Happy Halloween!

Our Halloween festivities started early in the week, when Rose had her school's fall festival on Tuesday evening. What a rodeo seeing the teachers and parents try to wrangle 20 toddlers into costumes! And then to watch the lead teacher trying to get the kids to sing their Halloween song! It was so much fun to see :)

I know you're all here to see pictures of Rose, but I just want to interject the AMAZING decorations that my team did at work! Super impressive!

Wow!


Anyway, back to Rose :)   Isn't she the cutest little lion you've ever seen?!?  We did a little practicing at home so she could learn what happens when you say "trick or treat." She was thrilled when she got a cookie from Grammy as her treat!

Then my mom took our annual Halloween photo!  (Click the link to see how much she's grown up in the past year!) This was the best photo we got since Little Miss was getting antsy to get outside...

The four of us did our usual routine of stopping at two neighbors' houses: Brian and Sue down the street from us, and Marcy, Andrew and Noah's house across the highway.

Rose loved going out for the evening stroll, but she wasn't too fond of  ringing doorbells. Little did we know, she was actually dressed as the "cowardly lion" this year. (Ha Ha)  If the costume still fits next year, we'll be sure to get her a courage medal to go with it! :) 

Actually, I think she was getting more and quiet because she was getting more and more queasy. (She's actually not "cowardly" at all, usually!)  Unfortunately, after bathtime she spent a couple hours throwing up. :(  I think it was just some sort of daycare virus, but I hope she doesn't associate Halloween with sickness from now on! At least she got to spend Friday home with my mom in the morning and with Mike in the afternoon - that's a good consolation prize, in my opinion!

Hope you all had a great Halloween, and that it ended better than Rose's holiday did!

hello? helllloooooo???

Is anyone there? I thought I heard crickets. I did! Well, I suppose that must be my fault for not posting anything in the last two weeks! Seriously, how has it been that long already?!? Yikes. Here's a quick rundown of what's been happening recently:

* I went to Osmo Vanska's farewell concert with the musicians of the Minnesota Orchestra. It was heartbreakingly beautiful. I hate not going to classical musical concerts throughout the year! I am firmly on the side of the musicians and wish the Board would (a) end the lockout and (b) adhere to the recommendations from Senator Mitchell!!

* Rose was sick again last Friday with a fever of 104! It was scary...and also scary that I'm getting a bit desensitized to such high fevers. We didn't go to the ER (on the recommendation of the on-call nurse) and the fever broke around 20 hours after it started. Whew!

* Speaking of ER's, we've started getting EOBs and bills related to Rose's last ER visits (for fever and then for burns). Man, modern medicine is expensive!

* Last weekend Rose had her first sleepaway without her parents around! Mike and I were at a wedding in Duluth, so Rose spent the weekend with Grammy and Grandpa Jack. We all had a great time!

* This is MEA weekend, so Rose got to spend all day with Grammy and Grandma Roles today, and tomorrow she gets to spend all day with her Daddy. What a lucky girl! (Thanks, grandmothers!!!)

* Rose's new favorite words are "uh oh" and "no." She especially loves saying NO to Mac - poor cat! She also refused her bath last night, which turned into a disaster of epic proportions. She tried to refuse it again tonight, but we insisted and her bedtime routine went as usual, so hopefully her sleep will be as usual tonight too.

I haven't taken a lot of photos recently, but here are a few to tide you over until her "official" 18-month shots next week! (Can you believe she is 18 months old already?!)

Rose has been super interested in ears recently. Sometimes it hurts when she pulls on them or inserts her finger.

When Rose is feverish, she just lays lethargically on me.

When she feels good, she LOVES to help me bake :)

Mike and I had a great time at the wedding!

Have a great Friday, everyone!

Another one

See that ginormous welt on her leg? Yep, she got bit again today. Ugh.

Friends who bite

See the big bite mark on her forearm, up by her elbow? Apparently Rose has some "friends" at school who like to bite. This is the third incident that we've had since she entered the toddler room. None of the others have left marks, but this one looks bad! Poor girl.

16 months!

16 months old!  Time with Rose just gets more and more fun every day. Right now she LOVES playing in the dirt (way more than I would have expected a daughter of mine to enjoy such things!).  :) She also loves bringing me handfuls of dirt. Ha!

a quick recap

Here's a quick recap which should explain why I haven't had time to post many updates recently!

Sun 8/4 - my last blog post about a lovely weekend
Mon 8/5 - so busy that I had to work extra long hours in the evening at home
Tues 8/6 - my throat started to scratch
Wed 8/7 - left work after about 3 hours - weakness, chills, fever, and general misery
Thurs 8/8 - another sick day
Fri 8/9 - still sick, but we headed up to North Dakota. After 8 hours of driving, we made it to Mike's grandparents'! (photos below)
Sat 8/10 - I was starting to feel human
Sun 8/11 - my first day without a nap in almost a week
Mon 8/12 - the 8-hr drive back to Mpls - Rose did a great job in the car both directions
Tues 8/13 - my mom was in town so Mike and I had an early anniversary date night at Republic (yum!) . Also, Rose had her first "transition day" into the Toddler Room!!!
Wed 8/14 - Mike started working on our new patio
Thurs 8/15 - our official 10-year anniversay
Fri 8/16 - our second anniversary dinner at Butcher and the Boar (double yum! and ouch to the pocketbook!)
Sat 8/17 - Mike finished the patio and I spent most of the day with Mitra and Dotty!!
Sun 8/18 - got caught up on errands - whew!

Whew is right! Here are the photos from our ND trip. (Note that I felt so sick most of the time that I pretty much just took pictures on Sunday when we visited the farm.)

There were BIG tractors at the farm!

Rose was a little uncertain of them at first.

There were also really big things to climb up!

We all took a turn.

One felt like a superhero atop the world!

ND is so flat that we could see FOREVER.

We climbed in the cab of every tractor.

Rose eventually started to enjoy it!

The tractors were huge.

Rose also loved playing in the yard.

Do you think these two might be related? ;)

We visited the one non-flat part of the area: Pembina Gorge.

It was surprisingly hilly - and lovely.

A great time was had by all!

With that, I need my beauty rest! I'd rather not get sick again, so it's early to bed for me. Have a great week, everyone!

weekend review

Rose just fell asleep, so I decided to take a moment to be thankful for the lovely weekend we had. Here were some highlights:
* leaving work of Friday with no "homework" for the weekend!
* making banana rhubarb muffins, chocolate zucchini bread, savory zucchini pie, chocolate zucchini muffins with vanilla frosting, and zucchini cheese pancakes
* going for a short family bike ride Saturday afternoon
* seeing my friend Dotty and her kids for a walk around Lake of the Isles on Saturday morning
* going to the MN Zoo for "family time" on Sunday morning
* running into Aryn at the lake on Saturday and Dotty at the zoo on Sunday
* getting to quilt for 2.5 hours while Rose napped on Saturday
* talking to my parents on the phone last night
* sleeping in until 7am on Saturday
* eating Mike's amazing Sunday night supper - and seeing Rose gobble it up as well!
* seeing Rose "speak" in a sentence for the first time! (she combined the signs for "more" and "milk" to ask for "more milk"!)

The "lowlight" of the weekend was definitely the children's puppet show that we tried to attend at the zoo this morning. As soon as the lights went down and the hostess came out dressed as a hawk, it was all over - Rose SCREAMED bloody murder and wouldn't stop until we left. I felt so bad for scaring her! I guess we'll wait a bit before we try that again.

I didn't take any still pictures this weekend, but I did take a couple videos. I'll upload them as soon as I can. Hope you all had a lovely weekend as well! :)

last weekend

Mike and I wanted to make one more trip up to the cabin before the end of summer, so a few weeks ago we picked the last weekend in July. We figured it would be a great time for swimming, fishing, and boating. Well, it turned out that Mother Nature had a different idea! With highs in the 50s (!) each day, it instead ended up being a great weekend for eating, learning to crawl down the stairs, and riding a tricycle in the basement. :)

Mike is planning to bring Rose up again later this month (when he's between classes), so let's hope they have better weather next time!

Well child visit (15 mo)

Rose is still growing right on track! (We had her 15-month doctor's appointment on Monday.) She has definitely learned to associate the doctor's office with pain, however - getting cathed during her kidney infection will do that! - and having 3 vaccines and a blood draw today certainly didn't help the matter. Poor girl. Good thing she only has a couple more shots at 18months and then she'll be DONE for awhile!

Two months
weight:  12# 6.4 oz (85th %ile)
height:   23.5"  (86th %ile)
head:    15.5" (66th %ile)

Four months
weight:  15# 10oz (86th %ile)
height:   26"  (95th %ile)
head:    16.75"  (85th %ile)

Six months
weight:  17# 7oz (78th %ile)
height:   27.25"  (93rd %ile)
head:    17"   (72nd %ile)

Nine months
weight:  19# 9.6oz (65th %ile)
height:   28.75"  (87th %ile)
head:    17.5"   (66th %ile)

Twelve months
weight:  20# 9.6oz (61th %ile)
height:   30.5"  (89th %ile)
head:    17.75"   (55th %ile)


Fifteen months
weight:  23# (70th %ile)
height:   32.25"  (91st %ile)
head:    18.25"   (67th %ile)

In other news, I'm hard at work on BALANCE again. It seems like a pretty constant theme in my life, especially in the last year or so. And every time I think I've addressed it, I must get complacent or something because it comes right back up again!

Recently work has been taking over my life. I love my job for so many reasons, but I don't love the fact that I get about 20 emails per hour, that all my peers are checking emails at all hours of night and day (so it feels like the expectation that everyone do so), and my "to do" list is never ending.

Monday I left work an hour early for Rose's doctor's appointment, so of course it was fine that I was sending emails for about an hour and a half at night after Rose went to bed. The struggle I'm having is about all the other days that I'm at work by 6:30 or 6:45am, I'm seeing clients or in meetings every hour until 4pm, and I still come home with a laundry list of things that need to be done before the next day.

I'm building more "admin" time into my schedule, so I'll actually have time to do the work that comes up in the meetings.  I'm optimistic that will help once it eventually goes into effect. I'm also trying to be gentle with myself since I haven't exercised in about a month and I haven't had any time for quilting/baking/blogging either - yet I also know how important it is to do those things!

If only there were more hours in the day - or if only I could get by with fewer hours of sleep each night! Sadly, I have to accept that I NEED eight hours of sleep per night, or else I get sick within a couple weeks. So how do I get my sleep, and also meet my other needs, such as hobbies and exercise? Because I'm learning that those truly are needs - I can't just work and do the basics at home (groceries, dinner together), but I also NEED time to turn my mind off and relax.

I think I'm going to turn my work email off on my phone. While I like having it constantly available, it also ends up creating more work for me since I read the email once on my phone, then have to read it a second time when I finally get to a computer to type out a response (I hate typing on my phone, and my phone is also not letting me send any reply emails for some reason). Hopefully the combination of that and the built-in admin time at work will allow me to do some hobbies after Rose goes to bed (instead of more work), which will then help me sleep more restfully, which will then allow me to actually exercise in the morning (instead of sleeping in or obsessing about emails already), which will then have additional positive effects going forward.

Sigh. All I want to do is be healthy and balanced for myself, AND to set a good example for Rose.

At least Rose makes sure I slow down each night to savor milk cuddles and bath time. :)

bathing beauty

I took Rose to the splash pad this afternoon since it was about a bazillion degrees outside. She was *very* slow to warm up to it, but that seems to be her personality. Mostly she just enjoyed sitting back and watching the big kids play.

Rose loves applying sunscreen (and reapplying, and applying again!)

She was content to sit and watch on "our" chair. (I ended up on the ground.)

Eventually she got close to the little fountains.

And even touched it a few times!

Yummy.

Toward the very end she did venture off a couple times...

...but frequently hurried back to safely whenever she got even slightly splashed! :)

Cruiser!

I got a request for another "cruiser" video... here you go!

(Let me know if the video doesn't work - I was having blogger problems yet again, so I had to go through this totally convoluted process...)

Isn't it amazing how steady she is after only a week of being a full-time walker?!?

In other news, we tried to go strawberry picking yesterday but were turned off by the HUGE line of cars waiting to get in. So instead we stopped at a farmstand and bought pre-picked strawberries. (Which I think was actually preferable for the slightly hungover and sleep-deprived gentlemen I was with, even if I was a bit disappointed!)  The strawberries were delicious! We ate at least a quart before we got any of them home. :)

"The berries were so good, I even ate the stems!"

Yesterday we also had brunch with our Philly friends, Brad and Katie, as well as dinner with our local friends, Zach and Vanessa (and their daughter Clementine). It was so nice to "break bread" with some wonderful people. I feel like we're finally starting to emerge from the cocoon that we were in for the first year after Rose's birth. We were on survival mode for so long, and it's nice to now have the energy and interest in being social and having hobbies.

Speaking of which, I've started running again!  I had several false starts in the past year, getting curtailed every time by Rose's sicknesses, my sicknesses, or just general new parent exhaustion. But I've been running a couple times per week for the past month or so, and I'm hopeful that I can keep it up. Now I'm looking for a race of some sort to keep me motivated! I'll let you know once I find one.

Have a great weekend!