Merry Christmas!

Ok, we're still behind. What a busy December it has been. Between baking, shopping, sewing and working we've been running around like crazy this holiday season.

We're also sans camera so this will have to be a post without pictures. I brought it to a holiday party a week ago and promptly left it at the house. Oops. Hopefully I'll get it back in the next few days and we can play catch up with pictures too.

Erin has had a great December. She loves all the sweet treats and enjoys telling us which treats we should eat. While eating the after dinner Christmas cookies at Gaga and Boppa's she tells Matt to eat the pink forgotten cookies, me to eat the Spangles and she eats the Tea Cakes. Luckily she allows for some deviation and we do get to sample some other kinds. She also discovered Muggy's fudge and is a huge fan. She points at the cupboard where I put it and keeps saying "More, more, more."

Erin's learning tons of new words and I think that the language explosion that people talk about has hit. She learned about 10 new words this week, including Muggy (Mimi), Paul, Tom, diaper, cut, hando (as in 100, this one is Laura's doing), hello, knee and baby Anders. We've certainly lost track of how many words she knows, but I'd get we're close to 50, with another 25 or so animal noises. She's also combining lots of words to make new phrases with new meaning. She loves to say bye-bye and night-night to lots of objects around the house. One of her favorites is "night-night tick-toc." Our favorite, by far, is when she talks about Santa. She doesn't say Santa, but still refers to him as "ho," as in Santa says "Ho, ho, ho." She talks about him frequently through the day and says things like "bye-bye Ho," "night-night Ho," and my very favorite "More Ho." We hear "more Ho" most often in the car when we've passed a huge inflatable Santa in some one's yard. Occasionally she gets herself all worked up yelling and crying about "more Ho" just because she wants to see more large Santa decorations. Man it's tough.

Erin was completely spoiled again this year for Christmas. Santa brought her a little kitchen set. So far her favorite features are the oven and microwave. Who knew that these were ideal little places to shove your dolls. I spent 10 minutes searching for her beloved Dando yesterday morning without any luck. After she left, I realized I'd forgotten to check her favorite new hiding spot. Of course, Dando was shoved in the oven with Charlie monkey, her tool set and several cars. While her culinary ideas are often outside the mainstream, she did get some play food which she also enjoys. She dumps lots of food into a pot and then takes it around for everyone to taste. Her favorite bit of play food is the egg, but she can't quite figure out why it doesn't crack for her the way mine do when she hits it on the side of the bowl. Go figure. She also go tool sets, stuffed animals, clothes and puzzles. I'm in the process of trying to weed out some of the old toys so that there is room for the new ones.

Both Erin and I have post-Christmas colds right now. Honestly, Erin is dealing with hers better than I am. She's a bit off these last few days, a little whinny and sleeping a bit restlessly. I, on the other hand, am a raging crank and I can't sleep at all at night. Bah humbug. Hopefully it will be short lived and then we can move on.

Enhancing my crankiness is working on the pages of paper work for my medical license. Matt got his last year and I do remember him complaining about what a pain it was. I think that I thought he was being a baby and blew him off. Man, he was right. This is a total pain. I think I've read through the directions a dozen times and still keep coming up with new things that I need to do. Ok, I'll quit whining, it's not THAT bad, but I'm not enjoying the time that I'm devoting to it.

Hopefully I'll get the camera back soon and post some Christmas pictures. In the meantime, I hope that everyone had a very Merry Christmas.

It's about time

Yes, we've been total slackers about updates. But today the guilt finally got the best of me and we'll try to catch up a little bit.

Matt and I had some time off together last month. It has been years since we had that much time home together and it was really fun. Erin had a blast with both parents around the house and we actually managed to complete a few of the projects on our list.


For the last two weeks of our time off, we went on vacation. Matt, Erin and I flew out to Portland for a few days. We saw the usual suspects and got to reassure everyone that Matt did still exist since it had been almost 2 years since he'd been able to come. Then Matt and I left Erin with Mom and flew to Hawaii for a week. It was amazing. Not only being in a warm, tropical wonderland, but also just being alone with nothing that we had to do. We hiked, boogie boarded, saw the sites, lounged on the beach and accomplished nothing. It was wonderful. I read 6 books on the trip and finally relaxed.Erin had a less magical time in Portland. She caught some bug and was sick a good chunk of the time we were gone. Being a trooper as always, she didn't fuss much, but just spent several days subdued, sleeping a lot and eating very little. She managed to save all of her toddler behavior for us. When we got home, you get the feeling that she was really happy to see us, but also pretty sure that she was upset with us. Erin did get a chance to go Mall walking with Mom, have story time at the library and have some quality time with her cousins. It is lots of fun to see all the kids together and Erin is still rather taken with Brennan.

We got home in time to have one day to put life back together before heading back to work. While we were gone, Jan and Dean painted the cabinets in the kitchen, so we got to put all of the stuff back in cupboards and enjoy our new kitchen. At this point we have finished everything in the kitchen that we are going to do now. There is still a little painting to be done, but it's just touch up and trim and I think that we will just wait to do anything else. It's amazing how good the kitchen looks, the cabinets brighten up the whole room and look great with the floors. Wow. Jan and Dean did a great job and we couldn't have done any of this without them. Below is the old and new kitchen for comparison.


Erin is 18 months old now (soon to be 19 months) and gets funnier every day. She likes to answer incorrectly in a coy tone of voice when you ask her a question she clearly knows the answer to. Her favorite is to say "no" when asked if she loves Mom, Dad or her grandparents. She smiles as she does it and knows that it's funny. The only person she will say yes, she loves is Andy. Go figure. She also does this with her shape sorter. She has a running commentary as she tries to fit the shape. She deliberately puts them in the wrong hole so she can say "no, no." and then "yeah!" when she puts it in the right hole.

She's learning new words every week and now can tell you that Santa says "ho, ho, ho," and she learned apple, yogurt, and poop this week too. Off the top of my head her list of words includes:
Mama, Dada, Ga-Ga, Boppa, Laura, Duncan, Oscar, Dando, Button, Bottom, More, All done, all gone, Hi, bye-bye, night-night, ball, banana, apple, yogurt, hot, yeah, no, poop, uh oh. She also has animal or noises for monkey, elephant, dog, cat, cow, turkey, ghost, Santa, chicken, sheep, horse, pig, crow, lion, and bear. Unfortunately, she has been reluctant to learn such helpful words as milk, water and Erin. I'm sure it's just a matter of time. She is using lots of word combinations and loves to say things like "more banana," and "uh oh Laura."

She is climbing a lot more and goes up and down off of the couches, chairs and our bed with ease. She likes to test the limits and stand up on chairs and in her high chair. She likes to tell us when things are out of place and will pick up dog hair or crumbs off the floor and bring them to us and say uh oh. She finds the outlet covers that are off and again, tell us uh oh until we fix the offending danger.

She is still a pretty good eater, but has good days and not so good days. She likes to feed herself with a spoon and is getting a little less messy about it. She still loves crackers, yogurt, apple sauce and cheese. She was a little less than thrilled about thanksgiving dinner, you know potatoes are evil, but enjoys pie and ice cream a lot. What a good Lee girl.

Erin is still too young to get the idea about Christmas, but has fun looking at the toy catalogs. She has a Target ad that she looks at each time she gets in the car. I guess this is just an extension of her love for books. She still brings us books to read to her many times during the day, but is now pickier about what we get to read. There are some pages that she likes better than others and we only get to read those. It must be the OCD, but it drives me crazy to skip pages in stories. I'll just have to deal with it.

She continues to love Oscar and Duncan. She helps feed the dogs and stacks their bowls after they are done. She looks out for Oscar by asking for more water for him , "more ah, more ah," and still chases Duncan around the house with her baby stroller, laughing maniacally. Poor Duncan. She loves for Oscar to knock over towers that she and Matt build.

