Apple orchard

Matt and I got the chance to take Erin to an apple orchard this weekend. Since we're cutting back to one nap a day, we're trying to keep her really active and out of the house in the morning. It's working OK, but mornings are still pretty rough. So, we felt pretty brave to drive all the way to the orchard yesterday morning, but she did great. She thought it was tons of fun to pull the apples off of the tree. She liked the hay ride and loved seeing the animals at the petting zoo. She didn't want to touch them, but squealed and laughed when they came near her. We topped the day off with a nap (for me and Erin) and some home made apple pie. Good stuff.

16 months

I guess that it's good that our extreme lack of posts for a good chunk of the summer wasn't all due to laziness. Unfortunately it was mostly because we were too busy to stop and reflect on life and it was mostly just me and Matt putting our heads down and plodding forward. Things have finally eased up a bit and we've gotten to enjoy a few afternoon outings this week. Thank goodness for a little down time.It occurred to us at the beginning of the summer that we might be leaving Minneapolis in June 2011. While that seems like a long ways off, the thought of selling the house in its present condition was terrifying so we have set forth to tackle some long due projects. Matt already posted pictures of the kitchen, which was a huge ordeal and is still not totally done. Next Dean and Matt are working on tiling the entry ways to each unit. They've done a great job and just need to grout the tile and then we'll get to cross that one of the list. It's been tough to get these projects done in a timely fashion while juggling working all the time and taking care of Erin. I guess this is why we started so far in advance. Slow and steady....

Erin is 16 months now and will be 17 months in just over a week. Man she is becoming more and more opinionated and willful. And while it's wonderful to see her personality develop, the testing of limits and the tearful meltdowns are trying. To confound the situation, she's in the transition from 2 to 1 nap and it's getting ugly. We can no longer get her to take 2 naps, but she is truly tired in the morning and has a tough time making it until midday to sleep. But now even with the 1 nap, she's only sleeping for an hour or so. Clearly this is not enough for her and she has near constant meltdowns in the late afternoon. We're doing our best to compensate by a really early bedtime, but this is wearing on all of us. I'm hoping that we settle into some kind of routine again soon.

Erin's vocabulary is growing. She now has about 25 words and a half dozen animal noises. Her latest word is "bottom" or in Erin-speak "bomb0." She also says button, buckle, bubble and a few other words that seem less useful than milk or book, but it's hard to reason with her. She jabbers constantly and loves to talk about her favorite people and is starting to string 2 words together. She now says "bye-bye Dada," "night-night mama," and "Mama all gone." She loves to pretend to talk on the telephone and will even hold the phone next to Duncan's head to give him a turn.

We took her in the bike trailer today and she did great. She didn't melt down until we were close to home. We only made it for about 2 miles and had a break in the middle, but this is a significant improvement from before. We also took her to play tennis the other day. She squealed as she chased the balls around the court while Matt and I hit a few balls. She loved it and hopefully we'll get a few more chances to go out and play before it gets too cold.


We got Erin a potty chair recently. I know that it's way too early to start training her, but I thought that we could have it around and start talking more about it. Over the weekend she discovered that she could get a raspberry if she sat on it and she had fun running back and forth from the fridge to the chair. She's also found it to be a great place to hide treasures. This afternoon I found her bubbles, her pull-along doggy and a book in it.


Erin's in love with her belly button. She likes to grab it and say button, she likes to look for other people's buttons and she likes to poke and grab it when she happy and laughing. This explains why we have so many pictures of her grabbing herself. Tons of fun. She's also trying her hand at climbing, although she still doesn't do much of it.

All Quiet

Well, it's 2 a.m. and I'm wide awake. I just finished a week of night shifts in the ER and it usually takes a couple days to switch around my schedule. After tossing and turning in bed for awhile, I peeked in Erin's room a couple minutes ago on my way to the kitchen. Opening the door a crack and watching her sleep for a moment has gotten to be a habit around here. Fran and I enjoy this a lot, and I don't think we're the only parents who do? I know Grandma and Grandpa also succumb to the temptation too!

