Gwen’s gotten a couple of new foods added to her list of things that are okay to eat: watermelon, Chips Ahoy 100 Calorie Thin Crisps (milk, egg, & nut safe), and possibly plain saltine crackers. Here’s a quick picture showing just how much she appreciates her first cookies. She’ll ask for them by name.
We are so very proud of the girls. I only cried twice during the ceremony, too.
Big old CONGRATS to Megan & Kaitlin for making it to High School Graduation! Woo Hoo!!!
I had a wonderful Mother’s Day! Hooray!
Yee Haw! I got another A added to my GPA for my spring Telecourse: Major World Religions. Next class is Speech (also as an on-line class) for Summer Session 1. I *may* get ambitious and try for History during Summer Session 2. We’ll have to see if that’s possible. Then, after History will be Govt, then American Literature, then some silly Health/PE class. Then I’m done! For now. One 19-year long degree plan just to earn a measly Associates of Sciences Degree.
I’ll try to get a Mother’s Day picture posted soon. Been busy this week with paperwork and a sick baby. Sorry.
We went to the zoo this weekend. It was overcast with chance of heavy rain late in the day, so it helped keep the zoo virtually empty compared to our normal crowded visits. The kids did great and had the time of their lives. Gwen sure was vocal all of sudden saying Look! See! So you could tell when she found the animal in each exhibit. Her favorites were the penguins and the fish in the aquarium. We also had fun riding the zoo train without even waiting in line! And the rain held up until about 1 pm, so we had enough time to see and do everything we wanted to then head home for nap time.
Gwen’s doing great at her new daycare, which is Mikayla’s before and after school daycare as well. She doesn’t like drop offs very much, crying, tantruming, and generally putting on a good show to make Mommy start her day off on a guilty note. They already have a couple of kids with food allergies similar to (or nearly the same as) Gwen, so they seem to be doing a great job of keeping her out of harm’s way. They do try to get the kids outside playing every day, so some of her current skin flares could be due to environmental allergies (but you know me… I blame food for *everything*). She naps so great at her daycare; 2 hours most days. I’m a little envious of that. It may be a coincidence, but she’s also communicating better now than ever. She has jumped her vocabulary up quite a bit these past 2 weeks and she will now count along with Mikayla in her version of 1 through 10. She’s also gotten really good at playground time, so our trips down the street to the park have changed up a bit. She doesn’t like to walk around the lake much anymore and prefers we stop immediately at the playground for time on the swing and slides. So, that’s news here.
Just a few new videos on You Tube for the family (and friends).
Mikayla dragging Gwen around in the wagon
Gwen and her daddy playing with a plastic easter egg
Have a great week.
I went way out of my comfort zone with my new glasses. Todd said I look like our friend Heather. That works great for me! And in other news, I got reunited with my dear cousin Amy (Celebrate Cakes) and her whole family. She has the best group of boys ever! All that’s left is finding my childhood buddy Amber and those little missing pieces of life will *poof* be gone! Have a great week everyone!
We have a family phrase, “Life is merely an equation… always seeking to balance”. It’s kind of our motto. So, for some reason when life hands me little slices of symmetry, I just love them. So here’s one. The first photo below is of Mikayla. The second one is Gwen. In both cases, they’re wearing my shoes. And these are completely unstaged moments in our life.
For the mythbuster’s fans.
Seems like the little girls are just growing before our very eyes. Mikayla is rapidly progressing through first grade… doing excellent academically and pretty good behaviorally. She’s growing like a weed! She has spring break next week and has plans to spend the entire week with GiGi & PawPaw. Gwen is nearly 17 months now… talking and singing when there’s a good song on TV (or trying her best to sing along). Her words so far are boo boo, shoe, mommy, yes, no, go go, hi, bye, puppy, woof woof, bobby (cats), uh oh, push, and then her patented little impish laugh she uses when she knows she’s getting into something she’s not supposed to. I’m loading a new video to youtube and here’s a recent picture.
Santa brought Mikayla a Wii and there was a Wii fit for me as well! Woo Hoo! The basic sport games are so much fun! Bowling is addictive; Todd was the first at our house to bowl over 200. Mikayla is enjoying Wii tennis. Todd said she has good form with her back hand so perhaps we’ve found a sport in which she is a natural. He also said I’m addicted to Wii fit. Now, that’s a *slight* exaggeration, but I do log my 30 minutes of exercise 5 days out of 7 each week. Wii fit is great because it has strength training elements as well as basic step aerobics, which I have always loved. I like to mix about 20 minutes of strength with 10 minutes of step aerobics… and it just cracks up Todd that I do my step aerobics while listening to MP3’s on my iPod plus read my e-mails on it. Mikayla can play Mario Party 8 for hours on the weekends if we would let her. Gwen enjoys watching us all play. She is certain she’s big enough to play wii too. Someday all too soon, I’m sure she will be. She falls off the fit board so it will be many years before I let her give that a try. Ain’t technology grand? This thing is so much good clean family fun, it’s no wonder they’re taking the world by storm. Speaking of good clean fun, my parents and older brother had so much fun playing our wii after Christmas, they went out and got their own.
Gwen is fascinated by our computers. If we so much as walk 5 steps away, she makes a bee line over and starts pushing away on all those pretty buttons! So I thought some folks would want to see a picture. She’s a very smart baby! Doing lots of things to surprise us all the time.
In other news, things are going great so far in 2009. Todd is at 3 weeks now as a Non-Smoker!!! I’m churning through my Spring telecourse (World Religions) with a solid A so far (since the professor makes it so easy). Mikayla is doing great in the 2nd half of first grade. Gwen keeps us on our toes by trying to get into everything. We were just remarking how it was only a year ago that she wasn’t sleeping at all, had horrific eczema, and we were all pretty miserable. Countless times we had to tell each other, “She won’t be this small forever”. Oh, how much change a year can bring! Thank goodness time keeps on ticking and we have gotten her into a nice little groove of development. She’s hitting all the normal benchmarks and made up some lost ground on her growth chart. Teaching her how to take no for an answer… well that’s a whole ‘nuther story!
My reflexes aren’t as fast as I’d like them to be. Last night, I was getting Gwen’s dinner ready and she was toddling around in the kitchen letting me know I was late with her dinner (non-verbally). So, I got the bowl of sweet taters ready, set them down to rinse the jar… and little miss patient pants decided to pull down the towel they were sitting on since I was taking so long. This is how it turned out:
As Gwen would say...
Stuff! Things! People!
BALLOONS!!!
