November transitions

I'm still not ready to talk about the election and all my feelings about it. So, instead, I'm choosing to post about a MUCH happier transition:

Rose is THRILLED to be in a booster seat!!!!

She was so proud when she walked into daycare this morning. She sought out every teacher who works there, to make sure they all knew that she is grown up enough for a booster seat. Feel free to give her a high five yourself the next time you see her! :)

Attempting free-range parenting

It's dark out, but Rose wanted to play outside while she waits for daddy to get home from fishing. So I (gulp) let her.

She's now running around screaming "this is so much fun!!!" at the top of her lungs. :)

Our first family camping trip

We did a one-night stay at Afton State Park back in June, in preparation for our five nights on the Gunflint trail (blog post still forthcoming...). It was so much fun! We definitely discovered that Rose loves camping, and Mike and I loved sharing the experience with her.

Rose insisted on wearing matching shirts with Daddy.

And we're off!

Only about one (very hilly) mile to go.

We had to stop to check out every puddle along the way.

Made it!

 

I had fun playing with my camera settings.

Mike humored me.

We survived the night!

I'm looking forward to more camping adventures next summer!

Belated BIRTHDAY!

Rose is very much a three-year-old now, and while it certainly has its challenges, Mike and I are loving her more and more every day. Unfortunately my parents weren't able to attend Rose's birthday due to my dad's first illness in over 20 years (no exaggeration), but we still had lots of other family members to celebrate with!

Happy belated third birthday, Rose!!

three updates

1. Rose's new favorite activity is looking through the photo albums I've created on snapfish over the years. She particularly likes the ones from her first and second years of life, and pointing out all the family members she knows. The hilarious thing is what she does with this picture: 

Every other picture she sees of Anne, she immediately labels (accurately) as her "Trula." But this one she INSISTS is "not Trula. Someone one else. Looks like Trula. Someone in blue shirt." When she didn't believe me, she brought it to Mike. And then last night she brought it to Grammy. She is absolutely adamant, and it cracks me up every time.


2. Last weekend Rose was SO excited to help Mike shovel. I helped by staying inside and taking some pictures through the window. :)

3. Finally, almost a week ago we made the switch to "daytime undies" over night (rather than "nighttime undies," which were pull-up diapers). With one exception, she has woken up dry every morning!!!!  We now call them "big girl undies." I'm so proud of her! (And praying that I don't jinx it by posting this!)

First day of preschool!!

Rose is starting to transition to the preschool classroom at school!!! She's there half the day today, then 3/4 of the day on Thursday and Friday. Then she's there full-time beginning Monday (when I'll also start my new job)!  In honor of all the first-day-of school photos that I've been seeing on Facebook, I made a lovely sign for Rose to hold in her first-day picture...but in typically Rose fashion, she promptly erased my work:

and refused to have her picture taken outside:

She wouldn't smile in the car:

But she did smile in front of her new classroom!

I hope she has a great day today!!

big girl bed

I meant to post this a few weeks ago, but totally forgot!

Rose is now in a "big girl bed"!  It happened rather suddenly, after she was crying in bed and I walked in to see her attempting to launch herself out of the crib. We try to avoid brain injuries as much as possible in this house, so it was clearly time to make the transition.  At first I was worried about how she'd adjust, but it went really well! Once she falls asleep (which is a different story), she stays in bed all night long (knock on wood).

She also loves laying in her bed during the day and saying "Mommy turn lights dark. Mommy go away" so she can pretend to sleep.  

We tucked a pool noodle under the fitted sheet to help keep her from rolling out of bed, and so far that's working pretty well. As in, she's only fallen out twice, poor thing. Otherwise she really loves her new bed!

Rose's birthday proper

Being that it was a school night, we just had a dinner of her favorites (deli turkey, grapes, bread and cheese) followed by CAKE!

She also got a few birthday presents, so we now have lots of new STORIES to read!

Happy 2nd birthday, Rose! You've brought me more joy than I ever imagined possible. I love you!

"official" 21 months photos

We (finally) took a couple (slightly belated) 21-month photos yesterday while Mike was snowblowing.

In other news, our little grown-up girl is:

1. forward-facing in her carseat! (please no judgments for doing it "early"!)

2.starting to potty train herself! (I know it's too early to dream about an end to diapers, but I can't help but be excited about that vision in the distance!!)

Hope you're having a great weekend!

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!