49 weeks - Happy Easter!

Happy Easter! We had our Easter celebration early (yesterday) with Mike's family. Anne was a wonderful host and everyone contributed a tasty dish to the festivities.

Rose enjoyed playing her new favorite game, which we affectionately refer to as "fake out."

"Here you go, Grandpa Jack!"

"Ha ha! Just kidding!"

(Can't get too mad at this cutie!)

We had another family portrait taken (thanks, Marsha!)

Instead of an Easter basket (of which she got several from family! thank you all!), we gave Rose a full kleenex box to enjoy.

We ate like kings: ham, cheesy potatoes, ramen noodle salad, scalloped corn, and lemon pie. Yum!

Annie appears confused as to why her "little" cousin is so much taller!

Overall we had a fabulous time, but Rose definitely hit her limit pretty quickly. I think she's an introvert, just like her parents - she likes being with people, but she needs a lot of down time as well!  We ended up leaving right after dinner so we could get her to bed right away. Thankfully, she woke up much happier this morning.

Her official portrait of the week highlights the cute thing she does with her hand after she deliberately drops something ;)

"Where'd it go?"

Rose started getting tired again shortly after her the photo shoot (less than 2 hours after waking up), so we quickly packed up to head out to the zoo, thinking she would just take a nap in the "magic sleep machine" (aka the car). Unfortunately, she was already overly tired (i.e., still recovering from all the excitement of the day before), so she didn't fall right asleep like we had expected. Instead, she cried all the way to Apple Valley, at which point we turned around to come back. She then continued to cry all the way back through Edina, and only fell asleep right before our exit. So we made a quick decision to head back to the zoo again so as not to risk waking her only seconds after falling asleep. (Good thing we were driving our more fuel-efficient vehicle!) In the end, she got a good 45-minute nap, and we were all able to enjoy the animals!

hugs for the kitty cat!

signing "all done" after lunch

 Can you find our little miss in these lineups?

Rose's favorite part of the whole zoo was the FISH!

Well, that and teething on her daddy's hat. :)

My favorite part was the PENGUINS!

(Mike, what was your favorite part?)

Have a great week, everyone!

What a week!

What a week this has been! Rose is recovering nicely from the hand, foot and mouth disease. She has been getting her appetite back and has been in a wonderful mood! We also decided that she is officially talking. For the longest time she would say something and we would ask each other, Was that a word? Or was she just playing with sounds?  We didn't want to jump the gun, but now we definitely agree that she is not only talking, but that she uses FOUR words! Her first word was cat ("ta"), and she also says mommy ("mamama"), daddy ("dadada"), and bottle ("ba")! The last couple days she has also been saying "yayaya," usually in a really loud voice, but we're not quite sure what that means yet.

Here's a video showing Mac being a sheister and Rose practicing her yayas:

Here's another video with Rose saying mommy and bottle:

(Note that we were cued into the meaning of "ba" by the fact that she will shove her face into my chest when she says it!)

In other news, we got a new car!!! Mike did a ton of research and we ended up taking home a Toyota Venza! I'm still quite intimidated by it (it's so nice! and big! and smells new!), but I think it will be great for longer car trips. We're definitely planning to continue using the Elantra for my daily commute and for our city driving, but I'm exciting to ride up to the cabin in it next weekend!

I have a habit of naming our cars. My first Saab was Eleanor, the Saturn was Audrey, and our current car is Lantra. We're still deciding what name suits the Venza, but so far I'm leaning toward Fernando. Yep, it would be my first male car. But somehow that seems appropriate from its appearance, doesn't it?

I'll take a better picture soon! (Notice all the gross snow we still have!)

Yesterday when I was at work Mike emailed me to let me know that our dryer broke. You've got to be kidding!, I said. Sadly, he wasn't. So Mike did a ton of research in a short amount of time and we bought a dryer yesterday. Thankfully, since we wash cloth diapers every 48 hours, we can pick it up later today. Sigh.

Finally, I had a terrifying experience at daycare yesterday. Mike and I had bought the dryer together, then he dropped me off to pick up Rose while he drove home to start making dinner. Rose and I were just hanging out for a little bit; I was chatting with her teachers and she was showing me her new favorite toy. I don't usually stay for more than a couple minutes at pickup time, but yesterday I felt some pull to stay. There were only five babies left at that time, and then another mom (who happens to work upstairs in the preschool room of the school) came in to pick up her son (who is only a couple weeks younger than Rose). We were chatting about how he still does an army crawl and will sometimes crawl right out of pants, and I looked away to start packing Rose up to head home. Then the mood in the room perceptibly shifted and I heard her say "What's happening? What's happening to him?!" I looked over and it was very clear that he was having a seizure (grand mal, most likely, in my non-expert opinion) - his limbs were jerking, his eyes weren't focusing, he started having bubbles in his mouth, and his lips turned blue. I was really proud that I remained calm in the situation, making sure that they were calling 911, that someone was at the door to bring the paramedics in, ensuring that he was lying flat and his head was protected during the convulsions, and reassuring his mom (who was understandably panicking!) that the ambulance was on its way and we were doing everything right. It felt like it took forever for the paramedics to arrive. Forever! I have no idea how long the seizure lasted because I was operating in (calm) panic mode myself. It was such a relief when it finally ended and the paramedics came in just seconds later. But as Rose and I were walking home, I lost it. I started to imagine how I would have felt if that had happened to Rose, and I started to feel guilty about joking that she "catches everything" that goes around school. It was just so incredibly scary. It's one thing to hear about how seizures are not so uncommon in kids (2-5% of kids will experience a febrile seizure), but it's an entirely different thing to actually see it happen to a kid you know. My heart goes out to him and his family this weekend. Please give the kids in your life an extra hug this weekend! Rose has already gotten a million extra hugs and kisses from me and Mike, and I know there will be many more to come.

48 weeks / 11 months

Saturday:

We test drove SUVs! Thanks to a series of incredibly generous parents and in-laws, I've never bought a car. I was super intimidated at the dealerships, but eventually it turned out to be pretty fun!  I think we have it narrowed down to a few different models, so now we just have to finish our research to make a decision that makes the most financial sense for us.

BTW, Rose was dressed for spring on Saturday, even though we still have ridiculous amounts of snow around. (I'm so tired of winter!!!!)

"Go Twins!"

Sunday:

We took the last of the frozen milk out of the freezer! I'm still nursing Rose at night, but this feels like the end of an era. Thankfully she seems to really like formula now. I'm proud that the frozen milk lastest as long as it did - this was the result of a LOT of pumping. Whew!

Sunday we also took Rose's weekly portraits.

Monday:

The last dose of Rose's 10-day course of antibiotic. She liked the taste so much that she always wanted to hold the medicine syringe after taking the medicine!

 

Then, as I posted yesterday, she got sent home from school with a fever due to hand, foot and mouth disease. Sigh. At least she's a happy girl as long as we stay up on her ibuprofen. Fingers crossed that she gets over this illness quickly and recovers for a good, long period of time!

Finally some good news!

"I love Daddy's wallet and the fun plastic inside!"

Mike told me that Rose's kidney ultrasound just showed that she is a-ok! Yay for perfect kidneys!

Hand, Foot and Mouth Disease

I bet you thought Rose had already contracted every possible illness she could possibly get, right? Nope. Today, her last day of antibiotics for the kidney infection, she got sent home with Hand, Foot and Mouth Disease. Sigh. At least, given the sores in Rose's mouth, we're going to get especially good use out of our vitamix the next few days. Sigh (again).

Get well soon, Rose!

11 months!

Our official 11-month "portraits" will come on Sunday, but for now here's a picture of Little Miss this evening with her current favorite toy:

Yep, it's the lid of a Tupperware container. Forget the big-money educational enrichment toys we've bought for her - our daughter would rather look at us through a clear lid. (Thanks, Grandma Roles!) Silly girl!

How to be a perfect parent

I was catching up on some blogs while eating lunch and I came across this hilarious post on "How to be a perfect parent." If you don't have time to read the whole (short) post, at least check out this hilarious chart:

It's like she can read my mind and knows all the crazy talk I have told myself! :)

lemons

Have I told you all how much Rose loves lemons? The second she sees them, she forgoes any of the other food on her tray.

She is also discovering how much fun it is to SPLASH in the tub! (Mom and Dad, click through to the blog see the video.)

Thanks for all the love you've been sending Rose. Her kidney u/s is scheduled for Tuesday...

Congrats, Mike!

Now that Mike has shared the news with his family, I can finally announce it here...


Guess who's entering the chemistry teaching program at the U in June?

This guy!

Congratulations, Mike!!!!! You're going to be a wonderful teacher. I'm so proud of you!

47 weeks

We got a message from the doctor Rose saw on Friday, and she reiterated that Rose does, in fact, have a urinary tract infection, and her blood tests also suggest that it had turned into a kidney infection. Apparently this can sometimes just happen for kids, but for some kids it can signal a problem with "urinary reflux" which can permanently scar the kidneys. Sigh. The "good" news (if there is such a thing) is that it turns out that the doctor Rose usually sees (and I use "usually" in a loose sense, because we've only seen her for about two 'well visits 'to date, whereas we've cycled through pretty much every other physician in the practice through all the 'sick visits' she's had) has a special interest in pediatric nephrology, so she's the provider they would recommend following up with anyway in order to get an ultrasound of her kidneys. So for now we'll just continue the antibiotic, we'll have a follow-up with our regular pediatrician in a week or two, and we'll talk at that time about scheduling a kidney ultrasound. I'm praying she doesn't have urinary reflux because "Dr. Google" suggests that the treatment is then 6 months to 2 years of preventative antibiotics! So please send some positive vibes our way because I would really, really like to avoid that!

Anyway, because Rose has gotten sick so often, so has missed a ton of school in the past few months, including four days last week. But we got a lovely card in the mail yesterday from all her friends!

 

Wasn't that thoughtful? I love our daycare.

In other news, we're also back to sleep training again. Apparently we (as in I) got in the very bad habit of letting Rose fall almost completely asleep while nursing and rocking before transferring to the crib each night. Now that she definitely has object permanence AND separation anxiety, this translates into frantic screaming when she wakes up and panics when she realizes a parent isn't holding her . . . and in her mind this means we must have abandoned her because we had been with her when she fell asleep! Now we need to re-train her to fall asleep on her own, so when she wakes up in the middle of the night she'll no longer be surprised that we're not in the room. In order to help with this, we're now going to do our last nursing before bathtime, and Mike is going to read her a story then put her in her crib drowsy yet awake. "Cry it out" was incredibly difficult yet worked incredibly well when we needed to wean her from her 4am feeding a few months ago, so hopefully we (as in I) can get through doing it again.

As a result of Rose having been sick and thus having terrible sleep, my sleep has also suffered. I believe I have complained to you before about how much I hate being sleep deprived, so I'll spare you my litany of woes. But I thought I would give you two examples of just how tired I was yesterday:
1. I made a *huge* pan of wild rice casserole for us to eat over the next several days. And when I woke up this morning, it was tight where I had left it yesterday, still in the oven. Ugh.
2. I have a pair of black boots that I've been wanted to get more use out of, so I've been on the look out for the past several months for a cute black dress or skirt that's winter-worthy. Yesterday after we went to the play area at Eden Prairie Center we walked through Sears on the way back to our car and I spotted a beautiful dress on the Land's End clearance rack. On a whim, I tried it on - usually fitted dresses look terrible on me since I'm so short-waisted, but I decided to give it a shot anyway. It was perfect - and only $22 (originally $98)! Woo-hoo! Except that when I put it away today, I noticed that it is very clearly "sable." As in not black at all. Ugh. (So how bad would it clash to wear a brown dress with black boots???)

But enough of my babbling! Let's get to the thing that you've all come to this blog for: photos of Little Miss! This week she has been all about books! She loves all of her books, including:

Goodnight Moon

Pat the Bunny

I am a Bunny Rabbit

Where is Baby's Belly Button?

Unlike her love of books, she's not so sure what she thinks of her daddy's new hat:

And now she's getting so fast that Mike started putting up barriers so slow her down between the living room and entry way!

She's getting tenacious, and also turning into Daddy's little girl!

Have a great week, everyone!