Life in Words

Dancing Days and Sleepless Nights

2011-12-11T20:08:00.001-08:00

My goodness. Our little girls are crazy funny and developing quite the little personalities.

We rearranged our living/family rooms and now we have one toy area (we had two toy areas and it seemed the whole house was always a disaster). The living room is now a dedicated "dancing" room. We moved the TV from our bedroom down into the living room and it's much cozier in there now. Weird to say a TV made a room more cozy, but it did. Anyway...we have dance parties every day now (Pete happened to pull out some good speakers he had stuffed away in the garage - who knew?!?) and the girls absolutely love having family dance parties.

Hailey has been refusing naps lately. It's been really frustrating. She gets so tired and I try to get her to nap, but she makes up every excuse under the sun in order to get up 1,000 times during her nap time. The most frustrating part about it is that she's always tired and cranky when we're trying to do something we'd like her to be happy for, such as Santa pictures.

We met up with Daddy at Redmond Town Center for pics this year. It was Pete's last week working at AT&T, so we figured we'd get one more lunch date in and since the girls wanted to wear their "fancy dresses" that day (and every other day), I figured it would be a great time to do Santa pics.

No. It wasn't. First of all, we got a Groupon for RTC Santa pics and it was $11 for a photo package.
The quality of the photo is pretty bad. And the Santa? Not great. And the chair? blah. The text on the bottom????? NO, not okay. The ads on the outside border? Are you kidding me?

Now, I'm really sorry if you got your pics at RTC and like them. I'm not trying to dog on them all. I was just a little frustrated as we had pretty good pics the last two years. It didn't help that I misheard the lady tell me it would be $6.95 for a 5x7, to which I said we'd like 3....and then after things were printed she told me the total was $56. Um, WHAT?!!?!?!? We cleared that up...the price was actually $16.95 for a 5x7 and multiplied by 3, add the tax.... I thought about ditching the photos.. We ended up just sticking with the $11 deal and letting them ditch the extra photos that were printed (whew).

Doesn't Hailey look so happy in the pic though? :) This is after she had calmed down. Unfortunately (or fortunately? because it makes a good pic) Charlotte had been watching Hailey freaking out and decided it was something to cry about. So awesome.

So anyway, we're still planning on taking the girls to Factoria Mall for Santa pics this year. That's where we've gone the last 2 years, and though they don't allow you to take your own pics, the Santa/decor/picture quality is much better than the one we got.

Yesterday and today we had dance practice for Hailey's show on Friday night. Oh boy....it's going to be interesting!

I should back up... On Tuesday we went to Hailey's normal class. There are 6 girls in her class. In class, Hailey sat on her little circle and wouldn't participate. She kept leaning over and saying something to the teacher (Ms. Barbara). She had been excited to go to dance, so I was a little curious as to why she wasn't doing anything. I know they all have their days...so figured she just wasn't feeling it. The class was working on all sorts of fun dance moves and not yet practicing their snowman routine. Ms. Barbara closed the shades so us peeping mom's would quite distracting the kids through the window and I wasn't sure what happened for the rest of class. When they came out, I asked the teacher if Hailey ever got up to dance and she said, "Yes, she did the WHOLE snowman dance - she kept telling me she didn't want to do any other dancing, just that she was waiting for the snowman dance." Ha! Too funny. That was encouraging.

I don't really have high expectations for the show this next Friday night...after today, I'm actually wondering if they'll even get her to come out on stage. It would be nice to see her (especially since tickets were $10/seat and we have a lot of family coming to see her), but hopefully I will refrain from being a crazy stage mom and be happy for the experience - even if she doesn't show up with the other little snowmen on stage.

So back to this weekend. We've had a really busy weekend (with this being my first down time) and like I mentioned already, Hailey hasn't been napping too well lately. She's also been up late the last few nights. Pete took Hailey to practice yesterday so I could prepare the house for some friends who came over for our annual gingerbread house building/decorating party. The practice was at the studio, with lots and lots of kids there. The idea was to get our little girls used to the crazy that will be backstage on the day of. They each have a teenager assigned to them during the show, so they got to meet them and then they did their practice behind closed doors.

Apparently the snowmen have the most expensive outfits and they are on loan from the studio (thankfully). We do not get to take them home as the kids have to share them (there are 3 different shows with 3 different sets of snowmen and they all share outfits).

Today was the dress rehearsal at the theater. Hailey was already super tired, so I wasn't too excited to take her. The toilet paper party the girls *threw* right before the practice might have been a cause for the tired bit, but hey, that was the best use of toilet paper today! And do you see it? It's a toilet paper heart shaped cloud!

Anyway, getting Hailey into her outfit proved to be a challenge when she started screaming and arching her back and saying she didn't want to dance. By this time, everyone else was dressed and had entered the theater. We were still trying to get dressed in the lobby. I told her that if she got her whole costume on and did the dance on stage she would be able to have a teeny ice cream treat when we got home. I hate bribes. Especially sugary ones. But I was also really tired and at that point, I didn't know what else to do in order to get her in there before it was too late. The bribe worked a little bit. I managed to get her tights and leotard on (it was a crying struggle) and into the theater we went. We were to get their accessories on them in the theater and then they'd be called up to the stage.

First came the tutu. Now, Hailey LOVES tutu's...but she wasn't having it. She hugged me and I managed to tie the thing around her as I was hugging her. Next came the scarf. She didn't want it. I got it around her neck by mentioning the ice cream (man, I can't believe I bribed her like this!), but she didn't want me to put it on her how it was supposed to go. Then she refused the hat, gloves and leg warmers. Totally refused them. I even mentioned the ice cream - it didn't work that time. I went on stage with her and helped her find her spot on stage (she's on an end) and I stepped to the side of the stage. The music came on and the teacher danced with them. They all danced. Well, all but Hailey that is. She stood there. I'm pretty sure she was chanting "ice cream, ice cream, ice cream" in her head the whole time. The group went in their little side stepping circle and she just stood there. Then after some more cute moves, the group exited the stage (to the side she was on) and yup, she just stood there (as in, she didn't exit and the others had to go around her). Then the music stopped. She looked over to me and said, "I get ice cream now!". Wow. That's my girl!

She fell asleep as soon as the truck started moving, but woke up during the transfer and didn't want to go down for a nap (a friend came over after church today and she was excited to see him again). We had another losing battle with nap time. We'll be hitting the internets on how to deal with this new wave of parenting. We've tried what we know and it's just not working. The girl is so tired lately though (maybe over-stimulated?)...

Fun facts about Hailey:

The first words Hailey spoke upon waking up this morning were, "I get to wear my fancy dress today!".
Hailey wants to wear tutu's every single day (well, actually the "fancy dress" has been winning this whole week). And every single day she wears a tutu is another day to convince her that it is really cold outside and we should wear warm layers with her tutu. She never wants stretch pants on with her tutu... some days I wonder if she's actually warm because she's turned down all offers of warmer clothes and opted for a summer dress with a tutu under it (maybe I should pack away the summer dresses now...). She has even been sleeping in tutu's lately too (over her PJ's).
She also likes headbands. She fell asleep with a headband in her hand tonight...I went in to check on Charlotte and there was Hailey, sleeping with her hand grasping that headband so tightly...I didn't want to risk waking her up by removing the headband. I went in an hour later and she still had it in her hand, but her arm had moved and her grip was looser - I set the headband on the floor next to her bed. Her first words tomorrow morning will probably be, "where's my headband?".
I'm amazed at how good her memory is. Quite some time ago my parents watched the girls for us and Hailey had an accident in her underwear (and I apparently forgot to pack extras). My mom put one of Charlotte's diapers on Hailey and we had a good laugh about it. Well, Hailey still randomly brings it up and says, "One time, Grandma put me in Charlotte's diaper! (insert really silly laugh here)".
Hailey can use the toilet all on her own (as in, pants down, sit, go, wipe, pants up, flush, wash hands). We still help wipe if we suspect it would be a good idea (you know what I mean).
She gets herself dressed in the mornings (including picking out which tutu she's going to wear, of course).
She can carry on a conversation on the phone. Wow, totally weird and awesome. I was so happy to have caught the following phone call with Daddy on camera.

One last little factoid:

We are still very rarely sleeping through the night. If it's not Charlotte, it's Hailey waking us up (more often than not these days). Not sure why Hailey wakes up so much in the middle of the night. Growing? Hungry? Has to pee? ??? One night recently she was up at least 8 times in the night. It's getting old. I want my sleep back.

And on that note, I was planning on sharing some fun facts about Charlotte too...but it's late now and I'm tired. This pic will have to do. :)

A little update with some cute pics

2011-11-16T08:46:00.001-08:00

Hailey is in a dance class and LOVING it. She knows some official ballet moves already (this was confirmed by her Aunt Kendra who is also in ballet right now). It's so sweet to see how her face totally lights up when she's dancing. She. Loves. It.

She likes playing the drums, dancing, singing, praying, picking out her own clothes in the morning, eating cereal, playing with Charlotte and eating snacks.

Charlotte still isn't talking much. She's a pretty serious girl (that's not so say she isn't goofy and happy). She mostly communicates by pointing and shaking her upper body side to side (which oddly enough, means "yes"). I followed Charlotte into the bathroom the other day. I was wondering what she was up to when she walked over to the toilet. I asked, "Do you need to go potty?" and she responded with a full body side-to-side shake...which I took as a yes. "Do you want to sit on the toilet?" shake-shake. Okay....so I was a little bewildered as I took off her diaper and set her there...and then she peed. She. Was. So. Proud! I was like, whoa....did that just happen? Hailey came in to see what had happened...and upon discovering Charlotte's great success, she cheered and cheered for Charlotte, "Yay Charlotte, good potty Charlotte, YAAAAAAAAY!!" We celebrate the small things here.

Charlotte has been zooming all over the house - it's amazing how much she moves. I don't really carry her around anymore (kind of sad). She loves to give hugs, but makes them short and sweet - then she's on the move again.

Pete and I joined our host team at church. Pete really wasn't excited about it, but I was determined to get us more involved (truth be told, I wasn't that excited about it either). It turned out to be a good thing (other than having to be at church at 8:15 on the mornings we're hosting). Last week we handed out bulletins and greeted everyone - easy-peasy and actually kind of fun! Pete and I agreed that maybe it wasn't all that bad of a thing after all. Well, other than missing most of the worship time because we're still at the doors greeting the latecomers - lots of late people at our church btw (we're usually in that crowd).

Speaking of being involved in church....Pete and I are both in growth groups. Pete meets up with some guys on Monday nights for his group called, God, Games & Guys (no joke). They play xbox together (they've had remote *meetings* a few times already). On Wednesdays I'm in a Beth Moore study called, Believing God. There's homework every day (not that I do it every day). Actually, I have been struggling to keep up. It's been a really good video series though! The homework has been totally frustrating. It's long. I haven't been in many Bible studies, but my table leader did tell me it's the hardest study she's ever been in and not to feel bad if I can't keep up with 2 little ones under foot. At least I've met more people from church by going..

I'm also in MOPS on Wednesdays at East Renton Community Church. I really like it this year (last year was kind of sad as I was pretty much the only person at my table). We have a really good group of girls at our table and I'm thankful that Meme invited me to join (and that I followed through and went)! Last week I was really excited to make myself a Thankful tree and guess what? The same morning I had decided that I would make one, it was the craft at MOPS! I was SO excited! How cool is that?

I'm absolutely LOVING the fall colors! We're so blessed to live in the NW (thanks parents!).

Dancing with a huge doll

2011-11-09T00:46:00.000-08:00

These girls crack me up. :)

Halloween 2011

2011-11-04T15:30:00.000-07:00

Wowsers, Halloween weekend was a wild one!

Hailey and Charlotte had several outfits to choose from and they both seemed to enjoy dressing up. Much to our surprise, Charlotte even kept her hat on most of the night she was a garden gnome!

Hailey got to go trick or treating with friends and at a party earlier in the weekend, she got to eat lots and lots of kettle corn (somebody stop that girl - she's going to have a tummy ache!).

Charlotte had lots of candy off the floor and has not been feeling well since. Well actually, she's finally better today - no more diarrhea diaper blow-outs! :) Oh sorry, was that TMI??

Fun times had by all.

Thanks friends!

Lazy Saturday video

2011-10-22T10:43:00.000-07:00

We are having a wonderful lazy Saturday morning here! It started off with a deer sighting in our yard. 1 mama and her 2 babies - so cute. They were eating some of the apples from our tree (the few that grew this year). We watched them for quite a while...and then Hailey asked me, "What's a deer say?" - I'm stumped.

Have you ever heard a deer make noise?? What do they sound like?

Skydiving 2011

2011-10-14T21:03:00.000-07:00

I've had it. I've written a post about our skydiving adventure TWO whole times now and BOTH times the page crashed right before I was going to publish the post and I lost it all.

So here you have it. It was amazing. Wish I could simply publish what I already wrote - twice. But I'm burned out. Here's the video (the good part starts at 2 minutes):

Pumpkin Patch 2011

2011-10-11T12:47:00.000-07:00

Fall is here!

The girls had fun at the patch this year. I was a little sad to learn that they hadn't grown any of the pumpkins themselves...but rather imported them and set them in their fields. Booo Hooo.....

The girls didn't seem to mind.

After walking around for a bit and test driving a few pumpkins, Hailey decided that all of the pumpkins were too big for her (pretty sure she was being budget conscious...thanks Hailey!). She and Charlotte happily picked out some teeny tiny ones back by the sales shack.

Ten on Ten :: October 2011

2011-10-10T22:08:00.000-07:00

Documenting my day with a photo an hour...this time - using my phone. Find out more about the project by following the link below.

The Birthday

2011-09-25T23:25:00.000-07:00

Charlotte's 1st birthday was Thursday, the 22nd. I made a really yummy breakfast of fancy eggs (scrambled with basil, peppers, and cheese), pancakes, and turkey bacon. Charlotte loved all of it! We enjoyed our time eating together as a family on a weekday morning.

I had been debating skipping Hailey's preschool for the day so we could take Charlotte to the zoo or something (naughty me), but since Charlotte normally naps for about 2 hours during Hailey's class time, I figured it would be wise to stick to our schedule. We were about 20 minutes late due to our big breakfast (or maybe it was 30 minutes...?) but Tessa was glad Hailey showed up (Ella is in Germany visiting her grandparents so it was just Tessa and Hailey this time).
I've never really dressed the girls in matching outfits, but I happened to find these polka dot outfits on the clearance rack at Baby Gap and couldn't pass them up. They looked so cute together! Hailey was super excited that the playdoh was still out, she got right to work...and Charlotte (as always) tried to join in.

When Charlotte and I got home she went right down for a nap and I got started on the crockpot BBQ chicken I had planned to make (I'm loving my menu plans from gfreecuisine.com!). When she woke up we ate lunch and then headed out to get Hailey. The girls and I played in the afternoon (after naps) and then the Myron 5 came over for a birthday dinner.

It was getting late, so we headed downstairs to have Charlotte open her gifts from mommy, daddy and Hailey. She got a "How I Got My Name" book that was customized for her (I thought it would be nice since it took us 3 weeks to figure out her name after she was born) and she got a doll (Hailey also got a doll on her 1st birthday from the same person off Etsy). Charlotte LOVED her doll, she pulled it out of the box and hugged her so tight! She loves dolls.

On Saturday we had a big birthday party for Charlotte. I had hoped the weather would be nice, and thankfully it cooperated (it would have been an uncomfortably packed house otherwise)!

The week prior, Pete had decided that our family would go out to breakfast (I LOVE going to breakfast!) on the morning of the party so we didn't create a big breakfast mess in our kitchen (I'm good at that). It was a really nice way to start the day and Pete had found a buy one get one free coupon for a nearby restaurant in our monthly mailer, so we were excited about that (nice work Pete).

I had ordered a gluten free cake and cupcake from a bakery in Kirkland (call me crazy!). I made a 'healthy' cake and cupcakes for Hailey's 1st birthday and it was a total disaster (let's just say I should have tested the recipes before serving the things at a party!). So...this time, I wanted to make sure that our guests would get to enjoy the cake and also, I'll be honest here...I didn't want to mess around with gluten free baking when I had so much else to do. So anyway, Pete and Hailey headed off to Kirkland to pick up the cake while Charlotte napped and I got the rest of the party prep underway.

I had a silly idea to make a birthday banner for Charlotte, so on the night before her birthday, Pete and I slaved away. It was nice to actually get it hung up and see it in all its glory (I might have almost died falling from the ladder, but hey...I did it all by myself!). I know that some people have awesome machines that cut their paper for them....but us? Well, we stayed up late a couple nights in a row - cutting out letters! I WILL use the banner at more than just this party, so I think it was worth it. ;) I also learned how to make tissue paper pom poms and though my pom poms weren't perfect, I thought they were a fun touch (yes, I'm patting myself on the back!).

So..........back to the day of the party. And the special cupcake. Pete got home with said bakery items, and I was a little annoyed that my "special 1st birthday, birthday girl cupcake" looked like something I whipped up at 1am (the pink frosting wasn't even consistent - like it wasn't mixed well). I mean, I paid $2.90 (plus tax) for the thing!!!

I don't usually call and complain, but I was a little disappointed in the lack luster of the 'special' cupcake...I've had cupcakes from cupcake shops, and this was a lazy attempt. So I called to tell them I wasn't totally satisfied. And then they put the "designer" of our cupcake on the phone. (((Where's my hole? I really wanted to crawl into my hole at this point!))) I got to tell the designer that I wasn't very happy with the results and I actually told her that it looks like something I whipped up at the last minute (eek! but it did!!!) ...she offered to make a new one for us to pick up before the party ( it was about an hour before the party). Um.....yeah, we're NOT close to Kirkland...so that wasn't an option. And well, nothing really came of it. She was supposed to call me back, after talking with the owner, to possibly offer me for a dozen free cupcakes for future use, but I haven't heard back (I guess there's still time). It wasn't really *that* big of a deal, I just felt ripped off since I'd seen what was in their display case for the same price and the cupcake we got was total lack luster in comparison. They even had one of the invitations to 'match' (as they had requested) but still failed to make it coordinate. I mean, they're the designers, right? Do something cool - make it fancy! Oh well. It was just a cupcake.

When it came time for Charlotte to blow out her candle she just stared and stared at it (that's our inquisitive little girl!).

Hailey blew out the candle for her and then after some prodding, Charlotte finally stuck her finger to the frosting and eventually tasted it (it was slow going). She was NOT impressed.

As a matter of fact, she didn't want any more and tried to get away from her cupcake!

Pete stuck some in her mouth and she was totally disgusted! She didn't want to have anything to do with it. Maybe she, too, was disappointed in the appearance of her special cupcake?

We tried to get her to eat it, and even Hailey took a bite out of it in an effort to show her that it was okay to eat....but it didn't work.

I brought out a fork, wondering if that's what she had been waiting for...but she just poked at her cupcake with a look of terror on her face. Her cousin Ella tried to feed her, but it didn't work. She just didn't want it.

The party went on and everyone else enjoyed the cake - some even swiped 2nds (it was a really good gluten free cake - vanilla with raspberry filling).

It was time for gifts and Charlotte found a laughing pill taped to a box and wandered off with it (thanks Bickel family!). She was content to wander around squeezing that thing for the rest of the day (and all day today). She just giggled and giggled with it. :)

She got some awesome books, toys and clothes - and all of the kids enjoyed doing a quality assurance test with the toys. Kid tested, mother approved!

