Archive February | Sweet Yet Sour

Archive for February, 2009

Happy Birthday Mike!

Thursday, February 12th, 2009 | The Daily Special | 2 Comments

Happy Birthday to you Mike!

Birthday boy

Don’t cry about being one year older… We have enough of that around here.

Don't Cry!

I promise you will have a nice birthday. Maybe later we can make mohawks…

Mohawk

And you and Anna can spend some quality time at the computer.

Quality Time

And then Brendan can show you how to properly eat your cake…

Cake!

Happy Birthday to the best husband in the world! Love – Dorrie

Mike has been working a lot lately (until 10:30 p.m. on Sunday! – though he was working at home) on a new project and now is in all day meetings. Poor Mike! Normally Mike works from home on Tuesdays, but instead he had to go into the office for a meeting that involved breakfast, lunch and dinner; you know he’ll hit brain freeze sooner or later…

I thought I would document for Mike what we did today since he won’t see Anna much for the next few days.

Monday Mike didn’t see Anna at all, but this morning they were able to spend a few quality moments together, even if it was over laundry:

Anna and Daddy

After that, Anna felt it was time to show us her Popeye impression:

Popeye!

After Mike left we had breakfast, which lately always includes Cheerios (or rather the organic version), since they are a good finger food. They also look really good pasted to your face:

That's 1 Cheerio on my chin!

I’m trying to get Anna to work on her spoon skills, and have found that the best way to do this is to put some cream cheese on the working end of the spoon:

Yummy Cream Cheese

Who wouldn’t like to eat cream cheese off the spoon?

After breakfast there was a little play time followed by the morning nap. When she woke up I bundled Anna up for a walk with Cash. It was a little cold, so I brought out the fleece…

Warm and ready for the dog walk

When we got home Anna found the phone and decided to make a few phone calls:

Phone Call

I’m not sure who she called, but if you know anyone in the “774″ area code, they apparently got a call from our house this morning.

Just for fun Anna taunted Cash for a little before we let him in from the backyard:

Cash Taunting

And then it was time to taunt that baby that was stuck outside in the cold:

Outside baby

My parents dropped by this morning that on their way out of town. They are driving up to British Columbia to spend a month in my uncle’s house on Vancouver Island. I’m so jealous! Anyway, Anna got to snuggle with Nana and Grandpa before they left for Canada.

Grandpa and Anna

She thought Nana was especially fascinating today:

Nana and Anna

And then it was on to lunch time. At lunch we worked on Anna’s fork skills with some macaroni and cheese. I don’t think she gets the whole fork concept just yet:

Fork skills need work

After lunch we did a little time with Anna’s walker toy, which she’s slowly learning to use properly:

Walker Time

Anna has a little diaper rash and the best way to help this is to do a little time without a diaper. Since this means I have to generally do a little clean up (accidents happen!), I thought I would try putting her in the laundry basket at first. But Anna had other plans:

I'm not staying in here!

This is what happened when she accidentally tipped over in the basket – she landed in laundry jail:

Laundry Jail

After a little more play time it was time for the afternoon nap. It was short, but Anna woke up cheery and after letting her talk and play for a while I went to get her out of her crib and was greeted with this:

I'm up!

Cash likes to get two walks a day, so we bundled up again and headed out. As we started to walk it began to snow:

Snowy Walk

It was cold on the walk and when we got home Anna wanted to watch the snow from the comfort of inside where it was warm.

Watching the Snow

We were invited to go over to my sister’s to hang out and so packed up and headed over (it’s 5 minutes away) to Aunt Rhiannon’s. Anna’s cousin Brendan had gotten out a toy that he thought Anna might like to play with and briefly (he’s 2 going on 3 after all) he allowed her to play with the toy, but only with supervision:

Brendan and Anna

Then Anna and Rhiannon spent some quality time on the couch with a snack while we watched Top Gear.

Rhiannon and Anna

When we got ready to leave Brendan wanted to walk us out to the car, but wasn’t able to find his own shoes. He opted for a pair of Rhiannon’s, but I think he will regret that later when he’s 17 and I drag out this picture to show to his prom date:

Nice shoes buddy!

