Friday, November 30, 2007

I'm a Pot Head

So, we have this habit in our family of using "random noun/adjective-head" as a nickname. For example: pumpkin-head, silly-head, goober-head, spaghetti-head. Emily has picked up this habit and will occasionally call me or Christoph some kind of "head". Her favorite is "pot-head." I'm having a hard time figuring out how to tell her that isn't a good nickname. I figure we're going to talk about drugs someday, but four still seems a little young. It also makes me laugh when she says it. Here we are cooking together in the kitchen and she affectionately asks, "Can I stir that, pot-head?" I just can't bring myself to stop her. At the same time, I can just see the reactions if she ever calls one of us that in public. What a nut.

Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Happy Halloween

Trick or Treat!



or as Katrina puts it "Candy"!

No Worries

Generally, I do not like e-mail forwards. Occasionally a friend will send me a choice forward that is very funny or I can relate to my life, but for the most part I get these sappy cheesy forwards that just make me groan. And, no offense to any one out there, as soon as I see anything that says, forward this to ten friends and/or get blessed/cursed/a special surprise, it just makes me so annoyed I have to delete it immediately.

So, all that to say, I got an annoying forward the other day, but I have to admit it made me think a little. It was discussing the topic of worrying about your kids and if that ever goes away. It goes through various stages of life and what worries about your kids you have in each stage. It ends with the person in their 60's saying,

Can it be that parents are sentenced to a
lifetime of worry? Is concern for one another
handed down like a torch to blaze the trail of
human frailties and the fears of the
Unknown? Is concern a curse or is it a virtue
that elevates us to the highest form of life?
One of my children became quite irritable
recently, saying to me, "Where were you? I've been
Calling for 3 days, and no one answered, I was worried."
I smiled a warm smile.
The torch has been passed.
So, what that says to me is you stop worrying about your kids when they start worrying about you. And that worrying somehow makes you better. Umm...no.

I don't consider myself to be a huge worrier. I think worrying is human, it's hard to be completely worry free. At the same time I try to adhere to the Biblical principal of "worry not about tomorrow, for each day has enough trouble of it's own". I believe God is in control and if I trust and follow Him he will work everything out. Of course I also have a vivid imagination, so I won't deny that if anyone is late my mind starts going to injured bodies lying on roadsides; and I do look at my children at the top of a play structure chortling with glee and have a flash of them at the bottom screaming in pain with something broken. However, I refuse to let that dominate my life. So, what's my point? Where am I going with this e-mail forward? It made me laugh and shake my head because now, more then ever, I can worry about everyone! I think this might be the most worrisome period in life. Maybe it's just me, but I think back to high-school, and college, and I pretty much just worried about myself. Then I got married and started adding Christoph into the mix and my little brother who was in college now too (I felt a little responsible for him). Now I worry about my kids, my husband, my brothers, my parents. If that e-mail is right and parents pass the worry torch when their kids start worrying about them, that happens way before their 60's and when they also have their own kids to worry about. Personally, I think we never stop worrying. Once you add someone to your worry repertoire, they never get taken out, you just keep adding more. It's part of loving people. That's why we have to brace ourselves, face the fear, stamp it down and above all trust God. Besides, usually it's the thing I didn't think to worry about that actually happens. ;)

Monday, October 22, 2007

The Word Is Out

Yes, we are having another baby. We are all excited and happy as you can see from Emily's reaction:

According to my calculations (haven't seen a doctor yet) I am eight weeks and my due date is June 3, 2008. That just happens to be my dad's birthday which I think is pretty cool. So far things are going fine, although I'm not enjoying the morning sickness or the exhaustion. More on that later. It's my blog and I'll whine if I want to... :) but I'll try to keep this post upbeat. Of course Katrina has no idea what's going to hit in 32 short weeks, but she currently LOVES babies, so I feel confident in her ability to adapt. It will be interesting to see the differences having kids two vs three years apart. Anyway, that's all for now. I'll keep you posted on further developments (hehe).

Sunday, October 21, 2007

That Sweet Day

So, it happened. The day every parent waits for and treasures. I was doing the boring, ordinary task of putting cans into a garbage bag for recycling when Katrina wandered over, laid her head on my shoulder and said, "I yuve u, mommy" and toddled off. Completely spontaneous and totally unprompted. Ah...bliss.