Charlotte was finally ready for a nap so I took her wings off, laid her down...and she was out! The party continued and I think (hope) everyone had fun (why don't we have people over more often??).

What a fun birthday it was (if I do say so myself!).

Happy Birthday to my sweet Charlotte

2011-09-22T16:29:00.000-07:00

I can't believe it, but my little Charlotte is a whole year old today.

It's been a while since I've written about her, so here's a list of things I'd like to remember about her at this age:

She took her first steps at 10 months and has been practicing her run in an effort to keep up with her sister.
She has 6 teeth (4 on top and 2 on the bottom)
She slides down the stairs on her belly - but now seems to think she's a big girl and wants to walk down them like her big sister does.
I always call her my sweet Charlotte because she is my little hug monster. She wraps her arms around me and lays her head on my shoulder and just lets me snuggle her.
She says mama, dada, that (dat), and cat. I'm pretty sure she has 'words' for other things, but I haven't quite picked up on them all. She seems to call Hailey the same thing every time, but I can't seem to think of the sound she makes (it doesn't sound like a word, but it always sounds the same!)
Charlotte can sign "milk" and "more" and it only took about 5 minutes for her to learn.
I am currently weening her and though I miss the morning cuddles, I'm hopeful she'll start sleeping through the night and forgo her 5am morning feed. I know, I'm crazy for still getting up and feeding her, but there was a time not long ago where my milk flow had slowed way down and I was afraid she wasn't getting enough and really needed the milk...so I kept on keeping on. Now I'm loading her up with formula. We're going to the doc tomorrow and will discuss the next steps.
She LOVES playing with Hailey. Hailey includes her in her play and Charlotte is always very interested and even helpful (she hands Hailey puzzle pieces when she's working on a puzzle).
She doesn't wave very often, but she does point a lot and say 'that' (or "dat")
She loves clapping and dancing.
She's still very interested in things - anything really. She inspects leaves, flowers, toys, hair clips and whatever else she gets her hands on. We call her our little intellect because she seems to study things so well (whereas Hailey is our free-spirited one) .
She's happy! Ever since we eliminated gluten she's been a happy girl. We like that.
She eats what we eat (only things she hasn't had yet are nuts, strawberries and maybe oranges?)
Her hair is getting lighter and still has a little curl to it. Hailey's hair grows nicely to the side but so far Charlotte's bangs are always dangling in her face (and getting food and snot stuck in them). She pulls clips out so she can look at them and I often forget to put them in her hair in the first place.

Happy Birthday my sweet Charlotte - I love you!!

Petuna Marlip's 31st Birthday

2011-09-01T00:48:00.000-07:00

Pete turned the big 3-0 this year. I wanted to spice it up and go hog wild in his honor. The plan was to pick up a Harley, ride to Harvey Field to skydive and then if we survived, to go on a nice ride in the afternoon. It was all going to be a surprise, but I have a really hard time not telling Pete about surprises I have planned (doh!), especially when I'm so freaked out/nervous/excited about the plan! I broke down and told him the plan a couple weeks before our birthday and he was totally game. He was actually excited to find out about it so he could experience the anticipation while waiting for the big day.

When we woke up on our birthday morning it was all cloudy and our dive was canceled (I'll admit, I was somewhat relieved). I didn't really intend to tell you about our birthday weekend in this post...but I guess since I'm here to document the skydive, I might as well write about our birthday weekend and save the skydiving for another post (since it didn't actually happen on our birthday).

FRIDAY

Kyle and Kari came down from Bellingham and took us out to dinner Friday night (our birthday was Saturday). My parents watched the kids and it was so fun to have a night out on the town. I LOVE going downtown and often find myself wishing we went downtown more often. So anyway, we went to Long Provincial Vietnamese Restaurant. Kyle and Kari went to Vietnam earlier this year, so it was really fun to let them choose all the food and hear about how it compared to the real thing once we were eating it. The food was really good and I highly recommend you try it if you're craving a night out in Seattle.
When we're with Kyle and Kari we tend to linger over our meals (maybe this just happens any time we don't have kids with us?) and stuff ourselves silly (there was a lot of food to be eaten!). We love spending time with K&K and only wish they lived closer so we could get together more often. It was a wonderful treat!After dinner we decided to walk through Belltown and take in some fresh air. It was quite random, but Pete and I ran into 3 different people we know...all by walking down one street! Actually, Kari and I thought Pete and Kyle were hiding from us as we were walking ahead of them and all of the sudden looked back and didn't see them. So Kari and I ducked around a corner to throw them off...and they didn't show up - finally we realized that the group of people chatting down the block actually included our men. Ha! Pete and I were feeling quite popular by the end of the night with these random people sightings...

We made our way back to the car and headed back to my parents house.

SATURDAY

In the morning, once we found out we wouldn't be skydiving that day, Pete and I slowly gathered up the girls and dropped them off at my parents house. Off to Burien we went...to Eagle Rider - where we were renting a Harley.

Actually, their website showed that they rent scooters as well...so we were very seriously debating switching it up and getting 2 scooters instead of the Harley...because that might have been more fun. On the way to the place I was reminded of one of Pete's long time bucket list items - to suit up in full leathers and ride around town on a really dorky little scooter. Based on the website, Eagle Rider didn't have dorky little scooters and Pete doesn't have full leathers, but we decided it would still be fun to ride newer faster scooters. Low and behold, just as we'd made up our minds...we arrived and asked about the scooters and were informed that in 3 months no one had rented scooters and so they had just (the week prior) shipped the scooters to their location in California.

Harley it was.
We rented a Fat Boy...because you know, that's what Arnold rode in Terminator 2. It's a heavy machine. Yikes. It was our first time on a Harley and poor Pete had to have a passenger on back for his first Harley ride - we were both a little nervous! My big gift to him that day was not only skydiving with him, but riding on the back of a motorcycle with him. That might sound strange, but I rode motorcycles before Pete did...and then when he got into it, we had our own bikes. I never quite felt comfortable riding on back when I myself knew how to ride (control freak? maybe). As a result of my motorcycle independence, Pete never went through that whole 'girlfriend on the back of the bike' phase. Our time riding together consisted of stopping at red lights next to each other and chatting (probably saying all sorts of sweet nothings...). Here we are back in the summer of 2006 when we had the same make and model of motorcycles (the first time)...

So anyway, we went for a ride to Timbuktu...and ended up in some crazy place we'd never heard of before. I enjoyed looking at the farms we went by...and on every corner I made sure to look to the outside of the turn (control freak I tell you....it's way to nerve wracking to look into the corner when you aren't in control of the bike!). After a few hours of riding, we headed back to my parents house so I could nurse Charlotte before we headed to dinner.

Off we went to Seattle. We met up with our friend Brandon for dinner at La Carta de Oaxaca in Ballard. We had another great meal, and after, we wandered down to D'ambrosio Gelateria. Oh. My. Word. It was the best gelato we've had since we were in Italy! No wonder there was a long line out the door! It was well worth the wait.

We wandered over to a little park where we ate our gelato and talked for quite a long while - until I was getting a bit chilly and realized that we still had to make the trek home on a motorcycle...and then get to my parent's house to pick up the girls so we could get to church in the morning. The girls transferred to their beds quite well and to sleep we all went.

SUNDAY

We managed to get to church somewhat on-time - I took the girls and Pete rode the Harley. After church Pete went to return the bike in Burion while I packed a picnic lunch. When Pete returned we headed out to Boeing field to catch a glimpse of the Blue Angels from our tailgate. We meant to grab ear plugs for the girls, but had forgotten them in our rush to get out the door.

Hailey thought the Blue Angels were pretty cool and didn't mind that daddy was covering her ears when they passed by. Charlotte on the other hand...was a little wiggle worm and squirmed all over every time I plugged her little ears.

The show wasn't nearly as good as it would have been if we had been on the lake performance side, but we didn't have time to waste in trafic - as our family was coming over in the afternoon and we still had some preparations to make at home. We were glad we got to see what we did though. It's pretty incredible to see those Blue Angels land and take off too!

The family came over and we celebrated Pete's birthday by having a 'wall raising' party. :) You see, Pete built a 10'x20' wall for our new shed and he even sheathed it just like his shed building book suggested! But then when it was time to raise the wall - it was quite heavy for his one man team! So it was sitting for a while just waiting for some strong men to help get it into position. I told the guys that dinner wouldn't be put on the grill until they got the walls up (because the grilling job does belong to the men, right? ...or maybe I just didn't want to be responsible for overcooking our flank steak!). The ladies chatted it up while the guys were working for their food.

...and before long both walls Pete had built were standing! It was really starting to look like a shed!! I was SOOOO super excited to see two walls up!

Dinner was on (with Kenny and Jason minding the grill) and the traditional Young family birthday meal was served - marinated flank steak - and it was a big hit!

The candles on the cake blew out with the breeze as soon as I stepped foot outside. All 30 of them. We sang...and it was beautiful. I just hope that all the neighbors were outside to enjoy our lovely song. My mom made a gluten free chocolate donut cake with dark chocolate frosting and it was delish!

Some Boccie Ball was played (I love that game!), some swinging was had (that's Gigi!) and dancing on our new 'stage' was the cool thing to do (rad).

~~*~It was a very full weekend - and I loved every minute of it!!~*~~

Skydiving post coming soon...I promise!

----------------------------------------

Pete+Shauna=Petuna

Marie+Philip=Marlip

30+32=31

Yes, it DOES make sense...sheeeesh!

----------------------------------------

This is NOT your cat!

2011-08-24T20:22:00.000-07:00

Our cat Willy stopped by for a visit tonight. It's pretty rare that we get to spend any time with him these days, so I dropped what I was doing (scooping kiwi for Charlotte) and ran outside to greet our cat of 10 years, Willy Rumples.

Something flashy hanging from his neck actually caught my eye as I was sitting at the table inside our kitchen. A tag?! I had to find out what it was.

FACT: King County Animal Control was out this past weekend surveying households about how many animals they have living with them and they were here to make sure we are paying our taxes, er, I mean cat registration fees if we indeed owned cats or dogs. We told the man that we used to have two cats, but some neighbors have been trying to steal them against our wishes and as such, we never see the cats. Also known as, we don't want to pay for cats we don't even see 2 times a month so please go away! The man chuckled a bit and went on to the next house. Pete and I wondered if Tweed (our cat's 'food provider') would be paying to register our cats since he seems to have full time ownership at this point...

Upon inspection, I found that Willy was now wearing a rather large silver tag which includes a King County registration number. A bit furious, I took the collar off of Willy and contemplated my next step.

It didn't take long. I quickly ran inside, found a sharpie and went to work.

This is NOT your cat!

Yup, that's what I wrote on the back of that big tag. Next up? Mod Podge. I slopped some Mod Podge over top of my message and got to work blowing it dry. I did not want my efforts to go to waste. This message was not going to be rubbed off. The message was going to be delivered!

Now...I don't know if Willy has fleas or not since I haven't seen him in so long. I've heard that it's a bad year for fleas (or I suppose it's a good year for the fleas...). I wasn't about to risk bringing him inside our house to infest it if those pests were on him - so I had left him outside while I altered his tag.

I went back out to find Willy. He was quite a ways away at the neighbors house (not the ones who stole him). I let him be and decided to come inside to clean up the girls and also to allow him the opportunity to come back to our yard sans children. Eventually I spotted Willy in our backyard and ran to the window to toss Pete the collar (he was out working on the shed). He managed to pet Willy and got the message attached to our cat.

What will come of this?

Probably nothing (just like the last 100 times). For now it's just another story in the saga of our cats. It does make me laugh though...and maybe that's the point of all of it.

I miss my foot warmers!

ten on ten :: August 2011

2011-08-10T19:45:00.000-07:00

It was a camera phone kind of day...and I decided to us the vignette mode for the most part. My phone formats the pics so big...sorry about that - I probably should have reformatted them for the blog...but I'm not wanting to spend much time on it!

I was so lucky to capture Charlotte fluffing the pillow in the doll bed this afternoon. She loves crawling on things! Big sister was with Lita for the day, so daddy and I got some good one on one time with our littlest one. The day in pictures started with Charlotte left standing at the door wondering where her sister went...

Hailey - 2.5 years

2011-07-27T10:18:00.000-07:00

Hailey is two and a half now and so hilarious. But if I had to describe her in one word it would be: SWEET!

She is always:

saying, "I love you mommy/daddy/charlotte, I missed you!"
counting things. The other morning she counted all the way to 26 with only a little help on a few numbers (18 and 23 I think). We had no idea she could count that high though!!!
singing her abc's. She now knows all the letters and can identify them. She even seems to know a few words (our names) when she sees them. I write one of the following "Hailey, Charlotte, Daddy, Mommy, Pete, puppy, pigeon" and she calls out what it says. Any time she sees a C she excitedly says, "C mommy! C Charlotte!!!!"
cutting paper... she's good at cutting itty bitty little pieces of paper. I then get to patrol the area for the little pieces so that Charlotte doesn't end up eating it all.
singing and humming. She is currently singing 'like a diamond in the sky..." and humming parts of it.
playing with Charlotte. She is so good to her little sis! She brings Charlotte toys if she is crying and gives her lots of hugs and kisses and tells her, "it's okay Charlotte".

eating. She asks all day for snacks (which she gets regularly) and I swear she eats more than me. She's a bottomless pit!
talking about people she likes. Frequent ones are, Lita, Papa Don, Mama (my mom), Aunt Kari, Uncle Jason, Aunt Kim, Uncle Dave, Cousins Sylvia, Ella, and Gigi and her friends Ella, Sebastian, and Tessa.
wearing tutu's. I try to have her wear other things, but she insists on tutu's EVERY day.
praying. It's super cute, she prays for her friends randomly...like during the middle of dinner, she'll fold her hands together and bow her head and start spouting off a bunch of stuff. Hilarious and sweet.
barefoot. Her shoes can often be found scattered in the yard.
will do anything for chocolate!
drawing. She's been into drawing faces lately. Here's a video from when she first started drawing faces:

picking raspberries and strawberries from our yard. She LOVES going outside to look for ripe fruit!

Her favorite color is: Green (that's what she's claimed for the last 2 weeks anyway!)

I'll probably come back and edit this later, but we're running out the door... See ya!

Little C - 9 months

2011-06-22T23:26:00.000-07:00

Charlotte is 9 months old as of the 22nd and it's just mind boggling to me how 9 months have already gone by since my sweet girl was born. She is super fun these days - and oh so active! This girl figured out how to crawl at 7 months and now at 8 months she started letting go of things while standing. Just the other day she looked at me, let go of the couch and took a step towards me (and promptly fell). Hailey had just learned how to scoot (dragging her body) somewhere in her 9th month and didn't actually get her belly off the floor until 11 months when she was put on a tile floor without clothes on - she didn't want her belly to get cold on the floor and thus learned to actually crawl.
Anyway, my 'little C' as I like to call her...is maturing so fast! She actually fell asleep on me the other day when we were at Pete's dads house and I cherished the time holding her as I haven't had many of those cuddling sweet sleepy baby moments with Charlotte since she's always on the move. In fact, she's so on the move...and interested in everything else going on in the room, that she has not been nursing very long or often during the day. And speaking of nursing, I am heading into unchartered territory here soon. I only nursed Hailey 10 months because my supply dried up when I got pregnant with Charlotte. Okay, I just realized that I have a month more to go before I reach that point where I'm nursing Charlotte longer than I had nursed Hailey, but what can I say....I totally had to stop typing just now in order to figure out how old Hailey was when I got pregnant with Charlotte! My memory has not been working well with numbers lately...

So back to my Little C. She's just a doll. She LOVES dancing and will dance to any music she hears. We've played that splish splash duck for her dozens of times per day and she still dances. Hailey gets a kick out of making Charlotte dance by pushing the button over and over (thanks mom! lol). Aside from dancing, Charlotte is also enjoying crawling up the stairs. This is not so fun for me. We have several stairways in our house and not enough baby gates. So she heads to the stairs when we're down playing in the living room (also known as the 'family room' since Pete contends that we don't 'live' in the living room). I've been working with her on sliding down on her belly, but she really gets a kick out of turning sideways to look at me (from the 3rd or 4th stair up) and then smiles really big and suddenly dives toward me with no regard to the fact that there are stairs below. She doesn't care...she knows I'm there to catch her. Naughty Charlotte. She's SO happy when she does this that I have a hard time using my serious voice in telling her, "no, we slide down on our belly". Then Hailey shows her over and over how the pros do it. She has in fact gone down the stairs a few times on her own by straightening her legs and sliding on her belly, but I think it will be a while before this becomes a surefire way for her to get down the stairs.

Charlotte says mama and dada...and a few other things, but I don't think those other things are actually words. ;) In just the last couple of days she's been chattering a lot. When music is on in the car she makes noise like she's trying to sing. She and Hailey go back and forth with noises...Hailey making a noise and Charlotte copying. I love it, though it gets super loud at times (it's easy to shriek loudly when you're a girl!). :) I believe it was last week that Hailey was using her recorder and then stuck it in Charlotte's mouth and to my shock and awe, she blew into it and made some noise! The other morning the girls were in the bath and Hailey pulled out her bird whistle. Being the nice sister she is, she let Charlotte try - and Charlotte did it (time and again I might add). We are quite proud of her new trick.
The girl likes to eat....but not when she doesn't like the food! Charlotte makes her point when she doesn't like a new food. So far she really doesn't like cauliflower, avocado and beets. In fact, she didn't like them so much that as soon as they touched her tongue she made a ridiculous face and started gagging herself and eventually, with cauliflower and avocado, she ended up throwing up. We introduced beets last night and she was holding those beets on her tongue and making her crazy disgusted faces and started gagging. Well, Pete got smart and started calling her name and distracted her a bit and it worked! She eventually swallowed and we continued to feed her beets, only we sweetened the deal by adding some sweet potatoes to the bites. Everything is better with sweet potatoes (so we've learned)!

Charlotte has been waving for about a week...though we weren't sure it was intentional. I'm now sure that she is meaning to wave. She just started waving at everyone in Starbucks (we're on a coffee date while Hailey is with some friends).

Over and out!

I couldn't pick a favorite...

2011-06-16T23:52:00.000-07:00

Hailey didn't want her picture taken so I said, "make a crazy face" and I captured what followed!

Charlotte doing the splish-splash!

2011-05-25T21:16:00.000-07:00

My mom brought this duck over for Hailey and I had to capture Charlotte dancing to it...it was so stinking cute!!

Puerto Vallarta, Mexico 2011

2011-05-17T15:06:00.001-07:00

We just got back from a 2 week long vacation to Mexico. It was full of all sorts of adventures and lazy days at the pool. Here's a summary of our trip as seen through our camera lens.
We arrived in time for the sunset and the picture above pretty much sums up how beautiful this beach was. We were staying at this amazing condominium complex my sis-in-law Kim found listed on good old craigslist (bargain priced for our last minute booking at the start of the 'slow' season). We actually had 2 condos in the building rented out during the time we were there. Kim's cousin Krista, her husband Ryan and their kids Savannah and Hunter arrived a week prior to our arrival and we had 3 days of overlap with them. Kim's mom Daphne (or 'nana' as the kids call her) was also there to soak in the sun. And the master coordinator Kim and fam was of course there to enjoy this family gathering. Our friend Amber arrived the day after we got there.Everyone was in the pool when we arrived, so we quickly got changed and headed down. This was the every day scene. The water was warm, like a bath tub! We played and played and played in the pool all day most days.
Before Ryan and Krista's family left, we all went to town to shop and eat. Here's the other Myron family on the boardwalk. That's Amber on the left!

