First Birthday

Tomorrow, February 24th is Mallory's first birthday.  We celebrated this weekend at home with just grandparents, aunts and uncles, and cousins.  I wonder what Mallory thought was going on when our house filled with so many people.  She didn't seem to mind.

We had a cupcake themed party.  Kris made a cupcake liner garland, I made a cupcake shaped cake, but fortunately grandma Margaret made cupcakes, mine turn out okay, but not good enough to share.  The sun came out so the kids enjoyed the trampoline and Conrad's car.  They rode bikes and threw the ball.  All in all it was a great day.

Mallory has four teeth on top and the two front bottom ones.  It looks like the next two front bottom ones are working their way in now as well.  She tries to walk, if she holds onto things she can do fine, but even when we hold her hands she prefers to squat down to crawl.  She was put on Conrad's trike this weekend and actually made it all around the backyard just fine on that thing.


She is a bright blue eyed girl who is getting blond curls in back.

She likes to be turned upside down and will toss her head back wanting you to flip her over.

She has many things to say, but not always clearly.  She does wave bye bye and I have seen blow kisses, but it is just infrequent enough I am not sure if it is just by chance or if she is really doing it.

Conrad is taking swim lessons twice a week.  He loves the pool and water, but was a little thrown when he had a different teacher last week and did not want to partake in the lesson. He has a lot to say and is a very kind boy.

He loves the park and hiking at the waterfalls.  He is adventurous and cautious all at the same time.













Kris and I are staying very busy at work.  We seem to find plenty to do when we aren't at work too.  My office will be moving into a new building soon so I will be adjusting to a new space and a new employee as we will be filling our empty payroll position too.

I am looking forward to the sunny weather and getting out more again.  I think it could be a fantastic spring and summer.  I know that the year ahead will bring all sorts of changes.  The year between 1 and 2 brings vast changes for a growing kiddo and I think is a fun and exciting time.

A New Year

Passage of time is significantly accelerated when you have growing children.  I think in particular when you have a very young child or someone under one.  Mallory is growing up so quickly and everything seems like it only happens once and then she is on to the next growing pain.  With Conrad things did seem like they lasted forever and the idea that "this too will pass" was much needed as teething struggles or each sleeping (or non-sleeping) phase seemed long and like it would never end.  Now I look back and know it all went by in a flash and with Mallory having that knowledge that it really will pass makes the time fly.

As we approach Mallory's first birthday already I think back over this year and can't even remember what we have done or how we got here.  Life in our household has been so busy it has felt like we were just trying to get through one thing at a time and couldn't see the forest through the trees so to speak.

Mallory is crawling, pulling herself up to anything, climbing, chattering away, dramatically crying when she does not get her way or wants something, and dances to music.  She has no fear and pushes her way into a crowd or past someone to get what she wants.  What she wants is generally whatever brother is playing with.  He is so sweet to give her something else or a car he is not playing with at the time, but that does not suffice, she wants what he has.  She has two teeth on the top and two on the bottom and her hair is growing out more now so she has a touch of curls in the back.  Generally she is a good sleeper.  She is easy to read when she is tired and goes down well with a bottle and her blanket.  She does still wake up at night needing to be settled again, but we have gotten to that only being once.  Last week she had such a terrible cold she could not breath and would wake up coughing.  The poor girl was miserable.  Now we are having some after effects from that where she still is coughing a bit and her sleep routine is off so we have been getting up with her more than we had been.

Conrad has grown up a lot since his birthday in August.  He is such a little boy now.  He loves that he is a "bigger boy" and wants to help and do things himself.  He uses the potty all on his own, gets himself dressed, well when we bribe him to do so by paying him a quarter.  He wants to get Mallory things and tells her what to do and not do (somewhat to Kris and my dismay).  Lately he wants to hold her which she does not want, but he is so sweet and will hold her hand in the car or give her hugs hello and goodbye.  The one thing Conrad struggles with is sleeping.  He really still wants Kris or I, and mostly me, to lay with him at night.  Really he wants us to flat sleep with him and preferably in our bed not his.  We can't get any kind of grasp as to what is wrong with his room or his bed, I think nothing is really wrong with them except he knows we leave.  He wakes up at night and comes into our room or cries until we come to him.  This is tough as we know he needs to start not needing us so much at night.  I mean why does he wake up at all; why can't he sleep alone?  He is a pretty thoughtful boy and very loving.  He loves to snuggle and cuddle.  Right now he is loving the shows Paw Patrol, Daniel Tiger, and Team Umi Zoomi.  He likes to read books and is starting to "read" them on his own too.  Most of all he plays with cars and trucks and has them talk and go places together.

