Long Road Trip

We took our first ever long road trip as a family last weekend over Memorial Day weekend.  We drove out to Escanaba, MI for my cousin Peter's high school graduation party.  Where is Escanaba you ask?  It's in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan along the lake.  

I was bracing myself for an epic fail.  Being in a car for 8 hours with a 4 year old and a 10 month old sounds like total torture.  

It actually wasn't that bad.  

Anna was a tad grumpy on the way out and had a few crying spats but I'm sure that it was related to the fact that she wouldn't take a bottle ALL day.  Meredith on the other hand listened to her kids music on her iPod the WHOLE way there and barely uttered a sound.  

The drive back was even better.  Anna was quite happy and cried/whined for a grand total of maybe 10 minutes.  Otherwise, she was quite happy when she was awake and slept a little bit too.  Again, Meredith listened to her iPod and barely uttered a sound.  

All my crazy relatives were there from my mom's side of the family.  It was a lot of fun and a big thank you goes out to my Uncle David for his hospitality!  

That's baby Bowen - Mer and Anna's cousin.  

They had fun playing with him.  

Everyone seems to think Anna looks like Greg.  Yay?  Nay?  

As usual, that silly guy was there to make the kids laugh.  

That's the guest of honor (my cousin Peter), and my uncle Robin playing Jarts.  I'm impressed with this picture.  I caught the Jart in mid-air.  

What do you do when  Jart gets caught up in a tall, tall tree?  Why you climb up it of course.  

It's a good thing there were people standing around ready to summon an ambulance.  

 

This is my cousin Vance.  Better know to Meredith as Uncle Grandpa.  Vance, bless your kind heart for playing with her for so long:-)

This is Peter (the graduate) performing at his own party.  He will be attending McNally Smith College of Music this fall.  

As usual, there are many pictures that I didn't get to take.  We had a great weekend and we're looking forward to seeing everyone again!  

Watch Out World!

Not only does Anna pull up to standing on her own (if you click on the picture below, you can see her two toothies), 

she also crawls on her own now!  Oy.  Time for gates.  

This week has been absolutely glorious!   We have been spending our afternoons outside.  Since it's a bit early for our pool to open, we have been filling our baby pool out front.  Our neighbors have a pool they fill as well so we get the kids together and they have a grand old time!  

In the meantime, Meredith is REALLY excited to go on the car trip to Michigan over the Memorial Day holiday.  I wonder if she will change her tune once she has been sitting in a car for seven hours???

 Grandma came up earlier in the week.

 These are the neighbor kids.

And, someone just refuses to crawl.  She could do it.  She just can't seem to figure it out.  She is starting to pull up on things and she can get into a sitting position on her own from being on her belly.  She just won't crawl.  

Mother's Day Weekend

Well, it's Mother's Day weekend.  What I really wanted was another charm for my bracelet with Anna's name and birthday and that's what I got:-)  I also got Meredith's charm re-engraved.  When we got this bracelet 4 years ago, we got the cheap engraving.  That was a mistake...we should have spent the money on the nicer engraving because over time, you could barely read it anymore.  

Tomorrow we are going to the St. Paul Farmer's Market to partake in the Mother's Day festivities that my mom is helping out with.  It should be fun.  I'm not sure if I"m going to bring my camera or not.


Earlier this week, I convinced Meredith to get her hair cut.  I LOVE it this way and it's so much easier. I was really getting tired of dealing with the tangles.

And, someone is starting to stand up in her crib.  I guess we're going to have to lower the mattress:-D

Making progress towards crawling

I think Anna could crawl if she wanted to...she just hasn't figured it out.  Check her out.  She's trying to stand up too.  

Meredith started crawling at 9.5 months.  As far as I'm concerned, Anna can take as long as she wants.  I'm not ready to baby proof and get out gates.  But I have a feeling it won't be too long.  

Teething

It's been a while since I've updated but I haven't really had too much to write about.  I celebrated my 36th birthday last week.  As my college friends and I say, I'm not in my upper 30's until I hit 39.  I had a great day and thanks to my wonderful husband and kids, I will be going to get a massage or whatever else I fancy sometime in the near future.

Anna is officially teething.  She got her first tooth (the middle right lower incisor) a few weeks ago and she just got the middle left lower incisor yesterday.  That puts her right on par with Meredith's teething pattern.  I guess we can expect her to get all four of her upper incisors right around her 1st birthday now.

Anna is currently on Omnicef for an ongoing sinus infection.  We brought her in last week because she was just so congested that she was gasping for breaths and making froggy noises in her throat and it had been going on for almost two months.  I was a little afraid to start on back up on antibiotics since she got colitis the last time she took antibiotics but we started her on probiotics a day before the antibiotics and we haven't had ANY diarrhea.  And her congestion eased up within days!