We all went to dinner together at The Blue Shrimp. The girls really liked the live music and Ella showed off her dance moves. Charlotte got to try some prepackaged food I brought for her. She loved it. I had to capture her chowing down because it was so cute.
Kim, Amber and I have been friends since elementary school! We had fun reminiscing on times past and it was really nice to catch up with Amber. Her new husband (they got married in Thailand a month ago!) had to work and didn't get to come. Amber stayed in the condo with us the first week. She was missing her man and I think she was trying to call him on her shell phone when I took this pic...
We mostly hung out at the pool all day, but we did find time to enjoy the sand and surf too. The littlest Myron girls even took a nap on the beach together. So cute.
Our little family went to town for dinner one night. The sunset was beautiful and we had some great food at Daiquiri Dick's. The manager there spoke English and told us that the chef from Matt's on the Market (in Pike Place) had been down to PV and had inspired 2 of the items on the menu. Small world!
Here's our condo from the beach. We would stay there again!!

One morning as I was standing above the beach taking in the view I saw 6 manta ray swimming right at the waters edge. I couldn't believe it. I ran up to get the camera (and Hailey). I'm glad I got this video...but was a little disappointed when I realized that I missed hitting the record button when there was some real action. The family that had been chasing the manta ray back and forth at waters edge....ended up right by one. One of the guys was standing ankle deep in the water and threw a rock at one of them. The manta ray turned and kind of flapped out of the water a bit onto shore and tried to attack the guy. The family all screamed and ran different directions and I thought I had just captured the most amazing you tube video yet....only to realize that I hadn't actually pressed the record button. :( It was quite a site though...trust me, it was cool (and I was a little annoyed that the guy threw a huge rock at the thing as it was just trying to get it's breakfast).

Pete and I got sucked into a Tau Resorts timeshare presentation. It was actually a really nice resort (it isn't built yet, but they did have a sample unit built). The pic above is of the beach at the resort. It was really pretty and the ownership bit itself was priced really well (we have since determined!). We're not sure about timeshares yet...and though it was really tempting to buy the last ditch effort deal they offered (3 weeks/year for 10 year ownership - $2225), we didn't. We claimed our $300 cash for attending and went on our merry way. We got back late to the condo and it was the day we were moving to the Grand Mayan...everyone was waiting on us.
We quickly packed up and were on our way. We arrived to the Grand Mayan and waited as Kim and Dave got us checked in (for some reason it was a slow/long check in process).
The guys got right down to business and inspected every nook and crannie of our unit. The hole in the ceiling didn't actually go anywhere (a little disappointing)...
The art in the unit was interesting. We named this one "hooters". I don't think I need to explain any further, just look at the painting.Here we are on another timeshare presentation. Yup. We were after a $300 room credit and 10% discount on everything charged to our room this time. We suffered through this presentation and eventually went on our way. This timeshare was so crazy expensive (even after they presented all the discounts), it made Pete and I wonder if we should have bought the other one! We're just not sure we like being locked into the timeshare resorts...so the jury is still out on whether a timeshare would be beneficial for our travel style.
Pete and I took the girls to town again. This time we ended up eating lunch in a bar. I was confused why when I ordered one margarita I received 2. Ah....happy hour in Mexico....2 for 1. Got it. So Pete got to have a margarita too. The food at this place was really inexpensive (my tacos were about $1.50 for 2) and the food was really good. I might even say that the food here was my absolute favorite of the entire trip. The green peppers were HOT and in everything we ordered. Charlotte wasn't happy that night...unfortunately I think it was a bit too spicy for her system. We kept marveling that we were sitting in a bar with our kids. It was odd....but the live music was great and we had a good time.
You can't go to Mexico and skip out on tequila tasting can you? Taste we did. We ended up bringing home some tequila in 2 flavors - chocolate and coffee. It was the most random purchase...but hey, when in Mexico...
Charlotte and Gigi had fun hanging out together (Gigi is 7 weeks younger than Charlotte). Charlotte expanded her skill set on this trip. Her 2nd tooth showed up on day 2. She had a lot to see and scooted her way around in order to be a part of things. She started sitting up on her own from a crawl too. I walked into the bedroom to get her up from her nap and was surprised to find her sitting in her crib! She learned to say 'dada' on this trip, but she's only saying it when prodded. She's now saying 'mama' quite frequently. She loved sitting in her float in the pool. She was so happy to be in the water and would kick kick kick her legs in the water. Upon arriving home she's been pulling herself up on everything (the couch, my leg, a chair, her sister...you name it).
Hailey helped Ella and Sylvia wash some laundry for Kim. The girls had a good time stomping on all the clothes. It was $14/load to do laundry at the resort so Kim made do with her free helpers for her 2nd load. Hailey and her cousins had fun together of course... It's really nice that they all play together so well.
Dave discovered that he could access some of the resorts file system simply by opening his file browser and clicking on the grand mayan's network. The guys were having a blast geeking out about that and really wanted to photoshop one of the image files, but fret not, they at least didn't have enough access to do that (though they could view all of the photography studio's pictures).
I actually don't remember what we were doing in the pic above. I'm guessing that we were in town and happened upon the shoreline.
One of our last nights in PV...we were looking for a taxi to take us back to the resort and couldn't resist a pretty sunset family picture.
Hanging at the pool the day before we left. Hailey wore that float vest whenever we were in the water and she did really well kicking herself all around. It was really nice to not have to hold her the whole time...and she got to be a 'big' kid and swim around with Sylvia and Ella.
The plane ride home...tan and in our warm clothes once again.
I should mention that we flew home on Friday the 13th....I thought this was a fitting picture. ;)

All in all, it was a fun trip...and I'm glad to be home. I get a little home sick sometimes and being that I love the spring time (my favorite season of the year) I was really happy to come home and see all of the cherry trees in bloom and to hear the birds singing. I'm seriously loving the spring weather here (especially today!) and it's kind of nice to have a tan to go along with it! ;)

Gluten free is the way to be

2011-04-27T23:14:00.000-07:00

You may recall that we've had our issues with constipation and gas around these parts (need a refresher? Go HERE). I haven't posted all the details along the way, but I'll summarize for you now.

1. Charlotte was a fussy extremely constipated newborn
2. I went off gluten, chocolate, coffee and dairy
3. Added back coffee, dairy and chocolate (thank goodness on all 3 counts!)
4. Charlotte started solids at 5.5 months old
5. Charlotte started pooping regularly

So back on April 8th we went to dinner at The Walrus and the Carpenter to celebrate Kim's birthday (which is on the 9th) and it was right then and there that I added gluten back into my diet. You see, I had just taken Charlotte to the doctor for her 6 month check up a few days prior and it was there that we decided I could try gluten again. Dinner was fantastic and I enjoyed every bit of gluten I indulged in (yes, I ate a lot of bread and butter - I was making up for lost time!!). The days following I was SO happy that it appeared to not have affected us. I was so happy in fact that I began to indulge in pop tarts and other gluten filled treats I hadn't eaten in months... Then just when I thought we were in the clear - I was hit with extreme fatigue. I didn't know what was wrong with me. I. was. so. tired. Every inch of me became lazy and a bit testy. Then Charlotte became a bit constipated and fussy and I didn't know what to think. Hadn't she just been fine after I'd indulged in all that gluten?? What was wrong now?

I became extremely constipated (sorry if it's TMI for you, but I'm used to crappy conversation these days). The pain in my intestines was horrific. If felt like contractions - sharp shooting pains that brought me out of my seat. I honestly was having a rough rough week last week folks. I was frustrated with the condition Charlotte and I were in and so I called my doctor. She asked me a few questions and there it was - the answer to all my problems. I have an issue with...

GLUTEN.

Seriously?!?? I was a bit shocked and absolutely and totally relieved to have an answer! In talking through it with my doc, it made so much sense. For as far back as I can remember I have had this fatigued feeling (I've often beat myself up over it) and I've never been all that regular in the BM department... My doctor told me that fatigue is one of the first signs of a gluten intolerance and that the symptoms can take a while to show up after having the gluten. On one hand I wanted to dance around and sing praises for having an answer. On the other hand, I became a bit sad to realize that I would have to ban myself from all sorts of amazing bad-for-me foods in order to keep my body happy. Oh how I love bread...

I had been wondering why I felt so incredible after having Charlotte - Pete and I have actually discussed it a few times. My energy levels the last few months have been great despite the lack of sleep. Mentally I've been sharp and not depressed. I've been enjoying RUNNING of all things! I've always hated running. I did the couch to 5k program after I had Hailey and I hated every single step of the way because every time I moved a leg it felt like I was dragging a ton of bricks. Even after going through the whole program, I had a very hard time running any distance. I thought it was all due to my low iron or maybe I just wasn't a runner type. Now I know. I wouldn't say I'm a running type now, but let me tell you...I go out to run my hilly 2 mile loop and often come back feeling like I could have run a lot longer (but I don't because I feel the need to get back inside to make dinner for my family).

I had no idea the conversation with my doctor would lead to this, but I'm so thrilled to have an answer for both Charlotte and me. I told Pete that our family is going off gluten and I got one of those sad stares... You see, I'd been hanging onto some of our gluten filled foods for when I'm able to eat them again...but seeing that it's not going to be in the cards, I'm going to rid our house of it (any recommendations for where to donate food?). Pete can eat all the gluten filled foods he wants when he's away, but for the most part, I think our every day life will be much easier if we all just accept this new lifestyle and embrace it. And that means I need to get all the gluten filled temptations out of the kitchen (Pete cooked a yummy gluten filled pizza the other night and let me tell you, it was hard for me to not be a little jealous). I think Pete is on board for the most part as he realizes life will be much easier for both Charlotte and me if we remove all the 'bad' stuff and learn to live gluten free. I'm actually relieved to do a whole pantry makeover. We're diving into this lifestyle and going to learn to love it!

To better health and beyond!!

How many times did I write the word 'gluten' in this post? 16

A blog post about the kids again...

2011-04-22T07:52:00.000-07:00

Charlotte is now 7 months old! She's been scooting around for a while now. She doesn't have the arm crawling movement down, but she is getting pretty fast at getting up on her hands and knees, moving her knees forward and then launching her face into whatever is in front of her. She moves around the room so fast now I'm a little worried that I need to get more serious child proofing done around here. Hailey was slow to crawl and by the time she did it didn't seem like there were many threats around. This time with Charlotte being so young and moving about, I just see danger everywhere. I'll be working on childproofing soon.

It's so crazy how time flies by with two kids.
Hailey is now talking up a storm. At times she drives me totally crazy with her non-stop talking, but for the most part it's pretty awesome. The times she drives me nuts are when I'm either breastfeeding and not real mobile or when I'm on the phone with someone at like say a bank. It's hard to discipline her at these times, let alone focus on the call at hand. I think she's really seeking some alone time with me right now. Pete and I have been talking about it a bit and I'm hoping to find some time to spend with her one on one real soon. Charlotte isn't the best napper so it's quite rare for me and Hailey to be able to play without Charlotte being in the picture. I'm thinking a solo trip to the children's museum or zoo is in demand.

Charlotte was up crying most of the night a couple nights ago. I'm pretty sure she's got another tooth coming in (she just got the lower right front tooth last week). She had a slight fever and we couldn't get her to be quiet....quite frustrating. Hailey woke up several times in the middle of the night due to all the commotion. We were in and out of bed too many times to track. Then the next night...same thing. I'm happy to report that last night Charlotte slept all the way through the night (8:30-7:45am)! Let's hope that continues...
I went to the dentist last week to have a troublesome crown replaced. Since the day they put the original one in 5 years ago I have been unable to stick a fork on that side of my mouth and it would randomly bleed - gross right? Well, I had been back for adjustments on it a bunch of times and we talked about replacing it...but by that time I was newly pregnant with Hailey and they wanted to wait until I wasn't pregnant to do it. Life happened and before I knew it I was pregnant again and hadn't dealt with my achy tooth. At this last cleaning I finally made the appointment for my free crown replacement. So in I went last week and got my crown. Days later my tooth was more sensitive to cold than it had been and I went back for an adjustment. Now again.....days later - I'm still in a lot of pain! I'm so frustrated with this tooth/crown. I just want my tooth to quit being a problem. It's seriously driving me nuts as the constant pain won't fade. I'll be going back to the dentist again this week (3rd times a charm?).

PS - I FINALLY posted a trip report from our February Maui trip. Go HERE to view it.

Blogging

2011-04-05T14:50:00.000-07:00

You may or may not have noticed that I've been cycling through blog templates. The truth is...I can't find one I love. I like clean simple lines, have to have balance and I want a teeny bit of flare - where are you oh perfect template??

I really like writing and my blog serves as a good place to hold memories that seem to be fading as time wears on. But....I'm so behind right now. I have a draft that has been sitting open for a couple months. I might post it soon but at the same time it seems so irrelevant (vacation report). Heck, I do want to remember our first vacation with two little girls in tow, so I guess I will probably post it (if I ever finish it). I also wanted to write about our 3rd anniversary which we celebrated in February. It wasn't amazing or anything, but it was simply perfect and I wanted to remember my first ever non-pregnant anniversary - because well, it was a new thing for me to experience and really tells a story about our first 3 years of marriage. I also wanted to post up about my big 2 year old girl...how did she grow up so fast???? And where is the time going???? There are so many other things I would love to write about too...but as always, my list of things to do is too long.

So for now...I give you this picture from a recent girls night. This was my first girls night out without Charlotte and it was magnificent to be together with these ladies for a girls night once again. I can't remember when we started these nights, it was several years and kids ago...and we used to host dinners and swap houses every other week (or once a month? I can't remember our exact interval), but kids arrived and it got more difficult to pull it all together, so these nights out to dinner are a wonderful escape. It truly is a blessing when we can all make the time for a girls night and I feel quite refreshed after. Thanks for being friends ladies!
I may or may not be posting more soon. :) Charlotte is currently scrying (scream/crying) upstairs so I better go get her. Over and out!

She does it all...

2011-03-26T09:16:00.000-07:00

Charlotte is now 6 months old and I'm amazed at all the things she does. How do they grow so fast??

She laughs...

She swings...

She scoots...

10 on 10 :: March 2011

2011-03-10T22:30:00.001-08:00

Bananas for the littlest one...

2011-03-06T23:41:00.001-08:00

Our little girl has been practically begging us for food lately. She grabs at everything I'm trying to eat and watches with such intensity as our forks go to our mouth. We decided she was ready to have her own taste from a spoon. Our doctor had told us that as long as she was able to sit up on her own and didn't immediately shove the food out (because of not knowing what to do with it) that we could start and didn't need to wait for that exact 6 month mark we made sure to hit with Hailey. So with that, we went for it tonight.
She looked so grown up sitting in the highchair for the first time. She liked the view.
She was so excited about this magical thing coming at her mouth...she opened her mouth ready to receive her first taste of banana.Her expression of wonderment. I imagine she was thinking something along the lines of, "hmm...what is that explosion of gooey tastiness happening in my mouth??"
At this point the flash hadn't recharged...and it looked like she was either savoring the banana or like it was a bit tart. Pete asked if I'd tasted the banana before I'd offered it to our daughter. Whoops, no I hadn't. So I did...and it was a good banana so I vote that she was savoring it. Charlotte is very hands on - touching, grabbing, petting...she's always doing something with her hands so it was no surprise that she kept trying to grab the spoon and my hands.

A+ Charlotte!

Maui 2011

2011-02-25T11:07:00.000-08:00

((Finally just posting this as is. It's been sitting as a draft in its current state for months! Something is better than nothing, right?))
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We had an awesome trip to Maui and I don't want to forget...so I'm trying my best to get this documented even a little bit (things sure are busy with 2 little girls in the house!).

We started off our trip by getting a whole middle row (3 seats) and a window row (2 seats) on the plane to ourselves. I now know how to book seats when you have 2 lap kids...they couldn't accommodate all of us the way I had booked (in the middle row there aren't enough air masks) and so they blocked off a bunch of seats for us. We were lucky both on the way there and back (same exact situation on the return flight!). The girls were great on the flight. It was so nice for Hailey to have her own seat - I can't even imagine what it would have been like if she'd been in our laps the whole time.

We arrived on Maui and found my brother Jason in the airport - he'd arrived 45 minutes prior to our arrival. It was nice to have extra hands to help gather up our bags and carseats (that's a lot to haul around when you have 2 kids to lug around too). We got our rental car and as we were heading out we got an offer for $100 off our car rental if we sat through a timeshare presentation. I like discounts and the rental was already a chunk of money I wasn't excited about spending, so we set up our appointment and off we went...to Costco.

I should have written a list and stuck to it, but since we didn't have a list and were eager to get to our hotel, we just grabbed a bunch of food and went on our merry way. We ended up with too much of a few items at the end of our trip - I'm hoping the cleaning lady was able to take it home and make use of it. ;)

We arrived and I was pleasantly surprised to find that the place we were staying was actually quite nice. The grounds were pretty and our room was huge. It wasn't luxury living, but it had everything we needed and we arrived just in time to watch the sunset from our lanai.
We decided to eat dinner at the hotel restaurant. The chef made a wonderful specialized gluten free meal for me and we all enjoyed our food. That was the only meal we ate at that restaurant, and now that it's said and done, we wish we'd taken advantage of the great happy hour prices or even the breakfast deals (why do that when we can make our own though?). The girls were starting to get a little fussy, so I headed back to the room with them and Pete and Jason paid the bill and followed suit. We put the girls in bed and settled in to watch some TV. Jason and I eventually went down to the hot tub and soaked (I don't know how it worked out that I went with Jason, but for some reason, Pete didn't seem to want to go - or maybe he was just being nice as usual).

In the morning we were equally happy with our view (wait, it was still dark when I got up). The girls were up way too early...and as I'd finished feeding Charlotte, I decided to get my workout clothes on and head to the hotel gym. I figured Jason was awake so I mentioned to him that I was going to work out and he was welcome to join. I think it was about 6am when i made this statement. He thought I was kidding, but as soon as the door closed he figured, what the heck...he'd work out too (I mean, he was already awake because of our girls so why not). So I was on the step machine when he walked in (I was only 10 minutes in). Those steppers provide a good workout! Youch. I thought this working out thing might last the whole trip, but I think I was fooling myself. I did go for a run on a different day...and my swimming has to count for something right?
So anyway, I made us bacon, eggs and waffles and then the girls went down for a nap. I figured Pete needed to work (he was planning on working a few hours here and there from Maui) and I saw it as a perfect opportunity for Jason and I got go down to the beach for some swimming and snorkeling. We made sure to stay in view of our lanai so I could get back to the room if Pete was out there waving his arms frantically indicating that little miss Charlotte was in need of her mommy.

As soon as Jason got in the water he tried to put his flippers on...and they were too big. So he kicked to stay afloat and off the thing went and into the great unknown it went. The water was pretty murky and the sun was still low, so we figured the flipper was a loss. There wasn't much to see right there anyway. We had fun floating in the water and eventually went back inside where we discussed our afternoon plans (did I mention that we were out swimming at 9am? we still had the whole day to play!).

