I’ve been slacking on the blog lately. I realized yesterday that I missed most of December… sorry about that! Lots of stories and lots of pictures to share…
… so to come…
… trip to South Carolina with my besties…
… Christmas recap, both from WI and home…
… Grand Lake / Grandby pictures…
… and others.
Lots of love to you all! I hope you all had a Merry Christmas and have a Happy New Year! Here’s to 2013!
Erin
Anna was seven months old yesterday – wow!
Anna is increasingly better at sitting up (still not on her own)… still only two teeth and drooling like crazy… loves to play with toys… enjoys eating puffs and cheerios… has chosen this week to be difficult in allowing herself to be dressed (she loves to kick and joke around while trying to dress her)… smiley, laughs a lot… happier than she is sad… still gets overwhelmed by her sisters but enjoys and tolerates them more and more… loves her mama… loves her dada… and will be headed on her first plane trip (out of the womb) this week!
Lots of fun stuff happens on the mornings I get to sleep in. (Thank you, Adam, for that blissful three hours this morning!)
This morning Adam captured the following stories from Raven and Julia:
Raven’s story on 12-15-12
Once upon a time there was a little drummer boy and he was sick.
He went up to the park. He fly fly fly up to the sky. He flied to the store. He buyed some Dora fruit snacks. He eat them all gone.
the end.
Julia’s story on 12-15-12
Once upon a time there was a princess in a castle. And then she saw a prince and she went to sleep and the she hear the witch and then a prince kiss her and then the princess waked up and then she got married. The end.
-----------------------------------------
I would say 5 or 6 times a week, Raven asks for Dora Fruit Snacks. I promised them to her for Christmas. I think we’ll get them as a treat for our plane trip.
And Julia is obsessed with Snow White… if you can’t tell. 
We enjoyed driving around and looking for neat places to take Julia’s 5 year pictures this year. We settled on a few places:
It was colder out than we were expecting, so we snapped and dashed, but we were happy with what we got. And this time little Anna joined in the fun too!
Hard to believe we have a five year old already…! Julia celebrated her birthday the Saturday after Thanksgiving – thanks to two leap years since her birth, it was the same day of the week as the day she was born, so Mommy experienced quite a bit of nostalgia.
The birthday girl in the morning not long after she woke up:
We decorated the tree together – what fun! Mommy let go of the Type A boiling up in her core and let the girls put approximately 20 ornaments in a 10 inch by 10 inch area. Ha! The girls had fun as this is the first year I really let them have at the tree. Talk about dripping with ornaments.
We took the girls down the road to take Julia’s 5 year pictures – those will come in a later post.
After lunch, we did Julia’s cake and presents. Now, I have to admit, the cake looked and tasted (not as) terrible, and I don’t know that I’ll attempt another one from scratch for a while. Ha! But, Julia loved blowing out candles and opening presents.
After presents and cake, I took Julia to see “Brave” – we had gone to see it when my mom was here after Anna was born, and it was playing again at the Elvis Theater. Julia enjoyed it, but after 45 minutes, she asked to please go home so she could play with her sisters. Awwww!
I have SO many blog posts to write, so many pictures to dig through, and little to no time. We took Julia’s 5 year pictures two weeks ago… haven’t even taken the Christmas photo picture to send out to folks… and we went to Grand Lake over a month ago… I’ll get there.
Also… last weekend I spent time with my dear friends Angela and Chrissy in Charleston, SC. Umm… amazing. LOVED IT! Then I ran across this photo on Facebook:
Between my weekend in Charleston and the influence of my dear Alabama friend Laura, I’ve become a lover of all things smocked. I can’t get enough of it! I also cannot afford it. HA!
Hopefully will find time this weekend to post a plethora of pictures… until then, it’s back to work!
erin
I read this great article in Better Homes and Gardens (THANKS, Chrissy, I LOVE THIS MAGAZINE!!!) about making pie crust and was given the idea of using cutouts instead of lattice or other crust tops for fruit pies. I had made cherry pies with leaf and acorn cut outs for the girls for their daycare Thanksgiving and for Thanksgiving Day, I made…
A cow pie!
Love you, Wisconsin!