We took Anna in for her 9 month checkup this morning.  She looks great and weighed in at 19 lbs., 3 oz. and is 28.5".

Meredith has a busy month ahead as I have her signed up for a bunch of classes through community education and she also starts some zoo camps at the end of the month.  She already took one community ed class and was SO excited.  She is also very excited for our road trip to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan later this month.  She made a packing list and asks me multiple times every day how many more days she has to wait to go on the "car trip".

I haven't had the camera out too much since Easter but this is one of my most favorite photos ever.  You may have seen it on Facebook already.

Easter 2012

We spent Easter this year at Peter & Phyllis' house again and as usual, we had a great time seeing everyone and enjoyed some great hospitality.

Grandma Schwake bought the girls matching Easter dresses this year. It was a bit cool, but I got creative with their closets and added some leggings, a cardigan, and cropped jean jacket.

Grandpa Schwake sure has developed a soft spot for babies.

And we got to visit with this cutie too, my nephew Bowen.
Babies are just so cute when they see other babies.

This little guy is Sam. He is my cousin Nate and his wife Jen's son. So I'm not sure what that makes him to me. 2nd cousin? First cousin once removed? Anyway, it was cute to watch Sam and Meredith play together.

And this other little guy is Matthew, Nate and Jen's other son who will be 2 this summer.

This egg hunt tradition goes back as far as I can remember (thank you Phyllis!). My earliest memory was when I was in 2nd or 3rd grade back in 1985 I think. It was the year I got my first Cabbage Patch Kid and I distinctly remember carrying that doll around during the egg hunt.

And Uncle Chris (who was referred to by Sam as 'The Silly Guy' did not disappoint the littles.

Easter Eve

The part of Easter I dislike the most is eggs. I despise hard boiled eggs. I always have - even when I was a little kid. They stink up your refrigerator and the texture makes me gag. Greg doesn't like them and neither does Meredith. But I remember dying Easter eggs and how much fun it was and Meredith was so excited to color eggs again.

We bought one of those kits where you can make your eggs into animals.
Here are the finished eggs. They turned out cute! And Meredith did actually say she wanted to try an egg again. She picked the blue bunny. After one teeny bite, she decided she really didn't like hard boiled eggs after all.

Anna just sat by and watched.

Osman Shrine Circus

Last year I discovered that the Osman Shrine Circus does a few shows where they offer Grandparents priced tickets for $5 each for people over the age of 55 and their guests. They are normally $20 seats so this makes for very cheap entertainment for a 4-year-old.

Once again, they offered the same special on tickets so my mom, my sister, me, Anna, and Meredith spent Friday morning at the circus. I didn't go last year so this was my first time going to the Shrine Circus in about 20 years or so. The last time I was there was in about 9th grade when we volunteered with the Girl Scouts.

The show was actually really good! Meredith really enjoyed it. When they turned down the lights, you entered a world of blinkie toys. And they made that known when they would say over the loudspeaker "boys and girls...please turn on your light up toys and show them off now! If you don't have one, make sure you get one!". ::eye roll here::

The girl in front of us had this elephant fiber optic blinkie toy that Meredith decided she wanted so Grandma was waiting patiently for one of the vendors to come by our seats so she could buy her one. In the meantime, I had taken Anna to the bathroom to change her diaper. On my way back to our seats, imagine my surprise when I walked by a curtained off area right outside our section out on the concourse that had a hand-written cardboard sign that said "Everything $1". And they had light-up blinkie toys! They had the elephant one that Meredith wanted. At first I thought they were reject toys and I even asked the Shriner selling them if they were broken or had worn out batteries. He told me they were just trying to clear out old inventory from last year.

I headed back to my seats with the new $1 elephant blinkie toy and my bag of cotton candy that I got from a vendor in the concourse. My mom told me that Meredith almost had a meltdown when she asked one of the vendors if he had the elephant blinkie toy and he told her they must be all sold out because he didn't have any.

I handed Mer the elephant blinkie toy and all was well. Grandma went out the the $1 blinkie toy booth and bought 4 more blinkie toys. LOL!

During intermission, Meredith and Grandma went for a ride on an elephant since Meredith was a bit apprehensive to try it last year. I was in my seat with Anna (and our small digital that fits in the diaper bag) so the pictures are kind of crappy. Grandma is wearing pink and Meredith is wearing orange.

