Our Sweet Little Maya

Maya is such a happy girl! We are so grateful for her personality and how we get to see it develop over time. She is her momma's girl for sure as she walks around the house with a huge smile on her face most of the time. Here is Maya doing some of her favorite things:

Maya loves to help out in the kitchen with Mommy and Daddy. This usually involves her moving items from one bowl to another. Here she is moving cheese. Of course the amount of cheese she is moving decreases over time due to her eating most of it.

Maya loves ice cream. Not much more needs to be said.

Maya loves a good playground. Today, she went down the sliding board all by herself. This is something that took longer than I suspect given her care free attitude. She was so proud of herself after she did it. The next time she went up the stairs to the top of the slide, she laughed and giggled the whole way while saying: "Me, Me, look at me."

We feel like this picture tells Maya's story the best. She is just full of smiles.

Road Tripping With the Delps

Living 12 hours from both sets of grandparents, with 2 kids 3 and under leaves us little choice but to make lots of road trips to Texas and Pennsylvania. These have become family events that we have looked forward to and have enjoyed over the past few years.

They are made a lot easier because we have the best traveling family ever! Yes, the rumor is true, we made it to Texas in less than 12 hours with only stopping one time to let the kids out of the car (compare that to 14+ hours for Grammy and Grandpa)! We even did the same thing on the way home. We did not use a DVD player and the words "we didn't have DVD players in our cars growing up" were uttered numerous times.

Before you go and call the authorities on us for inhumane treatment of our children, they rather enjoyed it. You would be amazed at how long a Dum Dum lollipop can keep a child occupied. Or in Sam's case, you'd be amazed at how looking at bridges and searching for alligators can keep him busy for hours. Maya got lost hundreds of times under her blanket, thankfully we found her every time.

I hope that our road trips to PA and Texas will remain family favorites for years to come (somehow I don't think they will enjoy them when they are teenagers, but one can hope). I know as they get older we will need to stop more, but for now I will enjoy seeing how fast we can make it!

Baseball

Sam has a deep love for baseball. It has been long enough now, that I can't remember when this started, but I think it was this spring when he started seeing little boys playing baseball at the YMCA. Every Saturday morning in April and May we went to the YMCA for swim lessons with Sam's friend Oliver. After swim lessons, Oliver and Sam would go outside to play on the playground. It wasn't too long until we found Sam looking like this:

This lead to Sam wanting to play baseball almost every afternoon and talking almost every adult in the neighborhood into playing with him. We did our best to find him an appropriate tee that didn't break (don't buy baseball tees from Target, they are crummy). Most afternoons in April and May at our house looked something like this:

Finally, on Memorial Day weekend, Sam got to attend a real baseball game with his Mom Mom and Grandpa Ed. We knew this would be a big event in his life. After all, Chase Utley and Ryan Howard were going to be there, his two favorite players. He had been talking about it for weeks. We really didn't know how he would handle watching the game though (even the strongest supporters of baseball acknowledge that the game is kind of slow for kids). Well, Sam absolutely loved it, and he did not move from his seat for almost the entire game (including post game Beach Boys concert). Yep, he sat in his seat for almost 4 hours. Here are some pictures of his first game that he remembers:

Daddy's Helper

Several weeks ago, I embarked on trying to fix our door bell. It had been broken a few days earlier and I figured it couldn't be that hard to fix. Sam was around and Maya was down for a nap, so I asked him to help. To make a long story short, I came to realize that Sam was old enough to actually be helpful with projects around the house. He handed me things while I was up on the ladder, and most importantly, he tested the door bell outside while I stayed inside to see what the door bell was doing.

Tonight, Sam and I got a little more ambitious. In an effort to save some money, we installed ceiling fans in our bedroom. Sam was super excited to be daddy's helper. We had a great time together and Sam was very patient, even more patient that daddy. Sam doesn't often hear his Dad cuss (yes, skeptics out there, I don't cuss that much), but he caught a few today. Maybe the seeds of Sam's cussing were planted today, who knows.

