Sweet Yet Sour

Catching Up

Sunday, December 11th, 2011 | Anna, Henry, Updates | 5 Comments

There comes a point when it’s been so long since the last time that I blogged that I feel overwhelmed with the amount of things that I have pictures of and stories about.  That’s where I’ve been for a while, but I’m going to head right in, try to make it as short as possible and catch everyone up on the goings on at our house.

First, I have no pictures of Cash because he’s basically back to his normal self after his toe amputation – sleeping all day on his bed until it’s either time for a walk or time for a meal.  He seems perfectly fine after the loss of his toe – although he’s not liking the booties we got him to protect that toe nub from the elements on his walks.  But he’s a Greyhound, he expresses displeasure so quietly it’s hard to notice at all.

My last post was right before Halloween, so we’ll begin there.  The week before Halloween the kids and I found a yard in our neighborhood with lots of leaves in the grass and they could not resist playing in them:

Kids in Leaves

It’s always such a struggle to get them both to look at the camera!

Anna in leaves

Following that, over the weekend, Mike and I painted Anna’s room.  My mom came up to watch the kids (thanks mom!) while we painted her room per her request “pink and purple”.  Here we are almost done:

Pink and Purple Painting

The next day was Halloween and the beginning of a week off from work for Mike – our own little “Staycation”.  We went to the Denver Botanic Gardens and the kids had a great time playing in the children’s garden and having a picnic in the grassy amphitheater.  That evening our nephew came to our house for some trick-or-treating and we managed a few pictures of the three of them before they ran away in search of sugar.  Anna had requested to be a “pink and purple butterfly” (sense a theme here?), Brendan was a mummy (his mom made the costume!) and Henry borrowed Brendan’s old Zebra costume.

A Butterfly Fairy, a Mummy and a Zebra

A butterfly fairy, a mummy and a zebra walk into a bar…

Anna had been asking for a while to go to work with her Daddy on the bus and the train.  Mike drives most days, but when he has the time he likes to walk two blocks, pick up the bus and then take that to the train station.  From there it’s a short train ride and walk to his office.  So, one morning we packed Anna up with her backpack (full of books), her lunchbag (with a breakfast snack) and Mike up with his backpack and they headed off to work:

Off to Work

After they rode the bus, train and walked to work they had a little breakfast and then I came to get Anna.  She had a great time!

Henry is a good napper (I’m hoping I don’t jinx myself with that), but sometimes he naps so hard that he has some awesome hair afterwards:

Best bedhead ever

I took the opportunity to take a picture of my beloved boys – they’re both so gorgeous!

My Boys

Anna loves to take pictures with my camera and sometimes she grabs it and takes loads of pictures.  Here are the results of one of her picture taking episodes:

Self Portrait

The Artist's Brother

The Scary Monster!

This is either Mike’s Elvis impression or he’s working on a fart…

Nice one eh?

And last, the most artistic of the bunch:

The Artist's Dinner

I call this one “Toast”; I’m sure it will be worth millions some day…

Henry can’t take pictures of his food, but he does like to do other things with it, like throwing it, smashing it or putting it in his hair.  He’s watched me plenty of times putting lotion on my face and one day he decided that his ketchup would work as lotion.  I got some good pictures before I stripped him down and put him in the bath:

Rubbing on the Lotion

Scary Ketchup Monster!

I think that’s it for now! We’re mostly caught up! More posts later!

Toeless

Tuesday, October 11th, 2011 | Updates | 3 Comments

In 2007 when Mike and I first got our beloved Greyhound Cash, he was only weeks from running his last race.  In those weeks he had been at a foster home with a family and their Greyhounds learning about the off-track world.  Things like stairs, glass doors, furniture, etc. were all new to him.

In those first months we learned that he loved walks, but loved even more going up to the baseball field at a high school near us and running.  We could close all of the gates around the field, take off his leash and collar and he would run full tilt.  It was great to see him run; he would run counter clockwise in a circle for several laps and then quickly tire out.  It was almost like owning a thoroughbred horse – it even sounded like a horse race when he ran!