Mobility

Anna is getting around these days. She's not quite crawling just yet but I don't think it will be too long before she's rocking on all fours. Both my kids are late crawlers. I think Meredith crawled at 9.5 months. Anna is 8 months old now so I think she's going to be moving in the very near future. Her latest trick is reaching for everything. She almost gets herself onto all fours when she does this but isn't quite there yet. But she rolls around on the floor everywhere! I'm dreading getting out the gates. I'm glad she is a late mover.

She seems to be following in Meredith's footsteps with a lot of things developmentally so I'm predicting she will pop a tooth in the next couple of weeks. I swear I can see them under her gum (in the rare opportunity she will let me look). Mer got her first tooth at 8.5 months.

PLOP!

More about spring

Yes, more about Spring. I am ridiculously excited to see my two goldfinch friends show up again this year!!!!! I wish I had more of a yard and trees to put more bird feeders.

My latest attempt to attract birds is this hummingbird feeder that I placed out front. It may even be too early but these temperatures make me think it's June. I really hope I can get one or two. But I can't plant flowers so I'm not sure if this alone will lure them. I may have to put a pot of flowers in the rock bed.

And yes, I have ghetto blinds. The cat did that.

Another feeding update

After almost two long months of trying to get Anna to eat baby food, I've decided I'm giving up. It's just not worth it anymore. We're going to skip baby food and go right to table food. She just refuses to eat anything I give her on a spoon - including stuff like pudding. But she seems to like to explore and pick up and eat finger foods like puffs, rice rusks, pasta, toast, etc. I'm going to get out the mesh feeders and the food grinder. I might try some of those squeeze packets of baby food though and see if she likes that. I'm actually kind of thrilled at the thought of not having to do baby food. But I'm not thrilled at the thought of coming up with baby friendly ideas of foods to eat.

Now, I have to go to Target and bring back about 20 containers of baby food that I had bought on sale. Ugh. I'm going to feel like a moron brining back a heaping bag of baby food.

Here she is eating spaghetti. She likes it:-)

Spring!

This is one of my favorite times of the year - when it starts to feel warmer out and Spring arrives. I can't believe this weather though. This has been the best winter ever. It's not often you can say it's 79 degrees when it's still winter. And this is the tree across the street. It has leaves popping out on St. Patricks Day.

This time of year also means home improvements. Sometimes I hate owning a house. Our windows are going bad (along with everyone else's in the neighborhood). Not sure what we're going to do about that but it makes me sick to my stomach to think about it. The builder just used cheap, shoddy, windows. Our neighbor has it much worse but it's probably only a matter of time before we're there too.

One a simpler note, we put in a new kitchen faucet. Our house came with the cheapest of the cheap (and ugliest of the ugly) faucets. This is the last faucet to be replaced and what was supposed to be simple turned into a two day project for Greg. First, the faucet was on so tight that Greg had to saw it off to get some leverage. Then, our plumbing under the sink was done so cheaply that the old hoses underneath did not even screw into the new faucet (they clamped I think) so we had to get some special adapters. But we finally got it done.

Here's Greg in action:

And here's the new faucet.

Our next project is hardware for the kitchen cabinets. I thought it was time for that after 9 years. I'm very excited about it and I'll put up pictures of it whenever Greg decides to tackle that project.

This weekend was the Just Between Friends consignment sale that I participated in. From what I understand, they had the best sale to date. They had over 100 more consigners this spring than they had this fall. And traffic at the sale was outstanding.

I brought in 112 items to sell and I only brought home 18 items! I sold almost all my maternity clothes too. I'm so happy. See in the picture below? That's all I had to bring home! I do think this great weather inspired people to buy for spring/summer so that was good. I grossed about $415 so after they take their cut, I'll be getting about $300 or so.

Sick Baby

I was hoping that I would make it through this winter season without a sick baby (beyond a cold) but it happened sooner rather than later. Anna was sick last week with a cold. After a couple days, she developed croup so we brought her in to the doctor. Her left ear was infected so she started on amoxicillin. Antibiotics are always dreadful in infants because they typically cause diarrhea and quite frankly, it's miserable changing all those diapers and seeing a red, rashy bum. Not to mention that this is what I think is the dreaded start of ongoing ear infections. I think back to Meredith who had infection after infection that wouldn't go away until she got tubes.

Anyhow, the antibiotics have given her colitis. Poor girl is having the worst time with poops and has had all sorts of bloody diarrhea so we went back to the doctor today. Her left ear was not infected anymore but now her right ear is. We have to stop the antibiotics because they are making her sick. We can't try another kind like augmentin because it is even worse on your body so now she has to battle this other ear infection on her own so her intestines can get better.

Poor girl - she is just a train wreck right now. And she is so congested on top of things. Her nose will not stop running. I just hope she gets better soon. If she is not improving by Monday, we have to start doing stool samples. Blech.