Dear Santa

C.U.T.E.

Preschool Christmas Program
Lutheran Church of Peace, Maplewood, MN

Away in a Manger

Photo Sharing - Video Sharing - Photo Printing

Bethlehem

Photo Sharing - Video Sharing - Photo Printing


Jingle Bells

Photo Sharing - Video Sharing - Photo Printing

A chip off both blocks

A few days ago Ava was in my bathroom with me and said "Mom, watch this!" I looked over and she was watching herself in the mirror raising her left eyebrow up and down. I could only roll my eyes because Scot is always raising one or the other of his eyebrows in conversation. So I asked Ava if Daddy showed her how to do that. She said no, she just knows he does that. She is very proud of her new trick - I will have to try and get it on video one of these days...it shouldn't be hard because it seems like she is now constantly saying, "Mom, watch this!" (Well, she says that all the time anyway but right now it is only about the eyebrow)

A little while later it was, "Mom, I do something like you do too!". And she followed that up with a big "Ttt!" (I'm not really sure how you spell that, but those who know me in real life will know what I mean). It's a form of laughter. ;-) And so Ava does that too.

My apologies for the lack of blogging lately...Scot left on another Guard trip on the 7th and will be gone until the 18th. What an annoying time of year for him to be away! And as one would expect, it also snowed about 8 inches Tuesday and Wednesday. One week down, one to go. It wouldn't be too bad if Reese were sleeping through the night...but she is most definitely not. We are in a bad cycle and I don't know what's going on with her, I only know that it is exhausting. I felt like a new person today when she only woke up once at midnight and then slept until 7:30. It was amazing!

The good fortune continued when later in the day my sister-in-law Julie and I took Ava to see Disney Princesses on Ice. Ava had a ball! It was a lot of fun - I'd share some pictures, but my camera battery was dead so I don't have any. Thankfully Julie had her camera along so I'll try and post a few when I get them from her.

As for Reese...I think she might be walking by Christmas! She has been standing unassisted for 15-20 seconds at a time and in the last few days she has even started to go from sitting to standing without pulling up on anything - she has some strong legs! While it is so exciting to watch her tackle yet another milestone, it is sad to see my baby act less and less like a baby...

And just because, here are a few "wintery" pics of them:

Sigh.

Going on Day 5 of playing single mom and I'm more than ready to share the wealth of parenting again. Scot has been gone since Monday and is rumored to be back sometime on Sunday. It would be nice to know a definitive ETA because I will be more than ready to leave the house. I'm looking VERY forward to a night out with the book club girls on Sunday, trying out dinner at Flame in Roseville.

Ava has been a terror all week. So much so that she got devil horns (yes, devil horns) on the frowny face on her "report card" from Vicki's on Wednesday. Today wasn't any better - in fact, Vicki informed me that it was quite possibly Ava's worst day at daycare ever. Another frowny face, this one extra large. Things didn't get much better after we left for home. We stopped at Target (hey, I needed paper towels and formula) - she was actually great in the store up until the very end. And then it got worse in the parking lot. I let her start to get into her carseat by herself as usual while I tended to Reese. Something happened (I still don't know what) and she got completely hysterical. I didn't react, just continued to buckle Reese in and eventually made my way back over to her side. She was still hysterical, screaming and crying and tears streaming. Without speaking to her, I finally got her buckled in and got in the driver's seat. A woman in the car across from me looked at me with disgust. Eh, whatever lady. That's how I felt too and all I could do was take a few deep breaths, pull out of the parking lot, and tune out the continuing tantrum until it finally stopped and she started talking in a normal voice like the past 15 minutes never happened.

I don't know what's going on with her. I've been reading about grief and anger in children - she talks about missing Gramma Di quite often. There's that. And then with Scot being gone this week, maybe it was just too much for her. Or maybe she's just four and that's how she acts. Please let it not be that one!

It isn't all downers at our house thankfully - we had a wonderful birthday party for Ava on Saturday. Again, can't believe my baby is FOUR. Lots of family, friends, pizza, cake, presents...it was a great time and Ava thoroughly enjoyed it.

Earlier this week, she also had her 4 year physical - she's 41 inches and 37.4 pounds, putting her at the 75th percentile for both. She passed the eye exam well enough (though kind of comical to watch someone who barely knows her letters in the first place try to read them from afar). Dr. L. had her draw some shapes on paper, write her name, and asked her other questions that a 4 year old should know. She did great. Then it was flu shot time - she got a regular flu shot and the H1N1 in the nasal mist form. Reese was along for the ride so she also got the H1N1 shot, having already had her regular flu shot last month. Guess who cried more about her shot? Yes, that would be Ava.