Friday, October 5, 2007

You've Got Me In Stitches

So the last month seems to have been a bit accident prone. First Katrina eats random plant matter, then Emily falls and you guessed it, got stitches. Wow. In some ways it strikes me as just being one of those childhood things. On the other hand, Emily is the less rowdy of my two girls. I managed to survive my entire childhood without getting stitches. This could be because I liked to read a lot and was not into organized sports. I did my share of bike riding and tree climbing however, so maybe I'm just more graceful. :) My brothers both got stitches at different times. Christoph also remembers getting stitches as a child. So, Emily is by no means alone in her venture. The sad, or funny thing, depending on your perspective, is that she went through the entire thing without Mom or Dad.

Yep, you heard right. Seeing as I had just gotten back from a two and a half week trip, Christoph planned a romantic overnight date for us. Our friends the Divineys were kind enough to watch the girls for us. Little did they know what they were in for. Saturday morning Emily was outside playing. Somehow, she managed to trip and hit her forehead right on the edge of a brick. After some phone calls back and forth Amber and I decided it should get looked at by the doctor. By the time we figured out where she could be seen on a Saturday it was almost time for us to head back anyway. We were on the Oregon coast, about two hours away. We got some lunch and headed back, but arrived after all the excitement was over. Turns out it was good we had her seen since they put five stitches in her forehead. I felt bad that our friend had to go through such an ordeal with Emily but, I was also glad it was her. Emily knows Amber well and is comfortable with her and Amber is very capable of staying calm and doing what has to be done. I found out after the fact that she was also a great patient advocate for Emily which made me very happy.

Apparently, for whatever reason, Lidocaine (the numbing medicine) doesn't have much effect on Emily. Amber says she could feel the pain radiating through Emily's body as they stitched her up. One interesting thing about my daughter is she absolutely HATES being held down. I've learned this through having to give her eye drops, get sand out of her eyes, and deal with her earrings. If given the choice between being perfectly still and being forcibly held down, she will show incredible self-restraint in holding still. On the flip side there is no quicker way to cause a full on, freak-out fit then holding her down against her will. I had warned Amber about this and she told the nurses and doctor that they could not tie her up. They listened, and Emily rewarded their trust by holding completely still even though she was having a lot of pain. Unfortunately this doesn't relay to her mouth, so even though she doesn't move she is by no means quiet. According to witnesses she screamed almost the entire time.

Not to make this all about me, but I'm just not sure, as a Mother, how to feel about the whole thing. I mostly just feel horrible that my friend had to go through making the decision to have Emily seen, drive her there, and then spend two hours holding a screaming child who is getting her forehead sewn up three inches from your face. Ok, the sewing part didn't take two hours, there was getting checked in, waiting for the topical Lidocaine to start working, moving on the the injectable Lidocaine, you get the idea. I also feel bad for Emily who had to be so brave and go through all that pain without Mommy or Daddy to hold her and comfort her. Does it mean that I'm a bad Mom because I feel more sympathy and guilt for my friend then for my child? It probably helps that when we got back Emily greeted us with, "Why are you back already? I want to sleep here more then one night!" I feel bad I wasn't there to be strong for my baby, but at the same time I have a nagging feeling that Amber was probably more patient with her screaming then I would have been. The fact that Emily held still without restraint for the whole thing makes me proud and also scares the crap out of me. This girl likes control.

Fortunately her wound seems to be healing very well. The stitches came out practically painlessly and the scar seems to look lighter almost daily. At least on her forehead she can have bangs to cover it if she wants to. :) And to quote my friend Amber, "When she grows up, I'm going to have to tell her she can definitely handle drug-free childbirth."

Thursday, October 4, 2007

Emilyisms

Emily makes me laugh, probably on a daily basis. I love the little things that come out of her mouth. I just wanted to write some of them down for posterity. This is just a random collection of little things said on many different occasions.

The other day Christoph was telling Emily that she needed to put her shoes on in preparation for them leaving, when he noticed there was something in her shoe. "Watch out," he says, "There's something in there."
"That's Winnie the Pooh," she replies. "He is having a time out."
"Why does Winnie need a time out," Christoph questions.
"He just needed one," she answers magnanimously. The really funny part to us is we have never used time outs as punishment. Something she picked up at daycare and from friends and relatives.

