Sweet Yet Sour

The Snowstorm and the Halloween Sheep

Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009 | Anna | 2 Comments

Last week, a few days before Halloween, we got our first real snowstorm of the season. It snowed for three days and piled up almost 3 feet of snow in our area. Fortunately, Mike was able to work from home and take breaks to go out and use the snow blower every few hours.

While we were stuck inside Anna decided that she wanted to read books while sitting in one of the drawers of her changing table. She sat in there and read “Blue Hat, Green Hat” for quite a long time.

Anna reads in the drawer

Just to show how much snow we got, Mike stood next to the table on our deck on the second day (we got more after this).

Mike and the snow

A few weeks ago I had the forethought to buy Anna a snow bib and it came in handy this last storm.  The snow was almost as tall as she and it was really fun to stick her into it and watch her try to wriggle out…

Anna in the snow drift

The snow stopped in time for Halloween so we dressed Anna up in this year’s sheep costume and headed out. We didn’t really “Trick or Treat” as much as go to the houses of neighbors we knew would want to see Anna in her costume.  She looked really cute in it, but would never say, “Baa!” when we asked her what a sheep says, even though we practiced all day…

The Halloween Sheep

We headed up to my sister’s house and met up with Anna’s cousin Brendan, who had decided to be a ghost this year.  Originally the idea was that Brendan was going to be Casper the Friendly ghost and his costume was made by my sister out of a pillowcase.

Brendan the ghost

All in all it was a good Halloween – Anna got some new crayons and books from our friends Cassandra and Mark and we got a fair amount of candy for ourselves.  This will probably be the last year we can eat all of her candy and not have her protest, but that’s probably best for my thighs!

Anna and Her New Bear

Friday, October 30th, 2009 | Anna | No Comments

Another Anna video post!

This past weekend we donated some coats to the “Coats for Colorado” drive and got a cute little bear wearing a sweater in return.  Last year’s Coats for Colorado bear was only briefly loved by Anna until Cash mauled it so much it became his – this year Anna is bigger and can say, “No Cash!” quite firmly.

So after dinner, while Mike was out walking with Cash, I gave Anna her new bear and started up the video camera to see what would happen…

Anna dances to the Sesame Street Theme

Wednesday, October 28th, 2009 | Anna | 3 Comments

I have some videos of Anna from recent months that I have not been able to upload until today.  The video files were in a format that just wouldn’t convert easily to the blog.  Mike fixed that today and so I’m going to post a few videos for everyone to see (at least those of you who haven’t seen them on Facebook) of Anna and her antics.

Today I’m posting a video that I took about 2 months ago of Anna dancing to the Sesame Street theme song.  Anna loves Sesame Street (especially Elmo) and for a while she would always dance to the theme song.  When she first started watching it she would laugh at the part of the theme song where Oscar says, “What now?” and would ask us to rewind it and play it over and over again.  Sadly, Anna has stopped dancing to the theme recently so it’s good that I got this on video.  She added in an extra attempt at a headstand for this one – bonus!  Sorry about the bad focus on this on the right side – I took it while my camera was still broken…

Pumpkin Hunting

Monday, October 26th, 2009 | Anna | 2 Comments

Two weeks ago (before this latest round of colds began), my sister and I decided to take the kids to a pumpkin farm out east in the farm country.  The farm’s website said they were family run and promised pumpkins, hay ride and an indoor hay bale maze.  Sounded like a blast to us!

It was a little bit more than an hour to get there, longer if you count the stop at Wal-Mart in the middle of nowhere to change a diaper, get out some snacks for the kids and make a potty stop, but well worth it.  After winding around back country roads we came upon the beautiful yellow farm house with wrap-around porch (I want one of those) with a barn and pumpkin patch.

There were all sizes of pumpkins for the kids to choose from, pygmy goats and dogs to pet and lots of other animals to look at for the kids.  There were pigs, chickens, ducks and geese so Anna and Brendan got the full farm experience.  After picking out our pumpkins, including my finding the one white pumpkin from the crop for Brendan, we hopped onto the hay ride.  There were not many people there so we all fit onto the hay wagon.

We got a tour of the farm equipment (oooh! tractors!) and then went down the hill to the cow pasture.  The farmer told us all about each of the cows, including their names (the one bull is called “Lucky” because he’s the only bull) and the dwarf cow, Goliath.  There was also a beautiful retired race horse.  All of them came up to the hay wagon and began to eat our seats, so they were fed a little before we left so that they wouldn’t follow us out of the pasture.

All-in-all it was a great pumpkin hunt, and for $22 total we got 10 pumpkins, a hayride for all 4 of us and 1 hot dog for Brendan – cheap by our standards.  I still had a broken camera at the time, but I did manage to take a few pictures with my cell phone.  It was a nice 60ish day so it was perfect for being out on the farm!

Anna in the pumpkin patch

Brendan hugs his pumpkin

Anna finds a pumpkin she can carry

Look! I found some hay!

That hay will look really good on your head!

Anna tries to get out of the pumpkin patch

Lost the coat, but still carrying the pumpkin...

Family Update

Tuesday, September 22nd, 2009 | Anna, Updates | 4 Comments

I’ve been neglecting the family updates, so hopefully I can catch up today! First, my apologies, I don’t have a lot of new pictures of Anna because my camera is broken.  Or rather, my camera has been dropped so many times that it seems to have affected the focus on the right side of picture.  I need to get it repaired but there has been so much going on here I haven’t had time to do anything about it.

Here’s one I took of Anna recently that doesn’t show the out of focus bit too badly:

Anna trying on clothes

Anna is in a “let’s try on clothes” phase, so here she decided to put on a romper over the outfit she was already wearing.  She’s so cute she makes it look good…

We’ve stopped counting the words that Anna knows; once we reached 50 we just stopped – her vocabulary is huge.  She’s saying two words sentences a lot, like “Bye bye truck” and “More milk” and the other day there was “Teeth owie”.  It is lovely to have a little communicator!  Mike has trained Anna to raise her arms and say, “Me!” when he asks, “Who’s the cutest?” and I’ve been teaching her to say, “Excuse me” when she burps or farts.  This works some of the time, but mostly Anna farts or burps, smiles wide and then says, “Excuse me.”  I think Mike has been teaching her that as well!

Mike is working hard, both at work and at home.  He recently built a sieve for my compost and then modified it temporarily so that he could use it to clean the Trex sawdust out of our mulch.  The carpenter who built our deck, nice man though he was, left us with all of the clean up.  Which meant much hauling of scrap to the trash, one trip to a local dump, and a lot of sawdust cleaning…  Mike continues with hockey again this season and if anyone wants to go watch him play, he’s playing tonight at 10 p.m.  Anna and I will be asleep, but will be rooting him on in spirit anyway.

Here’s our big news though: I’m “in the family way”, but in a nauseous, “Pass the Saltines and ginger ale” kind of a way.  I hate that phrase, “in the family way”, as well as “knocked up” and “preggo”.  So, I think I’ll just go with saying, I’m pregnant! Anna’s brother or sister is due April 4th – which is one day before Anna’s 2 year birthday, so I’m hoping that this baby comes early too – I would hate to be in the hospital for Anna’s birthday!  We’re only at 12 weeks now so hold off on the “What is it?” questions, since we won’t know until 20 weeks.  I’m just beginning my second favorite portion of pregnancy (after the totally nauseous peeing constantly phase I’m in now); the “She just looks fat” phase – before it really starts to look like I’m pregnant and not just packing on the extra pie and ice cream.  Oh, ice cream! Damn that sounds good – I have to go get some now!

This Week in Pictures

Sunday, August 16th, 2009 | Anna, Updates | 2 Comments

It’s been a busy week, and while I haven’t gotten pictures of it all, I do have some photos to share.

We went to Belleview Park twice in the past week. It’s pretty awesome; there’s a train, petting farm and a place to wade in a shallow stream.  Anna really liked the wading part:

Wading with Daddy

Of course the one time that Mike gets a decent picture of me, while we were all on the train, Anna wasn’t looking at the camera.  That is always how that works out!

Pretty Good

Sunday we went to visit Piper Joy and her proud parents.  Here is Nate with the recently fed and generally sleepy Piper:

Nate and Piper

While we visited with the new family, Anna hung out in Piper’s swing, which she is way too big for:

In Piper's Swing

This week Mike’s best friend Alex, his wife Dana and their daughter Nadia came to visit.  Dana got a good picture of the boys and their little girls while they watched Sesame Street:

Daddies' Girls

Alex discovered the joys of hanging out on our deck with his coffee:

Coffee on the deck

And Anna discovered one of Nadia’s bears, which was way too big for her:

Anna and the bear

Saturday morning Mike and Anna hung out the computer eating cereal, while Anna drew up plans for something:

At the computer

The highlight of the week has been Anna’s teething.  She has been “bonus fussy” (that’s what her doctor called it) – waking up several times a night, crying at the drop of a hat, not napping, not eating and just in general showing us that teething is no fun at all.  She’s tired, which is why I was able to get this lovely picture of her, which I plan on using to bribe her with when she’s 14…

Toasted

Another Family Update – Anna’s Chapter

Monday, August 3rd, 2009 | Anna, Updates | 2 Comments

It’s time once again for a family update.  I haven’t done one of these in a while, but I like them because I can cram a lot of information about all of us in and then feel pretty satisfied with myself.

As usual, let’s start with the cutie:

Anna will be 16 months on Wednesday.  She’s buzzing around really well with this new walking thing and is scraping up her knees far less than she did a few weeks ago.  I’ve enrolled her in “Tumble Tots” classes at our rec center every Wednesday, which is just what she needs.  It’s basically a padded room where the kids can play, jump on a trampoline, even go on a balance beam.  She loves it and there are plenty of other kids in the class to play with, including three sets of girl twins. Although I did catch her trying to do a somersault like we do in class off of the ottoman the other day!

Anna talks a lot and understands us quite well, but she chooses not to obey a good portion of the time as well; typical toddler!  Favorite phrases include: “walk park” as in, “we’re walking to the park now mama!”, and “more cheese”.  Oh, and “No!” – that’s certainly my favorite as well!

A few weeks ago we took Anna to the small airport not too far away where there is a restaurant that looks out onto the runways.  She did this for all of lunch:

Airplane Viewing

We went to a park nearby a few weekends ago for the neighborhood picnic.  Anna loves to go through the tunnels, but it’s even better when Daddy chases her:

In the tunnel

Oh and can I just say, this outfit that Anna is wearing, was made by my mom for me when I was Anna’s age.  How cool is it that Anna looks good in the 1974 outfit?

70's style

Last week we went to a nearby farming museum where we got to see lots of farm animals.  Like these dirty, smelly sheep:

Smelly Sheep

Granted, the museum was free (whohoo!) and Anna and her friend David had a good time:

Sheep Staring

That is, until David and Anna were sitting on a bench and David tried to kiss Anna.  She was a good girl and took off:

I'm outta here!

Gosh I hope she does that until she’s 21!

Yesterday I took Anna and Cash to the fenced in baseball field at the high school near us so Cash could get a run.  Instead, he just stood and Anna ran around:

Anna runs, Cash stands

After a while I just put the leash back on Cash.  Anna is learning the word “Come”, so she tried to get him to go with her, with little success:

Come Cash

Now that the deck is done I got out the baby pool and let Anna splash around in it for a while.  I didn’t put her in her swimming suit because Anna has no fat and gets cold easily, so I just let her go in the pool in what she was wearing.  She really loved playing in the pool, but in this picture she seems to be making a drink order to the pool boy:

Pina colada please!

Anna’s 15 Month Check-Up

Thursday, July 9th, 2009 | Anna | 4 Comments

Anna turned 15 months old last Sunday and we celebrated by taking her to the doctor on Tuesday.  I don’t think she appreciated the shots we gave her for 15 month birthday…

It was a struggle to get her to stay still long enough to weigh her, but the scale briefly flashed “17lbs 11oz.” so we went with that weight.  This means that Anna has gained almost a pound in a month and is continuing on her weight gain curve.  Our doctor is hopeful that if we continue to feed her butter, cream and cheese, that she will be back on the 3rd percentile curve by 18 months.

Otherwise Anna is 30 3/4 inches tall – putting her at the 50th percentile for height. Tall and skinny – that’s my girl!  At the risk of finger loss her doctor delved into Anna’s mouth and found 2 molars erupting – which nicely explains the finger chewing that Anna has been doing.

Prior to going to the doctor we made a list of Anna’s words and counted about 25 words that she says.  Just as a note, we count them as words if they sound “mostly” like the real word and she uses them in the right context.   For example, “dow”, which she says as we go down the stairs or when she wants to get down.  But other easier words she does quite well, like “Hi”, “bye” and “bee”.  We beamed with pride when told by the doctor that at 15 months most children only have 6 words.

Oh, and she’s still pretty cute – even when her faced is stuffed full of watermelon:

Cutie

But, I must make a mental note and not allow Mike to clean her up after a meal.  He has a tendency to do some hairstyling reminiscent of his long ago punk days:

Anna/Sid Vicious

Granted, Anna did comply and do her most Sid Vicious of looks for the camera.  I’m sure Mike is so proud!

A Girl and Her Sandbox

Tuesday, June 16th, 2009 | Anna | 3 Comments

A few weeks ago I was talking to my dad and I said, “Anna loves to play in the dirt.”  Before I knew it my dad had drawn up plans for a sandbox for Anna that he and Mike could build.  So here we are the proud owners of a new sandbox…

Here’s a “Before” picture of the spot where we put the sandbox:

Sandbox Before

Here is Mike and my dad working hard on putting the sandbox together:

Sandbox During

Once it was finished we put Anna in it – even though it didn’t have sand in it yet she seemed to like it:

Anna in the sandbox - no sand

Here is a picture of Foster, the dog that I rescued from the street while Mike and dad were working on the sandbox:

Foster

Foster brought the dog total to 4 in our house on sandbox day – it was a madhouse!  We found his owner, who lives down the street after about 2 hours…

Here is the first layer of sand we put in and all of the toys that we buried at the bottom for Anna to find when she really starts to dig to China:

Buried Treasure

Once all the sand was in we plopped the kiddo in with her new sand pails and let the fun begin!

Anna in the completed sandbox

And this is where I put Anna after she had thoroughly covered herself in sand:

Anna in the sink

She ate most of lunch in the sink, since she seemed happy there – I just kept giving her food while she splashed away…  Good times!

The final weigh-in

Tuesday, June 9th, 2009 | Anna | 4 Comments

Today we had another weight check with Anna’s doctor.  As you may remember, for the past three months we have had monthly weigh-ins to see if Anna can gain some weight.  I’ve been feeding her plenty of mac and cheese, butter, half-and-half and other fattening things all along the way.

When she was weighed today at the doctor’s office Anna weighed 17.8 lbs.  This means that Anna gained a pound since the last check and has steadily gained a pound a month for the past three months.  This has pleased our doctor enough that we will no longer have to go in every month.  I still need to feed Anna every possible fattening thing I can – since she is still 3rd percentile – but she’s on her own little curve.  Perhaps in a few months she can catch up to the other 1 year olds she knows and weigh the proper 20 lbs to face forward in her car seat.

In the meantime the doctor said that her weight might drop off, now that Anna is walking (see below!) and is “more active”.  Apparently our doctor has not been listening to me about how active Anna is already.  I mean seriously, this is the kid who regularly climbs into her rocking chair and stands there rocking it while trying to climb up the back…

Anyway, Anna is walking more and more every day and more steadily each time.  Pretty soon she’ll be running and then I’ll have to just feed her sticks of butter to keep her weight up – but for the moment the “great fattening up” has worked!