What I do know, is that I really enjoyed doing a project with Sam. He was again quite helpful and he really enjoyed just playing with daddy's tools. It was fun to see him be so proud of our work after it was finished. I hope that this is the start of many more projects to come. Our next project: Christmas lights!!!!

Our Silly Maya

Maya has a pretty silly personality. She often wonders around the house trying to find ways of being silly and is very proud of herself when she finds a way of doing it. 9 times out of 10, her silliness comes out with her wearing her boots around the house in some form or fashion. Occasionally, it involves other accessories as well, such as various kinds of hats.

Here are some pictures of ways that we routinely find Maya walking around the house:

Show and Tell

We all remember show and tell from our elementary school days. However, we probably do not all remember how important it was in our lives at the time. Sam's 3 year old class at school is doing show and tell this year and each week they need to bring something that starts with a certain letter. This week was A.

We had talked about it with Sam before Thursday and asked him what he wanted take: airplane, Annie (Thomas' coach), alligator, or apple. His choice was an alligator that Grandpa got him at Cabela's in PA. Thursday morning when it was time to go to school, Sam remembered his alligator without our prompting. It was clearly going to be the highlight of the day.

After school, Sam shared that he got to stand in the middle of the class and talk about his alligator: where they live, who gave it to him, that they have no noses, etc... He was very proud of his alligator and he could rattle off what everyone else in the class brought as well.

We look forward to a whole year of this! Although next week could be tough with the letter B being the letter of choice. Will Sam choose: a Baseball, a bat, a favorite Book, or a belt buckle from Grandpa. Leave a comment and give us your guess!

Sam's alligator:

Evening of Baseball

Last night we enjoyed a fun evening on the baseball field with the Slade's.  Sam's love for baseball comes only second to his trains, so he had a ball running the bases over and over again.  Maya was a little more interested in just playing in the dirt, but she gave it a shot.

Catching Up

There has been a lag in blog posts here since May. A huge part of that is because our life as a family has been teetering on crazy for well over 2 years now. That all kind of hit a head this summer and we were just trying to keep up with life.

We have made some decisions about our life as a family that have taken place this August. I have decided to leave Mission Year and work part time with FCS Community Economic Development. This allows me to stay home 2-3 days a week with Sam and Maya. It also means that one of us will not always be working which has seemed to be the case over the last two years. We are hoping that this will free us up to enjoy our family a lot more instead of just passing each other by so much of the time.

One by product of this switch is some added time for me at home to keep up the blog and other things that will help us remember our time with our kids. I will be trying to piece together our summer over the next few weeks.

It was a wonderful summer for us, even though it was quite hectic at times. We were blessed with two additions to our household and were so thankful they were here. Caty and Meroe brought a lot of joy, happiness, and laughter to our house this summer. The volunteered with our church summer camp and lived with us. We also got a chance to spend some time at the beach, in Texas, with Shawn and Shelva, and Mom Mom and Grandpa Ed this summer. It was great to have so much family time in such a short amount of time. We watched Maya transition from a walking baby into a toddler from June-August. It has been a remarkable transition that is a joy to watch happen right in front of our eyes.

We hope to have picture highlights up from the summer sometime soon!

Reading Time

Sam and Maya love to read (a trait inherited by their mother. I routinely am unable to recall any books that I read as a child). It has been really fun to see them enjoy books so much.

Maya's favorite book at the moment is a book called "I'm a Big Brother." Sam got it when he found out that he was going to be a big brother. Maya loves it because it is all about babies and she loves to point out the Mommy, Daddy, baby, "Sam", and Grammy and Grandpa on each page. Her other recent favorites have included: I know Rhino, a Thomas Book (another book bought for Sam), and Who's Driving.

Sam has multiple favorite books at the moment, it is hard to pick out one. He generally enjoys books that are fairly silly, such as the Stinky Cheese Man and An Alligator Under my Bed. He also enjoys a good dose of Curious George.

