Wednesday, December 30, 2009

p-h-o-t-o-s

Inside the Pink Pig
Waiting for the Pink Pig.
She's a celebrity. Did you know?
Feeding a bunny at Yellow River Game Ranch.
Hungry bunnies!
Insisting on riding the bike while wearing roller skates.
I can't get this photo to flip... Christmas at Nana's house.
Nana hug!
Roxanne's fancy new jewelry from Ann and John.
Opening her present from Ann and John.

Christmas, Birthday Party, Vacation... Oh My.

So. We are enjoying our family vacation. We aren't going anywhere, but this week, we've been doing fun stuff at home and around town that we normally can't fit into a weekend. Monday we went to Yellow River Game Ranch and got to feed all kinds of animals and just stare at some others (cougar, foxes, coyote, mountain lion, bobcat, etc. etc.). It was a very strange experience, since it literally feels like that place hasn't been updated in 30 years, and some of the pens that the animals live in just look really sad and depressing, but it is undeniably enjoyable to feed and pet squirrels, goats, donkeys, deer, ducks, chickens, etc. I think Roxanne's favorites were the bunnies that would hop around after you looking for more crackers. She also really liked the ducks. Yesterday, we went to Lenox to ride the Pink Pig. My mom and Leah met us there and helped me keep Roxanne entertained while we waited to get on the ride. I still remember riding the old one with my sister when we were little. It was really fun to ride it with Roxanne, even though it just sort of feels like an advertisement for Macy's. Justin used it as a chance to hang out in the Apple store. Sigh.

This morning was Roxanne's two year check up. The doctor said she looked great, and her height is around the 80th percentile, and her weight is around the 65th. I was a little nervous about her weight only because of our recent bout with the stomach virus, so I'm glad it's still a healthy number. We also chatted about dairy, since Roxanne is finally weaned, but doesn't like cows milk at all. The doctor said it was fine to rely on other sources of low fat dairy, like yogurt and cheese. So that's a relief. Hopefully at some point Roxanne will come around though and like cows milk. We'll see.

We had a lovely Christmas, and got to spend time with a lot of different parts of our family. It was so nice. And we really loved having Christmas Eve/Christmas morning in our very own home. It was so fun to set out cookies and milk for Santa and an apple for the reindeer. Roxanne was really excited, and when she got up on Christmas morning, she had a lot of fun opening her gifts. It took quite a while because she wanted to open all of her toys as soon as she unwrapped them, but we decided we should let her take her time. And it was so funny listening to her open them, since each time, she would pull the paper back and say "Oh my! Look at this!" or some variation. She sounds sort of condescending when she says these things, but in a hilarious kind of way. Like how a pre-school teacher might talk to a toddler. She loves to talk like that to me and Justin. She'll give Justin a bite of something, or order him to perform some kind of task, and when he does it, she'll say "Good girl, Dada, I so proud of you [eat food or perform task]."

Roxanne's birthday party was on Sunday afternoon, and it was wonderful! Justin and I were both a little overwhelmed, and we talked later how it ended up feeling kind of like our wedding, in that we felt like we didn't really get to talk to anyone, even though we wanted to talk to everyone and thank them for coming. So we apologize if we didn't talk to you! We really had a great time, and Roxanne definitely loved every minute of it. After she had opened all of her presents, she came and sat in my lap and asked me to sing the Happy Birthday song to her again. I asked her, "Roxanne sing it?" and she said, "No, everyone sing it!" so everyone obliged and sang her the birthday song again. She LOVED it. And asked for it again, but I told her that that was enough. She has so many wonderful, thoughtful gifts, and she has been having a great time all week playing with everything. We still haven't taken the decorations down. It's like we're still kind of exhausted from the party. Sad, but true.

Also, a special thanks to Jesse and Jacquelyn (and Evie and Owen) for our fabulous new kitchen cart! We still have to put it together, but I can't wait. It's going to be so nice to have the extra prep space. We can't thank them enough for such a nice housewarming gift. Thanks guys!

Oh, and we didn't take any photos at the birthday party (yeah, seriously) so if anyone has any, please send them to us. We would be SO appreciative.

We hope everyone had WONDERFUL holidays, and lots of good thinks in the New Year!

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Happy Birthday Justin!

Justin is 28 today! Happy Birthday to a wonderful Dada and husband. As cliche as it sounds, it seems like yesterday that we were still in high school. Justin is just as sweet now as he was then. Roxanne and I are so lucky. :)

Saturday, December 19, 2009

Happy Birthday Roxanne!