I put Anna and her two snack cups (we had left one at Rhiannon’s on another day) in to the car and we headed home. Sadly, sometimes the snack cups have a way of trapping your hands and not letting go. I think that’s what happened here:

Snack Trapped!

For dinner we had various finger foods including green beans, banana and goat cheese crumbles. Anna especially likes the goat cheese and pointed to the package every time she wanted more:

Dat!

Some people may like an after dinner mint, but Anna prefers an after dinner sock:

After Dinner Sock

The sock is probably less fattening than the mint, even if it is a little fuzzy.

After such a busy day it was time to get in the bath and do some quality time with the ducks and the frogs:

Rubber Duckie you're the one...

Anna was pretty tired and I ended the bath when she stood up and reached out for me. I think she was trying to say, “Get me to bed!”

The Munhall Family – An Update

Tuesday, February 10th, 2009 | Anna, Updates | No Comments

It’s been a while since I’ve done one of my updates – I think it’s about time to get one done.

Anna’s Update:

Anna turned 10 months old last week – I have no idea where the time went! She’s crawling like a pro, crawling up stairs, is cruising our furniture and is just generally active and happy. She’s saying “mama” and “dada”, but not necessarily towards the right person and has learned recently to point at things she wants and say “dat” or “dis” (roughly translated to “that” and “this”).

Yesterday I went to the card store for Valentine’s cards and had to listen to her say “dat” repeatedly and point at the stuffed animals behind me. I really was hoping that the “I want that” stage was a long way off!

She recently discovered the cupboard where we keep her plastic bowls and other Tupperware and spends lots of time exploring the detritus.

Cupboard

Sometimes after going through the cupboard she’ll just stay there for snack time…

Floor Snack

She also eats anything that is on the floor, so I’m having to keep it pretty clean or accept that she will just eat whatever she finds.

We go to the park and swing when we can, which she seems to enjoy:

Swing!

This past weekend we had playgroup with two other sets of parents from our childbirth class. Anna is the oldest of the three kids by a few weeks and although the boys have at least 5 lbs on her she is at least just as tall as them:

Anna, Drew and Timothy

I take a lot of pictures of her and sometimes she gets a little Britney Spears on me:

No more pictures!

Don’t worry – I’ll keep taking pictures of her – it’s not like she can get a restraining order that would stick…

Mike’s Update:

Thank you to all of you with your well wishes upon the death of Mike’s mom – Norma Munhall. Norma died suddenly following heart surgery, which she had hoped to keep secret from her family, on January 17th. Norma was a talented quilter, tatter (lace-maker), accomplished violinist and ice-skater, loving mom to Mike and adoring grandmother to Anna.

Following Norma’s death Mike rushed off to Dallas to help his dad sort things out and was there for 5 days. The lesson that we should all take away from Norma’s death is not only to appreciate your loved ones, but also to save your loved ones a lot of headaches by getting life insurance, writing a will and designating beneficiaries on all your accounts. Norma failed to do these things and Mike and his dad are having to deal with a lot of mess, expense and an attorney to get things properly sorted.

Having worked for years for attorneys I know that in most states if you die without a will all of your property either goes to the state for them to pay off your debts and allocate, or through probate court to then get distributed to your heirs. Mike and I are considering having a party where we all get together, write wills, make sure we have the whole life insurance thing sorted and then maybe play a round or two of Life…

Next week we will be traveling to Dallas for four days. There will be a service for Norma (she was cremated) and a mass will be held in her honor. Norma’s sisters Becky, Barbara, Evelyn and her brother Tom and his wife Pat will be in Dallas, as well as Mike Munhall Sr.’s sister Mary Lou. They are all quite excited to meet Anna so I’m sure that will be a cheery spot in an otherwise somber occasion.