Emily loves to create imaginary friends to play with. For a long time these friends were her real friends that she would "pretend" were visiting. Most often Emma and Madison, or our friends the Lozanos. Now she is branching out and coming up with people who are completely from her imagination. Today it was "Granny Smith Apple Girl". She says to me, "That Granny Smith Apple Girl just wants me to keep talking to her, but I have to leave." "Mean Girl" also made an appearance, trying to throw Emily in the trash and take all her toys. Hmmm.

Today in school Emily made this cool little turkey for her art project. It was really cute. On our way to the car I was exclaiming over it and telling her how cool it looked and how much I liked it. She just looks up at me, kinda nods and says, "Of course you do, Mom." Ah, the absolute confidence of a child.

About three weeks after school got out for the summer Emily comes up to me and says, "You must think I'm sick or something."
I looked at my perfectly healthy girl and asked, "What makes you think that?"
"I haven't been to school or ballet in a very long time" came the perfectly logical reply. Oh honey, that's called summer vacation.

We were in Ecuador getting ready to drive three hours to my parents house. As my brother climbed into the car he muttered "Oh crap". Emily quickly echoed him. He tried to tell her that's not a word little girls should say, but Emily protested, "Why can't I say it if I know what it means?" Of course I had to ask what HER definition of 'oh crap' is. She logically replied, "That's what you say when you think, 'oh no, now what am I going to do'." Nice.

We stayed one night in LA on our way to Ecuador. We rode a shuttle from the airport which Emily thought was very cool. They had a recording that announced the upcoming stops on the way and made little safety announcements, ect. Emily turns to me and asks, "Why does that lady say, 'please don't forget your bags' when the man takes them off the bus for us?" Umm...

Although Emily has outgrown the stage of cutely mispronouncing words, she has moved on to using big words in the wrong context, and making up words of her own. She will occasionally describe things as being romantic, for example "These shoes are so romantic." When she uses a word in the wrong context I love to ask for her definition. The elaborate explanations she comes up with are so entertaining. Recently we were in the car when she stated, "It's almostraffical out here"
"What does 'almostraffical' mean?" I inquired.
"That's when you have to watch very carefully not to hit other cars." she explained. Not far off actually.

Oh my Emily, I love you so. You are such a little firecracker. Sometimes I don't know if I'll be able to stay ahead of you. 

Friday, September 21, 2007

Yuck

Well, perhaps the age old adage holds true... pride goes before a fall. I don't know that I was exactly proud, but I did have a certain sense of satisfaction that Emily never got into anything as a baby, toddler, or preschooler. So it was with great consternation that I had to make my first call to Poison Control. The irony is that it wasn't that long ago that I posted our first poison control sticker by the phone. I saw them at work and it seemed like a good thing to have, just in case. It was the classic green yuck sticker and Emily hated it. For some reason that face just gave her the heebie-jeebies. After three days of listening to her implore us to take it down and many promises not to eat anything bad or let her friends eat anything bad, we replaced it with a more discreet plain sticker that is under the phone base, out of site. By the way, I didn't actually make the call. It was made by proxy through my dear husband. Here's how the events unfolded.

As I mentioned in my last post, the girls and I traveled to Ecuador, to visit my parents. It was a great trip, and fun to experience parts of my childhood through Emily's eyes. Anyway, one day Emily and Katrina were outside playing. I was  doing something, laundry I think, when my Mom says, "You better come, Katrina ate something". She fished some of it out of her mouth, but she had swallowed most of some strange tomatoish thing growing in my parents front yard. Oh great. Here I am in a foreign country, how am I going to figure out what it is that she swallowed and if it's going to kill her? She was acting fine, happy as a clam, so I turned to tracking down Emily to see if I could get to the bottom of what happened. After much reassuring that she wasn't in trouble, Emily finally confessed that she had given the fruit to Katrina to eat because she thought it was a tomato. On a side note, Christoph and I have been noticing a trend recently. Emily likes to use Katrina as her guinea pig in all kinds of ways. So, not knowing what else to do I call Christoph (waking him out of a dead sleep) and ask him to call Poison Control. They weren't much help. They advised taking the plant to our local nursery for identification purposes and then calling them back. They did reassure us that with most poisonous plants you have to consume large quantities to produce any ill effects, so one small fruit would not likely harm her even if it were poisonous. They advised to watch for vomiting, diarrhea, and unusual sleepiness. She acted perfectly normal for the rest of the day, so I'm guessing it wasn't poisonous. I did sternly tell Emily she must never feed herself or Katrina anything without first checking with someone. I will confess however that as I was going to sleep that night my active imagination couldn't help but summon up some images of Katrina not waking up in the morning. It took me a while to fall asleep and all my willpower not to go into her room to make sure she was still breathing. Here's to firsts in parenting, and to hopefully never having to call poison control again.