Now that Cash is 8 years old he has already been slowing down and while he still loves his walks, the last time we took him to the baseball field he just wandered around and peed on the fence.  Last week however, Cash injured himself badly enough that we may never see him run like he used to again.

Thursday night Cash came in from the backyard with a limp.  Upon closer examination I could tell that one of his back left toes was not angled the way that it should be and was also bleeding.  We taped him up, gave him some pain medication and then took him to the vet the next day.  (The absolute chaos that was me taking the injured dog and two kids to the vets – which took an hour and a half – is an amusing tale for another day.)

Long story short, Cash dislocated the end of one of his toes in what the vet seems to think was an incident involving Cash getting his toenail caught in our deck.  The options are either to have a surgeon attempt to stabilize the toe, or to amputate the toe.  This is a weight-bearing toe on his foot, so the vet was hesitant to recommend amputation, but after reviewing Cash’s case the surgeon recommended amputation – which has a much shorter recovery time.  And so on Friday we will send Cash off to surgery and say goodbye to one of his toes.   Here’s hoping that the poor boy will be able to recover quickly and walk better soon.

Cash has always had lovely running dreams where he barks, moves his legs rapidly and whips his tail around.  I’ll be sad if he won’t be able to run around like in his racing days, but I’m glad that he will always be able to dream of winning all those races. (He did actually win 10% of his races – not bad!)

A Hard Day’s Night

Saturday, March 12th, 2011 | Updates | 6 Comments

It’s been ages since I’ve posted!  Every time that I think about posting I am overwhelmed by the amount of things that have happened that I need to write about.  And then I fear that if I do get going on a post it will be this long drivel that will bore everyone within two paragraphs… So instead I haven’t blogged at all!

I have much to say about Henry and Anna, but I’ll save it for a later post when I have some pictures of the cuties to go with the post.

Today I’ll just write a brief update on Mike and his job situation.  The first week of May last year Mike was hired on contract with a large mobile phone company after leaving his previous job due to pay and benefit cuts.  The contract job sounded great at the time, it was a shorter commute, more pay and Mike was going to be doing lots of new software development, which he loves.

Within a few weeks our collective mood about the new job had changed; Mike was moved to a team with no new development and we were feeling the pain of higher income, but having to pay for our own health, dental and life insurance.  And then after a few months it became clear that the company that Mike was working for was not above making it’s contractors virtual slaves.  Mike has worked many long hours, weekends, nights, been on conference calls at 2 a.m., etc.  We’ve missed having him around and it’s been a strain on our family to be without him so much.

So a few weeks ago Mike began a job search in earnest and along the way got in touch with a recruiter.  The recruiter forwarded his resume on to a few positions, including one at my former employer (where I worked from 2000-2005), a large cable company.  An interview was scheduled and while Mike was awaiting the interview he contacted one of our friends and my former co-worker about the people with whom he was interviewing.  My beloved friend Pete didn’t know the people, but did forward Mike resume on to Pete’s employer, since they were also looking for software developers.  Long story short, after two interviews and a few nail-biting days, Mike has an offer letter in hand and will be starting his new job on March 28th!

If ever there was a work week that made us appreciate the new job (which promises more of a work/life balance), then this was it.  Mike was on a conference call at 2 a.m. Sunday morning, was at work on Sunday at 7:30 a.m. (and worked a full day) and then was at work all this week at 6 a.m., sometimes working 12+ hour days.

The new job will be 10 minutes away (he’s even working in my old building!), is a full-time salaried position and has great benefits.  Pete even reports that there is another homebrewer in the office!  Mike is really looking forward to starting his new job (and ending his current hellish one) and Anna, Henry and I are looking forward to seeing Mike for dinner, weekends and sometimes even lunch.  Hooray!

The Kids are Alright

Tuesday, January 11th, 2011 | Anna, Henry, Updates | 2 Comments

Update post… yay!

As usual, it’s been a while and mostly what has been missed is Henry’s development (more about that later).  But there’s plenty to talk about with regards to all of us – here goes!