Wow. Roxanne is two today! We have tried to do some fun things today even though we had to postpone her birthday party. First, we took her to a paint your own pottery place and let her paint a cupcake box, which was fine except that I took too long to paint my ornament and she had a melt down waiting for me. Oops. After that, we went to Bagel Palace and she had a birthday pancake followed by a cookie (with sprinkles of course, since she LOVES everything with sprinkles) and a dum dum lollipop. Sigh. Then we went home and all took a nap. After spending some groggy time trying to wake up, we headed over to Harry's in Alpharetta so Roxanne could visit with the real reindeer and Santa. It was so cool! The reindeer were really neat, but unfortunately, we couldn't touch them. I finally realized that having animals with giant antlers as part of a petting thing is in fact probably a bad idea. Duh. But she did have a good time, and she got an antler crown that she wore for the rest of the evening. We couldn't coax her to sit with Santa, but we finally got her to give him some fist bumps. He was a hip Santa who was totally on board with that. Unfortunately, our camera was too slow to capture any of said fist bumps, but I assure you they were funny.

Roxanne is getting to bed now, which is good, since she's exhausted. Oddly, she's also pretty dehydrated today, which is weird since she has been able to eat almost normally today and has been drinking. It makes me really nervous and I've been trying to get her to drink Pedialyte. Why do they hate the things that are good for them? That stuff is gross though, I have to say. It's weirdly salty...

Anyways, I'll try to post a nicer post later when I'm more settled. Something more like a "reflecting on Roxanne's first two years" post. Right.

Friday, December 18, 2009

Afflicted

Most of you have heard by now, but we are all sick over here at our place. It's been like a horror movie. Fortunately, we are all starting to feel a little better, but I think it will take a few days to be back to normal. Roxanne seems to have been running a low grade fever off and on today (of course, our thermometer isn't working and won't register any higher than 96 degrees, and since Roxanne isn't an iguana, I'm pretty sure it is broken) and she's been sleeping a lot. Which is good, since Justin is still feeling pretty awful. I'm mostly better, but really achy and worn out. I ran a couple of errands this morning and by the time I got home I had to lay down. None of us have eaten anything other than crackers, popsicles and chicken soup lately, so that doesn't help with the whole feeling weak thing.

We are really really really disappointed about having to postpone Roxanne's birthday party. We were really excited about it, but we don't really have the strength to sanitize the house (and please, let me tell you, when your 2 year old is vomiting every 3o minutes for six hours or so, you really need to sanitize the house) and the thought of us giving this AWFUL stomach bug to someone else is horrifying. Especially since the gestation period would probably make it so that it kicked in right in time for Christmas. Not nice... We are just thankful that we hadn't booked a party place like Monkey Joe's, which we were really considering. It would have been pretty frustrating to lose money on a deposit... And when I was researching how long you are contagious with one of these stomach viruses, it's not easy to find an answer. Some stomach bugs seem to stop being contagious 24 hours after you stop vomiting, but others can last up to 2 weeks after symptoms go away... Yikes. It's just not worth it to tempt it. We were given this lovely virus thanks to someone else being careless about exposing their sick child to others, and I really don't want to do the same.

But that's enough about that... We hope we can reschedule Roxanne's party for sometime in early January. We'll keep everyone posted. We'll just plan to have it here. I had to run to Target this morning to get some supplies (ginger ale, etc.) and I bought Roxanne some super cute decals for her wall. I've been eying them for months, and I finally decided to just get them. They are from the Woodland line of Circo room stuff, and they are so cute. Roxanne helped me put them on her wall today in one of the rare periods where we were able to be up and about. We put them on the walls above her crib, and she kept looking at them and saying, "I love them!" So cute... Well worth the $15 that I've been too cheap to shell out for them. They are perfect for that wall that you can't hang anything on because you know that the baby will probably pull it down...

Roxanne's talking is really getting serious. It still takes me by surprise when she says things, and uses these pretty complex sentences correctly. She has lately been talking about Santa, and how she wants him to "bring you presents." And on Wednesday, before she threw up the first time, she told me, "Mama, my tummy's hurt." When we watch TV now, she comments on what the characters are doing, like when we watched an episode of Spongebob earlier, she kept saying, "Squidward ate all the crabby patties Dada! haha!" Good and bad really, since we are going to have to be much more careful now. Last weekend, I was painting a picture frame for her room, and she came over and asked me if she could paint, too, and when I told her it was Mama's paint, she said "da*n it." Ah! I actually don't know where that came from, since I have a pretty immaculate vocabulary most of the time thanks to my job. I kept asking her "what did you say?" and she just kept repeating it. But I really thought I had to be mis-hearing her. Nope. I just said quietly, "we don't say that Roxanne, it's not nice," and then changed the subject. I've learned from experience that if you spend too much time teaching her something is bad, she just wants to say or do it more. Sigh.

Alright. I've worn myself out with typing. Poor pitiful me and my poor pitiful family. Hopefully we'll shake this soon!

Sunday, December 13, 2009

Christmas Mode


We have been shopping all weekend... Whew! Birthday presents and Christmas presents for Roxanne and we are trying to finish up our Christmas shopping for everyone else. Unfortunately, that hasn't left us time to finish a lot of the projects we wanted to get to around the house before Roxanne's party next weekend. Sigh. There are still weird spots on the ceiling in several rooms where we need to repair the water damage from the old roof, and the hall light is still disconnected. That is officially my least favorite room in the house... Oh well. Now I'm focusing on the food aspect of her party. We're going to aim for a menu of Roxanne's favorites. Yay!