Monday, September 10, 2007

Catching Up

I can't believe summer is over! It flew by so fast I still feel like I'm spinning. This week I've been trying to get things back into some kind of order and routine. I'm trying to decide if I should kinda retrospect blog about all the fun, cute, sad, scary, funny things that happened this summer or just move into the future. Probably I'll have to write about some of them. I better hurry though or I'll have too many new thing to write about. =)

Thank you to the two wonderful women, Sara and Amy, who wrote me encouraging notes after my frustrated post. I thought about re-writing that one, but I ended up just deleting it. After getting some sleep it sound so pitiful I was too embarrassed to leave it up. It sounded so woe-is-me it made me cringe. There was truth there, so I may revisit the topic at a later date, just not when I'm feeling so down. =) I'm not sure why, but I've always found it easier to write down my feelings then to talk about them.

Here is a quick synopsis of the summer, a little teaser if you will. Aside from the usual fun in the sun, visits to the swimming pool, barbecuing, and such we...

Went on a camping trip to the Oregon Coast

Visited Vancouver Canada

Went to Phoenix for my Grandma's funeral =(

Went to visit Grandma and Grandpa in Ecuador

Had our first call to Poison Control

It's been busy. Part of my trying to get into a routine in life includes a routine in blogging so there will be more to come. As soon as I can get the pictures off the camera!

Tuesday, July 3, 2007

A Day at the Zoo

We are blessed to have a great zoo near us. We most recently took the girls there on their birthday (March 29th, obviously this post is a little late). It was great because Christoph was on spring break and I didn't have to work. We were able to make an entire day of it and I think we all had fun.

Katrina was old enough this time to actually pay attention and be excited by the animals. She really loved the goats in the petting area. Emily's favorite were the lorikeets. She was a little freaked out to have the birds land on her, but she liked feeding them while they were on Daddy's arm.








They both got very excited about running around in the grass which made us really want to get our backyard done (right now it's a pile of dirt and weeds).












It was so much fun to reconnect and spend time as a family. Since I work every evening during the week and our weekends are usually so chaotic, sometimes it feels like Christoph and I barely see each other. It was also fun to spoil the girls a little. We let them each get something from the gift shop, Emily got a stuffed lorikeet and Katrina a stuffed goat to remember their favorite thing from the day. The butterfly exhibit opened back up in May, so I've been itching to go back for another visit. That's my favorite thing in the zoo. Other then little girls eating snow cones.

Monday, July 2, 2007

Candid Moments in Ballet


I think I've mentioned before that Emily is in ballet classes. They are offered through our local parks and rec department, so they are pretty low-key. I like the exposure without the pressure. These shots make it seem perhaps a little TOO low-key. Some poor classical ballet teacher would probably have heart palpitations if she saw them. You gotta love it.

Wednesday, June 20, 2007

Reaching New Heights

Katrina seems to be growing taller every day. Unfortunately for me, this opens whole new doors for exploration, literally. All the doors in our house have handles, not knobs, and now that she can reach them she can open every door in the house, including the front door. Fortunately she can't unlock it, so that was taken care of pretty easily. The pantry, on the other hand is a whole other story. It is her FAVORITE door in the house. She opens it 25 times a day. If she stopped at opening I would be ok, but she is no fool. She knows what treasures lie within the recesses of the pantry. Didn't like the lunch mom made? There's pretzels in the pantry. Feeling the mid-afternoon munchies? There's graham crackers in the pantry. Just a little bored and looking for something to make mom's head spin? There's vanilla wafers, you guessed it, in the pantry. I'm not exaggerating, she does it all day long. I take one food item away with a stern no, and she just waits a minute and goes and gets whatever's next to it on the shelf. Then when that gets old she moves on back to her old haunt, the Tupperware cupboard.

