Monday, March 30, 2009

Thanks!

Thanks for all your comments on my last post. I definitely have some good ideas to try now, I was feeling rather stuck. I am definitely going to try Jessica's suggestion of the smoothie with spinach in it. I don't think it is the "green" that they necessarily mind, but it's the small chunks of colorful non-sweet things that make them cringe. They both love smoothies though, so I am definitely going to try that. I am also going to get myself a copy of that cookbook. Yes, I don't necessarily agree with forcing my kids to eat things, there are things that I had to eat when I was little that I STILL don't like. However, it is more about not wanting my kids main source of vitamins to be in the gummy princess-shaped form.

Stay tuned for future updates on how it goes.

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I have to share a few recent pictures. I took two days off from work last week, just to hang out with my family. It was great. So, we took some pictures while I was "less busy" (as if that is ever true for a mother!)

Steve and Berlin, both looking especially cute.

Steve looking especially hot cute here and Tryn looks...caught off guard :)


Um, don't ask what we are doing here. Really not sure. They still look cute though :)



Okay, Berlin's true self, as can only be caught on film. She looks a little crazy, doesn't she?!

Sunday, March 29, 2009

Oh, fruit!

My kids LOVE fruit. They are passionate about fruit. They would eat fruit, and only fruit, at every meal if I let them. If they were to make a list of favorites I am not sure if it would be grapes, strawberries, peaches, pears, blueberries, raspberries, bananas, apples, or mandarin oranges that would be at the top, probably blueberries or strawberries.



In fact, when I open the fridge I often try to do so discretely. Otherwise I have two little people standing there pointing and grabbing at all of things things they want, always fruit. Then we have "discussions" about maybe being allowed fruit after they have eaten something else.



We used to (and still can) bribe Tryn to take bites of something with fruit. We would tell her that if she wanted a bite of strawberry that she would have to take a bite of spaghetti first. This actually worked really well. However, this is really tiresome to do at every meal and now we are to the point where she is old enough to just understand, "Eat this. This is dinner. If you don't want it, you can't ask for anything else." This doesn't always work as Tryn did not want Lemon Greek Chicken (really yummy!) the other night and when to bed with precisely four bites of chicken in her stomach (as she would not touch the potato, red and green pepper, and onion part of it). Berlin cannot be bribed. She will absolutely not take a bite if she does not want to...no matter what. So I am struggling. My kids HATE veggies as much as they love fruit, which is a lot. They will sometimes eat potatoes or corn. Nothing else. The experts say to keep reintroducing a food that you want your kids to eat and they will eventually start to eat it. Well, we have been introducing Tryn to vegetables for almost three years now and guess what, the experts are WRONG! I actually think Tryn likes veggies less now than she did before.

Well, as I get teased most days at work for eating spinach, carrots, bell peppers, and cucumbers for lunch, I am determined that my kids eat some veggies. I am a firm believer in nutritious eating and well balances meals. So, in a desperate attempt, I made them a grilled cheese sandwich on Saturday and put veggies in the cheese. As you can see below, Berlin was absolutely not impressed. She didn't even swallow a single bite. Tryn had to have ranch to dip hers in, which almost defeats the point of having veggies in the meal, and picked out the majority of carrots that she could find. AH!





Does anybody have any really great recipes, suggestions, ideas? I mean, I really can't complain all that much, because at least my kids will eat...most of the time. I just think it is really important to eat non highly processed and fresh foods, including lots of vegetables. And it's not working so far. Should I just wait and back off for a few months and hope that they will just eventually start eating veggies? Or should I keep trying? I just really don't know what to do...my mom always made me eat stuff. Though I hated it at the time, I am very grateful now :) Ugh.

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Puerto Vallarta or Paris?

Seriously. Okay, really short pre-story for those of you who don’t know: Basically Steve’s mom works for an airline and gave us flights for Christmas. She gets so many free flight passes per year and gave two of them to us for a vacation. We can fly pretty much where ever we want that is a direct flight (through her airline) from Minneapolis or Salt Lake City.

SO. Since it was cold and wintery we thought it would be great to go to a nice warm beach. A nice-relaxing-sleeping-in-late-and-doing-not-much-during-the-day vacation. This sounded fabulous to Steve and I since we are both permanently tired, just need some good down time, have not been on vacation alone together in FOUR (or wait, has it been FIVE? Yikes! I think it has been five.) years, and want to sleep in every day while we are gone.

However, we were originally going to go on this vacation in January when it was freezing cold all over the world except in Mexico. And, when we first found out about the tickets we immediately thought, “Let’s go to Europe!” Only, it’s cold in Paris in January. Well, we are now going on vacation the week after Easter. That is in April. This is different.

I LOVE Europe. I would love to live in Europe someday. After all, I did take a Facebook quiz called “Where should I live?” and it told me Italy, which I already knew because I am in love with Italy. How many times have I been there? Zero, but I am still in love. We can’t fly to Italy this time though because the only direct flights options are Paris, Barcelona, or Amsterdam. I have heard that Paris is lovely in the spring time.

Ugh! My dilemma is that I have been planning a warm beachy vacation for 4 months now and I am really excited about that vacation. I am excited about Puerto Vallarta and warm sandy beaches and swimming in the ocean. But I love Europe. I mean, I LOVE Europe. I just know that Europe would not be quite as relaxing. Ah! Help me!! Where do you think we should go? Steve wants to do whatever; he just wants to get out of here. At this point I need some good convincing arguments either way…anybody have any thoughts? Anyone?

Monday, March 23, 2009

So Grown Up


(Sorry about the quality of the photos, they were taken via IPhone)

The other night Steve and I took the girls to the park at MOA. Tryn passionately loves this park and the rides that are involved. We don't bring her very often because it is exhausting. Exhausting to go on all the rides with her, to help her try to manage the realm of her hyped up and excited emotions without melting down, to convince her that it is time to go when we have had enough. This time was pretty much the same except one major difference. Tryn is 36 inches tall. I didn't really realize that she was getting taller until she looked at the sign, not up to it. 36 inches. This means that she is allowed to go on some of the rides by herself.

Steve was really excited when he realized this and picked the first thing we walked by, a dropping tower type ride. Tryn watched as the ride conductor had to stop the ride so that she could let a girl twice Tryn's age get off before it was over, because she was hugging the lap bar with all her might and begging to get off. I thought, "That is totally going to be Tryn, she is too small for ride like this." But, since we had suggested a ride by herself, Tryn was determined to be a big girl. Well, as Tryn climbed onto the ride with kids almost twice her size and it rose almost two stories in the air, I braced myself for hysterics. Only, Tryn wasn't the one who cried. In fact, she started giggling...a lot. As she laughed with glee I was the one who burst into tears. She is a big girl. She is definitely not my baby anymore and the first day of kindergarten is going to suck.



Another indication that we now have a big girl on our hands happened during lunch today. After church we took the girls out to lunch with our friend Rollie. I showed Tryn the children's menu and explained the options that I would allow her to have and let her pick what she wanted.

"I want this one," she said, pointing to a corn dog.

I was hoping that whatever she picked it would be something that Berlin could eat some of too, so I said, "How about this pizza?"

"No, Mom, I want this hot dog." Well, I had let her pick, so I decided to really just let her pick. Since I can't remember if she has actually ever had a corn dog, I am sure she doesn't even really know what they are, but she was really determined to have it so I said fine.

The waitress was back within a few minutes to take our order. Steve ordered first, a burger with some fixings. Then it was my turn, a turkey sandwich with some dip on the side. Then, as if on cue and before the waitress could even ask what I wanted to order her, Tryn pipped up, "Um, um, I want this one lady."

I am still laughing about it now! Ha!! The waitress, whose name we learned on the spot, was sweet enough to let Tryn place her own order, though we tried again with a "please" and "thank you" in place of "lady". Oh, kids.

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

In North



In North I bring my kids out onto the front porch where they can play and watch the usual activities of the neighborhood; it is a very busy neighborhood. There are kids running everywhere, a continuous stream of cars, and a constant trickle of pedestrians, as our house is on the way to the bus stop. On any given afternoon I can look out my front door and see a football game commencing in the largest area of free space available for activities: the street. There are clusters of children everywhere, all interacting, all joining together in one big unsupervised play-date.

