Life as we know it

Here is the latest up date…Calli has had her third birthday.  It was great.  We did a friend party.  It was supposed to be six children, then quickly exploded into 14.  It was a really good time.  It was the princess theme b/c Calli wants to be a princess.  She received numerous gifts around that theme.  She now has a few dress up outfits, so that it awesome.  I regularly get to wear a crown as the queen.  She’s really coming out of her shell.  She used to take hours and hours to warm up at functions.  Now it is minimal time and she’s a little nut.Calli loves to make us laugh.  She is getting so tall.  She is growing like a weed.  She is big time into princesses and all their stuff.  She loves to tell secrets.  She is the best big sister still.  She will do anything for Kendall.  She doesn’t quite seem to get that she is so much bigger than Kendall and will squish her if she lays on her.  She guards her.  She makes sure Kendall is happy.  She will stop in the middle of playing whatever she is doing to help her out or get her fallen toy.  Calli loved that I took her to work with me on my last day with students.  She has been talking about it for days.Kendall is getting so big.  She’s at about 22 pounds now and also seems to be tall.  She is an amazing baby.  She is laid back.  She’s happy with wherever she is as long as she has access to her toes as toys.  She doesn’t want to crawl, but sure as heck wants to walk.  She babbles nonstop during all waking hours.  She loves food.  She wants to eat anything (just about that you give her.)  We fortunately don’t have to battle the serious food allergies…I went for it and gave her strawberries and peanutbutter.  I was just ready both times to rush to the ER.  No problem on either.  Please enjoy some pictures from the last few months.

Time is moving quickly and the girls are growing faster than we can keep up with these days.  Normally, our play dates consist of my friends with children coming over to play.  It is always fun.  It has come to a new phase in Calli’s play circle.  We had a friend of hers over from day care.  It was her first true play date last Sunday.  Joelle came over for 4 hours.  They played in her room, in the living room, played hair dresser, painted, colored, had a dance party, played with mega blocks, drove the jeep around, played on the slides, and just had a blast.  Oh poor Calli, took a face plant into the dirt.  She was going up the two step slide, the top of her sneaker hooked under the top, and she couldn’t control the momentum.  She went down face first into the dirt.  The odd part is she cried for such a small amount of time.  She cries for much longer over something much more minor. Kendall’s first tooth broke through today.  It is on the bottom right.  I have to say that she is so ridiculously even tempered with no change in personality (so far) with the teething thing that it is almost unreal.   

Well, we received a ton of snow last night.  There is about 7 inches accumulated so far and still another couple of hours of predicted snow.  Roar on March.  I have been battling illness since I returned to work just before Thanksgiving.  Now most of it has been a bad morning cold.  I cough, I produce, and I am done for the day.  Then right after my birthday (literally the day after) I get the “flu”.  I have high fevers, coughing, chest congestion, some not so pretty production, and general crappiness.  I go to the doctor’s and I was diagnosed with a sinus infection and bronchitis.  Now exactly 3 weeks later; here I am again with the EXACT same symptoms.  No way!  I go to the doctor’s again, but this time I insisted on seeing my doctor.  He did he general check up, prescribed some weaker general antibiotic and a chest Xray.  He had no heard from the lab on Friday.  Now I am P.O’ed b/c the weekend is here and what doctor is going to spend his time looking at my stuff on the weekend.  Apparently, the right answer to that is…mine.  I received a call on Saturday mid-morning from my actual doctor.  Now it is great I have a doctor that cares this much.  It also freaked me out a bit b/c I was getting a call from my doctor on a Saturday.  I knew it couldn’t be good.  He tells me that is it not full blown, but it certainly looks like pneumonia.  He prescribed a couple of more things to combat it, and instructed me that if the shortness of breath did not improve or got even the slightest bit worse, that I must immediately go to the ER or urgent care.  I was ready a couple of times on Saturday night to call the neighbors to watch the girls and have Chris take me.  I talked myself out of it b/c I wanted to meds to have time to work.  I felt like I had a pallet of bricks laying on my chest.  I had trouble breathing even in between words.  Not talking almost killed me.  I am feeling better.  Still crappy, but far better than I was.  I prayed that the snow predicted just had to come b/c I needed another day to recooperate and not worry about not getting paid.  Maternity leave sucked up all my discretionary time.  Ridiculous policy…hey let’s have the pregnant person use all their time, so they can’t get paid if she gets sick or her baby.  That’s a good plan.  Morons designed that plan. 

Prior to getting knocked down with this illness; I hosted a playdate here with Kelley and Autumn, Heather and Rose, and Karen and Ryan.  It was fun.  Rose and Calli are only about a month apart and miles in personality.  Heather and I have tried numerous times over the last year or so to get the girls together. Calli always wants to hang back and just watch.  They never actually played together before…Today.  They were acting just like the best of buds.  Poor Autumn got left in the dust though.  That will change as she gets older.  It’s b/c of where she is developmentally right now.  The two girls see her more as a tall baby than one of them.  It will happen.  I was so happy that Rose and Calli hit it off so well this time.  Calli even declared to me after they left that she had fun, wanted them to come over again, and that Rose is her friend.  Ryan was hysterical with Kendall.  We had the babies on our laps facing each other.  He just kept trying to pull her to him.  It was so fricken adorable.  It was a great playdate over all.

 Then last night Chris and Calli were making pizza together.  Calli is great chef or baker.  She is very precise when you give her directions.  Some directions she is off, but she does very well with most.  She loved every second of doing it.  I think her favorite part was making it with Daddy.  You can see by the pictures that she really did help make the entire pizza.  She rolled out the dough, spread the sauce,  sprinkled the cheese, and did some very precision placement of the pepperoni.  She loves prepping for cooking.  She loves scrubbing her hands.  We sing the alphabet, while she scrubs (I mean scrubs) the fronts, backs, and in between her fingers with very little guidance from me now.  She puts up with the brushing of her hair to tie it up.  She is  a girly girl and really likes her hair down, so this can be a feat sometimes.  She loves to wear her apron to cook.  She’s just an awesome kid. 

Oh and Calli never wants to leave Sierra out of any of the fun.  She made her into Mardi Gras dog by presenting her with beads.

Ok, so I have two kids and became a horrible blogger.  I can keep up with the written part, but honestly finding time to add pictures is crazy.  Anyone that does it knows what goes into cropping, sizing, adjusting the lighting levels, and whatnot…It is just plain not easy. 

 Ok, so Kendall is starting to move around like a crazy woman whenever you lay her on the floor. She would much rather scoot her way across the floor on her back than have anything to do with being on her belly.  She hates it!!!  This just means that crawling will be a bit more of a ways off. She is nearly 6 months (a little over a week to go) and she is 18# already.  Needless to say that she is a good eater.  She loves to eat.  She has liked all the foods I have given her thus so far.  The only one that didn’t seem to be a big hit was the butternut squash.  She even gobbled up the peas.  She is still an amazing sleeper.  She makes some seriously funny noises.  She does make one noise, and hasn’t made it in a while, but sounds like that horrible sound from the movie “The Grudge”.  I would cringe when she would make that noise.  Thank goodness she moved onto more desirable sounds.  She is gaining better control of her gross motor skills.  She is fine tuning her fine motor skills.  She does well with grasping items and putting them here or there, or oh yeah in her mouth.  She is a drooling fool these days.  I am expecting her first tooth any time soon.  She hasn’t been complaining much about them, but I am sure that is to come as I can’t imagine the pain that actually comes along with it.

Calli is really starting to speak more clear every day.  Her vocabulary continues to advance.  She says some funny things, but she is our kid.  She is really starting to recognize the relationships between men, women, children, and she even extends that knowledge to understanding that the King is a man, the Queen is a woman, and that the daughters are Princesses.  Her artistic skills do not cease to amaze me.  I am thoroughly impressed with her coloring and painting skills.  She is really trying to concentrate to staying within the lines or in one area.  Her imagination is just a huge spectrum of all that she has absorbed.  Her dolls get time outs for being sassy pants to her.  That just cracks me up.  She loves all types of music.  She will rock out to Laurie Berkner, Tom Petty, AC/DC, Toby Keith, the Beastie Boys, and Bare Naked Ladies.  I love that she loves all sorts of music.  She loves to sing and dance.  Thanks Steph for the tutu.  She puts it on regularly and twirls around the living room.  She can almost say the entire alphabet (she only misses a few letters), and on a good day she can count to 15.  She can count to 30 with some assistance.  She does understand the concept the 1-9 repeats itself between each 10 set, but doesn’t remember the order of the numbers after 15 or so.  She went “snow shoeing” with Grandpa, Auntie Jen, and Daddy.  Well, she got shoulder rides instead of the sled ride.  She refused to ride in the sled, so Grandpa and Daddy took turns lugging her on their shoulders.  I sat in the warm house while Kendall napped.  I wanted to go, but Mommy duties called.  I did get to see “The Last of the Mohicans (sp)” again. 