She also isn't above attempting the subtle art of manipulation and girlish wiles. How do kids learn this stuff so early? When I catch her doing something she's not supposed to she looks up at me with eyes twinkling mischievously and says in her sweetest most innocent voice, "Hi". I have to hide my laughter behind a stern "Katrina". Sometimes I just can't resist her sweet "Hi" and sweep her into my arms and tickle her until she shrieks.
 Despite my frustration at putting the same thing back in the pantry for the umpteenth time, I can't help but marvel at how big my baby has grown. Part of me just loves this age. She is constantly learning new things, figuring out how things work and how she can maneuver them for her own benefit. She is finally old enough to actually play with Emily and I love watching them wrestle around giggling at each other. I'm probably totally biased, but she is such a smart little baby and I am constantly caught by surprise over the things she can do and understand. I could go on all day, but somebody's in the pantry again.

Saturday, June 9, 2007

The Piercing

Emily, a couple of months ago you reached an important milestone in a girl's life. You got your ears pierced. I know this is a somewhat controversial decision. Many parents feel kids should have to wait until they are in their teens before making such a decision. Other parents just go ahead and pierce them as soon as they are out of the womb. Your Dad and I land somewhere in between. We wanted it to be your decision, not something we arbitrarily did to you, but we didn't feel it was such a life altering decision you had to wait to be a teenager to make it. I got my ears pierced when I was two. I begged my parents until they said ok, and though I can't remember it I have never regretted my decision.
 
Anyway after some gentle use of power of suggestion from grandma, you said you wanted to get your ears pierced. We explained that it would hurt, and that you would have to take care of your ears and earrings by letting us clean them and not playing with them. You still insisted you wanted to do it. A couple of weeks went by and you stood firm on your decision. So off we went to get your ears pierced. You was so cute and serious during the whole thing. Of course you cried, but you have been so excited and happy about your earrings and tell everyone about them. You even included them in a self portrait you did at school.
There have been a few bumps in the road, but overall it has gone smoothly. We had two episodes of an earring accidentally falling out and having to put it back in. The first one was bad, I couldn't get it in and it was hurting, but after that it had healed more and it went back in pretty easily. We have been pleasantly surprised by how proud you are of your earrings and of yourself for being brave. You have also shown a lot of responsibility in reminding us to clean your ears. You have even showed added maturity in other areas, like deciding that you are too old to suck your thumb and quitting, pretty much cold turkey. So far I feel happy that we made a good decision, we'll see if you claim we mutilated you or something down the road. :) I love you sweet girl and you are beautiful to me with or without pierced ears!

Monday, June 4, 2007

Contemplation of a Cheerio


These pictures are several months old, but I just love them. Katrina knows four signs now and they all have to do with food, "hungry" "more" "milk" and "all done". That girl loves to eat! I'm glad I pulled out the camera one day and snapped away. Emily never sits still long enough to take these kinds of close ups and Katrina is fast outgrowing this stage too. These pictures make me think of the simple pleasures in life, and how much I love kissing those fat cheeks.



















What are you doing Mother?























 




  




 



 
















                                         Milk is umm, umm good

Monday, April 23, 2007

Übergeek

I found this website on the Haragen's blog. Being married to Christoph I always wondered how much of a geek I truly am. I must say I was a little pleased with the results. 51% isn't bad. Then Christoph took the test. Oh my gosh! He scored 93%! They designate that as supreme nerd, while I am only lightly nerdy. Maybe I'm only as geeky as I am from living with him for the past (almost) seven years. I suppose I'll never really know.

My only beef with the test is the designation of nerd. While Christoph and I were dating, he quite seriously informed me that there is a difference between a nerd and a geek. They are not the same thing, as the layman might think. My personal definition is a geek has all the intelligence of a nerd, is perhaps a little more tech savvy, with none of the social awkwardness. So I have decided to change my husbands designation from Supreme Nerd to Übergeek. (Insert cheesy romantic sigh here) My hero!

I am nerdier than 51% of all people. Are you nerdier? Click here to find out!

Tuesday, April 17, 2007

Five Questions: The Interview

So, I haven't written anything in quite awhile. The biggest reason for this is just that I was just recovering from the holidays and my life went into a tailspin of sorts. It is a self induced tailspin and for good reasons, but has left me spinning nonetheless. To sum it up I got a second job. My work hours have basically gone from 100 hours a month to 160. So, January was interviews and all that goes into being hired (urine drug screen anyone?). February was orientation and my brother-in-laws wedding. March, we had family visiting and Emily and Katrina's birthdays, and so we suddenly find ourselves in April. Ugh. I have so many ideas for posts I felt totally overwhelmed and couldn't figure out where to start.