We decided it would be fun to go snorkeling at Black Rock. We headed over there (10 minute drive) and set up on the beach. As we were getting situated a girl and her husband walked by and after doing a double take, they turned around and came back. It was a girl who's son is Hailey's age and we've done several classes together at the community center. It was so random, and I was glad she recognized me. It's a small world! Hailey loved playing in the sand. And yes, I was *that* person who had their kid as hidden from the sun as possible. Well, okay...I didn't have pants on her - but I did keep her long sleeve top, shorts and a hat on her almost the whole time we were ever at a beach. She didn't even care - she just rolled with it. Oh, and that big red tent in the picture above? I had found that last summer at a garage sale for a buck and I finally had a legit use for it (other than a play tent in our house)! I packed it in our bag. Yup. I'm a creative packer and managed to get that thing in our bag so I would have a nice spot for Charlotte to hang out at on the beach. It worked very well.

Pete and Jason headed off to black rock with their snorkel gear on (Jason minus flippers) and I hung out with the girls and soaked up some sun. They came back and Jason and I headed back out to the rock while Pete stayed with the little ones. Having Jason along was really proving to be a smart move on our part! Not only was it great to just hang out with him so much, but the benefit of being able to still go out swimming and snorkeling while traveling with two girls under 2 proved to be awesome. The snorkeling at black rock wasn't amazing like we'd heard. It was fun of course, but the fish weren't much to write home about.

The next day Pete, Charlotte and I went to a 2 hour timeshare presentation (in order to get the $100 discount on our car rental). Jason and Hailey wandered around Lahaina and had ice cream while they waited for us. The timeshare presentation was at least interesting and the guy we were talking to was quite entertaining. He had a manager that he called 'mom' because she kept coming over and butting in and adding her $.02 that were totally unrelated to whatever we'd been talking about. We were glad it was so entertaining...since we were spending two whole hours inside during prime beach time. ;) We declined the timeshare and headed out with our activity discount cards and $100 rental discount. We were satisfied.
I can't remember what all we did during the day, but it probably involved a beach and swimsuits. We then headed to a luau - our first one ever! We enjoyed the entertainment and were glad we went. Hailey was getting a bit tired and loony - so by the time it was over, I was a bit relieved to be able to get her back to the condo and in bed.

I should mention that Hailey slept in the closet. It was a huge closet, so we made her a little bed... She thought it was pretty cool.
Saturday was a lay by the pool kind of day. Pete and Hailey were the only brave ones to enter the water. The pool used to be solar heated...as in, there was a working system to ensure the pool was warm. Now it's still solar heated, but just by the sun beating down on it. It was cold. It seemed only kids played in the pool. Pete and Hailey didn't last long. There was a great kid pool though - Hailey and I enjoyed it together and Hailey even made friends with two girls who played catch with her!
When we were done at the pool we headed into Ka'anapali to drop Jason off at a golf event. Our little family of 4 relaxed at the condo while Jason was away (I think we spent more time in the kid pool and took naps). We headed out a little early to pick up Jason so we could drive around and explore a bit. We spied on the golf event and tried to spot Jason in the crowd (pretty sure we saw him - my parents saw him in the crowd on TV!).
We met up with Jason at whalers village after the event. Hailey was running around in a store and fell onto a sharp edge...
We headed back to the condo and barbecued some dinner.

Our days kind of continued on in this pattern of visiting the beach and eating... and then on day 6 - my other brother Kyle, his wife Kari and their two kids Saben and Annika arrived. We had rented a condo in Kihei, so we headed that direction. On the way, we stopped off at a spot Pete and I had previously snorkeled at on a prior trip. The girls were napping, so Jason and I left Pete and the girls in the mini van and headed out for a 'quick' snorkel. Whoops. An hour later we made our way back to the van and I think by this point Pete had been getting tired of playing angry birds on his phone. The snorkeling was the best of the trip, so Jason and I were glad we'd stopped. Time flies when you're having fun!

On one of the days we were out snorkeling I got hung up on some coral as I tried to find my way out of shallow water and got knocked by a wave and OUCH....that stuff is sharp. Shark bait was a fitting nickname and it wasn't until several days later that I started researching sharks in Hawaii on the internet and became extremely thankful a shark hadn't found me when I was leaving a trail of blood in the water as I snorkeled quite a ways out from shore with Kari. I guess I'm just as clumsy in the water as I am out!
The kids had fun in the water and of course liked building sand castles. We found some nice kid friendly beaches to play at every day. I have many more stories and pictures, but I think this will have to do for now. Here's a few more pics of memorable moments.
I have many more stories, but I think this will have to do for now. Here are some more pics of memorable moments.

Hailey Madison - 2 years old

2011-02-22T00:44:00.000-08:00

Hailey's vocabulary has completely exploded lately (she says new words every day now). She says things like "got it" after I ask her if she understands something (like why she had to have a time out and that it's not okay to hit). She also says "no way!" and says "excuse me" after she sneezes or if she needs to get around you. She's very polite with her please and thank yous. Pete recently taught her how to use possessive forms "mommy's shoe" and she seems to know when to use the plural versions of words "ducks". She's constantly saying things and we don't understand everything she says, but she certainly thinks we should as she repeats the same thing over and over. The other day in the car she kept saying "I want a teetchee" over and over and I couldn't figure it out - "what do you want Hailey?" "I want a teetchee". We got home and she pointed up to some bunny snacks that she thinks are cookies and she said it again....ah, cookie - that's what she was saying that whole time.

Hailey is always humming or singing the alphabet song. She quite often replaces that letters with words like, "mommy, mommy, mommy, mommy" and sings it all to the alphabet tune. I need to work on some other songs with her. I tend to be a bit dead in the song realm...and she never really liked it when I sang to her as a baby (Charlotte on the other hand LOVES it when I sing to her). I mean, I've certainly sang different songs to her, but I'm not all that good at remembering words to songs, so I end up making stuff up half the time. Pete laughs at me and likes to hear me try to sing songs. Hailey has been making up her own songs lately, it's pretty cute.

She knows almost all the letters by sight. She surprised me a couple months ago when we pulled up to the doctors office and she said "D" and was pointing to the building letter. Wow! She has favorite letters right now... I, N, and O. She also is in love with the number 2. She loves to hold up her two fingers and say "TWO" when you ask her how old she is or is going to be. Yup, she says she's 2 right now (her birthday is on Sunday). She also randomly says "2, 3, 2" and though she can say one, she always skips it when counting.

Hailey is a great bigger sister. She is helpful and brings Charlotte toys throughout the day. If Charlotte cries, she finds a pacifier and shoves it in Charlotte's mouth and tells her "it's okay baby". Every once in a while Hailey pushes Charlotte out of her way or says "no baby!" as she steals a toy from her - these outbursts are usually when Hailey is nearing nap time and she's overall a bit ornery. If we miss a nap time, she gets a bit hyper and crazy...it's funny, but then she'll have a random outburst and do something wrong, like hit me in the face (that's rare, but it has happened!). Thankfully we usually get her down for a nap, but there are times when it doesn't happen (like on our recent trip to Hawaii) and in those times she acts out.
Hailey can almost dress herself all the way now. She put on pants and a shirt almost all by herself the other day. She did need help with the top because she started putting her arm through the neck hole, but other than that, she did it all. We got her some crocs while in Hawaii because the sandals I had brought her were too big and she was having a hard time walking in them. Anyway, I think I'm in love with crocs for kids! She can put them on all by herself and she likes wearing them! She is always putting socks on her hands - she loves her sock mittens.
Hailey is a good eater and is good with a fork and spoon. We don't usually make her special food - she eats what we eat. Sometimes she doesn't eat much of her meal, but that's fine and we make sure she knows that what's on the table is what's for dinner, so if she wants to eat dinner that night, she needs to eat the food prepared. She eventually will pick at it and more often than not she discovers that she likes whatever food it is that she had been refusing. One thing she doesn't care for is turkey meat. She loves chicken and steak though. She eats shrimp sometimes and also enjoys salmon and any white fish she's tried. She loves broccoli and green beans still. She will eat carrots and surprisingly she really likes mushrooms (I hated mushrooms as a kid and refused to eat them). She still likes bananas and apples and pears...those are kind of staples in her diet as far as fruit goes. She is a big fan of cheese too...
She loves coloring. She draws circles and scribbles all over in her drawing book. She likes to flip the pages to find a blank page to color on. She'll leave a mark on the new page and keep flipping to more blank pages. Thankfully I had found some journals at Ikea for $.25/each and I bought 10 of them...so we just keep one of those books on her little coloring table and she goes to town. She's only really colored on the wall once a few months ago. It was pretty, I should have taken a picture! If I'm remembering right, she used orange and green and scribbled as high as her arm would reach. Thankfully it came off with a magic eraser.
Hailey LOVES posing for the camera. She will sometimes grab the little point and shoot and hand it too me all while making the most awesome cheesy smiley face. Almost any time there's a camera pointed at her she squints her eyes a little and smiles. Once in a while she gets a bit shy and turns or runs away from the camera. Her newest thing is to make a frowning face for the camera (see above) - she cracks us up!

Speaking of getting shy, Hailey is usually shy around new people. If someone says hi to her and she's not in the mood for meeting new people she'll make a serious face and either look down or she'll turn her whole body away from that person. Hailey does warm up to new people pretty fast though. Sometimes as we're leaving a store where someone has been trying to talk to her, she'll yell "BYE!" really loudly as we walk away from the person.

Hailey still sucks her two fingers and has added in a nose picking third finger. IT'S. SO. GROSS. :( We try and try to get her to stop, but as soon as she's tired, her fingers go in her mouth and she starts massaging the inside of her nose with her ring finger. It just happened one day and since then, it stuck and with it, boogers stuck to her face/finger. So gross. She's so cute, but this habit makes me want to throw up. Her teeth are pulled out on the side she sucks her fingers on (she sucks on her left fingers most of the time). I think she'd have a perfect little smile if she hadn't done the finger sucking thing. We wash her hands quite frequently since she touches everything and then puts her fingers in her mouth. She never really took the pacifier when she was little, and we wish we'd forced it on her a bit more than we had as we've learned with Charlotte that taking a pacifier is a habit that can be learned (Charlotte refused at first, but we keep shoving it in there and now she's becoming a little dependent on it rather than her fingers).
Most days Hailey fusses if I try to do anything with her hair. She has such a nice head of hair...a nice gentle curl (Pete and I both have stick straight hair - so it's a bit odd that both our girls have curls in their hair). Sometimes I get lucky and Hailey agrees to have me put her hair up. I have to be super quick or she'll start screaming and acting like I'm pulling all her hair out. She usually really likes it once her hair is up and she likes having clips holding her bangs back. She often throws a fit when I even try to brush her hair... There are many days that we leave the house without her hair being brushed - thankfully she has such pretty hair that you can't really tell it hasn't been brushed since the day before.

She loves buckling things. This proved to be very convenient when she had gotten in a habit of standing up in her highchair at the table. We would suggest she buckle the belt around herself and she thought it was so fun, she always does it now. She hasn't quite figured out how to get it unbuckled and we're keeping it a secret for now. ;) She also likes to buckle her shoulder straps in her car seat now and gets upset if I'm in a hurry and do it for her.

Hailey loves dancing. She can bust a move to just about any kind of music. She gets down and boogies like no other. I think all the Michael Jackson, Justin Timberlake and Backstreet Boys listening she did while my mother in law Cassandra watched her really helped her dancing skills develop. She cracks us up and we love having dance parties just so we can laugh at her silly moves.

I removed the side of the crib sometime in December and she has done great in her big girl bed. She was SO proud of her big bed - she loves crawling up into bed and being tucked in at night. I bought a crib rail, but it took a couple days to get it and she did so well in her bed that I never put the rail on. She's only fallen out once. It wasn't a big deal, so we just helped her back in bed and reminded her that there's nothing holding her in so to be careful. Hailey usually stays in her bed in the mornings and just sits there calling for us. We yell back, "Hailey, you can get up now" and she crawls down, opens the door and climbs up in bed with the three of us (because by this point in the morning Charlotte is always in bed with us).

Hailey is a cuddly girl. She loves snuggling up on us, giving us lots of hugs and kisses. Every night before bed she gives us all big hugs and kisses. She very sweetly kisses Charlotte on the head and then crawls in bed.
I love our little Hailey-bear so much... I just can't believe how quickly she's growing up. How can she be turning 2 already?!?! I wish I could take a bit of her and bottle it up for later (I guess that's what videos are for).

Sleep Habits for Charlotte

2011-02-16T09:55:00.001-08:00

We did not have a bedtime routine for Charlotte and as of this week, we do. It was easy to figure out on the first kid (well, easy as in we had time to read a book about it), but then comes the 2nd and all we can do is hope she'll figure it out and go to sleep on her own because we're busy and exhausted. Well, we finally remembered that we had to build that sleep pattern with Hailey and so we began to train Charlotte this week in hopes of ever getting some time to ourselves.

We were sick and tired of going through her crying routine every night and decided to lay down the law. So far, it's working! She was taking hours to go to bed for the night, we'd be bouncing her as late at midnight some nights...

We always read to Hailey as part of her bedtime routine and Charlotte was always there for it, but we hadn't ever put her right to bed following it like we do Hailey, so it wasn't really a 'bedtime' thing for Charlotte. We decided she needed to go to bed at the same time as Hailey (probably should be earlier at this point) and so we added in brushing her gums when Hailey brushes her teeth. We moved her bed (pack n play) into our office (it had been in our room). We put her in her bed after lots of goodnight kisses from Hailey (and us), told her goodnight and closed the door. Crying would ensue. Every 5-10 minutes (depending on how loud/strained her cry was) we would go in and comfort her by patting her back and telling her it was okay and to go to sleep. We would not pick her up (didn't want to reinforce that if she cries we come running to hold her). The first couple nights were rough...she would cry and scream for over an hour. But each night, the length of time she cries has decreased! Last night she only had about 15 minutes of crying (we went in 2 times to pat her back and tell her goodnight during that period) and then, it was quiet. Pete and I high 5'ed (hesitantly since I was sure she'd be up in a couple hours), but to my surprise she slept from 9:30ish (we got a late start since we had a class at church we had just come home from) until 5 something (I don't remember exactly what time Pete said he brought her to me, but it was in the 5 o'clock hour)!!!! I fed her and took her back to her bed and went back to sleep. I was shocked that I hadn't even heard her - I must have been in a deep sleep, usually I get her and let Pete sleep through it all. She slept until 8:30 this morning and we reveled in how awesome it was that she had slept so well.

Also, I just put her down for a nap and though she cried for a while, I went in a few times to pat her back and now she is sleeping. :) Lately she's been into taking 20 minute power naps and I get no relief...but I'm happy to say that both girls are napping right now as I write this! Break out the champaign, this is something to celebrate! Let's hope this continues. I'll be very happy if it does....

Baby Charlee - 4.5 months

2011-02-10T22:12:00.000-08:00

I really do want to remember these sweet times with my little Charlotte. She's only this little once and she's growing so fast!

Speaking of growing, at her 4 month check up she weighed 13 lbs 15oz (50th%) and was 25.25" long (85th%). She's been wearing mostly 6 month clothing since the end of December (she's already too big for some items Hailey wore around 7 months old). Now I see why people say babies go through clothes so fast - Hailey seemed to wear the same size for so long in the beginning, but Charlotte is just so much bigger than Hailey was it's crazy! At this rate, I think Charlotte might be handing down clothes to Hailey in the future.

She had rolled over from front to back by 4 months (I have the date written somewhere in her baby book). I thought she would have rolled from back to front first because she had gotten on her side quite a few times and was almost turned over but then she would roll back onto her back. Then one day she surprised me and rolled from tummy to back. She is so close to going the other way, I thought it was going to happen last night - but then she rolled back onto her back.
Charlotte appears to still be sensitive to gluten. I ate a couple things (not intentionally) on our recent trip and since then her shrill screaming and constipation have returned. Her scream gets both Pete and me really uptight. It's not pretty or relaxing and all I can do is try to feed her and when that doesn't work (it usually doesn't) we just try to bounce her and when that doesn't work, I leave the room. It's awful. I feel so bad for her because you can just hear the pain in her scream. :( Poor girl.
Pete reports that she just pooped a big one today while I was in the shower (lucky me, he was home from work!). I hope this is a sign that we're getting cleansed enough to have a mostly happy little girl on our hands for a while. And I will be trying harder to make sure what I'm eating is gluten free.
Charlotte is usually pretty happy and I love her little smile. She's always smiling under the pacifier...which we've been forcing on her so as to avoid having another finger sucking kid. Any time she doesn't have the pacifier, her hands go right into the mouth...sometimes it's the thumb, and sometimes one or two fingers and yet sometimes her whole fist.
Charlotte is a very touchy feely little girl. At her 2 month check up it was noted that she had little scratches and scabs on her head from her nails. Two months later, she still had lots of scabs and after having a moment at the doctor of thinking it was dairy related, we confirmed that it indeed was not related to dairy, but rather, that she just likes touching things. What helped me realize this was one night as I laid in bed feeding her around 2am...she had one of her hands on her head and was opening and closing her hand on her hair grabbing and pulling it - she wasn't uncomfortable, she looked like she was in dream land. So knowing this, I've paid more attention to what her hands are doing throughout the days. When I'm nursing her she often reaches up and pets my chin or nose. She likes petting Pete's chin hair when he's holding her too. She's always grabbing for something and opening and closing her little hands around whatever it is. My hair, my shirt, Hailey's hair... that's right, she pulls Hailey's hair. And Hailey has cried about it more than once. Imagine that, a 4 month old tormenting her older sister - muah ah ah.... It's so funny to watch, but I do know, Charlotte has quite a good grip and it doesn't feel good when she pulls on hair.

Charlotte also likes to be close. We have to bounce her at night to get her to sleep. If she wakes up in the night to eat (usually once, sometimes twice) she refuses to go back to sleep unless she's snuggled up real close to me (otherwise if I try to put her back in her bed she cries and requires being bounced back to sleep...and in the middle of the night, I opt not). So, she ends up sleeping in our bed. It gets kind of annoying as she seems to be a bed hog - I seriously wake up almost falling off the bed. It would be great if we could get her sleeping in her room with Hailey though...what a nice break for mommy and daddy that would be!
Charlotte, or Charlee as Sylvia calls her, has a few nicknames around here. Hailey can say Charlie, so she calls her either Baby or Charlie. I've called her Charlie a bit lately and still often refer to her as 'The Baby'. CharlaBear is another one that I've overheard Pete using recently. I sometimes call her Charlotte, but pronounce it all wacky on purpose "CHAR lot". All in all, I probably call her Baby most often.
She never really got much cradle cap and the teeny amount she had seems to be gone now. I saw a few flakes this past week, so I guess I just assumed it was her cradle crap falling out. That's right, we call it cradle crap most of the time.

She makes all sorts of fun noises now - love it - even though at times it's so loud and high pitched that it hurts our ears. She groans and moans when she's nursing - it must taste good! She also drools and spits all over while making gurgling noises...that's fun if you're in the mood for a drool party.

I'm loving this fun age with my little Charlotte!