My birthday came and went.  I’m officially mid30’s now.  Everyone came out for my birthday, then I got terribly sick after that.  Chris claims he didn’t get that sick, but he was pretty knocked down, too.  Calli was the only one feeling well on that weekend.  The house looked like  a tornado swept through it.  We didn’t really care as long as she was content and playing nicely.  I didn’t have the energy to do otherwise. 

I am finally attaching many many pictures…some are from the fall and some from winter….

Kendall rolled over for the first time on this past Tuesday.  We were very excited.  She went from her back to her belly and back.  She has done it several times now.  She’s adjusting to eating the rice cereal.  I don’t think she likes the bland flavor.  Even though it is the same taste as her formula.  She is just learning to swallow the thicker cereal.  She’s getting better, but still prefers the bottle to the cereal.  I believe she will like it better once there is more flavors to taste.  That will be all too soon enough.  I can’t believe she is almost 4 1/2 months already.  Before we know it…she will be crawling.  It’s crazy.  I can only imagine how fast time flies when more than 2 kids are in the house.  whew…I have a hard enough time keeping up now.

Calli demonstrated a more than sincere connection to an animal last night.  We were watching Milo and Otis (w/ the Tabby cat and the Pug).  She was just completely wrapped up the entire time.  It reached a part in the movie where Otis the Pug dog was in some serious trouble.  He was on the beach looking in clam holes asking where his pal was and then the tide came in quick.  This stranded him on a rock.  Calli then showed some serious emotion. She was crying and very upset about the dog being in trouble.  It broke my heart.  I had to hold her for a bit and promise that the pug would be ok.  I assured her that he would be saved.  She literally was glued to the TV until she saw he was going to be ok.  The big sea turtle came and saved Otis.  It was amazing to see how much compassion she had for the dog that was in danger.  That’s my girl!

Calli is proving to have a pretty decent vocabulary for a 2 year old, and she has also been demonstrating a more solid grasp on the English language.  Lately, the things she says sometimes surprises us, takes us back, and makes us laugh… So we tried to potty training thing, and well she’s just not quite ready.  One morning she absolutely did not want to wear a diaper.  She wanted “big girl underwear”.  I bought several pairs of the training pants, so we could do this right when it was time.  I put them on her.  She was standing next to me near the end table.  She’s quiet and then calls me.  I asked her what she needs or would like.  She turns more toward me and says, “Sierra peed on the rug.”  I say what and look around for the dog; thinking that I forgot to let her out this morning.  I don’t see Sierra, which means this kid is talking about something else.  I ask her to repeat what she said and she did. I asked her where, and she says, “Right here (pointing to the area right in front of her feet as she took a step backwards).”  I then look at her pants and ask, “Did Sierra pee on your pants, too?”  ”No, I peed on my pants, but Sierra peed on the rug.”  It took all I had to not bust out laughing in front of her.  I was completely impressed that she thought to blame the dog.  Now Christmas day was spent at my sister’s house.  It was long day as most people know with kids.  The excitement alone is enough to make them tired.  Well, she didn’t eat a thing all day (ok, 5 pieces of pepperoni, a bite of poptart, some eggnog, juice, and oh a large peanutbutter and chocolate brownie…oh yeah some cheezits and juice at home…what a well balanced day of nourishment.)  She was nearly exhaustion, but fighting it all the way.  Chris and I bought a ticket for Bright Nights at forest park b/c she has gotten such a kick out of all the house lights all season long. Keeping her awake from my sister’s house to Forest Park was a trick in and of itself.  So we get there, and Calli wanted to the ticket to get in.  I look at Chris and say maybe they can give it back to us and “punch it or something”.  Well, out of the backseat she pipes up, “don’t punch me or something.”  I chuckled and simply explained that Mommy would never punch her or something.  It was cute.  Now we are riding home and I was sure she would fall asleep on the ride back.  Yeah right.  She kept yelling about being tired.  Then she preoccupied herself for a while by throwing invisible fake food to us in the front to eat.  Now, Chris just simply asks her a question and she turns on a dime.  She yells out, “Leave me a lone, PLEASE!”  Now the fact that she was yelling leave me along, but remembered to add that please was sort of funny. Chris lets out a pretty good laugh.  She then proceeds to yell, “It’s not funny, Daddy.”  NOw this kid is a trip.   

