Random Life/Abby Moments

I'd like to report that awesomely fantastic things are happening in our household, but the reality is that we're just experiencing normal life. After the last two months of Nate being out of town a lot we enjoyed the past weekend at home and are looking forward to many more in the month of June (I asked Nate to take June off from traveling to get some "at home" time in). So far we've accomplished digging out the tree roots from an old tree in the back yard, putting up new lattice on the side of our pergola, trimming all fourteen or so bushes in our yard, installing netting over our sandbox (so the cats don't get in), moving one of the support beams of our pergola, and removing a roof slat from our pergola (we are planning to install gutters soon). It's crazy how much work we were able to accomplish during the weekend. We counted and it had been six weekends since Nate had been at home for a full weekend! Who knows what we'll accomplish this upcoming weekend!

Since life is so normal right now I'll just end with posting some fun pictures and videos of Abby, one of my favorite camera subjects. :-)

I love the face she's making. She's doing a silly giggle cough but it just looks like such a funny pose.

Abby recently picked up coloring. We'd been trying for a while but she tended to end up eating the crayons rather than coloring with them. It's fun watching her learn all these "big girl" things.

We're also working on getting her to sit down on her bottom while she's in a big person chair. She's so proud of herself when she complies with our request. :-)

We got in some family time last weekend and went over to my sister Katie's house. While there my niece Haylee brought out her four wheeler and Abby wanted so badly to ride it. We put Abby on it with Haylee and got a kick out of watching the two of them ride around and around the yard.

Abby had such a look of concentration while on the 4-wheeler. She was so intense with what was going on.

Eventually Haylee got tired of riding the 4-wheeler but Abby still wanted to sit on it. Figuring that she couldn't hurt anything I got her on it, then walked a few feet away to sit back with everyone on the back patio. Imagine my surprise when a few minutes later I see Abby start moving forwards! Turns out she was tall enough to reach the pedals. :-) She also figured out the forwards and backwards buttons pretty quickly, too.

And finally a new milestone for me...I can now create pigtails!

How I love my honey bunny!

7 Quick Takes Friday - 5/25/12

--- 1 ---
This week has been long. Not because of bad things but because I've been so looking forward to the weekend. This will be the first weekend in two months that Nate will be home all weekend long. Due to out of town business trips where he'd leave early on Sunday or arrive late Saturday, out of town family trips, or out of town friend trips we haven't had an entire weekend at home together in so long. We're not planning on anything crazy, just working on the front and back yards, but I'm so looking forward to the time together.


--- 2 ---
I'm almost finished with my Couch to 5k running program and am getting excited to be able to run 30 straight minutes as well as participating in local charity 5k runs. I'm probably a little silly about it as I try to go out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday even when the wind is in high gear but I'm nervous that if I skip a day I'll fall out of the routine and be back at my "can barely run for a minute" activity level.


--- 3 ---
Abby has decided that whenever she's unhappy about something (being made to sit instead of stand in a chair, finished with dinner and wanting down, not getting the particular thing she's desiring, etc) she screams. Loud. I remember a friend having a screamer and thinking that I'd never allow my child to do that. Sorry, Elena! Karma and all that. We're now pulling out different parenting tricks hoping that one works to silence the scream. So far she's winning.


--- 4 ---
My Grandma is in the hospital with a broken/crushed vertebrae. As she's 92 the whole family is concerned about her recovery. We would appreciate prayers for pain relief, a successful surgical outcome, and no long-lasting effects.


--- 5 ---
I have such a craving for chocolate-peanut butter anything right now. But I'm trying to be good and staying away from it. I can't decide if going and smelling some would help cure the craving or make it that much worse. :-)


--- 6 ---
I met some neighbors on my street last night. I wish I wasn't so shy sometimes. We've lived in this house two years and I'm just now getting to the point where I feel somewhat comfortable enough to sit down with them when they're chatting in their front yards. Thankfully one of the ladies is really outgoing and just pulls me in whenever she sees me. I realize I need to be more open and friendly but it's just so hard. I don't want to intrude but I so want to belong. sigh. Hopefully this summer there will be lots of front lawn gatherings so by the time winter and its cold weather rolls around I'm friendly enough with everyone that I feel more than happy to come into houses. 