10 on 10 :: February 2011

2011-02-10T20:08:00.000-08:00

Christmas Recap (better late than never)

2011-01-17T14:46:00.000-08:00

I've sat down to write my Christmas recap so many times since Christmas and for some reason I never got far. Here's attempt #439 - a quick summary of what we did this past holiday season.

The week before Christmas we went on a Christmas dinner cruise with Pete's mom and step dad Kenny, grandparents mama and papa, sister Kendra and her boyfriend Gaelen, Kim, Dave and the girls. We had a great time and all agreed that this should become tradition. Hailey still wasn't fond of Santa. She told him goodbye several times though (she was excited to see him leave!).

On Christmas Eve we ended up going to church with my parents and brother Jason. Then we headed to Kim and Dave's for their annual Christmas Eve family gathering with Kim's side of the family (I was basically a part of that family before I married in!). We showed up late because of church and left early because I had so much to do at home still. Once we got the girls to bed we were up until 3am (never again!!!) wrapping gifts and preparing for our Christmas brunch. I had SO much done prior to this night, but we had a special gift for all the grandparents on Pete's side and though we had started this project several days before, it was not complete. We stayed up late picking out photos for their new digital photo frames...which I thought was a rather brilliant gift and liked them so much that I'm hoping to someday have one of my own.

Christmas morning we got up and had fun opening presents together as a family. Hailey wanted to open all of them, it was really cute. We were a bit rushed through this process as I still had things to do in preparation for our brunch (I will change it up a little next year so I don't feel rushed). I LOVE breakfast food, so thought it would be a fun tradition to invite all the family over for brunch. I had made Challah bread from scratch the day prior and used it in a french toast bread pudding...which I was unable to eat due to my current diet restrictions. They said it was good and I'll just have to hope it really was. I also made deviled eggs with a new fancy recipe out of one of my cookbooks. The recipe included shallots, fresh chives, capers and a few other things and I was a bit hesitant, but I think they turned out well and I ate quite a few since I couldn't have some of the other stuff. Everyone brought something to share and it was all so good. There were 12 of us at the table and to be honest, part of why Pete and I were up so late the night prior was because we were trying to figure out how to fit everyone into the dining room together. We made it work and it was great.

We cleaned up and the other Myron's came over just in time to open gifts. Wow. 5 little girls = lots of presents (and packaging garbage!!!)! We were all really spoiled and it was a bit chaotic during all of the opening, but it was fun. I love seeing those little eyes light up with excitement when they open a present. Kim and I, I mean...Genevieve and Charlotte received these rad creatures that sing and harmonize together. We had lots of fun playing with them.

The Myron's stayed until 10 or so and then we eventually wandered off to bed leaving the mess for another day (who wants to clean on Christmas??!?).

The following day we gathered our things and headed to my parents house for a Christmas celebration that included Kyle and Kari and kids. We were supposed to be there at 10am - but didn't make it over until 10:30...and left everyone waiting on us. Whoops. I was feeling super sleep deprived at this point. I will admit, the diet restriction emotions had been building up over the season and I briefly lost it when we got my parents house. Yes people, food made me cry. A Christmas tradition I've grown to love is having homemade Pierogi at my parent's house. Pierogi is a Ukrainian thing...and it's a homemade pasta with potato inside. It's grilled with onions and slathered with butter and served with sour cream. I used to not like it. Now I love it. So anyway, the house smelled incredible when we walked in. Charlotte needed to eat and I had sat down at the table with everyone to dive into the food, but quickly grew sad that I couldn't eat the one and only thing I wanted to eat. You could say I felt sorry for myself. The extreme exhaustion and the hunger that set in really worked against each other. I moved to the other room to let Charlotte nurse and quietly tried to hide my eyes which were brimming with tears. It was one thing not to eat the junk food all season, but another to cut out a distinct tradition.

I eventually got over it and was able to sit at the table and eat the scrambled eggs my mom made me. She made me some bacon too - that was quite enjoyable.

We moved the party into the living room and had fun watching my mom open all the boxes that contained little bottles of Schnapps (all different flavors). She had previously posted on her blog about drinking 'Birdie Juice' while playing golf with her lady friends...and well, we couldn't resist helping her check off that 'try every flavor' item on her bucket list. :)

Kari proved to be a great baby holder. Charlotte slept for so long like this, I was impressed!

I dressed Hailey in a dress I found in my hope chest. I wore it when I was a little younger than Hailey and thought it would be fun to dress her in the same dress I wore so many years ago.
Some of the extended family came over in the afternoon and we had fun sampling Schnapps together. I guess I didn't really take pictures at that point...but trust me, it was fun. We had lots of good food and had our annual gift exchange. I got the most awesome roasting sticks that my dad made out of golf clubs and forks. I can't wait to use them when we go camping this coming summer!

And that's about it in a nutshell.

Not 10 on 10

2011-01-10T11:33:00.000-08:00

Okay people, I'm back. I totally didn't pay attention to the calendar and missed the whole 10 on 10 thing...

That's not why I'm here though. The reason I'm posting is because I got a new lappy and am so excited about it! I really wanted a netbook so I could pay bills, work on taxes, make photo books, write emails and blog from anywhere in our house. The iPad just doesn't cut it for typing and it is a bit restrictive (i.e. can't upload pictures to my blog on it or even access our network drive to reach our media folders). All you apple fans - please don't get mad...I'm just not an apple fanatic. It's a pretty device, but apple puts a few too many restrictions on it. I bet I would love a mac book air, but that was a bit out of the price range...and besides, I'm kind of used to left and right mouse clicks. ;)

My point. Right. So here I am. Typing on my netbook while sitting in my living room (no joke, I just took that pic with my phone!). I really hope this little thing leads me to lots of blogging - I mean, I do love writing...I just never seem to find time to sit in the office to do it. And the creative juices really don't flow when I'm confined to a desk. So...to start off my new couch blogging adventures, I'm hoping to type up a Christmas recap and I would also like to post an update on the girls before I forget about the cute things they've been up to lately... Anywho, I should stop writing about my netbook now and probably go work on the 2010 Christmas post before it's Christmas 2011!

But first, in order to make this post a little more interesting, here's a pic of Hailey dancing for Charlotte.

Christmas 2010

2010-12-20T12:09:00.001-08:00

With Love Chartreuse Christmas Card

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Never again...

2010-12-15T22:42:00.000-08:00

I got a coupon in the mail for the Sears portrait studio...and since how I've never done portrait studio pictures of the girls, I thought I should try it. It was a major fail. My main goal was to get some pictures of Charlotte and I hoped for some of the girls together.

First off, Hailey woke up from her afternoon nap horribly grumpy. We've discovered that if she wakes up grumpy, that attitude persists throughout the day (this was confirmed by our outing to Sears - yup, grump). Charlotte started crying as soon as we got there....so they tried to warm Hailey up to the whole situation while I fed Charlotte. Charlotte wasn't interested in eating. Food seemed to be a 'happy' place for Hailey though, so I started giving her snacks. This worked for a minute or two.
Hailey figured out what we were trying to do and promptly started crying again (you can see the tears in her eyes).
We decided to try and get some pictures of Charlotte while Hailey threw a fit.
Charlotte still wasn't feeling great...but she looks remarkably happy in this picture.
I wasn't planning on being in any pictures, but this actually turned out pretty well (I have a similar shot from when Hailey was 3 months old too).
We eventually got Hailey to have a dance party with a bear. It was really cute. She was kind of loony at this point...running in circles, falling, and giggling like crazy the whole time.
The bears were a good idea. She really liked them...
Then we thought, "Hailey is happy, let's throw Charlotte into the pictures!" Um ya....that didn't work so well.
This is pretty cute. Wish you could see Hailey's face (she pulled out her pigtails in an earlier crying bout).

It was near closing time and they didn't have time to edit the photos...so asked us to come back the following day. They also suggested that we try to get additional pictures when we came back. We agreed.

Soon after we arrived home Charlotte pooped - and it was a big thick yellow log. Yup. I just described my kid's poop on a blog. It was very strange and it was very easy to understand why she had been SO fussy all night. The poor girl was having a heck of a time pushing that out... At nearly 3 months old she should not be having thick poop like this!

Oh right, back to the photo session story. Right. So....we went back the following day (yesterday). I made sure to leave the house shortly after Hailey's nap...and seeing how both girls were happy upon arrival, I decided we would try for a few more pictures. They weren't busy and were happy to try again.
Charlotte started crying as soon as we got into the room - she seemed hungry. We decided to get some shots of Hailey while I tried to feed Charlotte. Hailey caught on and started saying "no" in the sweet little whiny voice she has familiarized us with over the last few weeks.
Ahhh...props. Love the props. Hailey loved them too. Well...okay, love might be a bit of a stretch. She still didn't like the fact that this girl was trying to take pictures of her...props were fun, but when that girl tried to take a picture of her, she was not happy about it and eventually slid off the platform she had been on and proceeded to play with the props on the floor - behind the camera. Charlotte didn't want to eat...she was just fussy because she was trying to pass some gas (and boy did she!). We decided to try to get some pictures of her while Hailey was entertained with the purse and pearls on the floor.
Here we have the classic baby in a basket photo. This time the camera (or was it the operator?) was messing up and the pictures turned out with this lovely blue tint. I'm hoping Pete can correct it a bit in photoshop - otherwise they will have to be black and white....like this one......
So by the time we finished with the pictures, I was totally spent. The girl taking the photos seemed to be a bit slow in everything she did....by the time she got everything set up she'd leave the room...right as Hailey and Charlotte seemed to be happy and ready for pictures. It was like she'd get a phone call and abandon us. She would come back eventually and then we had missed the 'happy' window. So frustrating. Oh ya, and I would assume that if you work in a portrait studio you know what to do (how to set up the shots, what background to use, how to prop up a baby, etc)...but this girl didn't seem to know. She asked me what background I wanted and I asked what they had. Her response was, "we have so many options, so many...what do you want?". Um....that's not helpful! How am I supposed to pick something when you haven't shown or told me what you have?

I was glad I requested the white background for the first day - I should have just stuck with that.. The blue/white background she picked the following day was kind of cheesy, but the whole experience was so stressful/tiring that I just didn't even care anymore. I would be standing there asking, so...where/how should I put Charlotte for pics? And she would hmmm and haw and finally tell me to put her on her belly on a pillow with her elbows under herself to hold her up higher. News flash - this almost 3 month old doesn't like to be posed. She was NOT fond of laying ON her arms and it didn't make for a happy camper. It was so frustrating.

The photographer (aka person pushing the button on the camera) told me they needed about 15 minutes to edit the photos...so the girls and I headed to Starbucks in the mall (always a good pick-me-up) and Hailey got to enjoy a yogurt parfait while we waited. We went back to view the pictures and I wasn't sure they had edited them at all. No wait, they did make this beautiful collage while we were at Starbucks...
Hailey and Charlotte were ready to be heading home, as was I.

I kept asking what my options were for photo packages and the girl was NOT helpful. I still don't understand what my options were as she couldn't seem to tell me what they were. Maybe this is part of a scam so that you just end up buying the disk with all the pictures. Well, they got me. I was so confused trying to figure out why the girl couldn't tell me what my purchasing options were and I was getting more and more frustrated that the girl helping me wasn't actually helping me. She kept getting up to go help other people...which was annoying considering my two girls were on the verge of another meltdown. I was so confused and didn't have more time to sit there trying to drag the details out of her. At that point I had no idea if I even liked any of the pictures - I barely got to review them! I think it was out of sheer exhaustion that I told her I would just buy the CD so I could deal with the details on my own at home.

...and that is why I have all these wonderful pictures to post here and tell my story - because I'm the sucker who purchased the disk with all the pictures. I guess at the end of the day, these images will always serve as a reminder to me of why I should never take the girls to a portrait studio ever again.

At least not any time soon anyway...

Just for fun

2010-12-09T11:16:00.000-08:00

Charlotte :: 2 Months

2010-11-24T12:08:00.000-08:00

How does it go by so fast? My littlest girl is already 2 months old and it's bittersweet. No longer is she a little lump of baby to hold. She's a wiggly little girl always kicking her legs about (and more recently her arms too). On some accounts we are happy to have her grow up a little (in hopes that she'll outgrow her tummy troubles). On the other hand, it's just crazy to see how fast she's growing out of being a little baby!
Charlotte is still having poop issues. I thought she was figuring out how to poop finally, but it's been another 4 days without a trace. I'm supposed to be pumping now...so I can give her prune juice on day 4 of no poop. So far I've only managed to pump once though. Once in a while we have a hard night - but thankfully once she gets to sleep, she's wonderful! The other night she slept from 11:30 until 6am! I woke up and was amazed. She is still really loud in the morning - she sounds like a pug. Snorting and snarfing...and wiggling all about. We put her in her moses basket to sleep in our room and then whenever I feed her...I bring her to our bed and most of the time I don't make the transfer back and she sleeps on her back right between me and Pete. I'm still gluten and dairy free - so on the nights when she's really fussy and gassy, we scratch our heads and wonder what I ate that could have caused the reaction. I'm drinking more than 8oz of warm prune juice each day and let me tell ya....I'm not a fan. After I drink it my stomach starts churning and gurgling (you can hear it!).

I keep trying to capture Charlotte's smiles on camera...but that has proved to be difficult. I took this video this morning.

My updates:

It's been over 3 months since I had my hair cut...and it's driving me nuts! I really need a trim!
I started working out at home 2 weeks ago. I'm doing the Turbo Fire program and though it's really hard, I'm already seeing results (a few pounds gone!). I'm not very coordinated so the first time through some of the classes were a bit sketchy, but the more I do it, the easier it is to figure out. It's basically a combo of kickboxing and aerobics and there's about 8-10 different classes you cycle through. I have a whole 90 day schedule and mark the days off as I complete them. I really like the 15 and 20 minute classes - I have found that I lose interest when trying to do the 45 or 55 minute ones... The good thing is that the 15 and 20 minute classes are the highest intensity classes, designed to burn lots of calories. That's a good thing!
I've been cooking a ton lately and low and behold, I might just enjoy it! :O I signed up for e-mealz.com and love it! Every week I get a new menu plan and shopping list. The recipes are all really easy to make and so far, they taste wonderful. I love that I can just go to amazonfresh.com and order everything I need using the check list. I have a feeling this is the start of something good. Pete and I are the same way on this matter - we both hate doing things we don't feel we are good at. So....now that I've made so many great meals - I'm getting more confident in my cooking and starting to enjoy the process. It does get a little frustrating some days when both Hailey and Charlotte are needy and I'm trying to prepare something before Pete's made it home from work...but all in all, we've been eating really well lately (this no gluten or dairy thing deserves some credit!).

Swimming

2010-11-17T22:28:00.000-08:00

Charlotte and I got to watch Hailey at her swimming lesson today (okay, truth be told Charlotte slept the whole time). I was so proud of my little swimmer, she is very good at turning around in the water and reaching for the wall (very important thing to know in case she accidentally falls in water somewhere, she is being 'trained' to turn and reach for the wall for safety)!

In this video she climbs out of the pool and goes down the slide, splashes into the water, turns around and grabs for the wall.

Here she's kicking to keep her head out of the water. When she would reach for the balls she would sink a little because she would quit kicking, but she's coming along!

Here's a video of Hailey dancing. She loves dancing to ANY music and it cracks me up every time. :)

Counting my blessings :: Week 3

2010-11-17T10:55:00.000-08:00

Day 15

Day 16

Day 17

7 week :: 20 months

2010-11-11T00:13:00.000-08:00

Charlotte is still constipated. The poor little girl went for about 4 weeks without pooping! :O There were traces of poop in her diaper, but nothing more so we figured it was coming 'the next time' but the next diaper change came and went...and we waited so patiently. Everyone always says that breastfed babies can go a long time without pooping, but this seemed a little strange and she was quite obviously in pain and very very gassy. I guess I forgot to mention in my last Charlotte update that she hasn't been pooping...so there you have it. We've only had about 6 yellow poop diapers since she finished the meconium poop. It's been nice to not have poopy diapers all the time, but a bit troubling.

I spoke to our doctor yesterday since it's been a week since our visit and Charlotte still isn't pooping like she should be. The last real poop was on last Thursday. So...if she doesn't poop by tomorrow, I am supposed to call my doc Friday morning to report and see where we go from there.

I am still off dairy - though for some reason I ate buttered popcorn last weekend and didn't realize at the time that there is in fact butter in buttered popcorn (doh!). I'm now on a gluten free diet and have upped my prune juice intake to 1 full glass/day (large glass). We're hoping things turn around soon.
Charlotte has been really happy between farts... she smiles and coos at me. What a pleasant little girl she would be if she didn't have gas and constipation so often! She gets really worked up when she's gassy - so much that she sweats. If she was our first I'm betting we would be bathing her almost every day...but for now, Charlotte gets really greasy hair and only gets a bath about once a week (it's better for her skin anyway, right?). I don't think we bathed Hailey any more frequently, but I think Charlotte ends up being a bit more crusty by the time we get to her bath...
We're managing pretty well despite the fussiness. She seems to have periods of time where she's reasonably happy. I was frustrated the other day because she wanted to be held while she slept. I kept setting her down and she would immediately cry. I was a bit irritated at first because I really wanted to get some things done around the house. I had to stop and remind myself that she's only going to be this cute little baby for so long and then she will be grown up and telling me "no" - so I really tried to change my attitude in order to cherish my time snuggling her before she grows up. The housework will wait (trust me, I know this all too well!).

Charlotte's baby acne is almost gone. She didn't get it half as bad as Hailey did.

Charlotte's hair is so soft and fluffy - we love to pet it (contributing to her greasy hair syndrome). Hailey lays down next to her on the floor during tummy time and rubs her hand on Charlotte's head.
Hailey still likes her sister. YAY! I asked her to smile for a picture and she stuck out her tongue - where did she learn that?!? It was hilarious and I took about 6 pictures and she had her tongue out in all of them.

Hailey has been a bit mischievous lately. Just the other day while she was sitting on the toilet she took the box of kleenex off the toilet and put about 15 tissues into the toilet - she did the same thing tonight - after she had pooped!!! Ug. Thankfully Pete was home to deal with that one.

Hailey likes to carry the little step she uses to get on/off the toilet all around the house. She drags it down the stairs to the kitchen and stands on it while I'm making lunch...or she'll carry it downstairs to the living room and continuously climb up and jump off it. She cut her lip doing this yesterday...

Hailey has a newish shy side. Exhibit A: The last two times we dropped her off in the church nursery she cried and didn't want to stay there (she always reports afterward that she had fun though). Exhibit B: We went to a friends house the other night and she didn't know anyone there. She was really shy and introverted the whole time.

The other day we (Pete) found Hailey in her crib with her sleeper unzipped and poop on her hands and bedding... I'm so thankful Pete was home to help take care of the mess while I was feeding Charlotte. Unfortunately we seem to have hit the stage where she is extremely interested in her private parts and is always trying to look at them. It usually happens when she's on the toilet, but last week Pete found her sitting bare bum in time out in her room and holding her diaper in her hand (yes, she can now take her pants off too!!). I never thought my sweet girl would do this kind of thing...I'm hoping it's a quick stage and we get through it soon.
Hailey loves playing with her hair rubber bands. We had to move them to a place she can't reach because she would end up grabbing handfuls on bands and scatter them throughout the house. I wanted to put her hair up today and in order to distract her, I gave her the bin of hair bands...she had them strewn about in no time! I got her hair up though...so it worked. Later in the day we went back to the mess and had fun picking up all the bands and putting them back in their little box. Back on the shelf it went.