On the bright side, Mike is enjoying his new hobby that I blame Nate for – home brewing beer. Our guest bathroom is now home to an “Ale Pail” of a black ale Mike is brewing and a recently bottled pale ale. This was all supposed to live in the basement, but it turns out our basement is too cold to maintain the proper beer fermenting temperature. Superbowl Sunday at our house smelled like the Coors brewery (the only brewery I’ve toured) while Mike cooked up the black ale. He’s reading up on the subject on the web and by book and seems to be thouroughly enjoying himself.

Mike recently completed a large project at work in a new language he taught himself – Perl. It was a hefty project and Mike is quite pleased to have it be done and into QA. I’m proud of him for not only teaching himself a new language, but also putting it to use immediately. Mike is always a quick and adept learner.

Mike is still playing hockey on Tuesday nights, but I generally don’t hear much about how the games go since he never gets home before 11 p.m. and I’m long gone to bed by then…

Dorrie’s Update:

There’s not much from my end really. Mostly I’m just Anna’s mom and that’s okay by me – she keeps me pretty busy.

I am doing a little work for Mike’s office testing a new and rather large project completed by some guy, what’s his name? Oh yeah, Mike! Mike’s boss thought it would be good for me to test Mike’s project since “he’s readily available to you”. Nice! It’s a large project and it’s divided between the regular QA person and myself. Every once in a while I send Mike an email about a defect that I’ve found or with a question and have to delete “I love you” at the end of it – it’s habit!

It is lovely to have something other than laundry or cleaning to do during Anna’s naps. I generally put my headphones on, keep an eye on the lights on the baby monitor and test quite happily for an hour or two a day. The house is a mess, but I’m making a little extra money and that’s not shabby!

Anna’s First Swim

Wednesday, February 4th, 2009 | Anna | 3 Comments

Today while I was at Target I bought Anna a swim suit. It was really cute and it was $10, which is not cheap for the small amount of cloth you’re paying for, but it’s not really expensive either. It was a 12 month size, the smallest I could find, but I figured we would try it out, even though Anna is technically wearing 9 month clothes.

One of the perks of living in the suburb that we live in is that it has nice parks and with our HOA fees we have the use of 4 really great recreation centers. All of them have pools and work out areas, but have different specialties beyond the basics. The one closest to us has a lovely indoor pool with lots of places to play for big and little kids.

So today, my sister and I packed up the kids and headed off for Anna’s first swimming pool experience. I was really excited because I love to swim and I hope that Anna will like swimming as well. I think she got the excited vibe from me because she looks really happy and we haven’t even left the locker room:

Let me in the pool!

Seriously, how cute is the little girl in her little butterfly swimming suit? This is again one of those moments where I think briefly to myself that someone must have switched kids with me at the hospital because I know I couldn’t have made that cute of a kid, but I digress…

My nephew Brendan was also really excited to go into the pool, but was kind enough to pose for a picture with his cousin and even followed orders to try to hold her hand:

Brendan and Anna getting ready for swimming

Anna had a great time. She laughed and splashed and even tried to get face down in the water (which I did not let her do). We tried out the really shallow part of the pool with little fountains that Anna could play with, we walked through the “lazy river” part of the pool and we tried out the big warm hot tub part. I definitely think I have a future swimmer on my hands! We’re going to get her into swim classes as soon as we can.

After swimming, I wrapped her up in two towels (I had to sacrifice mine to keep her warm) and while I got dressed I found the perfect spot to keep her from going very far:

Locker Baby

Yes, it’s a locker, but she’s fine and she’s certainly not going anywhere. Granted that’s partially because I wrapped her really tightly into two towels, but still, she’s not moving and that’s rare for Anna.

I got the tired little girl home, fed her, covered her in lotion and popped her in bed. I hope she dreams about swimming!

Daddy’s Girl

Sunday, February 1st, 2009 | Anna | 2 Comments

Anna was very excited to see Mike when he came home from Dallas. There were lots of people to look at in the airport, but Anna still smiled at Mike when she realized he was there. Ever since then she’s been doing some quality daddy time.

Anna is by nature not a snuggly girl, she’s moves around too much, but if you’re in her way, you might get a little bit of a hug. Hence, here is Anna greeting Mike home in her own special way: