Blog Exclusive

Because I have been slacking, here is a blog-exclusive photo. It's cute.

Santa

Meredith asked Santa for two things. An Easy Bake Oven and a dolly. Santa brought her both. Much to Mommy's delight, both require me to buy 'maintenance' things. The Easy Bake Oven requires special mixes that must be purchased at the store. And they aren't exactly cheap for a mix that makes the equivalent to 1 regular cookie. But she loves it so I digress.

Santa also brought Meredith a Baby Alive doll which pees and poops. This also requires special diapers and food mixes. But she loves this too. **sigh**

See the poo?

One other gift Meredith got for Christmas from Mom and Dad was this set of pop beads. I contemplated whether it was worth the price when I first got it but it has been a huge hit. I'm so glad I didn't take it back to the store. She spends hours playing with them making necklaces, bracelets and rings. She tells me every day how much she loves it.

On a totally random note, my Christmas Cactus is finally blooming! This plant rarely blooms for me and I've had it for over 10 years. It must have 15-20 blooms on it this year but what's weird is that all the blooms are on one specific side of this huge plant. They formed on the side facing the wall. I have turned the blooms to face the kitchen now.

Bug Sucker

On Christmas Day, we spent the morning with Lois Andersen (one of Greg's relatives) and they we Skyped with the Florida Carlsons as we opened gifts. After that, we headed up to Robin and Irene's house in Amery, WI. It was a great day but the highlight of the day came when Chris ate a sucker. Not just any sucker... a bug sucker.

Janis had asked me if she could give Meredith a sucker she got at the Science Museum that had a cricket in the middle of it. I told her to go ahead and that Mer probably wouldn't want anything to do with it. A few minutes later, Meredith comes running up to me all excited and asking me if she could eat her sucker. She didn't realize there was a bug in it. I asked her if she really wanted to eat a sucker with a bug in it and her smile went away and was replaced by a look of disgust. Then she was so upset she began crying.

To try to cheer her up, we told her to go give it to her uncle Chris to see if he would eat it. He started off sucking on it but nobody thought it would go as far as it did.

She was excited to see him sucking on it.

The faces she made. LOL.

Here is the video for you enjoyment. The things that an uncle will do to impress his niece. The good part is about 1:30 in.

Christmas Eve

We spent Christmas Eve at the Schwake house. We enjoyed ham, appetizers, cookies, and candy galore. A certain little blondie was super excited all day about opening presents and she took every opportunity to hand out gifts and help open them. That works out great for us adults because no one likes to get up out of their seat to go pick out a present to hand out.

This picture was taken before we headed down to the farm. Dad and all his girls.

And just because she's so darn cute in her reindeer jammies.

Did I mention how excited someone was to open presents?

She didn't miss an opportunity.

Someone got tired before the end of the night. Cheeks anyone?

What we're up to these days

Now that we're almost through the holidays, I thought I'd update everyone on what's going on in the Carlson household. I will be putting Christmas pictures up but as you probably know by now, I'm always a week or two late with getting pictures up.

Meredith is getting ready to start up skating and swim lessons again in January. She is getting so good at skating and she asks to go skating now. Greg took her to open skating yesterday because she knew it was Wednesday and open skating is on Wednesday. I can't wait to start her in Mites in the fall!

She is going to preschool 2 days/week now. Since I am unemployed, we decreased her time there. I'm looking into traditional preschools with programs for 5-year-olds since I don't expect to be employed and she isn't going to start Kindergarten in the fall since she misses the cutoff by one day. She is so smart though, she could easily go to kindergarten now though. I just hope she doesn't get bored. She loves to learn and ask questions about things. The other day she was taking a bath and I was upstairs doing chores. I walked into the bathroom and she had written words all over the bathtub wall. Now, I know she doesn't know how to spell Pantene and she got that off my shampoo bottle, but look at all the other words she spelled on her own! Yellow, purple, white, Meredith, mommy, daddy, Anna, Addison, etc.

This is a picture of the tag on my Christmas gift this year. She's just getting so big and growing up so fast. Could she be any cuter?