Hailey also loves playing with the iPad. She knows which icons are for her apps and she only ever opens those ones.
Okay...I think that's it for now. I just really wanted to get some of this stuff documented before I forget it all (I don't think my mommy brain can hold all of it forever...so sad).

10 on 10 :: November 2010

2010-11-10T20:35:00.001-08:00

I remembered that it was the 10th just after the girls went down for their nap. I noted how beautiful it was outside, grabbed the camera and headed out with a challenge for myself - today I was determined to look for beauty in the ordinary. I put the zoom lens on the camera (which is WAY better than our normal lens btw) and soaked up some sun while searching the yard for some ordinary beauty. When Hailey and Charlotte were up from their nap we headed outside together. The zoom lens doesn't allow for any close proximity pictures, so alas, no pictures of Charlotte in this set. What a beautiful day it was!!!

Counting my blessings :: Week 2

2010-11-09T18:03:00.000-08:00

Day 8

Day 9

Day 10

Day 11

Day 12

Day 13

Day 14

Counting my blessings :: Week 1

2010-11-01T11:50:00.000-07:00

Day 1

Day 2Day 3
Day 4Day 5

Day 6

Day 7

***A special ten on ten challenge this month... for details, click here***

5 Weeks / 20 Months

2010-10-28T13:11:00.000-07:00

Charlotte is 5 weeks old this week. She has still been having lots of gas and I've eliminated milk, eggs, chocolate, nuts and coffee. On Tuesday I picked up some gas drops and colic tablets - neither seemed to make any difference and I had a really hard night. There I was plagued with a sore throat and all I wanted to do was SLEEP. Charlotte was very needy and was once again gassy and the only solution seemed to be...

...oh I give up... I couldn't find the solution. I was completely exhausted and at wits end when I (in tears I might add) took Charlotte to Pete (who was on the phone at 11pm working) and handed her to him. Pete quickly ended his call and came in the bedroom to ask what was wrong. Through tears I replied that I just couldn't hold her anymore and I needed some space. So he held her and bounced her and dealt with her fussiness. Now...I feel really bad for having interrupted his work as he's been working on this project at work for 9 months and it was going to launch the following night - meaning he would be up ALL night. He was in the last minute reporting and launch night prep mode and here I was handing him a crying baby. It was the first time I've cried since having Charlotte. I have to admit that my emotions/general well being has been very stable this time after giving birth (yay!). I just really needed a break at that moment. Pete had been working from home all day and even our 7pm dinner was interrupted by a phone call from his boss. And the night prior his boss called at 10:30 and asked if he could do some work (he ended up working until midnight that night). So...I was kind of left on my own with a gassy Charlotte all day and night and by Tuesday night I had just had it. We knew this hard work week was coming for Pete, and it's not like he abandoned me - I was just trying to let him have his 'work' space as much as possible - after all, it was only going to hard for a couple days.

So....Pete ran to the store last night and picked up gripe water (when I was picking up gas drops I meant to get this too, but Charlotte was kicking and crying the whole time I was in the store...so I grabbed the first things I saw and got out of there - forgetting the gripe water). All I can say is sweet alabama, last night was AWESOME. I knew Pete would be up late so I was really worried about trying to keep Charlotte calm in the middle of the night all by myself. But, she was amazing! She fell asleep around 11:30 and didn't wake up until 3:40 and when she did wake up, she was so awake and smiley! I was so happy. She was still passing stinky gas like crazy, but it was just coming out and it didn't seem to hurt her much. Yay!!!! I took her down to Pete to say hi at 4am...and he saw her smile for his first time (she started smiling last week, but it hasn't been all that often so he kept missing them). I was so happy to be awake with a happy baby - I gave her more gripe water in hopes of getting more peaceful sleep and it worked - we ended up going back to sleep around 4:40 and sleeping in until 10am or so (I did feed her at some point between 4:40 and 10am, but I don't really remember what time and thankfully it was a quick eat and then right back to sleep). I love gripe water. Now what I don't know is - how long does this last? Will gripe water be a part of our every day routine now?? I think I'll go read up online. ;)
In other non-gassy news...Hailey still loves Charlotte and gets really excited to see her in the mornings. I put Charlotte in Hailey's crib and just had to get a picture as Hailey started patting her back and petting her hair. It was so sweet.

And look how big Charlotte is! She weighs 10 1/2 pounds as of yesterday. Wowsers! She's very sturdy.
Pete gave Charlotte a bath on Monday (10/25). It was his first time giving her a bath all on his own. I have to admit, he does a better job than I do - he really gets in every single roll and cleans it well. I guess I'm just kind of quick since I usually do it when he's gone and Hailey is lingering around trying to dump cups of water on Charlotte's head...

Lita came over yesterday and Hailey was super happy to see her (as always). I was totally exhausted, so it was nice to have her there to entertain Hailey and also to hold a somewhat fussy Charlotte while I ate some lunch.

Speaking of people coming and holding Charlotte, my mom came by on Monday and held her for a while so I could get a break. I called her and in less than 45 minutes she was here. I was just plain tired (and a bit under the weather) and Charlotte wanted to be held...and well, I know my mom likes holding her - so she did just that! :)

and....in Hailey news...
I think we might be finally getting back on track with potty training (we took many steps back after our 1st camping trip this summer when I forgot to bring the potty seat and we told her to go in her diaper). She's been going a couple times a day on the toilet, but recently it's been more of a before nap/bedtime trick. She says she needs to go and then she sits there to delay her bedtime. This week she's been making a comeback though. We ran to Home Depot last Friday and I was a little surprised and worried when Hailey told me she needed to go. I was worried I would find poop in her diaper and I didn't have any diapers on me. So....we went into the bathroom and she hadn't pooping in her diaper - yay! She sat on the big toilet all by herself (she usually freaks out and won't go on the big toilet - Pete's the only one who's been successful with her going without a potty seat on a big toilet). She didn't go, but it was a good effort and worth a picture (she likes having her picture taken and I was trying to be so proud of her for sitting by herself on the big toilet). And it was good practice as I had Charlotte in the sling and Hailey seemed to be wearing so many layers that day. Ug. Trying to get her dressed and get her hands washed all while carrying Charlotte and my purse....what can I say, I'm proud of myself for doing it all and maintaining my sanity.

So she didn't go that time, or the two times she told us when we were at Scott and Bri's on Saturday night....but instead, her recent thing was all about signaling us after she went in her diaper. Thanks Hailey...

So this weekend we told her she was going to start getting time-outs if she kept going in her diaper and telling us after she went instead of before...and I think it's working! She has been signaling us way more often when she needs to go and has actually been going every time when we take her. Woot! I guess threats can be a good thing? We of course have major celebrations every time she goes...and we wave bye bye to the poopie or pee pee (which she says now) and she gets to flush it herself...I think all these things are helping her still think using the toilet is fun. :)

She woke up crying at midnight last night. Thankfully I was still awake. I went in to cuddle her for a minute and she said she needed to go...so I set her on the toilet and she immediately peed. Yay! I just hope she doesn't start waking up multiple times in the middle of the night needing to go... I don't know if I'd like waking up for 2 kids who are up every few hours!!

You might be wondering how I've found so much time to write this long post...and if you are...I will tell you that Pete asked Cassandra (aka Lita) if she would take Hailey for the day today since he would be lacking in the sleep department. She happily obliged and here I am, typing! It feels good to have some 'me' time while Charlotte is napping. And on that note, I'm going to go grab some lunch now. I'm hungry!

Pumpkin Patch

2010-10-22T14:16:00.000-07:00

4 weeks

2010-10-20T21:59:00.000-07:00

Here's our sweet Charlotte at 4 weeks old. I haven't really posted much about her yet and I'm not sure I'll find time to do weekly updates, so I'm going to aim for monthly updates. ;)

I try not to pay attention to how often she eats at night (I try not look at the time), but I am pretty sure she's up 2 times between 12 (when I've been going to sleep) and 6am (when she seems to have some awake time). Pete was pretty sure she slept a 5 hour stretch last night, but I kind of remember feeding one time at some point? Though I'm in such a daze at night, I could be wrong...

On the 2nd day of Charlotte's life she showed signs of colic. She was extremely fussy and nursing wasn't the cure. There seemed to be no cure. She would cry for 4 hours straight between 12am and 4am...and that lasted 3 nights. I called the pediatrician and we reviewed everything I had eaten over the previous few days. I had been eating ice cream and chocolate right before bed... She had me eliminate chocolate, coffee and milk from my diet in hopes that we would have a nice and happy baby again. Everything was going well and after about a week I reintroduced milk products. However, I never drink milk straight - it's always processed in some manner.

I ordered a non-fat (out of habit) chai latte from Starbucks the day before last. I've been havingsoy chai latte's at home and Charlotte hasn't reacted to them but somehow I ordered non-fat instead of soy and we have been paying for it. Yesterday was a rough rough day. The evening after I had the chai latte she was super fussy...and it wasn't that she was hungry. She just cried and cried and kicked her legs all about. It continued through the day yesterday. Pete was working from home - great, right? No. He was on conference calls all day...so I was trying my hardest to quiet Charlotte and keep Hailey from bugging Pete. Exhausting! Evening came and I was so happy to hand Charlotte to Pete...but it ended up being a game of hot potato, except our potato was a crying baby. Pete would bring her back to me assuming she must be hungry because she wouldn't stop crying....but nope, she wouldn't eat...so back to Pete she went (he's more patient with her when she's crying like that). She's doing much much better today, but still a little gassy (and it stinks!!). So...for now, I'm going to make sure I don't have any raw milk.

On to the fun stuff:

Charlotte has a really strong neck and was holding her head up well at 3.5 weeks old.
She has been a cluster feeder from about 6 or 7pm until 10-11pm...I just kind of get settled on our bed and watch TV while she chows down off and on for hours. I've come to enjoy the time relaxing...but she seems to be more efficient now and isn't eating as often before bed.
She has a mega double chin!
She likes to be held upright
We invented the word "scrying" based on what she does (scream-crying)
She's starting to coo and I like it!
In the mornings she sounds all congested and sounds like a pug
She could be Hailey's twin
Her hair is wavy and sticks up randomly after a bath

Sisterly Love

2010-10-15T16:21:00.001-07:00

Hailey loves her little baby sister. She brings her the pacifier when she's crying and will shove it in her mouth. She also tries to feed Charlotte bits of her food and has been putting hair clips on her head (as in, she sets them there and points and tells me to put it in Charlotte's hair). She also LOVES holding her, petting her head and kissing her. It's SO sweet to see her so receptive of her sister!

I'm enjoying motherhood so much right now. I think I even hit some kind of post-natal nesting mode...I've been cleaning and cooking a lot lately! It feels good to be the mother of these two special girls.

The Name Game

2010-10-15T12:16:00.000-07:00

When I was pregnant we had a hard time deciding on a name for our little girl. Olivia was the front runner in the beginning, but that faded as soon as I realized how popular it is right now (I still really love it though). Pete and I didn't quite agree on any names (very unusual for us not to agree on something). He would often suggest names that were completely off the wall (we had some good laughs!) and when he did have a real suggestion, I never quite knew if I should take him seriously.

One day I was driving and a name popped in my head: Katelyn. I called Pete and told him and he said "I like it!". Wow - a first! So as the pregnancy continued and people asked me what we were naming our little girl, I would hesitantly reply "Katelyn".

In the week before her birth, I heard the name Katelyn spoken to 3 different children in a week. I began to doubt our name selection as it seemed so popular and somehow it lost its charm when I heard other people use it with their kids.

So...Pete and I made up a name list, 9 names in total.

Scarlett-Sienna-Katelyn-Clarabelle-Clara-Elizabeth-Charlotte-Veronica-Victoria

We aimed to have it resolved by the time she was born.

No such luck

I imagined this baby having lighter hair...so when she arrived I was surprised to see so much dark hair. She just didn't look like the Katelyn I had imagined and at this point I wasn't sold on the name. We left the Birth Center without having named our daughter.

The week following her birth we slowly started to try out Katelyn for her name. I still didn't really like it and had a hard time introducing her as Katelyn...so I would often say "this is my baby girl" instead of "this is Katelyn". The name list was still on my bedside table.

We retracted "Katelyn" and went back to calling her "baby girl".

I thought maybe the post-pregnancy hormones might be messing with me, so I didn't want to settle on anything right away. This might have annoyed some people (my mom!), but I was just fine and dandy calling my baby "baby girl" for the first 2 weeks of her life.

We continued to discuss names, but never got very far. Pete thought she was a Katelyn...and hadn't accepted or realized that I really didn't want to name her Katelyn. Charlotte was the front runner for me at this point, but it seemed odd to say at first. Pete said we could name her Charlotte if I really thought she looked like a Charlotte, but I didn't want him to be settling just so she'd have a name I liked. I wanted to make sure Pete liked the name, but was doubting that he did since he kept saying she looked like a Katelyn. Every morning and night I would ask Pete what her name was...and he would either say Charlotte, or throw out new options (Evelyn, Elizabeth and Katelyn being the recurring ones). All the while he was waiting for me to be passionate about a name, but at this point, I was worn out and passion was not something I was feeling. I liked a few of the options, but from the beginning I thought she looked like a Charlotte. We had started calling her Charlotte once in a while at home...just trying it out...but I wasn't sure if it was going to stick.

Yesterday I called Pete and told him I wanted to publish her name on Facebook and so I asked him over the phone what we should name her. He said, "Charlotte."

So, Charlotte she is!

Charlotte Marie Myron

Birth Story - Baby Girl #2

2010-10-12T22:30:00.000-07:00

I'd hoped to write this sooner, but what can I say...I've been hibernating and recovering rather than writing a blog post. But alas, here it is.

Monday, September 20th we went to Overlake for an ultrasound to make sure that the womb was still a healthy environment for our baby to remain in. The tech who performed the ultrasound had said that our babies femur bones were so long they were "off the charts". Her head was measuring big too. She also came up with a 8lb 14oz guess for size... So a big and tall baby was the prognosis - that didn't sound fun. Then the doctor came in, took a look, adjusted some measurements and guessed that our baby was somewhere between 7 and 8lbs. I liked the sound of that much better! Since everything showed up healthy on the ultrasound it was determined safe to continue pregnancy into the 42nd week (if I was really that far along).

So the following day we went to the birth center for a 41.5 week appointment and had my membranes stripped again (they also did this the previous Thursday at my 41 week appointment). I was hopeful this time it would help start labor.

That evening I started noticing contractions as we sat down to dinner around 7pm. I'd had contractions like this before so I tried not to pay attention to them this time. They were close together, but not painful at that point. We continued on with our night...put Hailey to bed and then settled into bed for some TV time. We started timing contractions at midnight and after an hour and a half of timing them, my contractions were all between 3-6 minutes apart and a minute long. Since we were preparing for a quick delivery, my midwife had said to call if contractions were 7 minutes apart or less...so at 1:30 we paged our midwife Nicole. She called back and said that another couple was going to be meeting her at the birth center at 2:30am so she told us we could arrive at the same time and labor there (at this point I was really confused as to how early/late to go to the birth center - my last experience consisted of arriving and then promptly pushing Hailey out). My mom came over to get Hailey and we gathered up our bags and headed out the door.

We got to the birth center around 2:30am and found our birth suite to be a calming oasis. It was like a hotel but with candles burning and music playing! We chose a different birth suite than we had with Hailey. I wanted new memories of this birth and didn't want to be expecting things to go as they did for Hailey's birth. Since there were 2 of us in labor at the same time, we talked with the team about how the resources would be used (an extra student and midwife were brought in to provide support in case we were both delivering babies at the same time). The other couple had met with the other midwife more times than we had, so it was determined that the other midwife would attend the other birth if needed and I would have my normal midwife. So on we went.
They checked vitals and at 3am they told us to try and sleep for a bit if we could. The plan was to break my water in about 3 hours and at that point it sounded like a good plan. Pete and I laid down and my contractions seemed to space themselves further apart (though they slowly grew in intensity). I began to feel a bit of stress and worry "oh no, did we come too soon? what if this isn't really labor?!! I'm supposed to sleep through this??". Pete was able to sleep a bit. I was not. I was worried and also wondering why I should try to sleep if it put my labor at ease - the opposite of what I wanted to have happen. Shortly before 6am my contractions got to be quite uncomfortable. Laying down wasn't comfortable so I got up and started pacing around the room between contractions and was feeling much better that I was obviously progressing. I opened the door to find my birth team...only to find the place to be empty. I heard a baby down the hall cry and realized that the other baby had just been born. The midwives eventually walked out of that room and said "one down, one to go!". They told me to eat some food while they caught their breath. I ate a granola bar and had started on a banana (yuck!) when they came in to attend to me. At this point, my contractions were really getting strong. I was in active labor - no doubt about it.

My labor was progressing, and for that I was glad. Breaking the bag of waters seemed like a good way to get things really moving, but I wasn't prepared for it. I'm not sure how I could have prepared better...

At 7:15am I was at 7cm and they broke my water. You could say a state of panic swept over me. My body responded and I suddenly went from hard contractions to "oh my gosh I don't know what to do with myself it hurts so bad" contractions. I wouldn't say that these contractions were any different than what I had with Hailey's birth - but through Hailey's 7 hours of labor I was able to naturally progress and apply the pain management/coping techniques I'd learned in various classes I'd taken. I wasn't ready for the change of pace that breaking my water brought on and in looking back, I wish we hadn't gone that route. When I labored with Hailey I didn't use Pete at all, I was in a zone - a spaced out and focused zone that didn't require anything but a dark quiet room. This time, I clung to Pete as contraction after contraction hit me.

They put hot water in the tub and I got in. I was holding Jacki's hand (student midwife) and squeezing like crazy while Pete ran to get a cold washcloth to put on my forehead and also brought some water for me. I felt like pushing, and they said I could. So I did. But I didn't know how close the baby was to coming out...so I didn't want to waste my resources pushing. I had crazy thoughts and was fighting the pain instead of working through it. I hit a point where in my head I called myself stupid for trying to do this naturally again. I was screaming in my head "cut the baby out, just get it out of me! This is the stupidest thing I've ever done, why am I here?!". Mentally I wasn't doing well. I had a moment like this during Hailey's birth, but this time it seemed to last longer and I was really beating myself up. As I was having crazy thoughts about the whole situation I managed to stop myself and say "how did you do it last time?". This was huge. I realized that I needed to change my state of mind. I finally muttered out loud "I can do this!" and everyone told me back "you CAN do this!!" and so at some point after that I took a deep breath and with all my might and determination I pushed. I really wanted to get her out and end the crazy business. And what do you know...with that big push - out came her head. Until this point, no one had even seen her head so they were quite surprised to see it there so suddenly. She was born at 7:57am (42 minutes after breaking my water).
Pete caught her and brought her to my chest. She let out a little cry and then was quiet and content. We finally got to meet our little girl! I held her for a while in the tub and admired her. Pete cut the cord and then held her skin to skin while I got cleaned up and moved over to the bed. 20 minutes after she was born she nursed and proved to be good at it!
At our request, my parents brought Hailey to the birth center to meet her little sister. Pete and I ate the breakfast my parents brought us while our little girl had a newborn exam.
We headed home and it was a beautiful clear blue day (just like it had been the day Hailey was born!). We didn't name her right away. Well actually, I'd be lying if I said she was officially named as of today (3 weeks later). Another post to come (soon I hope) on that topic...