It's tough to get good pictures of Erin these days. She's moving too quickly and always runs at the camera when I pull it out. She's figured out that if she hits the right buttons she can look at pictures and loves to look at pictures of herself.

Erin loves to be our little helper. She likes to feed the dogs, sweep the floor, vacuum and now has started helping me cook. Matt was running thanksgiving morning, so Erin got to help make all of the pies. Some of them ended up with just a tad too much flour or water, but she had a blast. Today she helped me make banana bread. She was fascinated by the egg and wanted to poke it and got a little upset when we stirred it in. I'm hoping that soon we can just let her know what we want for dinner and chef Erin will cook it right up. It's ok to dream.

Well after our month of fun, it's back to the real world. Luckily Matt and I are both on pretty low key rotations. So we've still got weekends off and have time to get ready for the holidays. It's still been a challenging transition and I think we'd all like to go back to being home together. At least we've got some holiday fun on the way to keep our spirits up.

A few more pics

Happy Halloween!

We had a great time yesterday. As you can see, Erin was a little hesitant to put on the costume, but ended up tolerating it just fine. She even put on the hat for a short time, before letting us have a chance to wear it. Muggy and Paul were in town, so we met Laura over at Jan and Dean's for a great Halloween dinner. We only ventured to a few houses for trick-or-treating and Erin was a good sport and roared for everyone when asked. The costume was great and we may get another year of use out of it. She did enjoy getting a bite of candy and eagerly asked for "more, more" of the peanut butter cup. She's got good taste.


Now we are frantically trying to pack, clean, and organize before we leave. To throw a curve ball at us today, Oscar ate through the door to the bathroom cupboard. He's been on a diet and also on steroids for the last week and we're not sure if something pushed him over the edge tonight, but it's the most destructive that he's been in his 9.5 years with us. Yikes. Laura and Tom have graciously offered to take both dogs while we are gone and we'll have to be sure to send Oscar's kennel over with him.

As always, wish us luck for the plane ride, I'm just thrilled that I'll have Matt along this time.

PS. Thanks for the photos Laura

Roar

We have eagerly been awaiting Halloween. We've had Erin's costume for a few weeks, but she's been refusing to wear it at since we got it. That it, until yesterday. After her bath, I convinced her to try it on. I figure that getting her to wear the body wouldn't be a huge fight since it's just like pajamas with a tail. The head is a little more involved. In any case, she agreed to wear the head. Imagine a scrawny, pale little girl with a huge lion head on... it was awesome. She didn't want to take it off and we only got it off with promises that we would wear it again in the morning. This morning, I walk into her room and the first words out of her mouth are "more roar." So funny.

We've had a busy week trying to get some house projects checked off the list and get ready for our trip next week. Erin has had fun sweeping, vacuuming, washing and folding laundry. She even helps set the table and loves to take the napkins and the cups (plastic) to the table. How helpful.


Today we headed out into the pouring rain to tour some childcare options. We saw two centers that are pretty close to our house. One is Spanish immersion, has a great curriculum, feeds the kids fresh, organic meals prepared on site daily, uses cloth diapers and is just all around awesome. The other is fine. It is a quarter mile from our house, and is fine. Matt compared the first to paradise and the other to a prison camp. It's really not like that and Matt was just being a little dramatic. The problem is that the one we like is only open from 7:30-5:15. While this might work in the real world where people have grownup jobs and work normal hours, we're having trouble trying to figure out how we could make that work. We're supposed to see a few more next week and try to figure this whole thing out. Jan and Dean will still take care of Erin until she's close to 2, so we've got some time, but it would be really nice to have it settled.

Cold feet

It seems that the only time we can get a picture of Erin that is in focus is when she's sleeping. Otherwise it's just a blur. She's running around and we're lucky if she's actually in the frame. Either we need a new camera or we need to drug her. Hmm... we'll have to think about it.