And then there's Anna. Sweet little Anna:-)

She is growing so fast too. I fear the day when she's not a baby anymore. We're in a good place with her right now. She is sleeping well and we've go a good routine established for the most part. In another month or so (when she is six months old), we'll be starting her on solid food which I'm not really looking forward to. I guess I'm just lazy and don't want to switch up the routine so I told her doctor that I was waiting as long as possible to start solids.

She continues to be a very happy and easy baby. She giggles a lot and is playing with her toys now. She does a good job at lifting her head and she's working on sitting up right now. I suspect in the next month or so, she will be sitting.

The cheeks this girl has!

Pottery Barn Kids update

I finally called in to customer service in a final attempt to see if I can get this whole debacle figured out. I talked to a woman who actually found a retail store that had the stocking I wanted still in stock since it was sold out on-line. She called the store and had them ship the stocking to me. Since they had refunded me for the original order, all I had to pay for was the stocking and it was on sale at this point so it cost me less. The only thing is that it isn't embroidered. I'll have to take it somewhere to get her name embroidered on it.

And they sent me a $25 gift card for all the troubles.

I'm happy with that.

In the meantime, my wonderful mother-in-law, Mary Carlson heard about the whole debacle and got this beautiful PBK stocking from Ebay. That design is actually one of the ones I was debating on getting. Thank you so much Mary.

Now we have two beautiful stockings. This works out well though because we need stockings for Mom and Dad so I'll probably just order another one next year and then we'll be all set for the whole family :-)

Hitlist: Pottery Barn Kids

I think I'm almost ready to sever ties with Pottery Barn Kids. Meredith has this pretty stocking we got there a few years back with a little blonde skater girl on it. I ordered Anna a stocking that looks exactly the same only it has a blonde angel on it. I placed the order on October 28 to ensure I would have the stocking I wanted for her. I received my order approximately a week later (the first week in November) and this is what I got. The embroidery is extremely crooked. I was not happy with the way it looked so I called them and asked them to send a replacement. Meanwhile, they sent UPS over to pick up the bad stocking.

It took a few weeks for the replacement to arrive and this is what I got the week before Thanksgiving. As you can see, the embroidery is horribly off center. I called them the day after Thanksgiving to ask for another replacement. Again, they sent UPS to pick up the bad stocking.

After seeing these pictures, was I being to picky by sending them back? I actually find it unbelievable that they would send them to me like that in the first place.

I waited three weeks before I sent them an e-mail asking about my order. I basically go a response that said "we're sorry for the inconvenience but your item is out of stock. We have refunded your credit card".

I'm so ticked at this whole situation. I'm ticked that they would even send these horribly embroidered stockings to me in the first place. I'm ticked that I ordered this two months in advance and now I have no stocking. I'm ticked that I have nothing for Anna this Christmas. I'm ticked that I am done with them and now I won't have a stocking that matches Meredith's. I'm ticked at their lack of customer service. I'm ticked at how long they took both times to rectify this. I'm ticked that they never even bothered to tell me that the stocking ran out of stock. I'm ticked that none of this was my fault.

I have been going back and forth with them about how upset I am about this and then they offered to let me take the item 'as is' with a discount of $20 or pick a replacement stocking. First of all, I don't even have the stockings anymore so option 1 isn't even an option. And option two is not an option because when we're one week out from Christmas, they have no good stockings to choose from anymore. Plus I don't want another stocking design anyway. I want the darn angel stocking.

I just don't know what to do anymore but never shop there again.

Now we have to write Santa a letter to tell him that Anna doesn't have a stocking yet and that he should just leave her stuff on the floor by the fireplace.

I refuse to go out and spend money on a cheap stocking because I want a nice one that I love. I guess I'll have to start all over again next year (maybe at Land of Nod next time).

Mommy, why does Santa have claws?

That's what Meredith asked me in the car on the way to visit Santa. It's been a lot of fun so far this year to watch how excited she is about Christmas. She couldn't wait to get out the tree and decorate it. And she's been watching all the Christmas specials on TV that I used to watch as a kid. She also sings Christmas music. We listen to the LITE FM quite a bit and her favorite songs are Jingle Bells and Jingle Bell Rock.

Last night we wrapped gifts and she was just giddy about all the presents under the tree. She's super excited to not only get to open her presents but help Anna open her gifts as well.