For Thanksgiving we went to my sister’s for dinner and before we ate we took a few family pictures.  This is what happens when you put a four-year-old and a two-year-old in charge of holding an 8-month-old:

All the kids

Anna had an adorable dress on that day and I tried to capture how cute she looked, but as usual, she wasn’t much into posing for me:

Anna in her party dress

These days Anna is going to one class, another pre-pre-school class that is one day a week, but lasts from 9 -11:30.  For her first class last week she wore underwear, came home dry and apparently peed on the potty at school.  This is great news, since we have been duking it out with her over potty-training.  Anna was doing great with it for a while, but then decided that the baby was getting more attention and decided for several weeks, “I want to be a baby” and wanted to wear diapers.  We just had to grit our teeth through that stage (cross our fingers that it’s over) and we seem to be onto a stage where she’s working pretty hard at getting this potty-training thing right.  She even got out of the bath the other day to pee (and then promptly got back in all by herself).

Anna is in a “I’ll help you” stage that is pretty cute.  She decided the other day that she wanted to help her Daddy, who was programming on his computer on the couch:

Anna helping Mike

Mike decided that this was the best place for her, so that he could get some actual work done.

And she also likes to help me bake.  The other day when I was kneading bread dough she wanted to help and was even willing to don an apron to do so.  Granted, I discovered that her favorite part of helping me knead is to put her hand under the dough and have me squish the dough onto her hand:

Anna helping with kneading

Perhaps someday she’ll be a little more helpful…

Anna’s favorite toys that she got for Christmas are her tea set (straight from The Empress in Victoria, B.C.), her playdough set, and her new baby doll that can take baths with her and whom she has named, “Jessie” after the cowgirl in the Toy Story movies.  Jessie sleeps with her, goes practically everywhere with her and even sometimes has to be fed some of Henry’s baby food.  My favorite thing that she says these days is something she says to me when I’m trying to leave her room at bedtime, “I’m just talking to you!”

And finally, I took Anna to get her haircut the other day and had them cut her hair into a bob to make her thin hair look a little more plentiful.  We think it looks pretty adorable:

Anna in her new bob haircut

Henry is in that baby stage where changes come frequently.  Since my last post at the end of September (when Henry turned 6 months old) he has gone from sitting up, to commando crawling, to pulling up to stand, to cruising around from piece of furniture to furniture.  He’s still incredibly adorable though – that hasn’t changed!

Henry on Christmas

Henry just had his 9-month check-up on Dec. 29th (yay! no shots!).  He weighed 17.5 lbs and is 28 inches long.  He’s 5th percentile for weight and 75th percentile for height.  Since he’s apparently so, “small” our doctor advised the same thing that she did when Anna was his age, slapping butter, olive oil, cheese and cream into all of his foods.  I’m thinking about switching doctors…

Henry’s favorite toy is anything that his sister will let him play with – which isn’t much – and his favorite activity these days is crawling around and finding something to pull himself up to standing upon.  He’s pretty good at it, but every once in a while, there’s a mishap and he has the bruises to prove it.  Up next, walking!

Henry’s other favorite activity is unfortunately bugging poor Cash.  Cash has never been a big fan of babies, not that he knew much about them until Anna came along, and he’s definitely not a fan of them in his space.  He is however, an easy dog to train; he growled at Henry just one time, was spoken to harshly, and has since backed down.  Case in point:

Henry and Cash

Here is Cash quite content to have Henry on his bed and chewing on his rawhide toy.  Anyone who says that Greyhounds are not docile dogs hasn’t really met one!

As a side note, our back-up babysitter is in Vet Tech school and told me that the school adopts a certain number of Greyhounds every year as they come off the track.  These Greyhounds spend a year in the school being the “test dog”, for the students to practice examining, taking blood, etc., and then are apparently adopted out.  It makes me a little sad to know this, because it can’t be that great going from the track to being a student practice dog, but on the other hand, these are some of the most docile dogs that have ever walked the earth.  I hope that they find great homes eventually – ours has!

Mike has been working, working, working and sometimes taking a break for racquetball and beer brewing.  Today, for example he arose at 3:30 a.m. to be on a phone call for work at 4 a.m.  Yuck!  Anyone who knows of a nice PHP or ColdFusion job with regular hours, good pay and the ability to work from home frequently, email me!