 

We wish everyone a happy new year!

Oh My Go*!

Happy winter!  Fall has flown right by and it is already that time again, when Kris struggles with working lights to put on the house and I think we should just skip the trouble of the tree, but we never do.  So far we have one strand of lights in the windows, one strand around the front patio, and the white one foot ceramic Christmas tree on the shelf, not plugged in.  Maybe we will be able to get a tree this weekend, but since we will be in Washington for the holiday time is quickly getting away from us before we won't even be here to enjoy it.

Conrad is fully potty trained now.  He wants to get on and off the toilet by himself too.  He wears a pull up at night, but he has been doing great with that being dry in the morning too.  Switching the brain to not peeing freely seems to have taken care of night time too.  He new favorite phrase is "Oh my God!"  Yes God.  I am sure this is no thanks to me.  I say this in frustration along with occasional other choice words I really don't want him to say, so I am happy with Oh my god, even if the god part might make some people cringe.
Conrad is at a really fun age now.  He is very interested in knowing about things, his vocabulary is expanding, and he comes up with some cute thoughts.   He is pretty attached to mommy these days though and only I can put him to bed and help him in the bathroom, if needed.

Mallory is crawling all over.  She is couch surfing and gets herself around where she needs to go.  She wants to grab at everything.  Her two front bottom teeth are in and have been, in the last week her two top poked through and are on their way.  Her hair is starting to fill in and get longer, so she has just a few little curls in the back now.  Dada is still her go to word, she really doesn't say mama.  Sometimes I think she says brother though.  She is fully sleeping in her crib on her own, but she does still wake up two or three times a night and need a bottle, a change, or maybe a little rock back to sleep.

 

Kris and I have both been busy with work, Kris and been enjoying the Beaver football season, even thought the team did not prevail this year and lost.  I have been getting out a bit here and there and enjoying time with my girlfriends.  I have been to three social art spot parties which allows me to do some painting, even if it is instructed painting and not my own free design.

This year Conrad and Mallory are going to my parents with them a few days before Christmas so Kris and I will have a few days without any kids.  I am hoping while they are gone and can work on the painting I want to do for our living room.  I have been thinking of doing a barn to go next to the wonderful painting my uncle did so many years ago of the Roche Harbor store.  We will see.  If I don't do this maybe I will do Mallory's baby book.  She is definitely a second child since I have not kept that up for her at all.

Hope you all have a happy holiday season and we can see you all soon.

 

Updates and Changes

Okay i know I have fallen behind on updating this blog.  Maybe everyone gave up and figured there would be nothing new.  Sorry!  Work has been so busy for me I don't get much chance to do anything on the personal side, I have even been working through lunch and when not working through I am really trying to get back to the routine of going to the gym.  For me it is budget season and we just had our big push of new hires and getting all the new employees set up, paid and going on the system.  For budgets I have a lot of data I pull and projections for salary and effort reporting so that our units can create their budget needs.  They have to present to the student fee committee and request student fee funding they will need next year.

Kris has been busy at work too.  Not too surprising I don't fully know what he does, but I know they have been keeping the work coming in and he is trying to learn and updated system.  I am so glad his shop has stayed busy during this time when the economy was struggling.  He went hunting a few weeks ago and did get a deer which makes him happy.  Me, I'm not as big of a fan of the meat, but I am glad he likes it.  We also go to the Beaver Football games in the fall so have been busy tailgating and have a full month of games ahead.  I just wish the team was doing a bit better.