What Sam and Maya both love to do is act out books. We routinely find Sam or Maya with Lego blocks on their head shouting: "Caps for Sale, Caps for Sale, $.50 a cap." Or we find Maya turning off the lights in the living room, having everyone go to sleep, and then waking up when she turns the lights back on. Sam joins in by quoting the lines from Go Dog Go of: "Now it is day, now is the time to play."

There have been a few books that Sam claims to be able to "read." They included Mr. Brown can Moo and I Know a Rhino. We have read them to him so much that he can literally recite the entire book. Of course, this is also a trait he received from his mother because, as the story goes, she claimed to be able to read when she went to school even though she couldn't, she just had them memorized.

Here are some pictures of a recent story time in our room:

Together

Sam and Maya have quite the fond relationship most of the time. We love hearing the excitement in Maya's voice when she says "Sa" (her version of Sam) when he comes down in the morning (Maya is the earlier riser usually). Sam does his best to include Maya in conversations and often asks her questions such as, "What is your favorite color?" or "What do you want to eat MaYAA" (his inflection).

But siblings wouldn't be siblings without torture and oh man, can they torture one another. It is quite amazing to watch how ingrained it is in them from such an early age. Sam will just stand on Maya's blanket just to get a reaction of our her or Maya will just walk up to Sam's trains and throw them half way across the room to watch Sam melt down like no ones business.

Today I was able to capture each of their favorite tactics in physically torturing the other one. First Maya's favorite move:

The old head sit by Maya is by far her favorite. She even enjoys doing this one to daddy as well. It is not often that she is able to get Sam in this position, it usually involves Sam letting her, but when it happens, oh is she happy.

Sam's favorite move:

Sam has enjoyed the "wollybooger" from a very young age. He could spend hours doing these to Mommy and Daddy. He no longer has the need to do them to us, because he has his sister to torment with them. Of course, they are the funniest when Maya is running around the house holding her shirt up trying to avoid one of his "attacks."

Hots Dogs and Trains

Two Summers ago, I took Sam somewhere new every Friday on the train. It was a meaningful exercise for me to do with Sam. Because of time constraints of my job (s) and the challenge of taking two on MARTA, I have not rekindled that tradition until today. Sam, Maya, and I went to the kid'suem (as Sam calls it) or the Children's Museum to most.

Sam and Maya first went the Kid's Museum with Mom Mom and Grandpa Ed back in May and Sam feel in love with it. They have some ball contraption that Sam can play with for hours, literally. It is really fun to watch Sam be so confident and play so well without us. It has been one of the first places that we truly aren't needed. Maya on the other hand, well, we'll save that story for later.

After the museum, we were going to go to Chick-Fil-A for lunch. But a combination of a large gas leak downtown and a siting of a street hot dog vendor made us change our minds. I love a good street vendor. It is one of the things that I love about a city, just walk up to a street corner and get yourself a nice, cheap, and probably a little dirty hot dog. In ten years, this is my first hot dog from a street vendor in Atlanta. So really the pictures should be of me probably and not the kids, but they are cuter and they can't take pictures yet. So here they are eating on the train:

First Day Of School

Well, after a 3.5 month absence, we finally decided to post something here. What better way to start it off than back to school pics!

This is Maya's first year at school. We sent her to a few weeks of summer camp at her school, but this week marked the official first day. We weren't quite sure which side of her would come out: the person that loves people and enjoys being social or the girl that loves her daddy and mommy so much that she can't stand to be without them. Thankfully for everyone involved, she loved her first day of school and was even the prized art student of the day (something that made Mommy immensely proud).

Here are some pictures of Sam and Maya on their way to school:

This is Sam's 3rd year at Ormewood. We realized that it is the same amount of time from him starting there until when he will be going to a big school. That is really crazy to think about. This year is somewhat different for Sam. He will be going on Tuesday/Thursdays which means that he will be going with different friends than the last two years. Thankfully, one of his best buddies Zachery is going to school this year and is in his class. That made the transition for him much better. Here is the eager student on the first day (and yes, Maya would not pose for a individual shot):