--- 7 ---

The cleaning fairy needs to visit my house again. I did so great (in fact FANTASTIC!) the week Nate was gone because I really wanted him to come home to a clean and organizes house. I feel that after a long week away at hotels and restaurants he deserves to come home to home-cooked meals and no clutter. He lets me know that he really appreciates this as well. But this week I haven't maintained that. Our big problem area is our kitchen counter -- the minute this gets cluttered the whole house goes! Looks like I'll be focusing on the inside of the house this weekend as well as the outside!

For more Quick Takes, visit Conversion Diary!

The Oddities of Parenthood

Last weekend Nate and I noticed that it was getting really difficult to put Abby down for her morning nap. She'd go down great for the second afternoon nap, but that morning one was getting pushed later and later into the day, it was shortening from an hour and a half to around twenty minutes, and getting Abby to actually go down without a fight was getting harder and harder. So on Monday I decided to start forgoing the set morning nap and just focus on an afternoon nap.

I was hesitant about doing this, however. I liked having my morning and afternoon recharging times. I really worried that by forgoing that morning nap/recharge I'd, well, be a bad mom with a short fuse who desperately clung to the "just a few more hours" mentality throughout the day. But once again parenthood reaffirms how little I know. :-) This morning I was all set for some outings to keep Abby up and going until the afternoon nap time. Instead, she made it VERY apparent about two and a half hours after waking up that she NEEDED a morning nap and wasn't going to take no for an answer. So I put her down and went back to cleaning the house. After about thirty minutes I realized that I was actually a little bummed she went down because I was so looking forward to getting out and doing stuff! These last few days have been really fun in the mornings where we've been able to go on walks, go running, play in the park, run errands, see family and friends, etc. I didn't realize how freeing it is to not need to be home every three hours. Plus, I'm really enjoying the time with Abby. With needing both a morning and afternoon nap we tended not to travel too far from home and sometimes home can get really boring. :-) Once again I'm shown that I don't know everything there is to know about being a parent and that every stage of Abby's development has fun things in store for me!

Abby's 15 Month Stats

Here are Abby's 15 month stats:

                 Height          Weight               Head CM
Birth           19.5 in.         7 lbs. 0 oz.
1 Week       19.0 in.         6 lbs. 9 oz.         33 cm
2 Months     22.0 in.       11 lbs. 6 oz.         38 cm
4 Months     24.75 in.     15 lbs. 6 oz.         39.5 cm
6 Months     26.75 in.     18 lbs. 6 oz.         41.5 cm
9 Months     28.25 in.     21 lbs. 3 oz.         44 cm
12 Months   30.0 in.       23 lbs. 0 oz.         46.7 cm
15 Months   31.20 in.     26 lbs. 1 oz.         47.5 cm

Milestone wise she's doing pretty well. Her height continues to be in the 75th percentile, her weight has shot up a bit from the 75th to 85th percentile, and her head circumference has increased from the 75th to 85th percentile as well. So still a little taller and chunkier than average. :-) It's amazing to even think of all of the things I could write down in regards to what she's doing lately. Her biggest thing is that within the last two weeks she learned to walk and now just toddles back and forth as fast as she can. It's so cute to see her little tushie just moving along. :-) She also is understanding verbal requests quite nicely. When we ask her to put her toothbrush away in her drawer she happily grins and complies. It still boggles my mind how much she understands of her surroundings. With this comes heightened responsibility to make sure that what Nate and I say, watch, and hear is Abby appropriate. Not that we really have to worry about this as we're pretty 'clean living' people as it is but we do enjoy the occasional action or sci-fi movie that is just too grown up for her little eyes and ears right now.

Let's see...what else has Abby been up to? I think she's starting to dream as every once in a while she whimpers in her sleep, she's big into "helping" with chores (just the morning we got some good giggles in when she helped me unload the dishwasher - it was actually really cool having Abby hand me dishes and silverware to put away - now if we can just teach her the difference between helping out with the clean dishes and staying away from the dirty ones!), loves to go down the slides at the park by herself, and is really into watching birds (her little hand can't point fast enough when she spots them). The only thing that the doctor mentioned for us to keep an eye on is that she's not speaking as much as he'd like. She's got Mama and Dada down (not just babbling but actually knowing which one to say and when) but that's pretty much it for actual words. I don't count the 'yeah' she says when we ask her something because I don't hear context behind it but rather just repeating a word I say. So for homework Nate and I have been directed to not just go get her what she's pointing at but to repeatedly ask what she's wanting until she gets to the point of frustration and only then give it to her in the hopes that eventually she'll start verbalizing what she wants rather than just being silent and pointing. We've also been directed to have more repetition when we talk to her, for example "Abby, do you see the bird? Is that a bird, Abby? Can you say bird?". While I will definitely will be following what the doctor has asked I'm not too worried about her not speaking right now. Mainly for three reasons: 1) Abby just learned to walk and everything I've heard says that kids only obtain one new milestone at a time so learning to talk wouldn't have happened while she was trying to master walking, 2) Abby has consistently been behind on meeting her milestones by a few weeks. By this I mean whenever we've gone into the doctor's office and they've asked about "X" she's not doing it, but within a few weeks she's mastered "X" like she never had any problems. I honestly believe this comes from having been born two weeks early. She didn't get that extra 'cooking' time so she's just a little late in catching up to the 'average' for when milestones occur, and 3) she's just a naturally quieter child so it would make sense that in one who doesn't really babble incessantly words wouldn't be as forthcoming. Either way I expect I'll be hearing more words within a few months. Until then I'll enjoy the little stubby fingers that point at everything!

15 Months!

Abby's Officially Walking!

The week in Seattle must have been the thing Abby needed to officially move from taking three or four steps and then falling down into official walking mode. When we first got to my Grandmother's house Abby found the stair into her sunken living room the neatest toy. At first she and Bestamor would play Bump (a game that I used to play with Bestamor and Bestafar as well - the baby sits on the edge of the step and you slowly pull on their legs until they fall off the step and 'bump' onto the floor) for what seemed like hours. Abby would bump to the floor and then race as fast as she could to get back up onto the step for the next bump time. Then when the adults were unavailable to play (fixing dinner and what-not) I'd see Abby sitting on the step and then using it as a helper in standing up and getting momentum for a few steps. The furniture was placed far enough away that a number of steps were needed to reach it, but not so far as to be too far away. After Abby got pretty good at walking between all the furniture I peeked into the living room to see her start to bypass pieces on her way to the next furniture stop all while walking. By the end of the week I couldn't wait to show Nate all the progress she'd made in the days since he'd seen her last. His eyes were just wide open as he saw Abby walk across the room without falling and into his arms.

Since we've been home it's like a crazy milestone transformation has taken place. She walks everywhere, has learned to climb up on chairs by herself, has learned to communicate her wants better by actually going to the desired item (imagine my surprise when I told a fussy Abby to point to what she wanted and she got up and walked over to the pantry, pulled out the goldfish crackers box, and then walked the box back to me!), and overall has a more "go, go, go" personality. Nate and I still catch ourselves looking at the floor when we hear her walk into a room and then are taken back a bit when we see her feet instead of her crawling face. I'm happy this milestone is here (just shy of 15 months) because our weather is getting super nice and I'm enjoying letting her roam around in the parks instead of worrying about her crawling through the few sprinkler created mud puddles. I can't wait to take her to the water park and watch her run around under the rainbow sprinkler bridge!

Our 2nd Annual Seattle Work Trip

Or as Nate likes to call it "Our trip from hell". :-)

Let me back up to the beginning. For the second year in a row Nate was scheduled to teach a class in Seattle at the end of April/beginning of May. When we went last year Abby was 2.5 months and so easy to travel with. Nate spent the weekdays teaching while Abby and I visited various family members (both my parents grew up in the Seattle area) or hanging out in the hotel room. It was a great experience for the whole family and we were looking to repeat that experience this time around.

Our first "trip from hell" moment was actually a good thing, but lent itself to the trip from hell. We went up to visit Joe and Karen Larsen and see their new house. (As background - Karen and I have been friends since first grade, Joe and Karen got married in October, Karen moved to Seattle as that's where Joe was living when they were dating and they decided to make Seattle their married location). We had planned to see it back in January but a freak winter storm cancelled our trip. Due to the crazy schedule of both couples this last weekend in April was the last time we'd be able to go to see the new house for a few months. The weekend itself was really fun. We mostly hung out, chatted, and watched TV together (if you haven't watched a show called Duck Dynasty you really need to check it out. It's hilarious!). We did get to take Abby on her first Ferry ride when we took the ferry over to Kingston for lunch. I think she enjoyed herself. Did a lot of bird and car watching as well as playing around on the deck. It was also this Ferry jaunt that broke our jogging stroller. It looks like at some point in time I lost a lug nut off of the front wheel, but since I mostly jog on pavement it wasn't a big deal. When we went down to the water to hang out before getting on the Ferry the sand must have been too much for it. As we were coming back up from the water Nate suddenly stopped pushing as the front wheel had gone all catty-whompy on him. Upon further inspection we noticed that the wheel had popped out of it's holder and the frame was bent. There went jogging with Abby for the week and having a stroller for the week. :-( Fortunately, Abby is still light enough that carrying her on our shoulders is still more fun than work. The other 'hell' moment from this weekend was that Abby did not like sleeping in the pack-n-play. The first night there took three times getting her to fall and then stay asleep and both nights we were up at least once in the middle of the night with a super early wake-up as well. I should probably add in that this was the second (out of a total of three) weekends in a row that we were out of town. In addition, Abby woke up with a high fever Friday morning (Saturday morning the fever was gone so we decided that we'd make the trip as we'd already cancelled once and if her fever came back I would just head home early with her - it never did come back. What came was worse. Yeah!)

My family on the water before getting on the Ferry. My jogger is still functioning at this point.

My cutie-patootie holding a seashell that Nate found for her.

Nate holding Abby while watching the cars load with Karen and Joe. My jogger is now broken. :-(

I don't care that their was a metal railing around the edge of the ferry. I don't care that the gap at the bottom of the metal gate was contained by the edge of the ferry riding up. I do care that Nate is holding on to her. Even that little bit of hood made me feel like he would be able to catch her should that .1% accident occur.

Abby's first ferry ride. It's been years since Nate or I have been on one so it was a special treat for us as well.

Abby entertained herself like this for a good while. She could see her reflection in the window and thought there was another baby to play with. She played peek-a-boo and kept trying to kiss the baby. :-)

Still crawling. Will take a tentative few steps (max four or five) before falling back on to her bottom or forward on to her hands.

Moving on to our second "trip from hell" moment. Nate, Abby, and I left Joe and Karen's house to head to our hotel in Bellevue. We'd previously stayed at this hotel so I knew we'd have a decent but unmemorable room setup. We dropped Nate off for his meeting and I tried to get Abby down for her first nap. It was pretty comical. She was late for her nap so she was super cranky and wound-up and she was in that darn pack-n-play again. I was hiding on the other side of the bed so that she couldn't see me trying to read a book by phone-light. This was the same scenario for her afternoon nap as well. A bright spot in the day was that I got to have dinner and visit with two of my sorority sisters (Stephanie Freedman and Krista Haskins) and their husbands and kids. It was great catching up with them and seeing all the changes that a year brings. I really wish I was able to see them more often, but living on opposite sides of the state doesn't allow for many visits. So I try to soak up as much of them as I can when I do get to see them. So a two-missed nap, cranky child should pass out for the night, right? Nope! Abby decided that even at bed time she was going to resist sleeping. That first night she went late at 9:30pm then was up at 11pm and at 12:00am. At the midnight wake-up she flat refused to go back to sleep. After much tossing and turning I finally turned to Nate and told him to go and get a second hotel room for the night. Poor guy. Not only did he have to teach class the next day but he'd gotten Abby's fever from a few days before and was running a 103* temperature. Then a funny happened. I always put out the Do Not Disturb sign before going to bed, but when Nate came back to the room after getting the second room (with the intent to get his stuff for the next day so that he wouldn't have to bother us) he saw this sign and thought it meant that I'd gotten Abby to finally fall asleep and to not come in. Meanwhile, I was trying to keep Abby up until he got back because I didn't want her to fall asleep and then wake up upon his return. Finally at 2:00am I called the front desk asking where my husband was! I did laugh when I learned he'd left them an hour ago and then worked on getting Abby to sleep although it wasn't for long as she woke up at 5:45am and then at 7:00am when Nate showed up.