Sweet Baby Girl
September 22nd, 2010 - 7:57am
7lbs 12 oz - 20 inches long

Ten on Ten :: 10.10.10

2010-10-10T20:13:00.000-07:00

Ten on Ten: Take a photo every hour for ten consecutive hours on the tenth of each month. Document a day of your life and find beauty among the ordinary moments.

41 Weeks Pregnant

2010-09-18T06:34:00.000-07:00

Here I am. Pregnant. I don't want to complain...because as far as we know, this little girl inside me is healthy and I have much to be thankful for. But understand that I'm feeling compelled to document my feelings at this time so here comes the bit that might be construed as complaining.

Waiting for this little one to arrive has been a bit tiresome. I've had 2 different nights over the past week where I had some decent contractions and thought, "this is it" and then I wake in the morning to discover absolutely nothing going on with my body and I feel a little sad and recently, a little bitter about the situation. The picture above is from Thursday night. I'd started having contractions and they were getting a bit strong and uncomfortable so we decided that Pete should take Hailey to my parent's house just in case things progressed. Taking her at 11pm seemed easier than waking my parents up at 3am to have my mom drive over and wait for Hailey to wake up in the morning. I made sure to get a good cuddle in with Hailey before Pete took her. Maybe trying to 'prepare' jinxed the whole thing. I went to bed feeling a little uncomfortable, but figuring I should try to rest before I needed all my energy to push a baby out...and I slept until 8am the next morning. Okay, well...I was up every hour or so to pee, but that was pretty much the extent of it.

Hailey was such a nice and early surprise - everyone thought this new baby would be arriving early and with a fast labor (still hoping for that one!). That will teach us not to assume (you know what they say about assuming...)! Now I'm fearful that the newborn clothes I packed in my bag won't fit her. My labor bag has been in the car for a month...

I have to keep telling myself that due dates are an estimation and that they can be up to two weeks off. So I wait..

My 41 week appointment on Thursday went well. We had a fetal stress test and all was well there. I also had membranes stripped and was sure I would be having this girl soon after. I was dilated to 4-5 already and my cervix had less than 1/2cm to thin. Things were seeming ripe and ready. We've been trying all those at home 'tricks' to start labor...but to no avail. Obviously.

I know the baby will come out when she's ready. I don't think my body forgot what to do... I have to keep telling myself that. It's been a struggle for me as I wait for my body to naturally start labor. The great 2010 Battle of Ways. Do we try to induce labor or just keep waiting for my body to do it's own thing?

I am supposed to get an ultrasound of the placenta on Monday to make sure it's still healthy and providing nutrients to the baby. I 'forgot' to schedule it yesterday as I was hoping labor would start and I wouldn't make it all the way to Monday without giving birth. Now I'm not so sure this baby is ever coming out on her own and I'm feeling a bit guilty for not having my ultrasound on the schedule (I honestly did forget to schedule it and by the time I remembered, it was past 5pm).

So here I am. Waiting. Each morning is a little more frustrating than the last. I'm trying not to dwell on it, but it's hard waking up to a completely quiet uterus.

At the end of this, I can't wait to hold my little girl....and the waiting will all be worth it I'm sure. At this point I'm just getting a little worried about her size...and getting her pushed out is sounding more and more daunting. Prayers would be much appreciated.

In case you are curious, Pete and I have been married 31 months in total and for 28 months of our marriage I have been either pregnant or breastfeeding. I'm very ready to be done with pregnancy and to go down the road to being a somewhat normal person (lose the baby weight, have energy, etc). Thankfully I'm married to the most awesome guy on the planet and he hasn't thought the last 28 months to be out of the ordinary.

Here's hoping my next post is a birth story...

10 on 10 :: September 2010

2010-09-10T17:19:00.001-07:00

Well, it's my due date today and I didn't want to do 10 on 10 today...because I had decided the day would be boring since I wasn't in labor. Once I saw what Hailey was doing with her crayons I decided to grab the little camera and partake in the photo taking. We even spiced up the day by visiting the Tiger Mountain Zoo - fun times!

The end of pregnancy

2010-09-05T17:53:00.001-07:00

I haven't written in a while so I thought I should quickly jot down my thoughts as I'm in the final days of pregnancy with baby girl #2.

The first go round of pregnancy was always so exciting - well, other than the puking. I would count each week and read up about what was going on in the womb. Then surprise! Before I thought possible, Hailey arrived. I didn't have any anxiety about birth, I wasn't expecting it so soon...and it was a pleasant surprise to meet our little girl so early (16 days before our due date).

Round two has been interesting. Been there, done that...I'm ready to meet the baby and skip forward a few months to the point where we're getting some sleep. It sounds so heartless I know. But really, do you look forward to multiple late night feedings every night and not getting a full 8 hour stretch of sleep?

This time, I'm nearing my due date and anticipating labor. Actually getting quite a bit anxious about it the more time passes. How long will it be, will we make it to the birth center, how am I going to push out a baby bigger than Hailey was (she was only 6lbs 6.5oz), will everything go well, will there be complications, etc. All these questions of wonder... And every time I have a weird 'sign' of labor, I get a bit more on edge. Every time I sit up in bed I find myself wondering "is my water going to break when I get out of bed this time?" (that's what happened last time). It's strange.

Meanwhile, this little girl is still very active and her knees/feet/elbows/hands all seem so huge as they shove at my sides. It has been so sweet to watch Hailey learn to say 'baby' over the last couple months and even sweeter when she comes over to snuggle on my belly with 'baby'. She has even picked up on us poking and pushing at my belly and will often pull up my shirt and do the same as she says 'baby' over and over. She gives baby lots of kisses and even talks gibberish to her once in a while. There are times when Hailey is 'all done' with baby and will make it known by signing and saying 'all done' as she's pulling my shirt back down. Boy will it be a surprise when we can't just be all done with the baby once she's in the outside world!

So... I'm excited, anxious, and curious ...and ready to get a move on. I'm so looking forward to holding our new baby girl and examining her little face and seeing what color (if any) hair she has (I'm voting blond due to my early 'girl' gender dream in which she was blond). I want to count those little toes and kiss those little hands. I am looking forward to watching Hailey and her sister grow up together. So many things I am looking forward to (just not the sleepless nights!).

But for now...patience will have to do.

Hailey talks on the phone

2010-08-26T09:57:00.000-07:00

Hailey has been talking SO much these days. I love it. She knows what she's saying...though it doesn't always make sense to us. We love to hear it anyway...

Another 'look how cute my kid is' post

2010-07-23T13:42:00.000-07:00

I have been enjoying Hailey sooooo much lately, I just want to capture it here so I can look back later and remember what she was like around the 17 month mark. :)

I put braids in Hailey's hair for the first time the other day. Her hair is so long and lately she has been more willing to sit still for me to style it. She gets compliments on her hair where ever we go (example: 3 different groups of people at Costco commented on how cute her pigtails were the other day). I took the picture above at lunch time today. She was eating arugula and I asked her to smile...so polite she smiled with her mouth closed since she had food in her mouth!
Hailey and Willy are best buds. In the mornings she freaks out when she sees him and screams "WILLLLLLLLLLLLY! HIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII WILLLLLLLY!!!!!"
Willy lets Hailey dump dirt, flowers and rocks all over him. He just lays there... Sometimes he gets a little annoyed, gets up and lays back down about 2 feet away from where he started and then she gets right back to it. He's a really good babysitter!

Hailey LOVES playing in the dirt. I found her using a shoe as a shovel the other day. I quickly replaced the shoe with a bucket and she continued on using her hands as the shovel. I should probably get her a little shovel - she gets lots of splinters in her hands and feet these days...

I leave the front door open so Hailey can go in and out while I'm in the kitchen working on dinner...I walked around the corner to check on her one day and this is what I found on the window...

Hailey runs around the house blabbering things while she plays. As of a couple days ago she now says 'that' and points and repeats 'that, that, that...' until we figure out what it is she wants. Funny how they just kind of come up with 'that' on their own!
Many mornings while I'm getting our breakfast ready, she will bring me my shoes and try to put them on my feet. Last night Pete was standing in the kitchen and she brought a pair of his shoes over to him (pretty awesome she knows which ones are his). I will often find her sitting on the floor by the front door frantically trying to put her shoes on so she can go outside to play in the dirt.
Hailey discovered her Easter basket in the closet and LOVES playing with the crinkled paper filler. She begs me to play with it if I put if up on the desk where she can't reach it. Last night before bed we were having her put all the paper back in the basket and every time she would pick up just one little piece and put it in about 20 would fall out of the other side of the basket. Pete and I had a good laugh watching her 'clean up'. I think she could be entertained for hours...
Hailey loves giving kisses. She makes a perfect "muah" sound as she does it and sometimes the kisses just keep coming. It's super sweet and definitely a memory I want to keep on my list of favorites.
Hailey likes hanging out in her little pool on the deck. We are still in swim lessons and while it's great for Hailey and all...I've found that being this big and pregnant makes some things in the water a bit challenging. I was supposed to walk backwards with my head under in 4' deep (aka shallow) water holding Hailey in front of me under water (did I mention the walking backwards part??)...the goal was to see (I have goggles) how long she can hold her breath and to watch for the queues that she needs to come up...but I couldn't stay under or get coordinated enough to get all the pieces working together - I kept losing my feet as my belly pulled me up! It seems that my belly wants to be a buoy. I would love to float in the water with my buoy for hours, but unfortunately that's not part of Hailey's swim lesson... :( Hailey's favorite part of swim lessons is when we swim around collecting little balls. She loves balls and starts freaking out when the teacher brings them in the water. She still doesn't enjoy being on her back in the water and squirmed quite a bit as we worked on the back float this week.
Hailey LOVES playing with her cousins Sylvia and Ella. She thinks Sylvia is the coolest and loves it when Sylvia takes her for rides in the jeep. Just a few rules to remember "no shoes in the jeep". Sylvia has really taken on a nice 'big cousin' role and it's SO cute to watch her tote Hailey around.
Hailey loves playing in the sand/water with her cousins too! I'm amazed at how long she can stay occupied by playing with sand (I guess much like dirt).

Hailey really thinks Ella's neat too...she wants to follow her around at gymnastics and do everything Ella is doing. Speaking of gymnastics...we have been to 3 classes (we skipped one). She took some warming up, but by the 3rd session she was much more into a few of the activities. She likes running on the trampoline best and she did some carrot rolls down a pad this week and giggled through it every time...so I think that's a close 2nd. Last night she did quite a few somersaults (with me assisting) at home and though she wouldn't do them in class, she thought it was SO fun to do and kept bending over and putting her head and hands on the ground waiting for me to roll her over.
I just love seeing these 3 Myron girls together...check out those faces!

Home Birth

2010-07-22T13:35:00.000-07:00

It took me a bit off guard at an appointment when the midwife asked me if I am considering a home birth. Why...um, hmmmm....maybe? They gave me some suggested reading and since then, I've been pondering the idea a bit more seriously.

Hailey's birth was such an amazing event for us, it could have only been better (at the time) if the car ride hadn't taken place. There I was, ready to push, hovering in the passenger seat as Pete was going 80mph up 405. I was in so much pain at the time that my thoughts had turned to 'I need drugs!'. I knew in the back of my head at the time though, I was much too far along for drugs to even be an option and so I released that idea and focused on my hovering technique as I haphazardly laid there hoping not to have Hailey in the car. We made it to the birth center in time and after they filled the bathtub I had the peaceful birth I had hoped for. In looking back, the car ride is now a great part of the story and I truly can relate to all the women who have had to travel in a car as they are laboring. That being said, all but that one part of my birth experience was pretty calm and dare I say relaxing. Okay, okay, so it wasn't really relaxing, but my mind through it all was at peace as I felt like I knew what was going on with my body and I let my body do what it needed in order to expel my baby.

Ah right, back to the question at hand - to have a home birth or not. There's this teeny little itsy bitsy fear I have and I believe every woman must face this when looking at childbirth as a whole - no matter where child birth takes place. The big 'what if' question: What if something goes wrong?

Home births are only midwife assisted for normal and healthy pregnancies. Being that Hailey's birth went so well, the worries of having complications has been much reduced for me. So now I'm left with the big question - do we plan for a home birth? I'm thinking so at this point.

Just for my reference, here are some books I was recommended to read in order to help me with the home birth decision:
Ina Maye's "Guide to Childbirth"
Ina Maye's "Spiritual Midwifery"
Barbara Harper's "Gentle Birth Choices"

I have been reading a bit online and thought I'd share some links to sites I've been reading:
Is Home Birth for You?
Citizens for Midwifery (this isn't specifically about home birth, but it's a look into what midwifes provide)
Gentle Birth

As part of the decision making process I am planning on talking to a couple people who have had home births. I really want to hear their stories and I hope that this will provide the final inspiration I need.

Pregnancy eating habits, projects and other things

2010-07-18T21:24:00.000-07:00

So....I'm 32 weeks pregnant and still feeling quite tired all the time (as in, winded upon going up 5 stairs). I'm not sure my iron supplements are doing the trick - even though I'm on double the dose. Maybe I should be tripled up at this point...which reminds me that I'm out of my iron supplements after I take one more dose tonight (guess you know what I'll be doing tomorrow!). I think the underlying issues here are my dislike of grocery shopping and cooking (other than breakfast, for some reason I love making breakfast). This great dislike causes me to 'get by' with my eating, and therefore, I don't fill my body with all the proper nutrients. I struggle in this area. Big time. I will do well for a while and then...I fail.

I never really feel hungry. I think I'm eating out of habit at this point (in the 1st trimester the motto was 'eat or barf' so I chose to eat). I snack through the day (not usually on junk, but on nuts, raisins and things like that) ...and when it comes time to eat dinner (which is where I imagine I should be working on that iron intake), I'm not hungry. It's not until Pete walks through the door that I think, oh right...I need to make dinner. Then it's a matter of, "what should I make??" and by this time, I'm so worn down that I look for the easiest possible thing and badda bing, I make something somewhat bland and boring and by the time I start cooking and we eat, it's usually pretty late and I'm left feeling unsatisfied because I feel like I should have provided more nutrients to my family at mealtime.

It seems I don't have much brain power to figure out what to even make for dinner these days. I have good intentions, really, I do - sometimes it just doesn't pan out. Example: I bought some ready to grill steak kabobs at the local market last week thinking, "I need to eat more meat!" and I ended up forgetting about them sitting there in the fridge and had to throw them out today. I also had some peppers and onion to add to the grilling...and since I didn't use the steak, I didn't use the vegi's and now those are also going bad. A waste of money and good food. :( I guess all this to say....I need to be eating better and it's like my brain has totally shut off on how to do that without being in the kitchen all day. Somehow I manage to give Hailey (and sometimes Pete) the right stuff, but even tonight as she ate spaghetti w/meatballs and steamed broccoli, I couldn't bring myself to eat the same because they were leftovers (I don't know why, but I'm really turned off by leftovers!).

I guess I'm realizing that I need to do something to fix this problem, but it takes so much energy to do that. That's the big issue. My lack of energy is caused by my malnutrition and since I'm already so low on energy, it seems to be an even greater task to get enough energy to fix the problem.

When I do make a delicious meal that I know is packed with goodness, I feel great about it. But it just doesn't happen near as often as I'd like.

So. There you have it. My thoughts. My frustrations. This topic came about as I sat here reflecting on my meal choice tonight. I had a microwaveable bean burrito (it took all of one minute and 15 seconds to cook) and some goldfish crackers for dinner. Ug. I knew it wasn't helping me, but it was easy and I was tired and knew I needed to eat something...so I went for the easiest thing i could get my hands on.

Why can't I just be an amazing grocery shopper/chef and whip up the right kind of stuff for my family like it's no big thing? I just wish I had a personal chef so I could eat all the right things and not have to think about it. That would be SO dreamy....
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Back to the iron problem. I did get a cast iron pan in hopes that it would help me get more iron in my body. I thought it would be a pain to use, but after making pancakes, eggs and even grilled cheese sandwiches in it today, I LOVE IT! It's super easy to use/clean and I hope hope hope that this new pan will help me get some extra iron in my body. After looking at this linky I think I'll be making my scrambled eggs and everything else in my new pan every time!
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Other pregnancy news is that my hips and general pelvic region have been doing some widening this past week (or that's how it feels). I woke up one morning and was like, "woah, um....OUCH - wha happen?!". It was a bit painful to walk around that day...youchy, I don't remember it being so sudden when I was carrying Hailey, but this time I guess my body just knows what to do and thought it would prepare - seems so early... My jeans are still fitting, so I guess the hips haven't really moved that much, but ouchy ouchy it feels like things are getting ready for a baby to head on through (pun intended...).
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We are pretty sure we settled on a name for our little one. Pete keeps bringing back Hamburglar, but don't worry folks, I won't let that get on the birth paperwork!! I don't want to jinx the whole thing though, so I'll say we're still discussing (and we are...as I have to keep telling Pete the name is NOT going to be hamburglar!).
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This little girl is crazy busy inside me. At night she likes to practice gymnastics. I think she's getting pretty good at headstands. Speaking of, she's head down and has been for a couple weeks. The day she flipped was wEiRd. I felt like my water was going to break at any moment and wanted to puke (okay, I didn't WANT to puke, I just felt like I was going to...). After that day I noticed that her little feet and hands had swapped places and well, that was confirmed at my midwife appointment.
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House projects are coming along. We now have ALL of the doors replaced/installed! Only a few closet doors are painted and none have handles or knobs yet, but all of the doors are in and the trim is being worked on as I type! The house is still a total wreck in certain areas. I finally got the kitchen back in order and that feels good to have one room done. Well, okay...it's not even done, but it's closer to done than the rest so I guess that's something to smile about. :) Pete's painting the dining room trim right now and hopefully we'll be able to get that room back to normal so we can eat together once again. When the weather is cooperating we eat outside, but lately the mornings have been really cold and we've been eating in the kitchen (where there's only room for one adult to sit at the moment).
Other big news is that we bought a boat this week...and no, you can't have a ride - yet. ;) I have always said that I only want a boat if it has a place to sleep and prepare some food. I don't have much interest in ski boats (fun to go out on, yes, but I have always wanted a cruising boat - one we can go visit the San Juan islands on and that the girls could nap/play on in a spot out of the sun) . Not that we were looking for boats at this point in our life (though I always joke about how Pete's old car is taking up space for our imaginary boat)!

I don't know why Pete was looking at boats on craigslist. Well, okay...I guess I know him well enough now to know that he's always looking at things on craigslist and so when he found this boat for sale for a reasonable within budget (which was very low) price....he left my browser open to the ad so I would see it in the morning. The next morning I discovered what he'd been eying and he promptly IMed me from work to ask if I saw the boat he found on CL. So....yes, I saw it and agreed...sure, let's go look at this project boat. We took my brother Jason and away we went to look at this potential driveway space hog. Oh boy. A project it is.

Pete announced that he would (finally) sell his 1992 audi (that has been sitting in the driveway for too long not being used) and that he would work on getting rid of the motorcycle we still have in the garage (that one needs a little work before he can sell it, but he said he'll get it done).