Erin has been doing great. She now can assert her will with "no", "yeah", and "mo" (more). When things go away we hear "bye-bye", "all gone", and "night-night". She's been spending days and not infrequent overnights at Grandma and Grandpa's house with our work schedule so mixed up. We're so spoiled! She sleeps as hard as she plays, so after she goes to bed, when the house is quiet, it's hard to resist peeking in and watching her sleep. Definitely something I look forward to.

State Fair Time Already

Whew, what happened to August? We're way behind on blog updates and this is my (small) attempt to catch up! The Prekkers spent the past 6 weeks traveling, working, remodeling, and ... working. Erin has grown up so much, I'll let Fran post to describe all her new words and mumblings (we're seeing more and more of "No", quite the independent streak).

Fran and Erin made it out to Portland again, this time for a hike with Papa Joe and the family in mid-August. More pictures and details to come...



The big news is that we're finally back in the house after a kitchen remodel and loving every minute. Erin had a great time living with Grandpa and Grandma Prekker (Bapa and Ga-Ga) while Fran and I shuttled things back and forth and snuck a dog walk here and there. The whole project lasted ~3 weeks. Above is before, below is after. Goodbye, asbestos tile! In addition to restoring the original 1890s pine kitchen floor, we added a new stainless steel sink and countertops.







Here's Erin tonight in her PJs getting in some last minute reading. Look, "Da" on every page!

Home again

I know that I have a lot of updating to do now that we're home, but I'll just post a few things now and hopefully catch up later. Erin and I spent 10 days out in Oregon and in the middle of it, Jan, Nick and Josh and I took a little trip around Mt Hood. I guess "little trip" doesn't give us credit for all the sweating that we did. It was 4 day, 130+ miles in a loop around Mt Hood, complete with about 15,000 of climbing, mostly on gravel roads. Now that I'm about a week out from the ride, I can honestly say that it was wonderful and an experience that I'm happy to have had. There were many a times during the ride, however, that I did really think, "why did I pay good money to do this?" and "I think that I'm going to die." Erin stayed in Portland with Gramma Beth and did great without me (I had no doubt that she would). Here are a few photos from the bike trip.

Day 1: We climbed out of Hood River and went up for about 26 miles. Here's us at the beginning before we all realized just how much this would hurt. Also one of the first glimpses of Mt. Hood, you'll notice how much closer we get over time. And here's Nick puzzling over the map, we did that a lot and for a good chunk of the first day we weren't totally sure that we were in the right place. We were mostly, but we did take a few detours. And this is the inside of our hut day 1. All of the huts were like this and were just what we needed at the end of the day.


Day 2: I'm actually not sure how we got back on the bikes for day 2, but we did. We started climbing again first thing in the morning and hit the high point (elevation wise) about noon at almost 6000 feet. We rode about 38 miles day 2, we saw some snow, I bit it on my bike and we rode through miles of sand at the end of the day. The day 2 hut was next to a nice little stream and we got a chance to clean up a little bit and rinse our clothes. This was a great idea until we had to don soggy clothes the next morning. Oh well, live and learn.


Day 3: It got a lot more painful to get back on the bike and took longer each day to warm up stiff muscles. We rode/walked up the Barlow road and wondered about people ever managed this with a wagon train. We hit pavement mid morning and it was glorious. We took Hwy 26 up over a peak and then coasted down for 13ish miles. It was the fasted miles we did on the trip. Nick went so fast he needed to make a detour up the runaway truck ramp. We stopped in Rhododendron for some smoothies and then along the Zigzag river so Nick could fish and Jan and I could wash up. On the way out of Zigzag, Jan and I stopped by the campground that we went to as kids and took a trip down memory lane by using the outhouses there. Good times. Then we climbed up over Lolo pass for the next 13ish miles and the hut was sitting at the top of the pass. We were supposed to do about 46 miles for the day, but we took some shortcuts and made it about 36.