I'm quite pleased with the picture we got of them on Santa's lap (minus the box of tissues underneath his chair).

Thanksgiving

I know I'm WAAAAAY late with this. I realize we're almost to Christmas. Forgive me. I suck at blogging.

I thought I'd share a few pictures from Thanksgiving this year at Peter & Phyllis' house. I really need to take more pictures of other people than just my kids. I'm a little sad I don't have more pictures of everyone.

We had a great day. In true Maercklein style, it was very loud but that just means we're all having a good time. Anna did great. It seems that the more going on around her, the more content she is.

Meredith was showing off her musical side.

Nate testing the waters with a little girl.

Some of the boys. I'm not related to them at all.

Here are the 5 members of the next generation of our family. Wow.

Dolls

We have officially reached the doll stage with Meredith. Every day, Meredith plays with her dollies and dresses them up. She then puts them in all the places we put the baby. I spend all my time unstrapping dolls from the car seat, bouncy, and the swing. I'm just hoping that she never gets to the American Girl doll stage because I do not want to spend that kind of money on a doll. Many of her dolls are second hand right now. Whenever I see a nice clean Cabbage Patch doll at the thrift store for $2.99, I pick it up for her. I can't fathom spending $100+. Ack. I hope that day doesn't come.

We just visited Santa today and Meredith told him she wanted an Easy Bake Oven and some dollies she can dress. She also asked us why Santa has claws. That made me laugh.

For your entertainment, I took all these pictures on the same night after Meredith went to bed.

Yes, Meredith buckled the dolly into the car seat herself.

Elmo gets dolly treatment in our house.

The Exersaucer gets some love.

And the Bumbo.

And the swing.

And finally, the play gym. And yes, Elmo is wearing a dress.

Ice Skating

It's that time of year again...time for skating! We decided to put Meredith in skating lessons again this year. We had the intent of enrolling her in the same class she finished up with last year but she accidentally got enrolled in one level up (which is a class intended for ages 5+). She did fabulous! Look at all those bigger kids she skates with and she keeps up and is better than 3/4 of the other kids in the class :-) She is the little one in the black helmet and pink GAP hoodie below. She even skates all by herself in the practice area after each lesson. I actually had to bribe her with Halloween candy to get off the ice last week and she scolded me for putting my foot on the ice without skates.

I think she might be ready to start mites hockey next fall.

Check out the video below. They are practicing jumping. She is the one on the far left in the pink GAP hoodie.

Look how happy she is after she is done :-)

Happy Halloween!

This year Meredith chose to be a witch for Halloween. Ironically, her best friend from next door chose to be a witch too and neither of them knew about it until they discussed it. We went trick-or-treating with them last year and it was so fun to see the girls transform from itty bittys who didn't even know how to trick-or-treat to two girls who run from door to door and giggle and take turns ringing doorbells. It was so adorable.

As much as we want to move, living in a townhouse has a lot of advantages on Halloween. You can cover way more ground in a lot less time with going from house to house. And our neighborhood has lots of kids so we had lots and lots of trick-or-treaters. It's kind of fun to watch the progression of 3-6 year olds from 5:30 - 7:00 and then the older kids up to teenagers who don't even wear costumes from 8:00 - 9:00. Shouldn't costumes be mandatory if you're trick-or-treating? I don't mind the teenagers looking for candy, but put a costume on already.

Here are a couple pictures of Meredith and her friend.

And sweet, little Anna. She didn't have a costume, but she had a great outfit.

And just for kicks,this is a picture of Meredith when she was the same age as Anna. I think they look so similar.

Welcome Bowen Dean Schwake!

Congrats to my brother Ben and my sister-in-law Angie on the birth of Bowen! He's a little cutie :-)

That's me with my new nephew and new hair color.
Cousins (Meredith refused to get on the bed for a picture - I just LOVE the disagreeable stage she's going through now). Look how big a baby grows in just 3 months. Anna looks huge and I can't remember her being so tiny.

Ben and Angie checking out a baby of the bigger variety.

Grandpa and the girls. I had to threaten Meredith in order to get this picture.

Random cute pictures

I just thought I'd add a few more random, but cute pictures.

I'm impressed at the meal I have made for her in this picture.