Anyway, he does love beer, learning about it, tasting it, pairing it and especially brewing beer.  He spend this last weekend at the Big Beers, Belgians and Barleywines festival with his friends Nate and Scott.  As usual they had a great time, learned a great deal and came home exhausted (and maybe a little hungover) the next day.  Mike is always experimenting with trying out new craft beers and with trying to find good food to pair with beers.  We attended a beer pairing dinner in November and were fascinated to find the different pairings that a professional chef came up with – including a Cascadian dark I.P.A that was paired with a smoked chicken ravioli (that was yummy!).  I have to brag that Mike’s favorite beer pairing lately is my hazelnut fudge with a New Belgium’s Frambozen Raspberry Brown Ale.

Here is Mike and Henry on a recent brew day, checking out the beer process:

Mike and Henry on brew day

That particular brew day Mike was making his 16th batch of beer, a Belgian Blonde that he will be calling “Anna’s Ale”.  Henry, by the way, had his own batch of Amber Ale made around the time of his birth…

Here is Mike showing off the beauty and clarity of his beer after it was brewed:

Brew Day results

The beer has since been bottled and will be ready for tasting near the end of this month.

As for me, I am, as usual, trying hard to keep up with the two kids.  It’s rare that I have a moment to myself, and generally that’s during nap time, so I either clean, read or bake.  As can be seen from the previous post, I tried painting the kitchen during naps, with little success, but finally we were able to finish with the help of our friends Angie and Steve who had 4 kids on their hands for 4 hours! They’re great, but crazy!  The kitchen is now a lovely “Apple Crisp” color (that’s the official Behr name) and I’m loving the color.

When I do have time to bake, I have been trying to beauty up my results, I’m usually sort of a slob, figuring that taste will win out over appearance.  Mike requested a carrot cake a few weeks ago and I went so far as to toast the coconut that I put on top of the cream cheese frosting.  I think it looks pretty good:

Carrot Cake

So that’s pretty much it from here, we’re good, and the kids are alright (anyone else a Who fan?)  We hope you are too!

Long Overdue…

Tuesday, September 21st, 2010 | Anna, Henry, Updates | 3 Comments

I know – I am long overdue for a blog post about anything!

Henry has turned 6 months old and so I felt it was time for an update about him, and the rest of us…

Mike is working hard at his job, but he’s still fairly new, having only been at the place since early May.  I don’t think he’s having much fun, but I hear there’s a foosball table on the third floor that provides some fun/relief and he seems to be meeting lots of interesting people.

Beer brewing is Mike’s real passion and he’s spending most of his free time either brewing, racking (moving beer from the primary fermenting container to the “secondary”), bottling, or building up his equipment.  The other day he made a second batch of “Henry’s Ale” – and I took pictures of the operation.

Brewing in the garage

Now that Mike has gone “all grain” he’s moved into the garage and out of the kitchen – which is nice, since he took up most of the kitchen on brew days.  Once we get a utility sink in the basement (ahem honey!) the brewing equipment will be banished from the kitchen entirely.  And while I’m here, I’m going to take a moment to dispel some myths… A) Beer brewing is legal; B) Mike is not making “hooch” or “moonshine”, but beer, and the highest alcohol content beer he’s made was somewhere around 9%, C) Since it’s not the grain alcohol that we think of as moonshine, and not 100% proof – it’s not explosive.  I saw comments on a friend’s Facebook page that eluded to Mike’s beer brewing operation as being both illegal and explosive – not true!  Mike is on his (I think) 15th batch of beer and has made everything from an Amber ale to a black ale with stouts, wits and trippels in between – he’s having a great time perfecting his brewing!

As for me, I’m spending most of my time just trying to maintain the sanity/controlled chaos that is a house with a two-year old and 6 month old.  I have also been on the hunt for a babysitter (or two) that will help to give me some relief from the kids and perhaps a date night or two for Mike and I.  It’s a difficult process, especially since it’s hard for me to trust strangers with my children – they are the most precious things that I will ever have.  Mike and I had a babysitter last Saturday night, and she did great and so did the kids, but it was hard for me not to call and check-in and harder still not to worry.

