Christmas photo bomb (part one)

Here's your monthly dose of Rose photos! :)


Rose is FINALLY over her brutal 18/19 month sleep regression. Hallelujah for turning 20 months!!  In exchange, however, we are now subject to non-stop pleas for "be-be!!," as in "please show me more baby videos on YouTube!"  We are trying to set a limit of ~5 minutes per day, and never in response to whining. (Setting limits is hard!)

"Be-be!"

Since my last post, I was basically just trying to survive at work. It was SOOOO busy! I'd work 10-11 hours, then come home for dinner and bedtime and work some more. UGH!  I'm hoping my new 2014 schedule will be an improvement, because I can't go back to that again.  I took Friday the 20th off of work, and it took a good 48 hours at the cabin for my cortisol levels to decrease to baseline for the first time in WEEKS.

Rose founds LOTS to do to occupy herself at the cabin. She spent lots of time with family, such as with Trula:

And with her cousins:

And with her Grandparents:

 (You'll just have to trust me that she spent time with Grandpa Fly too, because I somehow didn't get any pictures of them together!)


And she also spent a fair amount of time just walking around and singing to herself:

This photo looks like she's practicing for the catwalk!

She's also turned into a total ham when she knows I'm taking her picture!

Mike spent a lot of time ice fishing (with some help from Claire!).

I went out snowshoeing around the lake with Emily one day, and I also spent a LOT of time reading. It was wonderful!

We had a great time celebrating an early Christmas!

Delicious food, fun times with family, and lots of relaxing time. Ahhhhh, just what the doctor ordered!!

On Monday we headed back to "the cities" ....

(stay tuned for more!)

long overdue update

November 17 was my last post?!? Yikes! Contrary to popular imagination, I have not, in fact, fallen off the face of the earth. Instead, I've just been SUPER busy with work... and with enjoying my time with Rose! On the work front, our new electronic health record (EHR) went "live" yesterday, and it required a TON of preparation and post-launch support. I'm so happy that the roll-out is going a little smoother than I feared, and I'm optimistic that the pain will be worth it in the end!  But, in far more interesting news, are you ready for a big ol' Rose update?!?  :)

Rose has been LOVING reading recently. She mostly enjoys being read to, but sometimes she will read by herself for a few minutes. I'm so happy that she seems to enjoy books as much as Mike and I do! Right now her favorites are any Llama Llama books, The Big Red Barn (thanks, Marcy!), and The Foot Book (gotta love Dr. Seuss!). She also loves looking at magazines with me to find pictures of babies ("be-be!") and animals ("tat!" for cat, "oof!" for dog/woof, "mmmm" for cow/moo). Best magazine, according to Rose? Definitely Parents. And she's not impressed with Real Simple.

For Thanksgiving we went to Appleton to visit my parents and extended family. About one hour into the 5-hour trip, I realized I had left my camera at home. D'oh! At least I had my cell phone with me.

The big excitement for Rose was that my parents had gotten a small kitchen for her to play with. I was worried she might be too young for imaginary or imitative play, but she absolutely LOVED it! She liked to "wash dishes," "mix food," and "microwave."

The other excitement for Rose was that my parents took her to the local children's museum. I don't think I've even been to a children's museum so I didn't really know what to expect, but this place was AWESOME! Great idea, Dad!  We spent a good two hours there, and Rose could have been entertained for days (except that we were butting up against nap time, so definitely had to leave!).There were fish, birds, an airplane, shopping carts, a tree fort, painting stations, a guinea pig, and about a million other exhibits. I think this was the first of many future trips!

The exciting thing for my parents is that they pulled out my rocking horse from ~33 years ago and let Rose play with it. My dad started calling him "Charlie" (get it? Charlie Horse?). Rose eventually got into rocking, but at first she just liked carrying him around the house. :)

Finally, since we were visiting grandparents, Rose got a good dose of television! As I walked by, she would point out that Pop Pop was showing her videos again...

I think my dad just really liked to be able to get some good cuddles in.

