Gulf had their power out for a little bit, but that was about it. Up here we just got rain, and not even bad rain.

Here are the most recent photos of Lila being goofy, and a video at the end.



Manolo likes to lay in this sunny spot by the window. Lila has horned in on his spot lately. She even goes over there when he's not there to lay down.


Wonder what he's saying?






She had a little mishap. She was crawling--I have no idea why she was crawling--around our bedroom and she ran into the edge of the desk with her face. You might not be able to tell unless you click on the picture to enlarge it, but she has a long, red mark down the side of her face. She recovered fairly quickly though and wanted to wear Mommy's headband (see below).






She was being naughty and got a timeout. I had to take a picture because she always puts her head down like this. I put her in the corner for 15 second for the timeout, but she takes it upon herself to sulk and put her head down like that. She doesn't really cry, she just puts her head down and whines.


Lila was jabbing away to her doll and I tried to turn the camera on and get a video without her noticing. That didn't work, she saw the camera and clammed up. The video is funny though, she's quite the character.