I had Mike take a picture of Henry and I a few weeks ago, because a friend reminded me that I need to be in some of the pictures too – I have to admit, there are very few pictures of my mom in our childhood photo albums… We’re elusive (and generally behind, rather than in front of the camera), us moms.

The mom and the boy

I have been doing a little baking, when I have time (which is generally on those rare days when both kids nap at the same time).  Last week I used up the last of a batch of fresh peaches on a version of upside down cake…

Upside down with peaches and pecans

Anna, who is so very two, is still the cutest thing around…

Anna on the tricycle

I took the picture above when we were visiting my mom a few weeks ago.  Anna loves to ride the Radio Flyer tricycle that my sister and I rode when were little that my parents still have in their garage.  At the beginning of the summer Anna was too short to reach the pedals of the tricycle we bought her, but now she can pedal on hers and the one at Nana’s – and she loves doing so!

Along with riding her tricycle, Anna is also back in her “school” class on Wednesdays and in tumbling on Fridays.  Anna is really strong and can pull herself up on the bars in tumbling class and jump pretty high on the trampoline – it is by far her favorite class.  We’re also spending a fair amount of time on potty training (I long for the days when other people’s bodily functions will not take up 80% of my time).  With chocolate as motivation Anna can go a whole day, except for naps, in underwear, but has yet to master #2 on the potty consistently.  I’ll spare you the details… It has been amusing to watch her with our babysitter interviewees; as soon as I mention to them that we are potty training her, Anna will jump up, ask them to come with her and shows off her ability to strip down, and pee on the potty.  We’re not shy here apparently…

Anna’s language skills are great; she speaks in long, generally grammatically correct sentences and is pretty easy to understand, even for those people not familiar with her.  I’ve started keeping a list in my journal of funny things that Anna says just to remember how funny she is at this age.  The other day I patted her butt and she said, “That’s not cool Mama.”

I got some great shots a few weeks ago of Anna, Mike and Henry:

Mike and both kids

and of Mike and Henry:

Mike and Henry

Henry (as of today at 4:09 a.m.) is now six months old.  He’s still a happy, cheery boy most of the time, except when tired or hungry, which is really pretty good for his age.  Henry has been eating solid foods for a while now; we started with rice cereal, moved on to oatmeal and now we have moved into veggie/fruit land.  I’ve been more organized than I was with Anna and have been able to make all of the veggies myself – I just steam and puree them all.  So far Henry has tried butternut squash, yellow squash, carrots, peas, green beans (hated those – my dad, who also hates them, would be proud!), sweet potatoes and apples.  Henry has a veggie or fruit for lunch, with a little cereal if he’s still hungry and then a fair amount of cereal before bed.  If I can get enough cereal in Henry I can put him down at 6 p.m. and not hear from him until 4 a.m.  It doesn’t always work like that, but when it does – I don’t take it for granted.

Here’s a more recent picture of my little flirt:

Henry - 6 months

Henry has mastered, although doesn’t seem too motivated to do very often, rolling from his tummy to his back.  If I put a favorite toy or object out of his reach he rolls part of the way over from his back, but has yet to complete the full roll from back to tummy.  Henry is still sleeping on his tummy, since that was the best position for his acid reflux, and last week when I tried to take him off the acid reflux medicine I got a grumpy boy instead of the cheery one I was used to – so experiment over – back on the meds!

At his 6 month appointment today Henry weighed 15lbs 8 oz. (15%) and was 27″ long (70%).  Henry started chewing on his food source a few days ago (that’s me!) and the doctor says she could feel a little swelling in his gums – so yay! teething coming up!

I got a great little video of Henry laughing the other day – with a burp at the end:

And that’s the story of us these days!

Henry – 4 Months

Thursday, July 22nd, 2010 | Henry, Updates | 2 Comments

As of 4:09 a.m. yesterday, Henry turned 4 months old.  It’s amazing how much babies change in such a short period.