Julia celebrated her birthday at daycare on Nov 20. Miss Erikka (Miss Erika?) also had a birthday last week on the 22nd and had planned to have a party for the kids on the 21st, so asked that we bring in Julia’s treat a day earlier. Julia picked out the theme (Hello Kitty) and mommy made the cupcakes – the frosting was a bit… umm… not pink, thanks to the amount of food color I used, but overall, they were DELICIOUS. (Not so the cake, which we will discuss later.)
My “baby” turned 5 today… Happy Birthday, Julia!
More pictures and more blogging to come.
Erin
It’s a gorgeous day and I absentmindedly put this dress on Anna only to remember in the middle of church that I had wanted to take her 6 month pictures in this dress, so hey, PROVIDENCE!
This dress was a gift from my mom when Julia was a baby and this dress fit Julia well when Julia was 9 months old. It fits Anna well now except that it’s short (because Anna is tall) and I have always loved this dress. So after church, Mommy and Baby headed outside for a quick photo shoot (Daddy helped too).
We’ve been working on Anna’s sitting this week and she did really well.
… she starts to turn green. See?
(Okay, really she just happened to find a green marker and tried to eat it – what the WHAT? – and first we made her look at herself in the mirror, which really upset her when she saw what she had done, and then Adam decided we needed a picture too. Raven wasn’t too happy about having her picture taken.)
This time I was the dummy who forgot to lock a vehicle at night… Strike #2 by Idiot Thieves at our home… I say Idiot, because even though I was the dummy who left the vehicle unlocked, the Thieves took the TomTom and car chargers… but didn’t notice Adam’s laptop in the backseat (whew….)….
*sigh*
Thankfully we don’t need a TomTom anymore because we use our phones exclusively for getting us places… Adam ordered new phone chargers so that we have those in the van again.
erin
I took Anna for her 6 month checkup today. Developmentally she’s doing well, though we need to work on her sitting. She proved once again to be a happy baby and handled her shots well.
However, we were told today that she hadn’t gained as much weight as they would like. She only gained 7 oz and I guess that’s not enough – it dropped her to 47th percentile, even though her height (27.5”) is at 96th percentile.
We go back in two weeks for a weight check to see if she’s gained weight. Here’s hoping!
Anna is almost exclusively on formula now. After a couple of tough weeks at work and coming home late, I was pumping less and less and nursing less and less. We’re down to one nursing session a day and otherwise Anna is drinking formula.
We did start her on oatmeal a few weeks ago and will now add in regular veggies and fruits and hope that helps too.
I know I shouldn’t worry and I’m not necessarily – but a little bit of me feelings like a Mommy Failure. I know that her poor sleeping of late is due to her being hungry and I do give her bottles in the middle of the night, but I never thought it would result in a weight issue. She *looks* fine to me, so even though she only gained 7 oz, hopefully it’s a non-issue. If she doesn’t gain weight in the next two weeks, we will have to add-in special “fortified” formula and see if that helps.
Otherwise, Anna is doing well. She’s a pretty calm baby, but she has learned how to cry and throw a fit when she’s upset or wants something. The big girls can make her smile and laugh but can also overwhelm her pretty quick, so it’s still a learning process for all of us that way.
Off to get the girlies from daycare… Happy Weekend!
Erin
No words can describe how quickly the last 6 months have gone.
No words can describe the love that I have for this child (or my other two).
We are so VERY blessed!
More tomorrow on Anna… well baby checkup in the morning!
erin
So I hear that out east this week, that “perfect storm” of hurricane meets winter is happening. Many prayers and good thoughts to those enduring said storm… while we have our share of weird and wacky weather in the Midwest (growing up) and in Colorado, I really can’t imagine having to deal with a winter storm AND a hurricane at the same time. Well, I can imagine having to deal with a hurricane, period.
That being said, we’re experiencing our own perfect storm in our house here in Colorado. While I don’t want to complain, at the same time I use this blog as a means to capture the happenings in our lives, and pretty much, this blog is my kids’ baby book (the horror!!!), and therefore this post is more for me than anyone else and I’ll “cry if I want to”.
It seems that in the last week, we’ve hit a number of “milestones” with Anna that have turned into a roadblock of sorts.