Reese! I haven't talked about my little baby much lately! Reese turned 10 months the same day Ava turned four. She is normally such a happy kid, but the first 2 weeks of November were rough. She seemed to have every symptom under the sun at one time or another, but never had anything more serious than a regular virus (this confirmed by 2 separate doctor visits). All of this was quite trying on our already fried nerves...as she was crying most of the time she was awake and was waking up once or twice in the middle of most nights. She was much better this week and is back to her happy self! She is still smiling most of the time and is usually content to play by herself. She has gotten a little more vocal lately and is not afraid to express her displeasure when Ava takes things from her! She's cruising now and will sometimes stand unassisted for a few seconds. She still prefers crawling and is a speedy little thing! She can clap and wave and say "da da da da da". And still has just 2 bottom teeth.

Oh, and I still can't find my camera thing. It's probably time for me to order a new one, in which case I will find the old one immediately. Here are two from my mom's camera from the weekend:

Where did my baby go?

We had a great day with our new little four year old! I went in to work late so I could hang out with Ava in the morning and take her to preschool at 9. We let her open a couple of presents then - she got a 48 piece floor princess puzzle and the game Cootie. We tackled both before it was time to go. And at one point she thoughtfully remarked on being four, "I feel like the same girl?" At preschool, she got to decorate a crown with some stickers and wear it the rest of the morning. She wasn't afraid to tell everyone that it was her birthday and that she is FOUR! After work, we thought maybe we'd take her to a play area or something, but Reese has been under the weather for what seems like forever, so we opted to stay home. We asked her if she wanted anything special for supper and she said "cereal". We threw some pancakes and mandarin oranges at her instead and Scot and I had a frozen pizza (she might be the only child on earth who does not like pizza). Then we settled in to watch another one of her birthday presents - Beauty and the Beast on dvd. We also got her the Aristocats movie, a Laurie Berkner cd (she likes her music that they play on Noggin) and some Tinkerbell dolls. I'm sure she'll get plenty more loot at her party on Saturday!

It's hard to believe that I had my little girl Ava four years ago - so much has happened in our lives since then, but in some ways it feels like it was hardly any time ago at all. And the difference in Ava in the past year is quite staggering, it seems like kids learn SO much between 3 and 4 and can articulate it so much better. And we all know Ava excels at articulating...well, at least in talking. She still sounds like she's from Jersey (not a lot of "r" sounds come out of her mouth) and throws in a lot of "fw" sounds for "th" mostly. "Fwee" for three, that sort of thing. She's really gotten on a computer game kick lately (we like nickjr.com) - I'm surprised how well she's using the mouse now. Considering I started using a mouse in like, um, 11th grade or something. It's so much fun - as challenging as Ava can be, she can make us laugh and tug at our heartstrings like crazy. I'm really excited to see what "four" brings.

My apologies for the lack of posting lately...the moving process was exhausting, but we are finally getting settled in our new house and really loving it. We enjoyed our first Halloween here 2 days after we moved in and invited some of our friends over for pizza and trick-or-treating. It was a lot of fun and an easy way to meet some of our new neighbors.

And I hoped to post some pictures too, but I cannot locate the thing that links the camera to the computer (whatever that is called). Sorry Lisa S.! ;-)

Little Peanuts

Reese had her 9 month appointment today and her stats are pretty close to Ava's...

Reese
Weight: 17 lbs, 8 oz (25th percentile)
Length: 28 inches (50th percentile)

Ava
Weight: 16 lbs, 6 oz (10th percentile)
Length: 27.5 inches (40th percentile)

9 months!

This post is a little late...as Reese turned 9 months on October 10th. (Which also happened to be Brett Favre's 40th birthday - I can't help it, I still adore him)

She is still as cute as ever!



Reese is still happy all of the time. She literally cries less than 5 minutes a day. This still amazes me - it is such a different experience than what we had the first time around! The rest of the time she is smiling and showing off her 2 big dimples. She did have a few minor bouts of crabbiness over the past few months...the end result being 2 bottom teeth. She got the first one in the middle of August and the second one in the middle of September. She's been crawling for 3 months now and she is FAST. She is on the move constantly. And she LOVES sticking random things like washcloths in her mouth and going about her routine - such a goofy girl. She is generally very content to entertain herself with toys. Her other favorite pasttime is eating. A LOT of eating. I begrudgingly stopped nursing about a month ago because I just could not keep her satisfied (I was able to nurse Ava for a year with a few months of supplementing at the end). She guzzles down bottles and has liked pretty much all the fruits and vegetables we've tried, with the exception of bananas (which I find to be a strange aversion but maybe she'll come around). She doesn't have her 9 month doctor visit until next week, so I won't have her official stats until then.