This was taken when Henry was 10 days old -

Henry - 10 days old

And this was taken today:

Henry - 4 Months old

Henry had a check-up at the doctor’s office today.  They weighed and measured Henry and then tested his development.  And then they gave him two shots; I’m pretty sure that was his favorite part…

At 4 months Henry now weighs 13lbs 3 oz. and is 24 3/4 inches long.  He’s gained almost 2 lbs and has grown 1 inch since his last check-up on June 10th.

Pretty soon Henry should start rolling over – which should be fun. Right now he’s doing really well at grabbing things and then pulling them into his mouth.  All things go into the mouth at this point – that’s Henry’s only way of finding out about things.  I went to change him last night and discovered that his whole left sock was soaked because he had found his foot and wanted to taste it.

Right now Henry is feeling the pain from his shots – he’s been fussy and inconsolable for a few hours, except when I put him in the bath.  But generally Henry is a lovely happy boy and he dearly loves his sister, who posed for me this morning in Henry’s crib:

Anna and Henry

Someday I hope they’ll be great friends!

The Busy Girl

Sunday, July 4th, 2010 | Anna, Updates | 3 Comments

Our mostly sweet, but sometimes temperamental Anna, has been pretty busy lately.  Along with keeping up a schedule of music class, school, and tumbling class, she’s also been doing lots of fun summer activities.

A few weeks ago Anna’s cousin Brendan came over to play.  He came with a large pitcher and some freshly squeezed lemon juice in it; he had a plan to have a lemonade stand in front of our house.  Since I was a big lemonade stand girl myself, I happily added some water, honey and ice to the operation.  Then I made a sign that said, “Lemonade – 25 cents” for them and told Brendan to color in the letters.  Too bad I forgot that he’s still 4 and watched as he colored over the letters…

Lemonade!

I thought people would probably get the idea anyway, so I taped it to Anna’s art table and we moved the operation out to the end of our driveway.  Anna didn’t really get the whole “Lemonade Stand” idea, so she sat across from Brendan and drank a cup of lemonade – thereby giving Brendan his first quarter of the day…

Drinking the product...

Brendan, meanwhile, had gotten a new “Home on the Range” harmonica that day and played that through the whole stand set-up process.  After two cups of lemonade went to the kids (yay! 50 cents!) we managed to sell the rest.  One cup to a nice woman who stopped her car in the middle of the street and paid $2 for her cup, one cup to my sister, one cup to a kid who tried to drink his cup and ride his bike away at the same time, and a car with a mother and 4 teenage girls that were on their way home from school.  Everyone who bought a cup of lemonade was treated to a harmonica song from Brendan – free with purchase – what a deal!  All in all, a major success!

Two weeks ago we had a lovely playgroup with some friends from our original birthing class for Anna.  Our friend Angie brought her son Timothy and her new baby Kate over, and our other friend Brooke brought her two twins Morgan and Keira over.  After lots of playing with the water table, etc., we sat all the kids down for lunch (fruit and cheese pizza) at Anna’s little table.

Timothy, Anna, Keira and Morgan

They all had a great time and everyone had so much fun at Anna’s water table that now they each own one too – I should get a commission from Toys’R'Us!

For Anna’s birthday my parents sent some money for a new outside playhouse for Anna.  We couldn’t find the right one until just recently, and it came this week, and was set up for Anna on Thursday night.  Anna saw it from her playroom window Friday morning and demanded to go down and “play with that!”  She didn’t even know what it was, but Anna knew it was a new fun thing for her! It has a door, mail slot, working doorbell, two windows, a little sink, table with seats and a little phone.  Anna loves it and played with it all day Friday.

I took some video so that my parents could see what a hit their gift is with the little girl:

Anna even demanded to eat her lunch in the playhouse (she also commanded that I make pizza rolls):

Playhouse Lunch

All-in-all, Empress Anna has been having a great summer so far.  Oh, and thanks Nana and Grandpa for the playhouse – the little girl obviously loves it!

The Empress

Friday, June 4th, 2010 | Anna, Updates | 3 Comments

Many times a day I refer to my beloved Anna as “The Empress”.  Part of the um, “joy” of her being two is a very “I am the boss” attitude.  On a moment’s notice Anna will decide that I’m doing something she doesn’t like and feel the need to order me around.  Phrases such as, “Mama sit there.” or “Mama no singing!” are common.