In other news, I figured I should document some of the crazy stages Rose is going through:
1. The 18-month sleep regression. Apparently this can happen anywhere around 18-20 months, and we are deep into it right now. I'm hoping we can soon get back to naptime and bedtime without tears (especially for me!.
2. Water phobia. Apparently toddlers can suddenly and inexplicably develop odd phobias, and Rose is suddenly terrified of taking a bath. For a few days over Thanksgiving we tried to "force" her to bathe, thinking that we just weren't doing it right and we could convince her that she really does like baths. Well, thanks to Dr. Google, we quickly learned that that was exactly the WRONG approach to take. (Yes, we will be paying her therapy bills when she gets older!)  Hopefully we can somehow convince Rose that bathtime is safe and fun again!
3. MINE. Rose has started to grab her books or toys and say "mine!" I don't know where she learned this (daycare?) but it's hard not to laugh. It's cute at this age but it wouldn't be at age 6, so instead I'm trying to just nonchalantly agree that "yes, that is your sippy cup / book / teether / sock / whatever" and then redirect her to something else.
4. Helping. Rose is an amazing helper! She likes to put dirty clothes down the laundry chute, sweep, lick batter off beaters, stir food, carry the grocery list at the store, set recycling by the front door, throw away kleenex, etc. I know this stage won't last long, but I'm enjoying it while it's here!
5. Being carried outside. Now that there's snow on the ground, Rose pretty much always refuses to walk anywhere. Not that I can blame her! But the funny part is that she loves pointing to piles of snow and saying "No!"  That's just her way of saying "snow," but it's also completely appropriately to just say "no" when point to snow banks. Ha!

 That's all I've got for now! I promise to write my next update before another month goes by :)

professional photos!

professional photos! They're here! http://www.tmphotographytiff.com/Families/Burcusa-Family-2013 See more photos from this SmugMug site.

Ode to Motherhood

Have any of you noticed that Mike and I got the best kid we could have possibly asked for?!? Rose is SO much fun! I think I've finally reached the point that I not only love Rose, but I also love being a mom. (Finally, right?) I know so many people who loved motherhood from the beginning, but that wasn't me. I mean, I loved Rose from the beginning, but motherhood just seemed so HARD. I was sleep deprived, nursing hurt, I could never set her down, I didn't have time for any of my hobbies. But now that she's a little older, she is becoming verbal and FUN in so many ways! We are finally sharing experiences together and I love it! I love watching her brain make new connections every day. Even when she's throwing temper tantrums, she's still super cute and I love her to pieces. I know that some women are "baby people," but I've come to terms with the fact that that's just not me. I'm so relieved that we're never planning to have another child, because I'm enjoying Rose so much as she is. She has helped me to be present and enjoy the moment every day. Eighteen months was a turning point for me and I can honestly say that I like motherhood now. :)


Recently Rose has begun to love doing whatever we do. Somehow, despite the fact that she may have only witnessed this once or twice in her life (ha ha), she now loves to sweep. 

I posed her so I could get an updated photo with her and the cats. Particularly since they aren't so terrified of each other any more.

She still LOVES bathtime. Here she is, rocking out with her bathtub xylophone. 

Have a great weekend, everyone!

Sneek peek!

I love, love, love this photo! There are a few more on Facebook. Can't wait to see all of them in a few weeks!


UPDATE: I can't figure out how to share someone else's FB photos here! Argh. Well, either check out my facebook page, or check back here in a few weeks :)

family photos

In other news, when Mike's aunt Louise was in town over the summer, she bid on a photography package and gave it to us as a gift!! I've always wanted professional family photos, but somehow we hadn't ever gotten around to it. We scheduled the shoot for this morning about two months ago and I'd been looking forward to it SO MUCH, so I was more than a little concerned that we'd have to cancel when Rose fell ill on Thursday night. Luckily, however, she seemed to recover well enough that I felt comfortable keeping the appointment and, even more luckily, it turned out to a beautiful, warm(-ish) November morning. It'll take at least 2 weeks to get the professional photos, so here are just a couple that we took on my cell phone's camera after the photographer left :)

Have a great weekend, everyone!

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!