And for comparison, here is Ava in the same 9 month tee:

This is one of my favorite pictures of Ava at that age...

...and this picture I snapped of Reese recently reminded me of it. Well, but with paper in her mouth, which she is keen on doing as mentioned above.

Transition

My mother-in-law Diane lost her battle with cancer on Monday, October 5th.

Her obituary

We are all missing her so, so much.

From Couch to 5K

'Tis the name of the 5K training program I printed out several weeks ago. I have a feeling the program would have been more effective had I done more than 6 workouts. Ah, but life really, really got in the way these past few months. Excuses, excuses I know. I don't like the sound of it either but the last few months have been pretty dang busy. And stressful. Moving back from Atlanta. Adjusting to working outside the home with 2 children. Being a single mom to those 2 children while Scot is periodically away. The buying and selling of houses. And most recently, supporting Scot while he and his sister support his mom, whose battle with cancer over the past 2 years is becoming more and more grim. And going about my own grieving as well.

So when I actually completed the 5K today without stopping, I couldn't help but shed a few tears. Even after all my years in track, I have never run that far in my life. And it's really not that far, I realize. But it was for me and in light of all that is going on in life, I feel proud that I finished. Oh, and special thanks to my running (and life) partner Scot, who said all the right things during the race to keep me going. Who also let me beat him by one second. :-)

Good Fortune

We celebrated my birthday on Tuesday with a dinner out to our new favorite Chinese restaurant. After living in our house for 5 years, we JUST discovered this place in July that's less than a mile away. And that's only because my sister in law Julie tried it out while she was living in our house during our time in Atlanta. Anyway, much to our delight, we learned yesterday that they are opening a second location less than a mile away from our new house. Sometimes it's the little things in life...

Sold!

We received an offer on the house late Monday night, negotiated back and forth a bit, and have ultimately accepted. It's pending an inspection on Friday, which may or may not happen as they may agree to just go with the City of St. Paul inspection we were required to have done before listing. And they're paying cash, which is great, because that means no last minute bank rejections or anything of that sort. We're not getting the list price, but we're relieved to be where we're at. It's worth it to have the weight off our shoulders, to not worry about the possibility of making 2 mortgage payments, looking for renters, etc. We'll close on both houses on October 30th. Now we can "relax", start packing, and be messy once again.

School Days

Ava started preschool on Tuesday, September 15th. She is attending a church preschool near Vicki's house - very conveniently for us, Don (Vicki's husband) will take Ava there and pick her up every Tuesday and Thursday. In her class of 16, wouldn't you know it, there are 2 Avas. So she is already an Ava W. Sigh.

Here she is holding up the homework she had to do for the first day of class! She wrote her name herself (and we apparently need to work on the "W" which will now be a requisite). I transcribed her other answers which you can read if you click on the picture. The picture in the upper right hand corner is one she drew of her and Reese. Aw....

Here she is posing in front of the house.

Walking up to the school...Sniff.

And settling in to class.

It seems she is having a great time so far - she has always been quite open to new situations so I wasn't too worried about her getting along. I'm so proud of my big girl!

For Sale

Gee, why are we leaving? This place sounds great! ;-)

"Welcome to this amazing "must see" St. Paul beauty, ready for you to move in and call home. From the close proximity to Beaver Lake and easy work commute to 3M and downtown, to the meticulously kept 4BD/3BA design, offering over 2100 finished square feet of living space, you owe yourself the enjoyment of this home. Add its 3 season porch, 3 car garage with loft, newer appliances, hardwood floors, remodeled bath, new flooring, light fixtures and garage doors and your dream home awaits you!"

My favorite is "meticulously kept". Ha. Never in the 5 years we've lived here has our house been meticulously kept.

Click here to view pictures.

Fun in the Florida Sun

Pool. Beach. Ocean. Corona. Cards. Food. Lots of food. Sun. Rain. Mojitos. Bug Bites. SpongeBob. Reading. Napping. Walking. Diet Coke. Manatee! The best cookies and cream ice cream ever. Lincoln Logs. Tears. Tantrums. First tooth. Standing. Sea Cow. Did I say mojitos? Hugs. Kisses. FAMILY. Captiva 2009.

