Conversations with Anna ...

We've been having loads of interesting conversations with Anna lately. In addition to working diligently on the concept of "tone" (such as when it is and is not appropriate to say "hey" or how she should say her sister's name ... i.e. yelling vs. kindness), I have been having a hard time keeping a straight face with some of the subjects we discuss. For example ...

My parents sent along venison summer sausage with us when we came home last week so Anna and I had some for lunch one day. (As a side note, this kid eats meat now! I mean, she'll actually ask for seconds on meatloaf, salmon, cheeseburgers, etc.!) I told Anna that the sausage was special because it was from deer. It didn't occur to me until then that Anna probably has no concept of where meat comes from. I realized my mistake when she said that we should thank the deer for the sausage, and that we must have gotten our crackers from the deer, too. So I tried to explain how a hunter shot the deer and (I glossed over a little here) parts of the deer were made into our sausage. Anna's response, without missing a beat, "Look, there's a part of the deer right there. And there's another." And then she ate up the rest of her sausage. I guess we don't have a vegetarian.

Another day Anna went to the bathroom by herself while I was feeding Kate. When she flushed, there was a bit of air in the pipes and the whole system made some loud, groaning noises. I didn't think much of it until the next time Anna had to go potty and she told me she wanted to use the other bathroom. When I asked why she said it was because there were cats (specifically Pounce, who hasn't lived with us for about 8 months) trying to come through the floor the last time she went. I understand the sound was odd, but cats coming through the floor? Really?

I think in relation to this previous story, I was talking with Anna about how Jesus is always with us even though we can't see Him (you know, He can even keep us safe from cats coming through the floor). Well, Anna latched onto that idea and proceeded to talk to Jesus for the next half hour, inviting Him to come into her room and see her toys and her bed and then having Him follow her into the kitchen, etc. For the next few days whenever she had to go to the bathroom, she'd also ask "Is Jesus here with us now?" I'm sure God must have a sense of humor :)

Along the religious lines, we've been doing the Resurrection Eggs with Anna this year to help prepare her for Easter. In case you've never seen them, here's a brief description. A small visual reminder of some part of the Easter story is placed in a dozen plastic eggs. Each day for the 12 days preceeding Easter we've been reading the Bible verse, opening the egg, and having the mini-devotion provided.

Anna really gets a kick out of seeing what's inside, but I didn't realize quite how descriptive we would have to get with some of the objects. For instance, yesterday's object was a whip, for when Jesus was whipped. So we had to explain how sometimes when people would disobey, they wouldn't get a time out they would be whipped, at which point we had to explain what actual whipping was. Anyway, then Anna took the little leather piece from the egg and said "I whip you, Daddy." And a few minutes later, "Daddy, Kate isn't obeying. You should whip her." So we went through another explanation of how we don't whip people in our home.

Today's object was a crown of thorns ... another whole series of explanations. Teachable moments, right? At least she understood the praying hands pretty easily :)


On a different note, we went to the lambing barn again this year to see the baby lambs and other animals. Anna loved it and was running from stall to stall to see what other animals she could find. Kate was a little overwhelmed at first (there were a LOT of people there), but she warmed up to the situation after awhile.

Maple Syrup Season

I took the girls up to my parents' place on Sunday after church to participate in their first maple syrup experience. The drive up went fairly well, although Anna didn't sleep at all ... she was too excited. At least she's a very pleasant traveller, listening to music, looking at books, singing songs, etc. Unfortunately, Kate screamed for the last 15-20 minutes after Anna and I had been passing her all sorts of toys for about 40 minutes after she woke up; it was just too much time in the carseat.





Anyway, the girls (especially Anna) loved seeing the maple syrup production. She and Matt had checked out a book about maple syrup making from the library last week so she was all prepared for the tapping of trees and the boiling of the sap.




We stuck around for Monday and part of Tuesday, too, to give us a change of scenery for a few days. Grandpa gave me a break from cooking by making us some great breakfasts and a tasty lunch while Grandma was at work; Anna helped out with the dinner on Monday night.


Monday we spent the day either hanging out indoors or outdoors, depending on who was awake and also everyone's mood.





We managed two different hikes in the afternoon, one with Grandpa and one after dinner with Grandma. (Anna and Grandpa are walking across "Anna's footbridge" in this photo ... isn't it sweet?!)




Anna was certainly a trooper with the evening hike and powered through a three-quarters of a mile hike, talking with Grandma almost the whole way about a troll who lived under the "tractor bridge" and how he was following us and not obeying when we told him to go away ... ah ... imagination ...


We came back on Tuesday, stopping in Wisconsin Dells to break up the trip. We were blessed to find a great park just off the main highway and played there for awhile before we went to Culver's for lunch. I rarely eat out with both girls by myself and now I remember why ... it's a LOT of work to make sure everyone is contained and eating and then still get a chance to eat myself! After lunch we went to the outlet mall for a little bit, but had to head home earlier than I would have liked because Anna started to melt down from exhaustion. I figured the other customers at Gap would probably rather I take my screaming two-year-old out of the store ...

Overall it was a good trip, maybe even the best so far with both girls, although the last 20 minutes of the drive up and the last 20 minutes at the mall weren't quite my favorite :)

Crazy week

Last week had a noteworthy event practically every day.

Monday—Eli and David came over to play in the morning before we went to see a David Landau (great local kids entertainer) performance together.

Tuesday—An otherwise normal playgroup became eventful when Eli escaped from the nursery looking for David and “went missing” for about 2 hours. Turns out he crawled under some beanbags to take refuge and fell asleep, which we all found out after the police were called and an amber alert issued.

Wednesday—Our neighbors were out of town so Kate came along to Kindermusik. She loved it, but Anna was not very enthusiastic about sharing this special time with her sister.

Thursday—We spent the day in Milwaukee celebrating Josh’s birthday. Fun, but tiring, day for everyone.

Friday—We stayed home … hooray! … All three of us spent a fair bit of the day outdoors enjoying the weather.

Saturday—We woke up to 3 inches of snow on the ground, which melted by the afternoon, but still … by 8 a.m. we were out playing in what was hopefully the last snow of the season.



It seems Anna has been on a roller coaster of emotions and moods lately. Sometimes she’s full of energy and chatting up a storm while other times she would just rather sit on the couch with her blanket. In fact, one afternoon she just wanted to bum around and then after dinner she ran the entire way to the park talking and yelling the whole time before continuing to play there for at least a half hour. I suppose we all have those ups and downs.

Anna has also been testing boundaries a lot lately. For example, if you were to tell her not to CROSS a line for some reason, she might come back with “But can I stand ON the line? Can I put my toe on the line? How about my hand?” until you both hash out the details. For the most part, she’s very good at obeying, but it’s almost as if she has a need to see exactly where those boundaries lie.

Kate is still our daughter of extremes. When she’s happy, she’s REALLY happy and when she’s mad, she’s REALLY mad. She’s happiest when she is getting lots of attention from just about anyone ... Anna, Matt, Shadow, me, strangers, etc. She’s most upset when she’s physically restrained for some reason … diaper changes, in her carseat longer than she thinks is necessary, when we have to hold her hands to keep them away from the spoon, etc. Thankfully, her happy times are more common than her mad times :)

Is this real?!?!

We had the following indicators of spring in the last week ...

1) The snow started melting and by today was completely gone!
2) Last Wednesday the robins returned.
3) Last Thursday the daffodils, crocuses, and tulips all peeked through the mulch.
4) Last Friday I was outside without a coat, hat, or gloves.
5) This weekend we were all outdoors with only sweatshirts over our normal clothes.
6) We've been to the park probably 4 times since last Monday and today there was no snow and were no puddles; we were in heaven.
7) We set up the bike trailer tonight, put both girls in it, and took a "test ride" around the neighborhood.

Hooray! I'm sure we'll have another cold snap, but it has been so refreshing to be able to get outdoors for extended periods. I can't believe we've gone almost 4 months without weather and activities like this.



Anna has loved the change in weather, spending a fair bit of time just exploring the yard again, but we've also pulled out all of the push toys, bubbles, hide-and-seek games, etc, in the past few days.




Kate seems to be in awe of this new outdoor experience. Her favorite activity right now is to push a toy up and down the driveway (kind of reminds us of Anna's first summer). In this picture she's just sitting on her toy and watching the rest of the family, yelling happily the whole time.



Kate was pretty funny on Sunday, too, because she was definitely weirded out by grass. I would sit down about 3 feet away from her and try to get her to crawl to me. She'd make an attempt, but then get a pretty distressed look on her face as soon as her hands touched the grass. Then she'd start to whine because she just didn't know how she was going to make it to my lap :)





Before the weather turned beautiful this past weekend, we had 4 or 5 days of rain and fog so we putzed around inside quite a bit early in the week. Kate discovered that she can play the piano ...





Anna did a lot of coloring and painting; she has such concentration skills sometimes ...


And finally, we've had a few consecutive nights without humidifiers or medicine! Kate still has a bit of drainage in the mornings, but I think we can safely say that we're all healthy for the time being :)

More colds

I think I've finally come to realize that every year during February and March we're just going to be passing around colds. Anna's first year it was the flu, then last year it was a nasty cold with a cough that lingered forever, and this year it seems to be a cold with a runny nose and a really deep, hacking cough. Anna had the worst of it last Monday and Tuesday and then Kate started coming down with it on Wednesday, but the cough didn't really start for her until Friday evening. Poor kids just don't know what to do with all of the phlegm and throat tickles. Our bedtime routine now involved filling up humidifiers, slathering the kids with Vicks, and then giving them a dose of Ibuprofen to keep the inflammation and coughing down as long as possible ... We're all ready for this to be done. Shadow has been a good pal through it all :)


The night coughing combined with our early risers (partly due to the coughing) is continuing to make us pretty tired. Kate has always been up right around 6, but now that Anna is consistently pooping on the toilet (hooray, hooray, hooray!), she's up between 5 and 6 to do that. No matter how hard we've tried to adjust her body rhythm, it always seems to revert back to this early morning poop schedule. Oh, well. We're proud of her for the progress she's made. At least she will go back and lie in her bed until her clock says 6. When we first put the digital clock in her room last summer, the deal was that she needed to wait until there was a 7 ... maybe those days will come again, but I'm not betting on their return any time soon.

On another positive note, Kate can successfully communicate with us! (besides crying, smiling, whimpering, laughing, etc., of course ...) We've been trying to teach her signs like we did with Anna and she picked up on "all done" awhile ago along with waving for "bye", "hi", and "good night". Now she also independently uses the signs for "drink" and "more". She's tried the sign for "down" once or twice, but not very consistently. She's also been attempting to say some words, but of course they don't sound anything quite like what they're supposed to sound like. For example, cat is "kah", we think. Anyway, it's fun. I'm excited to see what comes next.

On another good note, I love the fact that both girls enjoy books so much. I'm amazed when I hear how few books some kids have access to; our girls are certainly blessed in that regard! Saturday morning Matt and I were finishing getting ready for a visit from his parents and both girls were absorbed with books. Kate was in her room paging through her stack of board books while Anna was in her room looking through her own books (I think she got tired of Kate pulling books out of her hands in Kate's room). Kate is fairly good about not putting the books in her mouth, too ... most of the time :)


Because of sicknesses last week, we didn't go to play group or music class, but managed a short trip to the conservatory at Olbrich Gardens instead one day and then also went to the zoo for a little while another day. It's so hard to just stay cooped up all day long when someone has a cold, so we go for the short outtings that don't require much, if any, touching and spreading of germs.

As I mentioned above, we had a nice visit with Matt's parents on Saturday morning. Anna was thrilled to see them and have all sorts of fun with them playing Uno, jumping, and running around. Poor kid was falling-down exhausted by the time they left, though, since it had been a 5 a.m. morning for her. Kate also had a good time bonding with both grandparents, trying to do all sorts of silly things like biting Grandma's finger or pulling off Grandpa's glasses.


Hopefully we'll all be healthy soon and then stay healthy for awhile! At least the weather is warming up ... maybe we'll go splash in some puddles this afternoon :)

Tired Mischnicks

All last week, Kate thought that 5:15 was a good time to get up. We'd try and get to her to back to sleep; most days it didn't work so we would finally give up around 6 (which is her "normal" wake up time anyway). Sometimes Anna would hear us and get up early, sometimes she wouldn't. But then Anna came down with another cold so she's been spending the past several nights coughing. This morning, Kate cried at 4:30 because, I think, she got herself stuck in a weird position, then Anna started coughing a little before 5, got out of bed at 5:30 to poop, and was up for good. Kate, surprisingly, went back to sleep right away and then slept until after 6:30 ... whoa! Anyway, it's been a long day and I am looking forward to going to bed early.


But first, a few tidbits about our life. We love Kate dearly, but this kid can really tire me out. She's very fast at crawling and often makes a bee-line straight for me (yelling happily the whole time) wherever I am so she can pull herself up on my legs or launch herself (literally) onto my lap and proceed to do her very best to hinder whatever I'm trying to do. She likes to escape into the bathroom if we've forgotten to close the door and will pull herself up on the toilet ... yuck. She has also figured out how to go up the stairs in the basement and likes to give me a big grin before she makes her way over to them to climb. Unfortunately, she'll go a few steps and then try to sit down which means she topples backwards unless we're right there.

She's also become adept at carrying things around in her mouth. It makes sense to use your mouth as another hand, right? I feel that I still have to be extra vigilant about bugs. It's not that we have many, but Kate seems to be drawn to them and, for some reason, they look like food to her. She's already tasted an asian beetle (twice) and a box-elder bug, but I've managed to catch her before she's tasted a spider, a centipede, and an ant.

Besides the bugs, we're working on all kinds of real food with her. Kate certainly knows that she likes fruit better than vegetables, but we've convinced her that she still needs to eat the green ones at least once a day :) She's getting fairly good with feeding herself finger foods, but seems to get tired of them before she's actually full. Also, I'm pretty sure she's allergic to strawberries; she hasn't had any since her check-up and the eczema has cleared up. Poor kid ... we love strawberries in our family ...

As for Anna, she had a couple of big moments last week. On Tuesday evening we joined neighbor Carly at her gym class for "Bring a Friend Night". At the end of the class I couldn't believe how proud I was of Anna. She did so well in all of the things that truly matter ... she was willing to try all kinds of new activities, she got comfortable and confident in a completely new setting almost instantly, she had no issues taking turns or listening to the teacher, and on top of all that, she had fun! Who cares if she is still learning to do a forward roll? It was great to see how she's grown and become so sure of herself in the past year or so.


We also headed over to Milwaukee on Thursday to visit Josh and Gretchen. Again, I was really proud of Anna. She and Josh have come a long way in terms of communicating with one another. Now she says "No, no, Josh, I don't like it when you do that" instead of just crying :) They mostly had fun, but of course there were bound to be some disagreements between two kids this age. Gretchen and I had a good time listening in on the conversations they were having.

One last thing ... our Kindermusik teacher was highlighted on the local news last week. Here's the clip that was shown ...

http://www.channel3000.com/localvideo/index.html?v=27452

This isn't our class, but is very similar to the one we're in this semester. Enjoy!

The trip ...

Grandma Colba passed away in early February. She had been nearing the end for awhile and we are all thankful that her passing was peaceful and are rejoicing that she is finally able to join those she loved in heaven. Because of my parents' planned vacation to Hawaii in the middle of the month and my aunt and uncle's trip to Chile, the funeral was put off until this past weekend. We were hoping to go, but didn't make the final decision until Thursday morning when both Matt and Anna seemed to be over the worst of their colds.



We packed everyone up, made the plans, and headed out on Friday morning. Our trip down to St. Louis included a midday stop in Bloomington to visit Matt's Uncle Martin and Aunt Kathy (and to give the girls a chance to be out of their carseats for a little while). It's always nice to spend a little time with the Eckerts :)



We arrived in St. Louis just in time for the visitation and spent the evening catching up with family while Anna made some new friends and Kate tried to eat everything that was on the floor. Okay, it wasn't that bad, but a funeral home is not exactly a baby friendly environment :)

We thought both girls were exhausted enough to crash right away, but of course it took a long time to get our hotel room set up and convince them (especially Anna) that it was time to go to bed. Then on Saturday morning Kate woke us all up at 5 a.m. ... uh-oh. When everyone was still awake at 5:45, we decided to just get up.


We headed downstairs for a leisurely breakfast and then took a "drive" before the funeral so both girls would take a nap. Before we had kids, I used to think going for a drive to get them to sleep was a silly idea. I stand corrected. I don't want to think about what the rest of the day would have been like if both girls hadn't napped in the morning.


After Grandma's funeral we had lunch at the nursing home and then headed over to my cousin's house for the afternoon. Kate napped there (hooray!) and Anna spent the day milling around from room to room, toy to toy, cousin to cousin, and then having some playtime with Daddy outside, too. Believe it or not, but my mom just informed me that there were 32 of us (three under the age of 1, nine more between 2 and 12) in Natalie and Ryan's house for Saturday afternoon and evening. It certainly brought back memories of the holidays when I was little. Lots of people, activity, noise, and of course fun.

Both girls crashed pretty hard on Saturday night at the hotel, but Kate woke us up again at 5:30 on Sunday morning. Anna slept a little bit longer, but we were ready to be on the road by 8. On the way home, we stopped in Bloomington (again) to spend some time with my high school friend, Laura, and her family.


We made it back to McFarland just in time for Anna's swimming lesson. We had missed last week (the first one) because she was sick so we didn't want to miss another one. She LOVED it ... more on that another time.


Overall, the trip went really well, better than expected. The girls did SO well, even if I spent a lot of the drive in the back seat of the van keeping Kate company. Any frustrating moments (of which there were surprisingly few) were certainly balanced by the memories we made.