So here is the Empress’ update…

Anna is very verbal, very independent and very active.  She turned two on April 5th, and it was just too close to the birth of her baby brother for us to be capable of hosting a birthday party.  We waited a few weeks, called a few people and decided to have a little party at our house on the 17th of April.  But the universe had different plans for us.  A few days before the scheduled party we discovered that our beloved Cash had fleas, and that they were quite frequently jumping on us and in the carpet.  Exactly what I needed with a newborn in the house! So, we canceled the party at our house and began a huge clean up/flea killing campaign to rid us of this nasty pest.  The myth that there are no fleas in Colorado is a truly a myth!

Since we had already told Anna that she had a birthday coming up, we gathered a small group of family, met at a local restaurant and I made strawberry cupcakes with sprinkles for the birthday girl.

Anna's birthday

With the new baby in the house, Anna has learned that crying is a good tool for mommy manipulation.  She’s fond of grabbing my camera and playing with it, and if you try to take it away from her, you get this:

Anna crying

Most of the time she just gets fingerprints on my camera and aims the camera the wrong way.  And almost all of the pictures that she does take are fuzzy pictures of her fingers, but every once in a while she gets one that looks pretty good.

Anna's self portrait

This summer I have a full schedule for our active little girl, including a music/singing class on Mondays (a woman with a guitar sings and we sing and dance along), a pre-pre-school class for an hour on Wednesdays (parents do not attend!) and tumbling class on Saturdays.  In between all that we are going to try to fit in lots of visits with Anna’s friends.  We had a visit from Piper and Laura the other day and I got a shot of the little girls hanging out at Anna’s art table:

Anna and Piper

Anna’s climbing has reached new complications as she is often getting herself in situations I’d rather she not be in.  The other day I heard “Mama, come get me!” from her bedroom and rushed in to find her hanging on to the top of her bookcase, unable to figure out how to climb down.  Fortunately for me, when we moved the bookcase into her room I had had the foresight to have my dad and Mike anchor the bookcase to the wall.  I was Anna when I was little after all, I knew she was going to climb it eventually…

Yesterday, I came into the living room to find Anna opening the back door and saying, “I’m going outside, okay?”  The back door had been locked, but Anna had deftly moved one of her little chairs over to the door and unlocked both the handle lock and the dead bolt and let herself outside.

Last week I was listening to her usual morning singing routine that she does after she wakes up when all of a sudden there was screaming and crying.  Again, I rushed into her room to find that she had climbed up the side of her crib and gotten herself stuck trying to get out.  So, the decision was made to make the leap to a “big girl” bed.  We removed one side of her convertible crib, put up a gate on her bedroom door and spent last weekend dealing with the fall out.  Anna really enjoys her new independence, she frequently gets up out of the crib and plays with her books, stuffed animals, etc.  This is the destruction in her room after Sunday afternoon’s nap:

Anna's bedroom after a nap

Monday afternoon’s nap didn’t actually happen as Anna instead just played in her room.  Monday night we figured she would be tired and go to sleep pretty quickly. Ha! Instead, she played for 2 hours and then was up every time that we were up with Henry.  At midnight while I was feeding Henry, Mike went into Anna’s room to find her at the window with the shade up looking out and singing “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star”.  Adorable, but all that wakefulness made for a grumpy girl the next day.

With her new baby brother in the picture Anna is often a little more grumpy anyway.  She does not like all the attention Henry gets and often tells me to put Henry down or stop feeding him so that I can play with her.  It’s a little heartbreaking since I would like to give her more attention, but it’s simply not possible.  She’s a little helpful with him; she likes to put his pacifier in to make him stop crying, but she’s also treating her dolls like I treat Henry.  She often changes the diaper on one of her dolls and the other day decided to pull up her shirt and “feed” her doll – once she even pulled up her shirt when I let her have Henry on her lap! I’m sure this will get better when I have to feed Henry less often, but for the moment, Anna is learning to deal with the fact that I simply can’t give her my full attention.

But Anna is adorable and smart and will always be my favorite little girl.  Every once in a while out of the blue Anna will say, “I love you mama” and there’s nothing you can do but love those moments!