Holy Crap...

We bought a new house on Friday.

So, it's been a busy few days as we have gone from casually looking at internet postings (albeit several hundred) and about 10 actual visits to making a no-kidding offer. We had the home inspection today and everything seemed to check out well - we close on October 30th, which is great as that gives us a pretty big cushion to get our house sold. Frenzied cleaning describes the weekend - I even conned my parents into coming over to help out. :-) That didn't work out quite like I had hoped though, since we ended up in the ER with my mom about 30 minutes after their arrival. My poor mom smashed her right thumb while trying to replace a window she had just washed. Ouch! The staff at Woodwinds got her all bandaged up, though - she was a trooper throughout and even managed to help with some cleaning after all...

It's going to be a busy week - we're going to continue to clean up our place, but we are also leaving for vacation on Saturday with Scot's family so there that's to get ready for too. We would have loved to get our house listed before we go on vacation (because it would actually STAY clean!) but I don't think it's going to happen. So we're going to try really, really hard for the first week of Septemeber and hope that it sells quickly. And somewhere in there I need to finish my book club book - The Time Traveler's Wife - because we're going to see the movie on Thursday. Whee!

Here are some pics of the new place...

7 Months

Reese celebrated 7 months on the 10th. And boy is she busy! While Ava was just barely starting to crawl at 7 months, 1 day, Reese has it nearly perfected. She scoots around now faster than we can keep track of and it's just a matter of time before we'll need to throw up some strategic barriers around the house. In the last week she has also started crawling from a sitting position and sitting from a crawling position! I hope her milestone-breaking slows down a bit but I fear it won't.


She had her 6 month doctor visit on July 30th and checked out great.
Weight: 15 lbs, 5 oz
Height: 26 inches? (I can't remember for sure - bad Mom!)
She was somewhere around the 40-50th percentile for each.

She doesn't have any teeth yet but she is drooling incessantly. She was also extra fussy last week so I thought one or two would have sprouted by now, but so far nothing. My trusty blog tells me that Ava didn't get her first teeth until she was almost 9 months old, so maybe it will be awhile yet. She is getting more and more vocal - in the last few days she discovered that she can say "BA BA BA BA BA BA BA!" really loudly and so she does this often. She still smiles all the time - you just can't help but smile when you're around her! AND maybe most importantly, she is really and truly sleeping through the night now. She's been doing this pretty much since we moved back home and we're just so thankful - it's amazing what full nights of sleep can do for you. I usually put her to bed around 7-7:30 pm and she will sleep until about 6 am. She generally takes 2 naps during the day too - yay Reese! She is also eating more and more solids and has rarely met a food she didn't like. The only thing I can think of that she hasn't liked so far is bananas. Otherwise it's all fair game - I think she would eat 24/7 if it was an option for her. Well, so would I, I guess (so maybe not all that newsworthy).

She has never cried during a bath. She just loves them so much and her favorite part is getting snuggled up in the hooded towel afterwards - she giggles and smiles like crazy.

Oh yeah, and she's a thumbsucker just like her big sis.

The rest of us are all doing pretty well too. Scot just came back from taking an Alaskan cruise with his mom and sister - they all had a wonderful time and if I hadn't been to Alaska already myself, I would have been even more jealous than I was. Thankfully, another vacation is in our near future - we are all going to Captiva, FL at the end of August. I don't have anything new to report on our jobs - mine is still in limbo, though they should be announcing things in the next few weeks and I have an inkling that I will be happy with the switch. The job posting that Scot applied for is now closed, so they should be interviewing for that soon. LOTS.OF.CHANGE as always for us.

Ava? Still our little Miss Jekyl & Hyde - she can be sticky sweet one minute and a complete monster the next. I've heard four is better...but at this rate I'm becoming less convinced that good behavior is right around the corner. Most of the time, though, she really can be so much fun - we've been playing a lot of games lately. And her imagination is through the roof - Vicki has made that comment to us over and over again. Right now, her favorite name is "Alayma". All of her babies are named Alayma. Sometimes they have twins named "Aloma". It's all pretty comical...Last night when Scot put her to bed she said, "Daddy, I like you because you're cute." Pause. "No, I mean handsome."

Wordless Wednesday

Too Busy To Blog

Sorry fans. While it's great to be home, it is hectic. We're both working full time, carting the kids to daycare and back, catching up with friends and family, and catching up with life in general. There's just not much left in either of our tanks at the end of each day! So, I'm going to keep this kind of short (but with a picture or two or 20 of course!). What have we been up to the last few weeks? Here are some of the highlights...