That brings us to the interview. Girl's Life, to whom I can only aspire, had this cool posting. It seemed like just the thing to get me going again. Who doesn't enjoy talking about themselves? I have to admit, I was also very curious to see what questions Amy would ask me. They are things no one has asked me before, so any of you reading out there will get to delve a little deeper into my psyche. (Insert devilish laugh here) If anyone would like me to interview them just follow the instructions at the end of the post.

1. What's your favorite line from a song and why?

That's a hard one. My favorite line has to say something cool all by itself, so it's not the same thing as my favorite song. Contrary to what you might think if you heard me walking around humming, my favorite line is NOT Strawbababababerry, Strawberry Shortcake. The people who make that cartoon have an evil talent for writing songs that become indelibly written on your brain. I love a lot of songs for a lot of reasons, but when I really stop and think about it, there can be only one. I first heard this song when I was 16 and I have never forgotten it. The song is Nieve en Verano and it is by Marcos Vidal. It basically talks about how unusual and surprising Jesus was and is. The line is, "In You everything is so sublime and unexpected, like snow in summer". It sounds way more poetic in Spanish. The music is so beautiful and it just instantly paints a picture in my head. There you are, hot and tired and it's another summer day with everything looking dry and dead and then it starts to snow. I can can totally relate that to God and His love. Thirteen years later I can think of that line and instantly remember the tune. It makes me feel happy. On a side note, I tried to find that CD right after I graduated from college and I couldn't find it anywhere. When I was writing this I did a search and it's on Ebay! Yes!

2. If you could spend the day with one celebrity, who would you choose?

Oh man. Maybe I'm thinking about these too much. It depends on my mood. Would I go shallow and just pick someone really cute...or go deep and pick someone I admire? I would be stuck with them for the whole day. :) When I first read the question I instantly thought of a bunch of movie stars, but celebrity could be anyone famous. Hmm. I would probably pick Margaret Becker. I really love the lyrics to her songs and that makes me think she would be an interesting person to talk to.

3. What's the first thing you do in the morning?

Groan. Just ask Christoph. Lately, I just never want to wake up, even though I kinda consider myself a morning person. Then, not to be gross, but I usually drag myself to the bathroom and finish waking up while I pee. If it's a good day step three is take a shower before proceeding to step four which is rescuing Katrina from her crib. On a bad day she is up before me and step four supersedes step three which usually turns into step 20. Because after Katrina comes Emily...anyway you get the picture. I must say, I do enjoy seeing Katrina's sweet just-woke-up smile every morning. That and Emily's good morning kiss are totally worth getting up for. Despite the groaning.

4. What Muppet do you most relate to?

Probably Kermit. Shy and sometimes a little depressed, but still never gives up. Although I feel weird saying that since he's kinda the main character. I don't feel like the main character of anything, nor do I want to be. Still, I can't relate to any of the other ones. It's not easy being green...

5. If money were no option, would you choose to to work at a dream job (with a fabulous nanny at home with the kiddo) or be a stay at home mom?

Stay at home mom in a heartbeat. That is my dream job! It's all I've ever wanted to be my whole life. According to my parents, when asked what I wanted to be when I grew up I always answered "a mommy". I will embarrassedly admit I was pursuing my MRS degree in college. The nursing thing was just a fall back. It makes good money and has good job security. I wouldn't mind having the fabulous nanny available for the occasional night out or day off though. Sometimes I wonder if I can really do the whole stay-at-home Mom thing. I don't feel like I have the patience to be around the girls 24/7. I tell myself that's just because I'm tired from working. :) I'm looking forward to the day when I can test that theory!

Well, I hope I wasn't too long winded, it's a bad habit of mine. That was fun! If you want to try it follow these directions (as copied from Girl's Life):

1. Leave me a comment saying, "Interview me." Or you could say something about my charming wit, beautiful hair, etc.
2. I will respond by emailing you five questions. I get to pick the questions.
3. You will update your blog with the answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the same post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.

It's 10:30pm and I have a load of clothes to fold. Why am I still typing this?

Sunday, April 8, 2007

Happy Easter

We Wish You a Happy and Blessed Day!


More will be coming someday...

Friday, March 2, 2007

Eleven

Here we are, only one short month until your first birthday. I am trying to cherish every second of your last month as a baby. You are crawling towards toddlerhood as fast as your little legs will take you.