Lost in Chaos

Monday, May 10th, 2010 | Updates | 2 Comments

If you’ve been wondering where I have been well, mostly lost in the chaos of two kids – a two-year old and a newborn are the handful I expected them to be.

I used to have spare moments during the day, a moment to prepare dinner, a moment to nap, a moment to blog, etc. and all that is gone – for the time being.  This is the first spare moment I have had in weeks – and I doubt it will last long.  Phone calls and emails go unanswered, thank you notes go unwritten and blog posts go undone.

I’m going to do separate posts for family updates, since there has been a lot that has gone on with each of us in the past few weeks.  I’ll post first about Henry when I have a moment.   I promise to include pictures… Updates coming soon, I promise!

Pregnancy Update

Sunday, March 14th, 2010 | Updates | 3 Comments

Here we are at the beginning of the 37th week of my pregnancy.  That means at most I have 3 more weeks until my son enters the world.

12 days.  12 wonderful days – that’s how many consecutive days since the beginning of December I have not been sick.  Otherwise I have been battling a cold or stomach virus each week.  Apparently for this pregnancy my immune system completely shut down.  As I sit here with my trusty box of tissues with lotion and my Mentholatum, I can only hope that it will come back up after the baby is born.  During my 12 days of not being sick I was able to visit with friends and have my baby shower – so I should probably be grateful.  I sincerely wish that I was one of those wonderful people who never complains and is always perky, despite being sick, but unfortunately for Mike – I’m not.  I’ve been sick, grumpy and unable to sleep for the past few months and he’s been such a great husband throughout.

I’m at the point in the pregnancy where sleep is generally a problem anyway.  The baby is so large and heavy at this point that turning over is something that requires a forklift and a major pillow shift.  I sleep on one side for a little, until the bottom hip begins to hurt, and then I have to turn over, move the pillows that are under the baby belly and behind my back and start the whole process again.  I generally have to pee at least 4 times a night, and with this latest cold, I wake up to cough or sneeze fairly often.  This latest cold did bring some relief to Mike however – I lost my voice on Wednesday and didn’t really start to get it back until Saturday- so he has been spared some complaining…

I’m also at the point in the pregnancy where I go in to see my midwife every week.  Don’t worry – I’m not one of those “Do It Naturally At Home with a Midwife” kind of gals. My midwife is a certified Nurse Midwife, so when the time comes, I meet her at the hospital, she hangs around, but not annoyingly so, and then if something goes wrong there are nurses and doctors around to help.  It worked out great with her for Anna and I’m glad that I have her support again for this second pregnancy.  I can clearly remember a conversation I had with her last time that went like this, “Dorrie, the breathing isn’t working is it?”, “No, Jayne, it isn’t.” to which she replied, “Epidurals are our friends.”  Damn that was good advice!

At last week’s appointment the midwife did some checking and announced that I was making progress, but we weren’t going to have the baby this weekend.  This all has to do with the state of my cervix, the status of which I am going to spare the details of – it’s the internet after all.  I have lately been having lots of contractions and with the lack of sleep was pretty much hoping to go into her office and come out a few hours later with a baby.  There comes a point in my pregnancies where I get to a “I’m done with this crap” point and I am so there…

On the homefront I have been nesting a little.  The baby’s room is as decorated as I can get it right now – we’re doing a farm animals theme with red as our main color.  I got so nesty this past week I scrubbed a few baseboards, and even picked up all of the dog poop in the yard – although what contact the baby will have with the backyard is beyond me.

We’ve also been trying our best to prepare Anna for what is about to happen.  We talk a lot about the baby and how when the baby comes she will go her Aunt’s and Mama will go to the doctor.  If you ask her what babies do Anna says, “Cry”.  She visits the baby’s room a lot, mostly to find her old toys and say, “It’s mine!” and we have been reading her a book about being a big sister.  This will be a bumpy road for her coming up, but I’m hoping that all this prep will make it a little less of a shock.

Hormones willing my next post will be a post of pictures of my son and how the whole birth thing went down.  But if I get bored in the meantime, I’ll post some pictures of the cutie/soon-to-be big sister.