First week back
We moved Ava into a new bedroom - what was our guest bedroom on the main floor. Before I went back to work, I bought bedding, a rug, and some shelving (all at Target of course!) and painted the walls. It is supposed to be a light key lime green, but it looks kind of yellow in these pictures and when the overhead light is on.


Reese is now in the nursery - all I did was add wooden letters to spell her name on the wall, otherwise I didn't change any of the decorations. And if I'm being honest, it still says "ees" as I used the nails from Ava's name and still haven't added another two. But she seems to be OK with all of it. :-) Actually, knock on wood, she must love it because she is finally sleeping through the night! Well, most nights. Or at least until 4ish and then back to sleep again for a few more hours. We'll take it.

July 11-12
Our first Saturday back in town, we met up with friends J-squared and K-squared (that would be Jess, Jared, Keira and their niece Kallee) at Teddy Bear Park in Stillwater...the weather was gorgeous! Just like our sweet girls.

On Sunday, we hosted "Kid Fest 2009"...because we're getting to the point in life where most of our friends now have kids and keep having more! We added 4 (!) to the mix just since we met up last summer: Grant (1), Bennett (6 mo), Reese (6 mo), and Izaak (3 mo). So, 9 kids in all and somehow we forgot to get a picture of them all together! We had a great time - we even rented a Bounce House so the bigger kids could burn off some extra energy. Lots of good food, drinks, and commiseration. Kudos to Aunt Julie who is not a parent and came anyway :-)

July 13
I went back to work. Ick.

July 18-21
On Saturday morning, my friend and old coworker Sheila invited Ava out to her place in Monticello to ride her pony Nuttie. We had a great visit and Ava had so much fun! She was pretty tentative to ride at first, but was a lot more confident when she tried again later. We'll definitely try to get out there again before it gets cold. Does it get any cuter than this?


On Saturday night, Scot and I went out to celebrate our 11th anniversary. I've now been married exactly one third of my life. Yowza. We had dinner at W.A. Frost in St. Paul, which was wonderful. They greeted us with 2 glasses of champagne on the house and Scot even had roses delivered to our table! Aunt Julie was generous enough to babysit AND see to it that we had dessert (chocolate cake for me and creme brulee for Scot - man, she knows us well!) and Moscato D'Asti. After that we went to see The Hangover, which was hilarious. I can't remember the last time we did dinner AND a movie, so it was quite a treat! It wasn't Hawaii...but it was still pretty good. Here we are acting like we like each other.

On Sunday we looked at 7 houses. We're thinking a little more seriously about taking advantage of the low prices that are out there right now so we can move into something bigger and in a nicer neighborhood (though we wish we didn't have to worry about selling our current house). We haven't fallen in love with anything yet so we'll keep looking and see what happens. It's stressful and exciting all at the same time. Thanks to Grandma Di and Aunt Marilyn for watching our napping children for most of the time we were gone - we treated them to a nice cookout upon our return!

On Monday morning, Scot went to a Honda dealership and bought us a 2007 Honda Pilot. A few days earlier, we learned the transmission was probably going out on our Explorer (which was especially annoying considering it only had about 85K miles on it). We considered our options and decided to get a newer used vehicle, so we combed the internet (oh, how I love the internet) and found a great deal on this particular Pilot. Scot did some haggling, got a great trade in for our Explorer, and came home with the Pilot...even made it back for an eye doctor appointment at 1. It's fun to have a new vehicle! Hopefully we can get a year or two more out of my car before we have to worry about that again - buying a car is so stressful!

As I read this over, it is no wonder that I have been sick since Tuesday with a whole gamut of symptoms. Too much. All of that and my job is in limbo as my department braces for a reorganization. I have been assured I will have a job, but it will likely be different than what I'm currently doing (supervising). I told my boss today that it wouldn't break my heart if I weren't a supervisor anymore. Something has to give and it might as well be the job that I don't always like. To be determined. On a related note, another full time job at the Guard base posted on Thursday and Scot already has his app in. Wish him luck!

And some "just because" pictures.
Reese. Who is crawling. As of 6 months, 8 days. About 3 weeks earlier than Ava did. We were actually hoping she'd "underachieve" on this one. Oh well...

Princess Keira and Princess Ava



Don't be too surprised if I take a little blogging hiatus for awhile...I hope the next few weeks are much LESS exciting than the past 3 have been!