21 months

Rose turned 21 months old today, and somehow I didn't realize it until AFTER she had already gone to bed! I promise to take some updated pictures soon, but in the meantime I thought I'd provide you all with a few updates and "old" photos from the past several weeks:

1. Rose is speaking in two-word sentences! "Mama move" seems to be her favorite command. It's so much fun to hear her language abilities exploding!

2. Her bath boycott is FINALLY over! It's a Christmas miracle!! Thanks to Dolly and Peter for giving her some fun bath toys for Christmas so we could finally end our six-week power struggle. Now she begs to get into the bath tub each day!

3. She went to bed about 30 minutes ago, and I just heard a thump and a wail emanating from her room. I ran across the house, terrified that she had climbed out of the crib (for the first time ever) and landed on her head. As soon as I opened the door, however, I heard her say "book! book!"  That's when I realized that the thump had been her book landing on the floor.  Yep, she now insists on sleeping with a book every night! She's definitely my (and Mike's!) little girl :)

4. Finally, we made the momentous transition to a forward-facing car seat last weekend. It's legal to be FF at one year, but the AAP and NHTSA recommending waiting until at least two years. Well, we got tired of shoving her in the backseat, having her sit all cramped up, and hitting her head on the doorjam every time she got in or out. I'm having a lot of Mommy guilt about the "early" transition, but overall I think we're all quite happy with the change - Rose seems to LOVE looking out the front as we drive!

Have a great night, everyone!

Christmas photo bomb (part three - final installment)

Christmas morning started with our traditional meal of "Eric Estrada" (aka strata), followed by our Burcusa family gifts.

Rose also helped me to bake chocolate chip scones!

Then we went to the Fleischhacker family gathering, which Jason and Emily hosted at their new farm.  It was so much fun that I neglected to take any photos! Sorry!

Thursday (boxing day), Mike and I ran some errands. Then I busied myself with finishing Rose's new quilt for naptime at "school"....

and Mike set up Rose's new bookshelf.

On Friday, we ran a few more errands, and I again worked on a quilt:

Then my parents came to town! We had lots of fun eating, eating, and more eating. And opening more presents, too!

Rose is super excited to have her own shopping cart now.

Mike is super excited to have a new toy: a helicopter!

And my dad is super excited that we're all going to be cheering on our respective teams during the World Cup this summer. (We're not going to Brazil or anything! Just wearing our shirts at home.)

 My parents took off after breakfast this morning... Rose already missed her Ninja and Pop Pop!

Hope you all had a wonderful holiday season! Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Christmas photo bomb (part two)

After our long and relaxing weekend at the cabin, we headed back home on Monday. Then Tuesday morning we left bright and early for Christmas Eve festivities at Mike's dad's house!

Jack and Marsha were petsitting, and I'm pretty sure Rose thought this dog was the coolest thing ever!

Rose also has decided that she loves Christmas trees - especially when she "helps" to light them up (by saying "ready, set, GO" as we plug in the lights).

She had so much more fun unwrapping presents this year compared to last year. But it still took FOREVER to get through all her gifts since she just wanted to play with each one right after opening it. A great reminder to slow down and be present in every moment!

She convinced her grandpa to show her more  "be be" videos. :)

AND, she had a GREAT time "watering the potty"  (she was drowning the plants, so Grammy got the great idea to let her pour water in the potty instead. She loved it!).

We had to leave early since she started to melt down at the end of dinner, but we still had a great Christmas Eve day!

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 :)