So. With these statements made and a couple nights of discussing and sleeping on the decision....Pete took his mom and step dad Kenny to look at it (Kenny has done boat restoration stuff before - so I really wanted his opinion on the thing) and home they came, boat in tow.
The good news is that the boat only has about 20 hours on a rebuilt engine and the engine sounds great. I guess the engine it has is a very good engine and pretty common, so he's not worried about the engine being an issue at this point. And he likes tinkering on engines...so ya. The major work that needs doing is replacing all the upholstery, installing some seats and painting the boat (it's mostly sanded down, the guy that sold it was mid-restore and his job has taken him traveling all over and left him with no time to work on the boat). So...it looks a bit crappy right now, but the idea is that with some 'quick and easy' (yeah right) fixing up it should turn a decent profit. Of course we might keep it as a nice little family boat for a while before the profit... The other reassuring thought behind the purchase was that we could probably get our money back out of it easily selling it as is if we decide it's too big of a project.

I had no hopes of it getting it in the water this year (I think we'll be a little occupied with a new baby!), but Pete is sure he'll be testing the waters sometime this summer. And by testing the waters, I really mean...he'll be testing his boater skills (currently very low) and will be praying that he doesn't crash into anything or that the boat doesn't sink as he takes the boat on a test run in the marina. The idea would be to stay near land/dock in case of malfunction. Oh, also the goal is to go during the week in the middle of the day when it's really overcast and the launch area is empty. It might take a while to learn how to do all this. Pete will be taking the online boating safety course and will I'm sure be reading lots and lots of stuff on the web about boating to get more familiar before he takes the big plunge....

Anywho, so things are crazy around here and we (as always) have a ton of work to do on various projects. We might be crazy for buying an old project boat (did I mention that the boat is older than I am?!)...but I guess crazy or not, we are always up for an adventure (we tend to likes ones that have potential to turn a profit) and Pete likes garage projects - so I just hope the boat doesn't become a nightmare of a project.
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I should probably mention Hailey at least once in this post...so here it is. It appears that she likes to cook (at least someone in this family does!). I guess it's a little too early to tell if it will stick, but for now, she likes to dump things in her pots and stir them around. It's cute. She's cute. :)
If you have made it this far, go you! There's a lot of text this time and I'm sure I could write a bunch more, but it's past that time where I'm extremely tired and really need to catch some z's...

Hailey kisses the baby belly

2010-07-03T11:36:00.001-07:00

Trip to Italy: The Last Days

2010-06-22T09:49:00.000-07:00

We headed up to the bakery in the morning and stopped by the park on the way back.
We stopped by the market and grabbed some food to grub on down by the water.
I should mention that the weather was incredible the entire time we were in Italy. It was in the high 70's almost everywhere (more like the 80's in Rome). I thought about swimming on this day...
I didn't end up swimming...because it just didn't seem like that much fun to go by myself. But I did soak up the sun and enjoy our mini meal.
Hailey and I played in the water...and then this old guy was hollering at me...and speaking german I think. I had no idea what he was saying, but I finally figured out that he wanted to take a picture of Hailey and me. It was strange, but I stood there in the water and smiled for him and he took a couple pics. I'm not sure if he thought I was someone else or if he just thought we were cute out there playing in the water. It was just kind of funny and random - I wished I could have understood him to know what he was thinking...
We were out there all day. It was so relaxing (just what we had in mind for the last leg of our trip).
This picture of Pete and Hailey is one of my favorite pictures from our trip. Love it.
We ended the night with some gelato. The following morning we were heading to Milan...goodbye Cinque Terre!
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So....we woke up, gathered our things and headed to the train station. It was another beautiful day.
Hailey charmed all the people on the train and even got her own seat for a portion of the trip. We arrived in Milan and it was FREEZING!!! We were feeling a bit blessed to have had such warm weather everywhere we went because it seemed a cold front was making its way into Italy as we were departing.
I saw McDonalds (in the shopping district) and somehow convinced Pete that we should eat there. I enjoyed the fries and I might have even had a coke (if you will remember, I don't usually drink soda, but had strong cravings for Coke while in Italy and so indulged a few times).
We did some shopping and also visited the cathedral. Our flight didn't leave until 6am the following morning, so we spent the day walking around seeing the city and of course did some window-shopping. We didn't have reservations anywhere that night and we decided to head to the airport to see what was around there in the way of hotels. It was about an hour bus ride to the airport and we soon realized that there wasn't much of anything around the airport (the guidebook didn't list any hotels near the airport either). The airport seemed to be in the middle of nowhere. We had to be at the airport early the next morning, and had found that the only way to get there from Milan would be to take a taxi since the bus and trains didn't run that early. At 70euros for a taxi from Milan to the airport, we decided we would take the bus the day before and just sort of spend the night in the airport (budget traveling I tell you!).
By the time we got to the airport all the ticket booths were closed and we were unable to go through security to get to the lounge areas as we had hoped. So....it was either take refuge under really bright lights in the main ticketing area on the few seats there, or find another option. We found a cove of sorts. It was the best option around that we found.
We made Hailey a little bed on the floor, put her in her pj's and got her to sleep. We took turns laying next to her in an effort to get any sleep ourselves. Pete and I didn't really sleep much at all.
Our little girl was ready to go in the morning! It was a long day....long long day of flying...but we managed and arrived home safe and sound. :)
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HOORAY! I did it! This concludes my Italy 2009 trip report.

Trip to Italy: Days 15 & 16

2010-06-21T21:06:00.000-07:00

Monterosso al Mare was beautiful. We grabbed some breakfast at a touristy place (every restaurant seemed touristy and expensive) and then we walked back towards the train station to head to our intended destination - Vernazza.
Ah ha! Upon arriving at the train station, I was immediately pleased with what I saw. This was the Italy I wanted to see! We didn't have reservations anywhere and had read in our guide book that there are lots of apartments to rent on a walk up basis and we found this to be quite true. We started walking towards the water and found many signs stating "apartment for rent, ring bell". So we rang. People either shouted out their windows to tell us they were full or they came down to meet us and then showed us to their rental unit. The rates were pretty good and there were many rooms to choose from. We finally settled on one of the more spacious units close to the train station. The windows were really good (I was concerned about the train noise being an issue, but with the windows closed, you couldn't hear the trains). I LOVED the view outside the windows of our 3rd floor room...
It really was the perfect room for us...I spent quite a bit of time sitting on the bed gazing out the windows.
Here I am at the entrance to our apartment as we were heading out to explore. We spent the day exploring the town and seeing the sights. This was the last stop on our big trip and we had 3 nights in this town so we kicked back, took our time wandering around, and enjoyed every minute of it. It seems I haven't mentioned gelato in a while. Don't fret - we made sure to have some every day while we were in the Cinque Terre.
We also had plenty of pizza, bread, salami, cheese, grapes and wine on this trip. You could say we were trying to be budget travelers on this trip. Once in a while we'd eat out, but we were fairly conservative as we were aware that the dollar on the euro wasn't in our favor. In looking back I wish we had explored the food a bit more, but I'd like to think I'm saving that greater exploration for another trip in the coming years.
We hiked around a bit, sat at the waters edge and enjoyed our time.
At some point we settled into our room for the evening and drifted off to sleep.
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The next morning we headed up the street to Il Pirata delle Cinque Terre which is run by Sicilian twin brothers. They are known for their pastries and I was ready to get a taste. It was excellent and we managed to visit this gem in the following days as well.
We stumbled upon a playground on the way to the bakery and Hailey got her first real ride on a swing. She loved it...
We took a quick break in our room and then headed out for a day of hiking. This was one of the things I was most excited for during our trip planning, so I was plenty giddy to get out and do it! We started in Vernazza and headed toward Corniglia. There were lots of stairs and I was lucky to be carrying Hailey on my back for this leg. I don't know how long it took us to get from town to town, but the book says this portion is a 90 minute hike. It was beautiful.
We ate lunch in Corniglia. I had some sort of seafood salad and Pete had a pesto pasta dish of some sort (I'm guessing by the pic).

We continued on our hike and arrived in Manarola and promptly found a reward for our efforts.
We hit the trail again, but this time it was a paved walkway...not so much hiking on this leg of the journey. We had to pose here on the Via dell'Amore (Pathway of Love). The trail became established as a lovers' meeting point for boys and girls from the two towns (meet in the middle kind of thing).
We reached Riomaggiore and ended our day of hiking with some fruity drinks in a bar overlooking the water.
We rode the train back to Monterosso al Mare and decided to have dinner there. We chose to go to the top rated 'classy' place that was listed in Rick Steves' guidebook. It turned out that everyone else visiting from America had decided to eat there as well and there was a distinct uncomfortable feeling as we walked into the restaurant. We should have turned around. The whole place filled with an 'oh no, they aren't possibly bringing a BABY in here?!' kind of air that seemed to ruin any hope of having an enjoyable meal. In all of the eating we did in Italy, this was the most uncomfortable and it was because of the people (stupid Americans! (no offense intended friends)). The girl at the table next to us made a snotty somewhat under her breath (but not quiet enough for me not to hear) remark as we sat down at our table. It was obvious that almost every person in this place thought we were rude for bringing our kid to eat with us. We were sure to ruin their dinner environment. I think the pressure got to Hailey. She had been so good at every meal on our whole trip - she just knew this would be a great place to start fussing...it was kind of like she said, "you think I'm annoying by just being here? I'll show you annoying!" and she proceeded to get a bit grumpy about things. I don't even remember what we ate...the mood was just so strange. Pete and I chuckled about it as we headed back to Vernazza...we loved how enthusiastic the Italians were about having our baby in their restaurants - she was always making everyone smile - we just narrowed it down to the American's being the selfish ones who couldn't understand why we would go to dinner with our baby in tow.
We had fun at the park while we waited for our train back to Vernazza to arrive. Hailey once again went on a swing and thoroughly enjoyed it. I would like to note that the color combo of the dolphin and the spring....are the same color combo as my old stunt bike (man I loved that thing).
This concludes days 15 and 16 of our trip to Italy...just one or two more days to go! I'm SO close to finishing these Italy posts - I'm amazed that I might actually finish! :P

Trip to Italy: Day 14

2010-06-21T11:25:00.000-07:00

So I realize that I never sat down to finish my Italy trip posts. Now that my sister-in-law Kari is blogging about their recent travels to Spain - I'm feeling inspired to get the last leg of our trip documented here.

During our trip I kept a little diary. At the end of each day I would write a little summary of what we did. For some reason the last 4 days or so were so relaxing that I fell off the writing wagon (much like my trip blogging itself and maybe this is why).
I think I left off with Civita Di Bagnoregio...last I wrote, we had been a bit creeped out by the empty town and decided that we needed to leave the next day - even though there wasn't bus service on Sunday. We decided that we would walk. The bus had taken an hour to get us out here, but we decided to make the most of the beautiful country side and we would enjoy a long walk back to Orvieto.

That was our plan. Morning came and the church bells woke us up bright and early (note the bell tower on the right in the pic above...our room was in the building to the left - the top left window was ours and the bell was loud). We went downstairs to have our breakfast...which was orange juice and small prepackaged chocolate filled croissants. We decided that we would spend a little time looking around and then check out. Upon stepping out of the B&B Pete heard a couple speaking English and went over to ask them if we could hang a ride to Orvieto with them. Turns out they were Canadians. They were a bit baffled at how we knew they had driven there or how we knew they spoke English (we were across the courtyard from them when Pete saw them) and why we needed a ride in the first place. A quick explanation about the buses not running on Sundays...the town being much smaller than we anticipated and us not planning well for the situation...and we were IN. :) The couple wanted to have a drink before leaving so we got to wander the town and see it all.

We were on a hunt for Hailey food once again since we ran out the day before. She was hungry. We wanted something more than bread. We went to this little bruschetta place and asked if they had any fruit and explained that we didn't plan well and we needed something for our daughter. The girl working there happened to have an apple in her sack lunch and shared it with us. She was really nice and made us some wonderful bruschetta and then sat down with us to chat. She told us about her family and the little town...how they used to live there, but now she lives on the 'main' land on the other side of the foot bridge and only comes over to run their tourist business. We wandered around, took a few pics and then headed off to find our new Canadian friends.
We walked across the footbridge and headed for their rental car - a BMW. Okay, this wasn't so bad - free ride in a nice car with nice people - good work Pete! We learned that she was the mayor of King City, Ontario and it sounded like they had a nice life in Canada. We stopped to take pictures along the way and Pete and I realized just how long of a walk it would have been if we hadn't hitched a ride.
The picture above is of Orvieto - that's where we were heading... We had already driven quite a ways and had quite a ways to go. It was a beautiful ride! We parted ways in Orvieto and the 3 of us headed to the train station.
A few train transfers later and we arrived in Monterosso al Mare. It was late and we didn't have any reservations. We got a vacancy list from the train station and Pete called around. He found us a nice room for 60euro/night and it was the best and least expensive room we had on the whole trip.
Monterosso al Mare was touristy and seemed too modern for what I had imagined. I was a bit disappointed since I had imagined a very old set of villages on the hillsides of the Ligurian Sea. Now...we hadn't planned on staying a night in Monterosso and I hadn't seen the other towns yet, so I really didn't know what was to come. It was beautiful there...the beach was stunning at sunset. It was just so touristy that it bothered me a little. We found our room and settled in for the night.

...more to come later - I promise!

Fathers Day #2 & other random updates

2010-06-20T21:13:00.000-07:00

We had a nice Fathers Day despite the rain.

Hailey and I got up nice and early (okay, this part I wasn't so thrilled about) and made a big breakfast for Pete. Our new favorite way of having eggs is scrambled with fresh basil, mozzarella and some red pepper thrown in. Yummy. We also had waffles with strawberries and since it was Pete's special day, we had some bacon. I've been really into making breakfast these days and I just love eating it. I have a feeling my pregnancy weight gain is going to pick up a notch with all the maple syrup I've been consuming. I thought about eliminating the syrup and having a whipped cream topping...but call me lazy or just plain addicted to syrup...we have yet to try the whipped cream option. I did however finish off the box of fruit loops I bought last week and have vowed not to buy any more sugared cereal during this pregnancy. It was a weak moment at the grocery store and having those in the house was horribly good - as in...2 bowls of sugared cereal a day...you get the picture.

We skipped church and Pete slept in until 9am (we usually go to the 9:00 service so Hailey can take a late morning nap after church). I cleaned up the kitchen after breakfast while Pete and Hailey played together downstairs. When Hailey went down for a nap I made oatmeal raisin cookies - one of Pete's favorites!
We went to the kid's museum in Factoria after Hailey's nap and played around. The water play area is her favorite part - surprisingly she managed to stay mostly dry today. Then we went to good old red robin where Hailey charmed our table neighbors with smiles and funny faces. We got a balloon and headed to the rack for some Hailey shoes. I still haven't found the pair of Stride-rite's I bought and had all of 2 weeks before I lost them. It's driven me nearly insane. I hope I find them at some point for baby #2 to wear in the future. That gives me some time to uncover them at least - if I lost them in the house that is (I can't seem to figure out how they could possibly be here though - I've searched EVERYWHERE!!).

We headed home nice and worn out and all three of us took naps. It was soooo nice to nap.

We woke up from our naps around 5:15 and loaded up to go visit my dad and have a nice dinner with him (thanks mom!).

Pete is now playing the xbox and enjoying his 'do nothing' day. I'm calling it a do nothing day because we have a list of projects that are constantly looming over our heads and today I thought he deserved a day off from even talking about them. :)

Last night we were painting doors in the garage together (earlier in the day yesterday we picked out and brought home base trim for the whole house). Pete didn't want to install the doors (which we've had for over a month now) until we had all the trim so now we're one step closer. We still have to paint all the doors and all the trim... Projects galore to get done before this baby arrives I tell you!! Last weekend we managed to fit some housework in before and after graduation celebrations for Pete's little sister Kendra (she graduated from high school - and celebrate we did!). :) Then back to scrubbing the deck and weeding we went...
So anywho... I've felt a bit off today - my baby belly is HUGE now and it felt as if it was contracting all day. Well, this evening I am pretty sure little baby #2 (name still not final) has flipped and is now head down. I guess it was quite a process because all day I felt short of breath and like my belly was 50 lbs (even picking up Hailey has seemed like a huge chore). Baby #2 seemed to be in the same position for quite a long time as I've only ever felt kicks on the lower left side and an occasional tapping of hands on the right. Dinner tonight was filled with large objects (pretty sure they were feet) surfacing on the right side (pretty high compared to where they were on the left) and now there is lots of lighter tapping down lower (hands I'm assuming). It was strange feeling those feet on my right side!

So speaking of the baby, baby #2 that is, Pete suggested a couple names today: Bunny and Hamburgler. Yup. This is the reason we have not been able to settle on a name. Pete still has so many great suggestions up his sleeves he just doesn't want to call it quits before he gets them all out there for consideration. We have 2 good finalists as of now - until Pete comes up with something better than Hamburgler anyway...

My midwife visits have moved from once a month to every two weeks - ACK! This is flying by. I'm 28 weeks now and at my appointment last Thursday my midwife went over the 'what to pack' list and told me I need to be prepared early in case we're well, early. What to PACK?!? It hit me on the way home from my appointment that this really could happen any day. I mean, I hope baby stays in there for a while longer (2 months please!), but really....the way she's been so active makes me think she's going to break the bag of waters too early. She was head up at my appointment btw and her feet were on my left and hands on the right as I already described above.

We had finally decided that we would like to go to the birth center for the birth and then I found out from my midwife that we can change our minds the day of and tell them to come to us if I don't want to face the car ride. Hmmm...good to know I have that option. I've been so up in the air over the idea of having a home birth - maybe when I'm in the moment I'll be ready to commit one way or another. ;P

In other news, Hailey has been under the weather all this past week. She had a fever last Sunday night and still has coughs and a runny nose as of today. It's gotten better and better as the week has come and gone so I'm hoping it clears up all the way real soon. She's been a bit off and seems to take after me when I'm sick. What am I like when my immune system is under attack you ask? Just a little helpless and pathetic. :) I like to be cuddled and spoiled and it seems Hailey likes to take advantage of the situation and get as many cuddles out of the deal as possible. I like that part. Sometimes she just wanders around hugging my legs as I'm trying to cook dinner... The part that's been rather funny has been the fake fits she throws. I haven't decided if this is just a 'sick' thing or if it's just a new tantrum trick she will continue to use. I want to get a picture of her face when she does it...she wrinkles it up all funny and wines like she's miserable (but the next minute she is totally fine). She seems to do this if say...she doesn't get what she wants immediately. We are currently reading Love and Logic and hoping to get a good foundation to build from so we start off on the right foot with discipline and all that goes with raising nice well behaved kids. It can be confusing to figure out just how to handle some situations (i.e. the food throwing she does to indicate that she's done eating - telling her 'no' doesn't work and honestly sometimes we have a really really hard time not busting up laughing because she's so cute and funny when she misbehaves)!

So I guess those are my thoughts for now. This pregnancy is flying by. I feel huge. And I will sign off leaving you with a cute picture of Hailey. I just love her soft hair - it's getting so long!

Sunshine + Pregnant = Pictures!

2010-06-12T15:30:00.000-07:00

We took advantage of the sun this morning and headed to the backyard for some 27 weeks pregnancy pics. I think Pete did a pretty great job playing photographer and the weather was perfect.