Mallory is 8 months old now, 8 months and a week.  She has had the two bottom front teeth since about the middle of September.  They both came in at the same time.  She now seems to be chewing and drooling a lot so is maybe working on the top, but we have said that a couple times now and nothing has come through.  She loves to stand to play.  She jumps and walks in walker toys a lot.  She also wants whatever someone else has, so always wants the trucks Conrad happens to be playing with.  He is really good about giving her a car or truck he is not playing with at the time, but that still quickly gets abandoned and she starts to reach and go for the ones he has.  She says da da da da pretty regularly and did say ma ma ma ma at least once but hasn't stuck with that as much as da da.  She loves her blanket and usually wants it over her face when she is going to sleep.  It is a bit scary for us to see her in her crib with the blanket all scrunched up at her face like that, but she pulls it up there and we check that she is breathing and let her sleep.  At this point she does pretty well sleeping at night.  She usually wakes up around midnight or one for a bottle and then seems to stir again around four.  Sometimes she just puts herself back to sleep, sometimes she needs another little bottle.  Then she will usually sleep pretty well until six thirty or so.  The biggest news for her is that she finally crawled.  She has been scotching herself around somehow.  No obvious pulling or anything but seemed to be able to move enough to get to things she wanted.  She has also been getting up on those knees and doing the rocking, but not getting the forward motion.  For me I saw it for the first time last night.  Kris seemed to have seen her do it before that.  So she did actually move on her knees in a crawl.  Now Conrad really won't be able to keep the toys out of her reach.

Conrad is getting so much older lately.  He is far more able to get things he needs and wants for himself these days.  He is three now and just not a baby anymore.  He says the best things sometimes that surprise me.  Lately he tells me he will just get a little bigger like his dad and then he will ride the bumpy school bus.  He seems to really want to ride the bus and has absolutely decided it is a bumpy school bus.  He knows his alphabet, although we still need to work on him recognizing the letters correctly on some of them.  He counts to 10 perfectly, but gets a bit mixed up beyond that.  He knows the days of the week and the months of the year.  He does pretty well tracing letters on worksheets, I think.  he comes home with worksheets that look really good I am just not sure if he is really doing them himself or how much help he gets from Ronnie, his daycare teacher or perhaps her older grandchildren that are sometimes there with the kids.  We have a book at home we do letters in and he has done really good tracing and other times just wants to scribble.  This past weekend we decided to commit to potty training and did away with diapers.  He is fully in underwear except and night and is doing great.  He had an accident on the way to daycare Monday but other than that has been using the potty and staying dry.  We are excited to have him in this stage and out of diapers.  He has been using the potty off and on for a while now but just didn't seem interested in making it the norm.

For Halloween Conrad dressed as a cowboy, maybe Rowdy Yates, and Mallory was a pony.  Conrad was asked if he was going to ride Mallory and he sweetly said "not until she gets older."

Where Are They Now?

Conrad is 3 and Mallory is 6 months!

August has been a very busy month for us and has flown by very quickly.  It is hard for me to believe Conrad is three now.  His birthday was Friday the 22nd.  We celebrated Sunday with a race care birthday.  He was very excited about his amazing gifts and had so much fun running around and jumping on the trampoline with friends.  Monday morning we threw away his Boo (pacifier) and he went all day and night without it.  He did ask for it a couple of times but once reminded that he threw it away he was able to move on.  Maybe we should have gotten rid of that thing sooner!

Mallory had her 6 month appointment on Friday.  She sits up on her own very well now and drools constantly.  She is starting to eat, she has tried Bananas, sweet potato, green beans, and avocado. She is 25 inches tall and 15.45 pounds.  That puts her in the 35th percentile for height and 38th for weight.  The doctor said she is very proportional.

In Limbo

As I sit here waiting for my 2 hour delayed 2 hour flight to Santa Barbara I feel like I am in limbo and realize this is sort of what my life has been feeling like and I think it is a theme right now for so many around me.

I am headed to Santa Barbara for a four day work conference.  It is actually a pretty great conference and I think it will be a nice four days, spending that time in sunny Santa Barbara at eh UCSB campus isn't half bad either.  I got up at my usual 5:30am with Mallory and cooed with her for an hour until she was ready to eat and go back to sleep, then I showered and finished my packing.  Kris and the kids headed off to cousin Charlie's big birthday party and I headed north thinking I had timed everything just right to leave just the right amount of wait time and not be rushed to park and check my bag, enough time to grab a coffee and go.  Not so, I arrived to a 2 hour delay.  No explanation I have heard, but my guess might be fog in California?  No I am through security and stuck on the inside waiting.

I am the type who, when traveling, just wants to get there and get on with the show.  I think of all that I am missing or all that I could be doing.  I guess the one good thing is I have my laptop so now I can blog, something I don't find much time for lately.