Day 4: At last it was a downhill day. We descended from Lolo pass down into Hood River again. It was good to be going downhill all day because I'm not sure that we could have done any more climbing. All in all it was a great trip, but I've never been happier to see a car in my life.


Here are are a few photos from Erin's time in Portland. She spent a lot of time pushing that stroller around and loved it.

Helper Erin

Erin has turned into quite a helper. She likes to help fold the laundry, sort clothes, brush her hair, brush her teeth and sweep the floor. Inevitably this causes more work for us, but it's so much fun to watch her imitate. She even tried to drive the boat while we were up at the lake.

Besides imitating us, Erin is becoming a toddler in many other ways. She has started trying to run. She hasn't quite gotten the hang of it yet and she just walks very quickly with big steps, but she'll be running soon. She has also been throwing lots of tantrums lately. She even tried to bite me in the middle of one when she was mad at me. I think that we're going to have our hands full very soon.

In general, though, Erin continues to be easy going and adaptable. We took a quick trip up to the cabin this week. We got her out of bed at 5:30 and were on the road by 6:00. She entertained herself the whole ride up and had a great time playing up at the lake, wading in the water, playing in the sand and taking an evening boat ride. She got to meet Great Grandpa Leon again and was even friendly enough to give him a kiss at the end of the visit. She slept up at the big house with Jan and Dean and slept great. So did I, I slept down at the cabin and I took the opportunity to sleep in until 10:00. Man it's been along time since I slept in. Unfortunately Matt had to get back to work on Thursday morning, so he left Wednesday night and drove the dogs and himself home. What a long day. The weather was crummy on Thursday, so we packed up and left by the afternoon. Erin got to spend the morning watching Dean and the electric man work on the electric system for the big house and was mesmerized, just like she is watching Matt mow the lawn. I think that we'll be spending a lot of time watching construction sites in the months to come.

Erin is still a great sleeper and always sleeps through the night. She's needing a bit more time to fall asleep lately and it's not uncommon for her to play in her crib for an hour before conking out. We've tried putting her down earlier and later and it doesn't seem to matter. She's happy and just talks to herself, throws her toys out of the crib and turns the light on and off. I think that she may be showing us that she needs her alone time as much as we do. She is also starting to skip one of her naps a few times a week and I think that the end of two naps is coming in the next month or two. Man am I going to miss her morning nap.

Erin continues to be a good eater and really sticks with her favorites. She still loves any kind of fruit, yogurt, hummus, bread, oatmeal with applesauce, cheese, soups and broccoli. Recently she started gobbling up salad greens with vinegar dressing on it. Surprisingly she refuses to eat blueberry muffins, cinnamon bread or ice cream. The other day I gave her some peanut butter on bread and a half hour later Matt gets home and asks why her face is all red and blotchy. Sure enough she had a red blotchy face and a few hives on her neck and belly. She's had peanut butter before and been fine and I'm not sure it's related, but I think that we'll wait a little bit before trying that again.

Erin loves emptying. She loves to pour water out of watering cans and from her cups in the bath. She loves to empty her book shelves of all their books. She loves to empty the cupboards of their contents. She loves to empty laundry baskets of all the clothes. I used to try to clean up each mess as she made it, but now she's quick, and moves from one mess to the next so fast that I'd spend the entire day picking stuff up. So I've had to suppress my inner OCD and wait until she's napping or down for the night to really pick up. Luckily the dogs now ignore all of her toys and the only real downside is the occasional stumble or stubbed toe.

Erin and I are heading out to Portland this weekend and staying for almost 2 weeks. Matt will be sad to see us go, but he's working almost every day while we are gone and will manage to keep himself busy and take care of the dogs. Erin will surely miss him as he is her favorite person around the house and any bad mood will lift as soon as he gets home. While we're out in Portland, I'll be going on a 4 day bike ride with Jan, Nick and their friend Josh while Erin stays with Gramma Beth. I've been on a few rides this week, but it's going to be quite a challenge. I'm assuming that the flight out will be quite a challenge as well and anyone's advice for entertaining a 14 month old on the flight will be much appreciated.