We're having a tough time with keeping Erin warm at night. She won't keep blankets on herself and she's outgrown all of her sleep sacks. Usually she's in a pair of pajamas and then has a sleeper on top. We were out of sleepers last night, so I figured she might keep socks on if we put robeez on too. You can see how well it worked. One shoe on and one shoe off. At least it doesn't seem to bother her. She also loves these pajamas because she'll tell you the ghost says "boo." She woke up this morning and all we heard was "boo, boo," then giggles. It's good to find yourself funny.

Snow and 17 months

I shouldn't be surprised since we're living in Minnesota, but it does seem a little early for snow. But, alas, winter appears to be well on it's way. We've now woken up to snow 2 mornings in the last week. It not terribly cold yet, but it's such a shock to the system and it's making it tough to want to be outside much. Plus Erin is refusing mittens, blankets in the stroller and often times the hat goes as well. It might be a chilly winter for her.

Otherwise Erin is doing great. She's getting better and better every day with one nap. Evenings are still a struggle and out bedtime routine is often accompanied by lots of tears. Tonight sitting in the bath sent her into hysterics and it was just downhill from there. Strangely enough, even when she is upset she doesn't really fight anything, she's just unhappy. We've found that the song that will temporarily calm her lately is the "abc" song. She loves it and will stop crying to here me sing it. Silly girl.

She's learning new words and sounds on a regular basis now. She now knows that the ghost says "boo" and the wolf says "howl." Her favorite new word is "go" and she loves to repeat it endlessly whenever she hears it in conversation. I'm not sure that she knows what it means and can't use it herself yet, but I'm sure it's coming. She's stringing more words together and will often say "night- night Duncan," or "bye-bye Dada."

At home she's quiet excited about playing with her tea set at her little table. She loves to have people sit with her and have them drink from the cups. She also gets a thrill out of chasing Duncan around the house with her stroller, kissing him and hugging him. Poor Duncan. He loves the attention, but we have to put him in his kennel to get a break from her because he gets really stressed being chased by a maniac with a little pink stroller. Man, I'm never gonna let this kid drive, she's going to be a terror. She also gets a kick out of sitting on Oscar. Man he is one patient dog. Between Erin and Duncan, I think that his golden years are shot.


Other than the trouble at bedtime, testing the limits and some short lived tantrums, Erin is still a really easy kid. We had dinner with a bunch of friends from Grinnell last night. There were 3 other toddler there, all born within 6 weeks of each other. It was interesting to see the differences in temperament and I was reminded repeatedly about what a mild tempered child Erin is. I certainly agree, but part of me is just waiting for the other shoe to drop.


Erin has had some great times in her highchair lately. She is very into feeding herself and always wants a spoon to feed herself with. This is getting very messy, with lots of yogurt mustaches and beards. The messiest, however, was the couscous. She managed to fling it everywhere. The dogs loved it, but I found couscous between her toes, in her ears and all over the house for days. I think that we'll stick to bigger pasta for a while. She's also gotten very interested in the newspaper. She loves to grab a section to read while Matt and I read. Today she was very taken by a picture of a man skiing and carried that section of the newspaper around the house all morning.

As you can tell from the pictures, Erin is starting to ham it up for photos. She'll look blankly at the camera unless you say "laugh Erin," and then this crazy smile is what you get. She's also developing quite the social laugh. If the adults are laughing about something, Erin chimes in and laughs so hard, totally oblivious to what is funny. It's hysterical.


We're starting to get excited about Halloween. Mom was nice enough to make Erin a fantastic lion costume. We got it in the mail this week. She's a little reluctant to wear it, but we're working on it. Just as a sneak peak, here's Erin in the hat. Thank you so much Mom.

I think that's about it. Matt and I are counting down the days until vacation starts next week. I've got 4 more days of clinic and 3 day of back-up call (cross your fingers I don't get called in) and Matt works for the next 6 days. But then it will be sweet vacation. We're planning to fly out to Portland, see everyone out there and then head out to Hawaii sans Erin for a week. I can't wait.

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.