In North people actually use their front porches a lot. We have a grill on ours that we use regularly. Our five-year-old neighbor Jonathan has tried to buy steak and hamburger dinners from us. Sometimes, if we see him playing outside before we start cooking, we will add extra for him.

In North I was sitting out on my front porch one day when I met Kelly. She was waiting for her kindergartner to get off the bus. We started chatting and she told me how she had just moved into the neighborhood from Northeast, she didn’t really like North because it was too violent. She is 25 years old and she has seven kids, the oldest is eleven and her youngest is two weeks older than my seven-month-old. She had her first baby in eighth grade and she is proud of the fact that she has just one baby daddy. She has been with him more than half her life and he was eighteen years older than her when they met. We talk several times a week now while she is waiting at the bus stop, and we’ve been invited to her birthday party.

In North my daughter asks, in two-year-old fashion, “What are them doing?” when she hears people conversing through shouts from opposite ends of the block. I say, “They are talking to each other.” She tries to copy them, yelling out unintelligible noises. I try to tell her that it is not nice to shout at people like that, but to her it is just what people do. It’s just another way to have a conversation.

In North I am starting to recognize homeless faces. My neighbor knows several of their names and though I don’t yet, I will someday. For now I give them cash and feel sad when the nights get colder and colder because they are the same faces that I saw standing out there the last time the nights got colder and colder. I wonder how they keep hope. If I don’t have cash, at least I offer them a smile, just to say, “Hey, I notice you.”

In North a snowy afternoon might bring several different groups of elementary entrepreneurs to our door, asking if they can shovel our sidewalks. If we have cash we say yes, even if that means we usually need to shovel again after they are done. If we have cookies we pass them out, but we don’t invite them in for hot chocolate and I am not sure why.

In North the police, fire trucks, and ambulance can arrive on the scene at lightning speed. When my baby was born in the backseat of the car last February, I could hear sirens in the distance before my husband even hung up his 911 call. Amidst all the standard crazy day-to-day activity, the quick arrival time makes me feel safer.

In North it is not every parent’s dream to have a park just two short blocks away from home. My husband was at the park with the girls one day and heard gun shots on the other side of the community center, less than 50 yards away from where my babies were playing. When I put my daughter to bed that night she described to me, “Them cars caught them. Cars wif lights. They went up the hill. The kids were runnin’. Them cars caught them. Why did them do that?” I didn’t have an answer for her.

In North there are times I don’t bring my daughters outside in the middle of the afternoon because I don’t want them to see that the neighbors across the street have gotten so angry they are throwing punches. I don’t want them to see one neighbor holding the other neighbor against the wall, fists pounding, until the cop car races up.

In North nighttime can be even more eventful than daytime. One night I awoke at 2:00am during a raging thunderstorm, while still lying in bed I looked out the window and saw the back of two little heads about 20 inches from my face. A dad and his five kids, their ages about three to eleven years old, were camped out on our lawn chairs on our porch under a No Trespassing sign. The police did not believe this man and his children had walked from an impossibly long distance away. They said they were waiting for Grandma to come and pick them up, as Mom was too drunk for them to go home. After calling Grandma, to re-explain the whole situation and remind her why she was picking them up, she arrived five minutes later. The six of them piled into a five-passenger car with Grandma, and the police watched them drive away.

In North gunshots woke me up around 5:00am. I looked out my bedroom window to see three men pacing back and forth on the sidewalk in front of our house. One of them was on the phone, agitated, and I was glad that someone was calling 911. A car screeched to a halt at the corner. It seems, instead, they were mad because their ride was late. One of the men pulled a gun out of his pocket and they got into the car. He unloaded his weapon into the air before they squealed away. I am not sure what he was trying to say, but I heard him loud and clear.

In North we were also woken up a week before Christmas at 4:00am by someone pounding on the door. When we didn’t answer immediately, we heard, “Police! Open up!” The cops wanted to know if we had heard or seen anything unusual in the past few hours. Yellow crime tape stretched from the corner of our front porch and to the stop sign on the other side of the street. We found out later that a man was shot and killed a couple of houses down the block. We didn’t hear a thing.

In North the next time someone was shot and killed on our street it happened before 10:00pm, while we were still awake. We were sitting at the kitchen table when it suddenly seemed like there was an overly decorated Christmas display on the other side of our drapes. We looked out our kitchen window to see an entire fleet of emergency vehicles appear within two or three minutes. We went outside and overheard someone say they saw a body lying in the street less than half a block away. It was dark and we couldn’t see anything. Our entire intersection was soon blocked off with the yellow crime tape. Two kids, trying to get home, crossed it and got thrown onto the hood of a police car and patted down. Most of the neighborhood showed up. Detectives followed, along with a news crew. People gathered on our front lawn and when they heard the news of who had died some fell to the ground, screaming and wailing. We listened to it while we lay in bed and tried to fall asleep. The next day when we looked out our kitchen window we could see balloons and flowers marking the spot where our neighbor had fallen and died.

In North we are surrounded by empty houses. Five of the six houses directly surrounding our corner are vacant. They are boarded up and condemned. Soon after we moved in we took a walk down the block and counted the houses on our street that we could tell were vacant. From our corner down to the other end of the block were 16 boarded-up houses. Now these houses are falling down around us. The city has decided to bring in cranes and trucks and knock them down. This rocks my daughter’s world. She keeps asking me, “Where did it go? What happened?” We woke her up early one morning so that she could watch as the house across the street was reduced to a pile of boards and bricks; we hoped it would help her understand. Honestly, though, the bizarreness of it all rocks my world too. Especially when it’s the next day, when people scrounging through the massive pile of rubble, pulling out the aluminum siding to sell. It looks like scene from a third world country. Now I don’t know if I want my daughter to see and understand, to think this is normal. There is nothing normal about it.

In North you can hear on the new about a man getting shot and killed on a sidewalk in the middle of the afternoon, and that might mean something to you. It means something else to see a little 10 year old girl strip down to her t-shirt and jeans on the street when the weather is below zero so that she can teach her friend how to win a fist fight. While bouncing around with her fists in the air she says, “You don’t ever wear no hood. They can grab onto that so fast and pull you down. Make sure you don’t wear no hoods.”

In North we have a fire bowl out on our 8x16 piece of lawn. This is where we hang out with friends and meet our neighbors. We met Rob, who sat down to bum a smoke from one of our friends and ended up staying for a couple of hours. Our next encounter with Rob was when he stopped by to see if he could do some yard work for us to make five dollars. We said sure and gave him ten. He was really excited that he could not only buy cigarettes, but toilet paper as well. A few weeks later he knocked on our door at 11:00pm to tell us that he had just been in the hospital with a bleeding stomach ulcer. He wanted to know if my husband would sit on the porch with him and drink a beer. My husband said, “Sure, let me get dressed first.” I went back to bed.


Sunday, March 15, 2009

In Other News

First, Berlin has started drinking real big girl milk!! Yay! For those of you who don't know, I was worried about Berlin actually being able to eat any dairy products at all. Among other things, she seemed really sensitive to dairy, even broken down via breastmilk, the first several months of her life. Even the first couple of times I gave her cheese about 2 months ago, she didn't have the best reaction (lots of crying and gas). So, I am very please to announce, there have been no adverse reactions to plain old regular whole milk. Yay! It seems she has outgrown her sensitivity.

Secondly, we recently had some visitors. A good friend of mine, Aleisha, recently became a mother to a beautiful baby girl. Cece has the most amazingly soft hair and really long arms. Aleisha's brother Rollie is under the impression that the width of your arms exactly equals your height in inches, so we tried it on Cece. Her arms are actually one inch longer. Mine and Aleisha's are shorter, Rollie's and Cait's are the same as their height. I don't know if that means anything about anything, but aren't you glad you know now!



Grandpa and Grandma recently stopped by for a quick visit on their way to the airport. I just thought this was a cute picture, so I wanted to add it to my news :)

And lastly, I am the mother of a kid. I mean, I am the mother of two children, but up until now they have both fit into the category of "baby". I still have one baby, but my other daughter is now a kid, she no longer fits into the baby or even toddler category. I do not feel old enough to be the mother of a kid. At all. I was fine with having "babies", not so sure about this whole kid thing. Also, if she continues to be this beautiful, Steve is never going to let her out of the house. Probably not even to go to kindergarten, much less high school or on a first date.

Friday, March 13, 2009

Excerpt from: A Night in the Life of Parents

Last night, as I grabbed my pj’s in the process of getting ready for bed, some fishy crackers (Goldfish crackers) fell from the folds of my tank top. One might wonder how they got there…I have no idea. I fall into bed at midnight (after staying up far too late watching Lost, because Steve and I have decided not to watch tv while the girls are awake) and feel something small and hard beneath my stomach. I pull out a huge plastic princess earring. I toss it on the floor and roll over. Steve pulls back the covers to his side of the bed and finds Sophie, Cinderella, and the other princess earring.

“I don’t want to sleep with Sophie and Cinderella,” he mumbles, as adds them to the multitude of other toys on our floor and falls into bed. I am assuming that Sophie and Cinderella were in our bed under the covers because their mommy (Trynica) put them there for their nye-night a few hours previous, I am not really sure.



---------------------(Pic: Tryn and her bff, Sophie)----------------------

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

I Will Never

(I am attempting a non-kid related post, let me know what you think!)

While growing up I had a friend who desperately wanted to be a pastor’s wife. I don’t even really remember why, but that’s just what she wanted to do, be a mother and a pastor’s wife. Being a pastor’s wife was, honestly, the very last thing that I could think of wanting to be when I grew up. When we would talk about it, I remember telling my friend that I NEVER wanted to be a pastor’s wife.

Well, my friend married an electrician and I, of all people, married a pastor…of sorts. It sounds weird and funny to even say that and, for all technical purposes, Steve’s title is not “blah, blah Pastor of anything”. He does, however, work at a church. He does hold the role that, at many churches, is titled Worship Pastor. For as many places as he has ever been the worship leader, I think “pastor” has managed to stay out of his title for some reason or another. Maybe so I could more easily ignore the fact that I am indeed what I said I would never be, a pastor’s wife.

You see, all of the reason that I did not want to be a pastor’s wife are still part of my life. For starters, you know the whole Sunday-morning-getting-your-kids-ready-for-church-chaos that most parents deal with together? I do that by myself almost every time I go to church. I rush around getting the kids ready, I struggle getting them out the door, I drag them across the parking lot, I convince them that they need to stay in their classrooms so I can go to the service. If, for some reason, they cannot be convinced, I sit with them out in the great room by myself thinking, “Why did I hurry to get here?” Sometimes this has been several Sundays in a row and that causes me to wonder why I still make the effort at all.

I also sit alone during almost every church service. Not only does this suck for the very obvious reason, I am alone, but it also sucks because I am sure that there are other people with imaginations like mine. When I see other people, especially mother’s, at church alone I wonder things. I wonder if their husband ever comes to church with them, if they are married to an unbeliever, if their husband has died, if he is gone to war, if he just doesn’t care, the list goes on and on. I am always very relieved when Steve comes to sit with me; I feel safe from wondering thoughts and made up stories about my supposed life.

However, this also presents a different uncomfortable dilemma. When Steve walks off the stage and has time to come to sit with me, suddenly everyone knows who I am. Yes, nobody will wonder if my husband is at home drunk on the couch while I am at church by myself, but people watch us. And I am sorry if this seems self-centered, to be making these claims, but I know that this is true because I have done it to people myself. It is hard to think that I am the only watcher and wonderer…and besides, I can plainly see people looking at us, especially out of the corner of their eyes. And that isn’t so much the part that I mind. What I really don’t like is that people will learn my name, just because I am Steve’s wife, and suddenly there is this whole group of people who recognize me and know my name and I don’t know who any of them are! Not only that, but they have one name to learn and I have hundreds and I am terrible at remembering names. It is very overwhelming. People will say hi to me and I am not sure if they are saying hi just because they recognize me or if I have actually met them before and I have no idea. I am not a social butterfly nor am I the type of person that knows how to be everyone’s best friend. It’s just not me.

All that to say, I love and adore my husband and I am VERY proud of him. I think he is amazing at his job and he is a very gifted worship leader. The first time I really noticed him was the first time he lead worship for our college group, it was then that I also saw his gift. He has only had three years of piano lessons his entire life and he can play, literally, at least 7 different instruments, though I think we counted once and it was more like 10. He can also write orchestral pieces with parts for an entire orchestra, which is not something many people can do…ever, at all. He is amazing. He is also one of those people who have found something that he is good at and that he also enjoys and gets to do for his job, which is awesome. I wouldn’t change that for a second. So, I guess I might ALWAYS be a pastor’s wife, and I don’t think I will mind. It’s ironic what things you say you will never do that somehow find you anyway…I also said that I would NEVER marry Steve after the suggestion from a friend, but that a whole other story!

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Abbacies!

Thanks for all your comments on my blog name…it was good to get some positive feedback, I was really starting to get nervous about it. I would have to say that I am still slightly undecided, though I do think I will leave it for a little while. If you visit my blog sometime in the future and the title has changed you will know why!
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I have to share a funny story with you because I keep thinking about it and every time I think about it I still laugh out loud.

Sunday morning I was getting dressed when Tryn came running into my room, “Mom!! Dad needs some abbacies!”

“What baby?”

“Some abbacies! Dad needs some!”

“What does he need, Tryn?”

Very earnestly and with all seriousness, “Some abbacies!”

“Dad needs some abbacies?”

“Yes!”

“Tryn, I don’t understand what you are talking about. Dad needs abbacies?”

“Yes! We don’t have any. We don’t have any abbacies.”

Suddenly, I realized that Steve was in the shower, “Tryn, did Daddy say that he needs some privacy?”

“Yes! Some abbacies!”

She suddenly took off running out the door. I could hear her pitter patter back to the bathroom, then a yell, “Dad! We don’t have any! We don’t have any abbacies!” Muffled response from Steve.

A few minutes later she was back, shaking her head, “We don’t have any. I told Dad. We don’t have any abbacies.”

Haha! It still makes me laugh! I love this kid. The best part of it was how earnestly she wanted to help her daddy find what he needed.

Monday, March 9, 2009

Concern with a Question

So, I never gave this a second thought, but my husband mentioned something to me the other day that has me a little paranoid. He said that he was talking about my blog with someone from his workplace and they thought that because my blog is titled “Life with Little People” that I was talking about dwarfs. I guess “little people” is a well-known term for small adults…I guess I did not know this. Did anyone else think this when they read the title of my blog? It never crossed my mind, but now I am worried about it and am thinking about changing it. Any thoughts? About this or anything? :)Any suggestions for a new title? I always love reading your comments!!

Thursday, March 5, 2009

Oh, for the love...

Disclaimer: Now, this is absolutely not the reason I became a mother...but it sure helps.

I had a crappy day yesterday. I really can't tell you why, I just don't know. I was feeling a little depressed and melancholy all day for no particular reason, just a bum day. However, I got home from work and walked in the door and Berlin, oh little Berlin. She toddled across the floor as fast and she could, lifted her arms, and I swooped her up. She tackled my face she was so happy to see me. She grabbed both sides of my face and just laughed from the pure excitement that I was home. She offered me 6 or 7 kisses and threw her head back and just giggled and laughed. She only stopped laughing when I tried to put her down, just to take off my coat. How dare I put her down when I have just walking in the door? I guess I didn't dare :) It is great to have someone be so excited to see you. Especially when the last time they saw you was only 8 hours earlier. She changed my whole mood. I mean, wouldn't someone this scrumptious change your mood too?


The Days of Being Two

Tryn is a busy girl and she loves to constantly be doing something. One of the things that I just adore about Tryn is how she gets extremely excited about small things. If I ask her if she wants to help me cook you would think I just asked her if she wants $100. I have mentioned before that Tryn LOVES to cook, this is not an exaggeration. Sometimes we give her a couple of bowls with flower, sugar, and water, occasionally food coloring, and she will "cook" at the table for a really long time.



She is also brave enough to taste her creations. Something I never wanted to do as a kid.



Tryn loves to color, especially if it involves princessessess (as Tryn says). We got her these laminated type princess pictures for Christmas that you can color with a marker and the color wipes off. I think this has saved a great many trees as Tryn has not quite perfected the art of serious coloring and can finish a page in about a minute.



She recently learned how to put puzzles together, which she found quite fascinating. I might actually need to get a few of these now.



And she also LOVES helping us do anything. She loves helping daddy shovel, helping me do the laundry, setting the table, throwing things away, sweeping...anything you can think of that a little girl could help you do, she wants to do it.



Two of her other all time favorite activities are reading books, we could read about 100 books a day if Tryn got her way, and watching princess movies.

Quarter?

Haha. I think I have mentioned before that we have dance parties all the time. Literally, every day, sometimes several times a day. Tryn asks for specific songs, mainly her princess songs (which are Disney theme songs from different princess movies) and lately has been asking for M.I.A. She doesn't know the names to the other songs that she likes, but we can turn on certian songs and get her, "Oh, I like this song!" approval or her, "I don't like this song," dismissal. She is very consistent with her likes and dislikes too.

Anyway, we conduct dance parties by hooking up our laptop to a set of speakers and opening up Itunes. Last night, as Tryn crawled up on the chair near the desk where we usually set the computer, the the battery died on the computer and the music went silent. Tryn understanding that we need to plug the chord into the compter to get it to work again, dramatically, turns to Steve and asks, "Dad! Can we put the quardeder in there?"

"The what, babe?"

"The quarter!"

Tuesday, March 3, 2009

The One-Year-Old Big Girl!

Little Berlin was classically cute for her first birthday party. She danced for us, opened presents, and ate some cake. I took about 100 pictures, but I didn't want to bore you with 30 pics of her opening her presents. I picked my favorite picture of the whole night, this is post cake eating and just after we took off her chocolate covered shirt. A friend actually took this picture for us (thanks Larissa!!)



Berlin really wanted to share her cake with someone (or else she wanted someone to clean off her really dirty hand). So I obliged, of course, it was her birthday after all. She gave me lots of bites and also a few kisses.



This is pre-cake birthday girl, she was busy chasing balloons all over the house, but I managed to get her to look at me for a second.



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I am kind of obsessed with getting a picture or two of Berlin sleeping. Berlin, now, is a good sleeper. She sleeps through the night for the most part, and we usually don't have to get up with her even if she does wake up. However, I spent the first eight months of her life getting up with her SEVERAL times a night. Some nights I would literally get up with her every hour. We also had the hardest time getting her to sleep. There was lots of crying, bouncing in the bouncy seat, lots of being held, and lots of feeding to sleep. She was also such a light sleeper that she would wake up at the slightest noises and then, instead of going back to sleep, she would cry. This is all behind us now. The biggest bummer of it all is that I LOVE watching my babies sleep. I still love watching Tryn sleep and she is almost three. I also love having pictures of my kids sleeping. They looks so peaceful, innocent, and beautiful. Needless to say, I have very few pictures of Berlin sleeping, at any age. So, I may have taken this in the car, while I was sitting in the driver's seat, and I can't say whether or not for sure the car was still moving...just really couldn't say...but I have a picture of her sleeping!!



And I couldn't resist adding this picture of all around cuteness. Berlin is talking on the phone here, airing out her diaper rash, in her real one-year-old-birthday-suit. I would love to post some pictures of the "whole" experience, but we need to stay G rated here :) B loves being nakie.



Monday, March 2, 2009

Monday Confessions

This last week Steve and I managed to pull off a successful birthday party for our one-year-old Berlin. However, I did not buy her gifts and all of the party food Friday afternoon at 2:00 when the party started at 5:00. That, of course, would cause me to be way too stressed out and get a headache right before the party started, so I would never do that to myself.

We did not get Berlin a carseat for her birthday because it is the only thing she needed. That would be a boring gift, boring practical carseat. I am also not going to return the carseat at the end of this week and re-buy it to save $50 with coupons that aren't effective until Saturday. That would be a big pain to do, so I would never do that. I do not care about saving $50 dollars, nope, not at all.

I also have not had birthday cake and ice cream everyday since Friday. I don't even like cake all that much, so I would never eat it every day for four days in a row. I mean, eating cake helps you loose weight, right?


Welcome to Not Me! Monday! This was created by MckMama. You can head over to her blog to read what she and everyone else have not been doing this week.