Now that Calli is older and fully understands Santa Claus; it is fantabulous!  She says the cutest darn things.  I love the fact that she keeps telling me, “I want to go to Christmas.”  or “I need to see Santa.  I want toys.”  These are very serious statements as she says them.  It’s so important.  She asks for the Calendar for the advent calendar.  She was asking for the “I want to do numbers.” Kendall is loving all the lights and her face at today’s crazy falling snow was priceless.  She is so smiley all the time.  She just loves and adores her big sister.  All Calli has to do is  walk by her and Kendall lights up ear to ear.  Her head is much more steady.  She doesn’t seem to want to roll over. She always tries to pull forward in any seated position.  I swear this girl is going to sit up before she rolls over.  Some day pictures will be added.  I am just trying to keep up with all the cute things as they happen.   

Kendall has been sleeping in a bassinet since she was brought home from the hospital.  Chris set up the cameras, so they can both be in the girls’ room, so I can use the monitor to see both my girls.  Now she’s taken a few naps in there, but she’s never slept the night in there.  She has slept next to me in the bassinet for 11 weeks now.  This is actually hard for me to do.  I decided that tonight was the night.  I know this has to happen.  She has to sleep in there.  I’m going to miss her next to me though.  So far so good…she fussed a bit so far, but she just wanted her binkie.  It will be ok.  I just have to get used to it.  

I’ll start with Calli tonight…she is the biggest bed time staller.  She will do almost anything to put off having to actually go to bed.  She has this bottle of rocks that she collected from Sebago this summer.  They are special to her and she loves to play with them regularly.  She spread them out on the coffee table earlier this evening.  She watches a show each night before bed, then gets two books for Chris and I to read to her.  The credits roll, and she always announces, “The end”.  Tonight, she announces it, creeps off the couch, then instead of getting her books; she goes to her pile of rocks and starts putting them back in her container (small internal cartwheel for Calli cleaning up after herself without being told).  I told her we could get the rocks tomorrow, but she needed to get her books. Without skipping a beat, she keeps putting the rocks in the play kitchen coffee pot, and says, “I’m busy”.  I tried really hard not to laugh. As soon as she was done, she picked out two books, and declared who was reading each book.  We get through the usual bed time reading, kisses, hugs, lights out, and music.  I realized that I forgot the barrettes in her hair.  I have a paranoia about her choking, so I had to go back in before she fell asleep.  I get them.  We run through the I love you’s, kiss, and hug.  She waits for me to get to the door and declares she wants another.  She did this twice.  Now how do you deny that type of procrastination. Now Kendall is starting to show some signs of her own personality.  She is smiling for the sake of liking something and not just gas bubbles passing through her tiny body.  She also makes “mama faces” at things she’s not necessarily pleased with at the moment.  She brings down those brows and makes a scowling face.  She is becoming so aware of her surroundings.  She can see so much further now.  She loves the frog and dragon fly on the curtain above the changing table  She is a snuggle bug.  She does prefer to be held over sitting in the bouncy chair, on the boppy, or in the swing.  She will tolerate them over all, but not for very long. I think she gets bored easily.  She has gained good neck control, but still needs the support b/c she gets tired after holding that head up for 10 minutes (give or take).  She is sleeping through the night for the most nights.  Whahoo…6 weeks old and sleeping through the night. I will take it.  She does like to be held to go to sleep, except I can put her down for that last time (usually) semi-sleeping, and she will nod off.   We have two great girls.