This month you went to your first wedding! Your Uncle Peter was married on February 10th, so we had a little road trip down to Woodland CA. You did very well in the car, and were a good girl for the most part. You got pretty impatient during the wedding. Thank God for your Auntie Brooke and Auntie Amy. They were so helpful and kept you entertained by feeding you a banana. Daddy was in the wedding and so was Emily. I was trying to help her make it down the aisle, so I was very thankful that they were willing to hold and entertain you during that time.

You are pulling yourself up to stand now and have taken a few steps holding on to things. You started crawling up the stairs. It freaks me out a bit, but you are very steady. As soon as you decided to crawl up I started working to teach you to safely crawl back down. I want you to be able to navigate the stairs safely. You caught on pretty quick and are loving having more of the house to explore.



You still love to play with your ball toy. You also love to play with anything that Emily is playing with. She has learned to keep her stuff up high.

You have a ready smile and a mischievous twinkle in your eye. Your are babbling Ma-ma-ma now too, but not really associating it with me or Da-da-da with Daddy. I can tell you have a lot to say though and it's going to be bursting out before we know it. You have learned a couple of baby signs, "more" and "hungry" which you seem to enjoy using.

I am really enjoying being your Mommy. You make me smile and laugh and I love you cuddles. Thank you for bringing so much sunshine into our family. We love you! 





Tuesday, January 30, 2007

Ten


Wow, here you are 10 months old. I think I say this every month, but the time is just flying by. You are officially a total chub at this point. Now that you are on formula and solids your weight has jumped right back to the 90th percentile! Your thighs are just luscious. =)

You had your 10 month old well check and they did the Denver on you. You did pretty good on the social section, but you don't wave bye-bye which 80% of ten-month olds do. You are a couple of months behind in the language and gross motor section, no words other then da-da-da, which you use for everything, and you aren't pulling yourself to stand yet. That is no surprise. Your sister was "late" on crawling, walking, ect. too. You did awesome in the adaptive section, scoring at about the 13 month level. The nurse said she has never seen a baby put the block in the cup as fast as you did. That could be because your favorite toy involves putting balls into little slots. You sit and grin and laugh and plunk the ball through over and over. You are very skilled at picking things up and moving things around. I don't worry about all this, I know you're cruising along at your own pace and you'll get to the walking and talking soon enough. It is kind of interesting to think about it from a personality angle. You definitely like manipulating the world around you! Emily made the observation after your appointment that your eyes were following Dr Bartlett's stethoscope the whole time he was examining you.



You are such a sunny, smiling baby. You have decided you are done with baby food and only want to eat big people food. The problem with that is you still only have four teeth! So, we have been experimenting with chunks of things that dissolve easily. It's hard not to have a carb heavy diet this way, because the other thing is, you like a lot of variety. We can't get away with feeding you the same thing day after day. You'll eat three bites of green beans and then spit them out until we offer you something else. So opinionated already!

You love your big sister and she loves you too. she gets frustrated sometimes when you get into her stuff, but she loves to make you smile and no one can make you smile quicker then her.

I love you baby girl. Everyday holds more delights with you in our world!



Wednesday, January 10, 2007

Nine

You are nine months old sweet thing! Where is the time going? You are such a little chunk now, it's getting hard to carry you around. You celebrated starting your ninth month by getting your top two front teeth. That brings you up to four chompers! You are glad to have them too because baby food is getting really uninteresting to you. You watch others eat with rapt attention, smacking your lips, but when you're offered a bite of your food, you clamp your lips shut and turn your head away. I can't say that I blame you, but there is the whole choking factor to consider. We are experimenting with different kinds of food to offer you. You love cut up banana and (shhh) French fries.

We celebrated your first Christmas and it was pretty fun. You were of course initially more interested in the wrapping paper then the gifts, but you quickly developed a love for your Care Bear. It is so cute to see you snuggle up to it.




You are so mobile these days. You can get from sitting to lying and then back to siting again. You don't crawl so much as slide, but that doesn't slow you down at all. Soldiers could take lessons from you. You pull yourself all over the house, sliding along on your stomach. Some day you'll figure out that those legs are good for more then just the occasional extra leverage and steering.

You are mostly a cheerful little girl. We can always tell when it's nap time, because that's the only time you're cranky. You love being able to chase the kitty and try to involve yourself in anything big sister is doing. Both of them are going a little more crazy the more mobile you get. I've noticed that Emily has gotten very bossy this last month. She's going to keep you toeing the line. We are starting a new year and I can tell it's going to be so much fun! I love you!