At this point Nate and I agreed that it would be best if I called my grandmother to see if Abby and I could stay with her for the week as it was very apparent that the three of us could not handle another night together. After Bestamor (Norwegian for Grandmother) graciously opened her home to us I worked on getting the cartload of gear to the car (it amazed me how much stuff one little person needs). Almost like perfect timing as soon as I got to Bestamor's house and put Abby down for a nap (which thankfully she finally stayed down for) I got a call from Nate saying that he needed medicines as he was back in the hotel room taking a nap and trying to overcome the cold he'd apparently gotten (nope, we soon find out it's not a cold!). So I drive the 25 minute trip back to Nate to drop off meds and check up on him then 25 minutes back to Abby. When Abby got up I noticed these weird blister like marks on her hands. We recently found out she is allergic to tomatoes and since I'm still new to this food allergy thing I completely spaced on this when the pizza requests for Monday's dinner were coming in. Since Abby had a slice with the tomato sauce I figured these blisters were a skin reaction to the tomatoes that were on her fingers and thought nothing else of it.

Nate's blisters from having Hand, Foot, and Mouth disease. Notice that each fingertip has numerous blisters on it. At one point Nate counted 11 blisters on a fingertip before they started to blend together and he couldn't tell one from another.

It's hard to see because Abby wouldn't hold her hand still, but on her pointer finger (the part that's facing upward) she has two blisters. On this hand there were a total of three. That's it! Nate definitely got the worst of this sickness proving that you really do want to get childhood illnesses as a child as they aren't as intense as when you get them for the first time as an adult.

Wednesday passed with no issues. (Well, except for the fact that it rained and rained and rained so Abby was stuck inside to play. Had my jogger not been broken I probably would have put the rain hood up and taken her out but that wasn't to be.)

Thursday had me drive back out to Nate to drop off some Melatonin as he was having troubles sleeping and then back again when he, his co-worker Larry, and I went out to dinner. Bestamor graciously watched Abby for me and my adult-time out was AWESOME!!! I forget how much work she is to take out for dinner until I'm out without her and realize that I don't have to evacuate half the table and spend the majority of the evening trying to pay attention to Nate with one eye and ear and Abby with the other. Even though Nate and Larry talked shop most of the evening and I just sat and listened it was still a great dinner out. 

Then Friday hit with our third "trip from hell" moment. I woke up super early (Abby had decided that a 6am wake-up time was appropriate this entire trip and Bestamor loved having company so she kept me up late most nights. Add in at least one middle of the night waking and it didn't make for a lot of sleep) to an email from Nate saying that he needed to go to Urgent Care at lunch as he had these weird blister spots and his hands and feet that were super painful. Uh oh. A light bulb totally went off and I went back to Abby's weird blisters on her hands. Yep, there were a few more than what I'd noticed on Monday. Her feet, which we'd thought were blisters from her too-tight shoes, had more spots too. At that moment I just knew that these two had Hand, Foot, and Mouth disease. A trip to Urgent Care confirmed this. It was also an Ah Ha moment for Nate who had thought that his feet were hurting all week due to his shoes being too old. And so began the process of Facebook messaging, texting, and calling all the people we'd come in contact with or would come in contact with to let them know about the diagnosis. The sad part of this was that my Mom's side of the family had planned a small family get together, but since our group would have included a compromised immune system, a scoped shoulder, a biopsied face, and a 92-year-old grandmother it was decided that Abby, Nate, and I would not be joining in on the festivities and would miss out this trip. So bummed! :-(

Saturday also had a highlight in that Nate had gotten me tickets to see Madame Butterfly for my birthday. Unfortunately we weren't able to leave in time to have a nice dinner before hand but we did scarf up some onion rings and tater tots at McMennamin's across the street in the few minutes we had before the opera started. The opera was pretty good! Although I did wonder about my lack of empathy as I looked around at all the women crying while I was dry-eyed. Oh, well. Guess opera isn't completely my thing. :-)

By the time Sunday arrived Nate and I were more than ready to go home. Three weekends in a row out of town, too late nights, too early mornings, intense class teaching while feverish and nauseous, trying to entertain a busy little girl in three different locations, two confirmed cases of Hand, Foot, and Mouth disease, sleepless nights, driving half-hour trips multiple times each day, and missing a family reunion. Not a trip we'd like to repeat again. On the positive side, though, I got to spend a ton of time with my Grandmother, Abby really got to know Bestamor, we both got to visit Aunts, Uncles, and Cousins that we hadn't seen in a while (on my dad's side), I got to see friends that I hadn't seen in a while, and Abby got her first Ferry ride. 

Aunt Tammy gave Abby (and Nate and Haylee) a few gifts. Here Abby is taking the gifts out of the bag and then putting them back in. Over and over again. :-)

Here's hoping that these next few weeks are much healthier and more relaxing than this past week has been.