For one, Anna’s second tooth has made its appearance (yay, and ugh!). She isn’t terrible with teething, but one can tell it bothers her. Second, I’ve been producing less and less milk requiring us to supplement with formula more and more. Last week we switched brands… and it appears that BabyZilla has come to visit just in time for Halloween. We’re switching back in hopes that it helps. And, of course, the more she grows and learns, the harder it is to keep her asleep for long stretches at night as she learns to move around her crib and get stuck, bang her hand, bang her feet, etc.
I know that it’s a season and it too shall pass. I am enjoying the extra cuddles and the occasional baby giggles. However, I’m simply not sleeping well. At all. Today I worked from home because I got so little sleep that I couldn’t function this morning. It’s not bad when it’s a night here and there, but due to work and Anna, I’ve had one good night of sleep in the last three weeks. And, Anna came home from daycare today because she was so ornery they couldn’t figure out what to do with her. Honestly. They wondered if she was sick or something because she wouldn’t eat (she has come to detest the bottle again now that the formula switch has taken place) and she couldn’t be put down. So, I’m hoping that one of these “issues” of hers shakes out soon… hopefully the switch back to the original formula helps… or something.
Here is where I would put a picture of her two teeth – which I think we managed to get a picture of this last weekend – but we were a big camera trigger happy this weekend and there is a lot to cull through to find a good one… here’s hoping for some time to blog pictures later this week!
Happy Monday!
Erin
Anna posed for a few pictures yesterday before our anniversary dinner. In the second one, you can see her tooth!
This year is our 10th Wedding Anniversary!
Happy Anniversary, Adam! (Our 10th Anniversary was on Friday, October 19, 2012.)
Each year we try to go out on a date and eat a different ethnic food. Most years we’ve managed to go without our kids – we weren’t able to do that this year, but we’ll still hit up a new restaurant – after all, we figured out that it would actually be cheaper to TAKE the kids and feed them instead of find a babysitter.
Please note, I said cheaper NOT easier.
So… here’s the list, that we spent a week and a half ago trying to remember and decided we better get it written down…
1st: Greek – The Vernon Inn, Cedar Rapids, IA
2nd: Czech – Zindrick’s Czech Restaurant, Cedar Rapids, IA
3rd: German – Hessen Haus, Des Moines, IA
(Side note: This is the year we celebrated with Adam’s parents, who were in town – their anniversary is October 12. We decided this fall in 2005 to purchase their passports for Christmas and take them with us to Germany the following year.)
4th: Chinese – P.F. Chang’s, Des Moines, IA
(Side note: I still have my fortune cookie fortune from this dinner – “Soon you’ll hear the pitter patter of little feet.” We found out two weeks later that we were expecting, only to miscarry in December. BUT, Julia soon followed on that baby’s heels!)
5th: Italian – Tursi’s Latin King, Des Moines, IA
6th: Thai – Restaurant in Des Moines, IA
7th: Hawaiian – Alohana Hawaiian Grill, Des Moines, IA
(Side note: We went out for this dinner only TWO DAYS after I had my gall bladder out when Adam’s mom was visiting having helped us with the surgery and was more than willing to watch the kids.)
8th: English – Royal Mile, Des Moines, IA
9th: Pizza – The Bucket, Arvada, CO
(Side note: Okay, kind of a sad “ethnic food”, but we went out for dinner ON OUR ANNIVESARY with some new friends we had made and their kids.)
THIS YEAR… the 10th: Landry’s Seafood House, Englewood, CO (Time to get our seafood on!)
We called and made reservations (though we wouldn’t have needed to), and when we arrived, we saw this on our menus:
That was pretty cool!
Though the food wasn’t spectacular, it was still tasty, and the girls were really good (and mommy and daddy were able to enjoy dessert in relative peace thanks to contraband – read: markers – that mommy had brought along for the night. Landry’s, sorry about your table cloth!).
On Thursday Adam surprised me with these:
So very cool! He ordered Signature M&M’s for me in our wedding colors (though he couldn’t quite get dark enough turquoise for those of you wondering). Red and silver… and as you can see in the second picture, they say, “Adam & Erin”, “10 years!”, hearts, roses… he’s so sweet! I still haven’t dug into them… kinda wondering if there is some way we can preserve any of them.
Hope you all have a beautiful Sunday!
erin