In life I am limbo as with the small children Kris and I have I often think or tell people in a couple of years we will have more freedom for that again.  I love Mallory and Kris and I choose to have her and are so happy we do, but this age is hard to have any freedom with.  Conrad is just now really at a point where he has some independence and that frees Kris and I up just a bit.  He can be left with someone else and I know he has nothing but a good time.  He even got the jug of milk out of the fridge the other day and a cup from the cupboard.  He brought them to be to pour, but we are getting there.  So now is the time Kris and I could go away for a little trip or even an evening out and we know he will be happy about it.  Mallory on the other hand still really needs us, and mostly me.  Even being gone these next four days will be a test for us all, probably more me than Mallory or Kris, but she has still been breast feeding and sleeps with me at night.  So we are in limbo with the freedom of having children who aren't really babies.  In a couple of years we will be there again.

In Kris and my careers we are doing well but in a bit of a place of limbo too.  Kris has been talking about and working with the mind that he is going to buy the business he is at from his boss.  This is not a pipe dream, Jay and he have talked about it and it is the unwritten plan.  Jay is getting close to that point of retiring, but isn't there just yet and Kris is looking at things from the perspective of how he will run things or the operations being his to manage, but not really there yet either.  For me it is not so much work, it is the location I work in.  Currently we are cramped into a somewhat small space in the memorial union building, but there is a new building under construction we are going to be moving into.  The building is close to being done now, I even got a picture "in" what will be my new office.  We expect to move in this winter.  I keep thinking maybe I should rearrange this, or look at getting something to help organize and do this, but then I think it really is not much longer and we will be in an entirely new space.

In many ways it is good to be in some limbo, it means things are changing and happening to you, but it is that space where you aren't really there yet and you feel a little stuck.  All I know to do is focus on what is coming next and work to make it the best it can be when it does get here, maybe you can make the change come sooner, or like with me and waiting for this plane, I can make the best of the time I have while I am waiting.

What They Want and Don't Want

I read that because our children are beginning to talk in sentences, and sometimes say things in a big and definite voice between two and three we can be tricked into thinking that our toddlers are more grown up than they really are.  We have to remember they are still babies. That they can wait a little while but not long and that they can hold their strong feelings inside a little bit, but their feelings can easily burst out in a rush of excitement, fear, and frustration.  This is a time that can be frightening for them and they need lots of love and reassurance that they are lovable.  This morning I had the opportunity to show Conrad he was lovable.

Conrad slept pretty well last night, he has been struggling with a stuffy nose and cough that may be allergies or a cold, we don't know.  He also wakes up and can't find his pacifier which upsets him, and lately his fear has been very imaginative, we constantly have a lion somewhere in our house. So sleeping well is a good accomplishment for the week.  I guess I assumed that would mean he was more rested and would be in a good mood.  Instead he was just moody.  He wanted medicine for his cough and was crying about it.  He did not want to get dressed and was crying about it.  He wanted to help put the garbage out and was crying about it.  He wanted to put the sun glasses on himself and was crying about it.  Then he wanted to open the door at daycare and was crying about that too.  Thank goodness for Ronnie's patience as we hugged and snuggled through the tears getting to the bottom of the drama.  Then off he went to play.

Mallory has been at daycare with Conrad this week.  She seems to be doing really well with it.  Of course Ronnie is a baby whisperer and can put her in a swing with her pacifier and she is happy as can be and at home we can't leave her but for a moment.  How these kids so easily get mommy and daddy wrapped around their little fingers.

Mallory really likes to suck on whatever she can get in her mouth these days.  She gets her hands and fingers a lot.  If she is being held right your arm or hand will do fine too.  Blankets are a good thing to try if she can just figure out how to get it in her mouth...  She is a pretty happy girl and smiles and laughs a lot.  She has this funny gasps she makes pretty often.  it is a mix of laughing and gasping for air that barks out of her.  We think it is a happy noise.  She is also a gassy burp-y thing and spits up far more than Conrad did.

Mallory is very strong and can push her body up with her legs, holds her head up very well and does show signs of hand eye coordination.  At 3 months developmentally her hearing and vision are improving and she turns her head at the sound of our voices.  She particullarly like Conrad and will smile and look for him.  She prefers brightly colored toys and sharp contrasts and of course faces are very fascinating.

All in all I have some pretty great kids and am very happy to have my wonderful family at whatever stage they are in.