Sunday, December 6, 2009

A busy weekend...





So, this weekend, we hosted a super fun baby shower for my friend Sarah (our first real event at our new house!), we picked Katie up from my Dad and Colleen's farm, we (I) decorated the house for Christmas, and even got to see my grandparents for a few minutes. You can see in the photos that Roxanne was very excited to have Katie back. In the photo with both of them, Roxanne is trying to simultaneously pet and try to get Katie to dance with her. We have an iPod doughnut that Mike gave us when we moved into our last apartment, and it's been getting a LOT of use in our new house, too. We often listen to music in the living room and have family dance parties, so that's what we were doing when Roxanne was trying to get Katie to dance. We've been listening to Christmas music, but the Squirrel Nut Zippers Christmas album is the house favorite. At least for dancing... We also listen to the Charlie Brown Christmas album a lot, but it's for dinner time. There's too many low key songs for dance parties.

I'm rambling... So yes, I'll post photos on the house blog of our Christmas decorations as well as some photos from the baby shower. I felt so grown up hosting an actual gathering! Roxanne apparently thought it was the best thing ever and flirted tirelessly with everyone.

We took Roxanne to see Santa today, and it was kind of a let down. She basically just looked slightly freaked out when I set her in Santa's lap, but not enough to cry or anything, just enough to make a zombie face in all the photos. We went to North Dekalb Mall, and since it was almost 6 when we went (closing time) I think everyone involved was just kind of "phoning it in." The Santa was very sweet though, and good with Roxanne, but no matter how many times I gently corrected him, he kept talking to Roxanne like she was a boy. Poor Roxanne. At least she knew about all the toys he was asking about. He asked if she wanted a "Thomas the Train," or a ball or some trucks. Of course, Roxanne kept saying "yes!" to all of these, since that what she plays with at work. Ben has a huge train table with Thomas trians, and Roxanne really does like it. Maybe I should start bringing a tutu to work for her to wear sometimes... But still, she was pretty zombied out overall. And I had put her in her one and only Christmas shirt with a pretty little felt poinsetta on it, and Santa let her have a huge sticker before the photo shoot, and she of course put it right over the flower. Sigh. I'll try and post the Santa photo later. I'm tempted to take her to a different Santa and just not buy any photos. It's totally annoying that you can't use your personal camera, but I guess that's the only way they make money.

I just have to say, we are really enjoying our home. It's just nice to be able to spend time together here. Justin and Roxanne have been playing a lot in the playroom with the Kinex that Kendree passed on to us, and it's so cute to hear them in there. The cutest is when Roxanne walks up to Justin and says "come play with me Dada!" and drags him into the playroom. Last Sunday we were all able to play in Justin's "music room" in the basement for a while and make silly music. And Justin and Roxanne played ball in the backyard last weekend, too. It's just such a nice change from our old apartment, where we felt so cramped that we often wanted to spend most of our time out of the house. We really are lucky.

We hope everyone had a great weekend!

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

The tantrum thrower

Whew. Terrible twos have arrived. As any member of my family can attest to... She was a doll at Thanksgiving at Pop Pop and Yaya's farm, but that was mainly because random strangers were apparently giving her chocolate through most of the event. But we went to Callaway on Saturday to be with my mom's side of the family (lots of us nowadays!) and Roxanne had several full-on meltdowns. She likes to lay on the floor in public places when she's throwing these fits. It's really charming. On the "Magical Night of Lights" tour, she threw a prolonged fit because Justin wouldn't let her climb under the bench of our moving trolley car. Before that, she had been totally mesmerized by the lights. We still had a great time, but I think maybe some of the other people on the train might have felt differently... :) In any case, we are hoping this phase ends soon. Ugh.

Not to be too negative. She's doing lots of really super cute new things, and her talking is still getting better and better. She says really hilarious things all the time. Her favorite phrase right now is "I don't like ____." Justin is convinced that it came from him reading her Green Eggs and Ham but I don't know. It kind of seems like a normal step in development. She often says that she doesn't like things, and then five seconds later she says, "I do like ____!" about whatever it was she was talking about before. Which supports the green eggs and ham thing. The only real downside to that is that sometimes she says she doesn't like Dada, or kisses, or whatever nice thing that she is currently grumpy with. We always tell her that she shouldn't say those things, but it's always hard to tell what is getting through. The most noticeable thing about her personality these days is that she's very sassy. Cute, but sassy. She thinks it's hilarious to be contrary. And it usually is...

In other news, we are still trying to get settled into the house. We are really loving it, but there are a million little projects we need to work on. We are obssessing over each detail since we hope that these things will be in place for a very very long time. I'm working on my graduate school application, and I'm officially locked in, since I've registered to take the GRE on January 8. That is one expensive test... Justin has been stressed at work, but at least it should slow down once the holidays roll around.

We hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving!