Spring Break Visitors

Dave's cousin Jean, and her kids, Jessi and Nick, visited us from Indiana this past weekend.  They were kicking off their spring break and needed a little get-away up north.  We had a really good time catching up with Jean while the kids had a blast playing together. 

The weather was decent all weekend so we played outside a lot.  Jessi and Nick remembered our play set from the last time they visited so we did a lot of swinging, climbing, and sliding plus we got out Carter's bounce house for tons of jumping and laughing.  Only one bloody nose the whole weekend (sorry Nick!) so we call that a success.  Uncle Mark, Kathy, Max, Grandma Webb, and Mark's friend Scott and his two girls also joined us.  Lots of kids, lots of commotion, lots of fun!

Nick, Carter, and Jessi on the swings.

The kids in the bounce house

Dave and Jean

Jessi and Mia in the playroom

We also took the whole gang to Meijer Gardens to see the butterfly exhibit.  Here are the kids posing as butterflies (Mia is really tall!).

Jessi, Carter, Nick, and Max

We had a really fun weekend!  Thanks everyone!

March Madness

Unfortunately I'm not talking about college basketball (although let's give a moment of joyful silence for the awesome Michigan State basketball team and their journey to the Final Four and beyond). 

The title of this posting refers to the crazy health issues Mia has been battling the past few weeks.  She started out with pink eye, then moved into double ear infections, then a diagnosis of Fifth Disease (sounds much worse than it is - more of a viral rash than anything else), and finally a bout of sporadic vomiting that lasted us close to a week.  All gory details aside, Mia is doing much better.  The vomiting has stumped the Dr.'s so they suggested cutting out dairy from her diet for a week, then gradually re-introduce it, in hopes that her stomach will get back to normal.  We hope it was simply a weird series of coincidences with maybe a flu bug or two thrown into the mix. 

The poor girl has been to the Dr. at least 4 times in the last 2 weeks but she's been a trooper through it all.  Her "one year" appointment was in the midst of all this so here are her stats:  weight 20 lbs. 8 oz. (she's lost a little since then however due to her sickness), this was the 41st%; and height - 29 inches, 47th%.  

We're looking forward to getting this all behind us and having a healthy spring!

Oh - and Go Spartans!

Happy Birthday Mia!

Hard to believe that Mia is already one year old!  We had a fun celebration for her and Dave on Sunday since their birthdays are only 2 days apart.  Grandpa and Grandma Jernstadt, Grandma Webb, Uncle Mark, Kathy, Max, the Burke Family, and Meredith all joined us for the festivities.  

 

We decided to start with the present opening (better to get as many clean shots of the birthday girl before she makes a mess with the cake).  Mia got some adorable outfits for summer, a really cute bikini, some fun new toys, books, and hair accessories!

Carter was good at helping unwrap the gifts.

Showing off her new barn.

After the presents were opened, we headed for the cake.  Since Mia loves taking a bath, we decided to make the cake look like a bath tub, complete with rubber duckies and other bath toys.   

Unlike her older brother, Mia LOVES cake!  Carter wouldn't really touch his cake when he turned one (or even today) so we didn't get that token messy face picture with him.  But Mia on the other hand, dove right in and we got plenty of pictures.  She even gave her guests some added fun by flinging her cake around the room.  Iguess she made up for whatever Carter missed out on.

The first few tastes...

  

Here we see the sugar high wearing off.

We had so much fun with everyone, thank you for helping us celebrate!

Mia Update:
11 Months

So many changes for Mia! 

Walking:  She's just about walking, she takes a few steps at a time and has much better balance lately.  Still prefers to crawl when she wants to get somewhere fast, but she's taking a lot more risks with letting go and seems to have a lot more confidence that she can do it by herself. 

Eating:  She hates all baby food.  She only wants big people food and she will try anything we put on her tray.  We think she's pretty amazing with her chewing ability since she still has ZERO teeth.  Her favorites right now are crackers, pasta, cereal, Nutragrain bars, fruit cups, waffles, yogurt, and mashed potatoes.  She's also been using a sippy cup for most of her liquids and she's getting pretty good with this new method of drinking.  We still do a bottle at night before bed but that is pretty much the extent of the bottle.  We're also weaning her off formula.  She usually only has formula in the nighttime bottle and milk or juice throughout the day.

Other big girl things:  we retired the swing a week or so ago, I was sad to see it go for convenience reasons but it's great to have a huge section of our family room back!  You forget how much room those things take up until you take them down.  We've gotten out all the baby gates and have strategically put them all over the house.  She is everywhere and quicker than you think, she can get half way up the stairs before I can blink sometimes.  We'll also be switching her to forward facing in the car in a few weeks.  I'm sure she'll be happy to look at something other than the back of the seat!  We're also slowly trying to wean her off her pacifier.  This has been her best friend since birth, so we know this will be a rough road for everyone involved.  We try to keep it to nighttime and sometimes during the day, it's a habit we all need to break, it's really easy to slip one in her mouth when she's getting tired or angry. 

Hair:  her hair is growing faster than we can say barrette.  When we get it wet in the bath it is literally half way down her back.  Dave is getting really good at a single ponytail and I've moved on to piggy tails.  It's extremely hard when your subject is constantly moving their head side to side to try and see what the heck you are doing to them.  Hair was never my forte; I could barely do a regular braid on my cabbage patch kids or myself when I was growing up.  When I had gymnastics competitions growing up I just had to have a french braid (which neither my mom or I were good at), but if I held strands of hair while my mom did the braiding, we could pretty much end up with a french braid.  My goal is to someday get good enough to do a french braid on Mia without her holding half her hair.  (I realize that when she's older a french braid will be completely un-cool, but it's still my goal). 

Mom - I loved those french braid days, thanks for always doing what I wanted even though a regular pony tail would have taken a quarter of the time and effort!

Vocabulary to date:  ba (ball), ba-ba (bottle), da (dog),  dada, mama, Ta-Te (Carter), uh-oh (when she throws something across the room on purpose), and buh (book).  She has a lot of other sounds and shrieks but these are the words that actually mean something so far.

While we love the fact that Mia is getting to be such a big girl, we're somewhat sad that she's growing out of the baby stages (well, I am at least).  I will miss the days when I could put her in the swing and put in a load of laundry or take a quick shower, or when I could snuggle with her on the couch without her squirming away.  But I love this new stage where she's becoming more independent and turning into such a fun little girl!  We can't wait to celebrate your birthday in a few weeks Mia!!

Carter Update:
3 1/2 years old

Hard to believe we've already been thinking about school for Carter, it seems like yesterday we were worried about what daycare to pick.  In late January we took a look at a bunch of preschools in the area and decided that the Forest Hills Public School Preschool program was the best option.  He will be going 3 days a week for about 2.5 hours per morning starting in the fall.  They also provide after school daycare called the "Kids Care Program" for kids in preschool through kindergarten.  After his Wednesday morning class he will go to lunch with the other children in the Kids Care Program and then outside recess and more playtime in the child care room until we pick him up after 5pm.  Luckily we only have to do this on Wednesdays because on Monday and Friday Dave or I will be picking him up after the regular class.  I think he's somewhat excited but a little apprehensive, hopefully by the fall he will be ready.

Carter is doing really well with his big brother role.  He LOVES Mia and is always keeping an eye on her and making sure she's having fun and staying out of trouble.  He does a good job of alerting us when Mia puts something small in her mouth or is crawling toward the dog dishes or anything else he deems not safe for her.  Our daycare lady tells me he is a very protective brother at daycare as well.  Making sure other kids aren't taking away her toys (somewhat funny since he often takes her toys away himself).  He also loves to make Mia laugh.  He will do anything to get her to laugh and once he finds something that entertains her, he will do it forever.  They are a fun little duo. 

 

The one area we're struggling with right now is sleeping.  For the past month or so, Carter has been waking up 2, 3, even 4 times a night.  He wakes up crying and scared, either yelling for us to come upstairs or he sprints downstairs to find us.  We're not sure if he's having bad dreams or wakes up to sounds in the house, but he is extremely afraid that "bad woofs" (wolves) are going to get him.  He tells us they come from the guest bedroom and nothing seems to ease his mind.  We've tried to be reasonable, we tell him that wolves can't work door knobs (we remind him that we always have to let Shady and Maisy in and out of the house because they can't open doors, hoping this makes it easier to picture in his head), we also tell him that Shady and Maisy bark like crazy if any animal comes close to our house, or that Daddy and Mommy will always protect him.  We've tried other approaches, telling him wolves are nice or that they only live in woods, or they are scared of people.  Nothing really eases his mind.  Ever since he told us the wolves come from the guest bedroom, we've been closing that door AND putting the baby gate up.  Seems in his mind wolves can't jump over baby gates and this makes him feel a little better.  We also brought up his big cardboard box and put it right next to his bed.  We told him if he's scared, he could hide in his box (he loves hiding in it even when he's not scared).  Those things have been helping, but he still gets up about 1-2 times a night.  We're hoping this phase is done very soon.  Someday we'll look back on this blog post and laugh about the scary wolves...we hope.

Trip to the Sunshine State

Notice in the title I didn't mention anything about temperature.  Yes, on our trip to Florida we had some GREAT sunshine, warm temperatures on the other hand, not so much.  Despite the fridged for Florida temps, we had a wonderful vacation down in Fort Myers to visit Grandma and Grandpa B and see their new house and to visit with Aunt Lee, Uncle Bob, Elsa and Claire.  This was both of the kids' first "real" trip and we loved every barely luke warm second of it. 

Here are the kids in the airport, pretty happy for 5am.  Carter was so excited to get on his first plane ride, he didn't care what time of day it was.

Yes, we let Carter push all the buttons he could find EXCEPT the red one.

The first thing you want to do when you get to Florida is throw on your bathing suit and head for the pool.  Especially when you're coming from Michigan in January.  Grandma and Grandpa live in a great golf/tennis community with not only their own private pool, but also a pool and hot tub off the main club house.  So we did what any Michigan tourist would do, we threw on our suits and headed for the pool.  The good news was that the public pool area was completely empty, we had the place to ourselves!  The bad news was that the pool temp was about like Lake Michigan's temp this time of year. 

Gorgeous from a distance

So we opted for the "hot pool" as Carter called it.  Again, we had the place to ourselves, nobody who lived in Florida was crazy enough to put on a bathing suit I guess.

Carter enjoyed his first Harley ride with Grandpa on the way home from the hot pool. 

Don and Dave enjoyed a few rounds of golf on their beautiful golf course.  Their house backs up to the 3rd tee, so us non-golfers ran out to see them when we saw their cart headed our way.

Nice swing!

Grandma and Mia enjoying the sunshine.

On day two of our stay, Uncle Bob, Aunt Lee, Elsa, and Claire arrived!  Carter was SO excited to play with Elsa and see baby Claire.  We had so much fun hanging out with everyone for a lazy week of playing with the kids, celebrating a late Christmas, and eating what seemed like an endless buffet of snacks and meals.

Here we are celebrating Christmas.  The kids had so many toys to play with afterwards they didn't know what to do with themselves.  Thank you for all the wonderful gifts everyone!!

Mia is reading to her new Andy, homemade by Grandma B.  Ann was so happy to see him when we got home!

Other fun things:  the kids did a lot of coloring and drawing, we visted the manatees and a cool playground, we played around Grandpa and Grandma's pool a lot, we went for fun walks in the neighborhood, and we played with a lot of lincoln logs and puzzles.  

Claire is always full of smiles!

Fun in Grandma's big tub.

Carter and Elsa especially loved to throw Grandpa's balls into the pool and watch him fish them back out with the skimmer.

Visiting the manatees...

Claire is showing her enthusiasm after spotting a manatee.

Croc attack!

More hot pool fun with Elsa and Uncle Bob

 

One of the highlights of the manatee park was when Grandpa bought Carter and Elsa some adorable stuffed manatees.  Carter named his Frank and Elsa named her's Spot.  Here are Frank and Spot on this walk with us.

Dining by the pool

We were very sad to leave the sunshine state.  Chilly temps and all.  Next time we hope to actually get in their gorgeous pool and maybe even spot the neighborhood croc who apparently was hiding somewhere in the bogs due to the cold temps.  We want to send huge thank yous to Grandma and Grandpa for putting up with us and all our gear.  We miss everyone!!