Christmas time in the city

This is lengthy.  You don't really have to read it.  But at least check out the video at the bottom.  SUPER cute, even if I am the mom :-)

Oy.  This fall semester has been a doozie.  Not bad in any kind of way, just busy.  Christmas break started yesterday (officially....it really started at 3:00 on Friday) and I feel like this just might be the first time that I've sat down in about four months.

C&E are loving first grade at their new school (Pierce this year, since the move).  Great teacher, making good friends and plowing through the first grade standards and curriculum.  They decided to do gymnastics this year, instead of dance.  They are doing well with it.  The both started in "Beginners" but about mid-term Cora tested out and joined the "Intermediate" group.

Willa is in preschool two days a week and with my parents the other three.  She's still our sweetie and little goofball.  She's such a ham and knows when she has an audience -- as evidenced in the video below. :)

Our Christmas break got off to a bit of a rocky start, but has since taken a turn for the uneventful - which is nice.  Cora and Evaline had their class party on Friday after school. I had signed up to help, but was a bit late because I'd picked up Willa beforehand and she had to go potty on the drive.  We're in the early - but successful - stages of potty-training, a stage where you don't mess around.  Cora and Evaline had their first Pierce birthday party - they went to Capri College and had their hair and nails done - quite fancy, they were just tickled.  

Saturday night we started our fourth annual "Twinkle Light Express" where the girls find tickets under their pillow as they are getting ready for bed, we load into the car with cocoa and treats, and drive around to look at Christmas lights.

They all look so good in this picture, don't they?  Happy?  Healthy?  It was all an illusion.  Moments after this photo was taken the back seat was covered in vomit.  There's no way to handle that gently.  Sorry, I had to just put it out there.  Willa was suddenly so very sick.  I was up with her until around 4 am.  Ian took the ugly jobs - I was with Willa while he was cleaning up everything else.  Oy.  What a night.

We missed our Wiley Family Christmas on Sunday because of it.  She was still feeling pretty rotten on Sunday afternoon...and we were sitting on pins and needles waiting for the next one to drop.  We didn't go to the party because we were so worried that we were carriers of some dreadful stomach bug and would get everyone sick.  No one else got it though, and it was too bad that we missed it - the girls were so disappointed.

Monday night my brother Dave was still in town, so we had dinner at my parents.  The girls had prepared songs for the Wiley Christmas, so they got to perform there.   Willa even had a poem prepared.

And now...we are all waiting for Christmas.  Waiting and sitting on the couch watching Season One of the Gilmore Girls, playing 2048 on my phone (thanks, Dave), and reading whatever is in my hand.  This has all the makings of a fabulous break.

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

 

There was a little girl...

There was a little girl,

Who had a little curl,

Right in the middle of her forehead.

When she was good,

She was very, very good.

But when she was bad,

She was horrid.

Serenades

There was a time - a third of my life ago - when a "serenade" meant Alpha Gam sisters, Frat boys, goofy lyrics to popular songs, and invitations to Greek Week, Homecoming, or Varieties.

These days a "serenade" means driving around with this cutie:

TWO!!

Happy, happy, happy birthday to my beautiful baby (or maybe not so baby) girl!

Willa Rose Petersen, two years old today:

And for old times sake, my little baby, two years ago today:

She truly is the sweetest little thing. My cup runneth over.

Where did this summer go??

We are pretty much back at it.  Not quite the normal, back-to-school-year routine, because we don't technically start  official days back until the following week, but last week was spent at an (inspiring) conference, and I'm spending most of this week in meetings and training (more to come on this)...so, basically this is it.

I think that this has quite officially been the shortest summer ever.  We didn't get out of school until June 13 because of snow days and a late Thanksgiving (our district is on trimesters - at least until next year - and first trimester always ends at Thanksgiving, so our start date is always 13 weeks before Thanksgiving).  With vacation, June was a blur - it seems it was over before it even started.  July was incredibly busy.  This was the "Summer of the Twins" - on Monday and Friday afternoons they had swimming lessons, Tuesday evenings were dance, and Friday mornings were gymnastics. The days with no classes usually ended up with play dates.

In between all of those regularly scheduled activities, our summer went a little something like this:

Out at Grandma Helen's farm, Cora got to hold a kitty.

Willa loves her big-girl hat!

The highlight of Evaline's recent trip to the farm: getting to go up in a real, actual attic!

Not a fan of the prickly grass, this girl preferred to stick to the patio.

Sprinkler time and a homemade "water slide"!

A little bit of twin love!

We switched around Willa's car seat last week - she's loving it!  A twenty minute car ride full of "Mommy? Mommy? Hi!  Daddy? Daddy? Hi!  Mommy? Mommy? Hi! Daddy? Daddy? Hi!"

Willa's first sweet corn  - fresh from the corner stand.

A little sister is really just a living doll, made for dress-up.

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Dance class: showing off the leaps.

Check out this action shot!

Holy HUGE cucumber.

Donuts!!

Outdoor, interactive children's theater, complete with props (a sea of left socks).

The girls with Leo the Lion (can you spot my dad in this picture??!!)

Lovin' the blue room in the children's museum

Makin' music!

Swim lessons!

Who needs paper?

First Ponytail

It wasn't easy...but I managed to get it done!

Also, please ignore the dirty face.  It's summer, and summer is for getting dirty.  (Or...being lazy and not thoroughly washing your child's face after lunch, and then forgetting and snapping a photo of their first-ever ponytail, and then not being able to get another decent shot after realizing (and then cleaning) the dirty face.)

The Willa

I have this odd habit of referring to my children as "the girls" (meaning Cora and Evaline) and "the Willa." It stems from "the girls" being such a good pair, and for the almost four years before Willa came along they were "the girls" and the only girls.  But now that Willa is here, it is hard for me to include her into that pairing.  And it also makes for awkward conversations when someone asks something like "What size clothes are the girls wearing now?"  Because when I answer I only tell them what size Cora and Evaline are in....because those are "the girls."  I probably need to change that.

Willa is at such a fun age right now.  I probably wouldn't have said that three weeks ago, because then she was at a very obnoxious age (clingy, whiny, generally discontented).  But just like everything that they go through - she grew out of that.  Thank goodness - and just in time for summer - hooray!

At 21 months (yesterday) she is a fun-loving, smiley girls who is curious, playful and loves to tease and be teased.  She's a little bit of a thing, still having to roll up her 18 month pants.  At her 18 month doctor's appointment at the end of February she measured in the 3rd (that's right) percentile for height.  She has super chubby cheeks and gorgeous (if still quite skimpy) red hair that curls straight up on top of her head in the humidity. (Its a little hard to see in these pictures, but she wasn't into cooperating.)

She was a late walker (not until around Christmas - almost 16 months), but is making up for that now.  Her trot has turned into a run, and she is constantly chasing after her sisters - every where they go, she is at their heels.  And for the most part, they don't mind.  Cora has always been a bit more willing to let her tag along, and will sometimes sit for over an hour and just play with her.  Evaline is warming up to her as she is able to do more and more.  For awhile there, Evaline liked her and all...but didn't really know what to do with her.

Willa's play is advancing - she loves to play with babies - baby dolls, her "Little People" doll house, the wooden dolls in their Melissa and Doug wooden castle set, her sisters' Polly Pockets or Barbies, any type of dolls.  She watches her sisters and copies everything they do.  This weekend we were with some friends who recently had a beautiful baby boy and she copied what she saw done with the real baby: changing diapers, putting her doll in the rock-n-play, and all that jazz.  When she gets into something, she has a very long attention span.  In he picture at the top of this post she sat and played with the color/shape sorter for well over half and hour while we were making supper.  She worked at it until she could get it right - every time.

She's starting to be a little jabber-box.  She's putting two words together - Daddy Bye-Bye, Daddy/Baby Ni-Nigh and others.  She still uses her sign language, as is still making up her own signs, which is pretty cool to watch.  I would say that between signs and actual words she's got a solid vocabulary of somewhere in the 40-50 word range.  

She loves to rock and snuggle.  She loves hugs.  She loves her dad, but prefers her mom (and I'm OK with that).

She's a fun kid.  We think we'll keep her.

Who needs to crawl...

...when you can do this?

A Ten-Month Willa

The last week of May was a hectic one.  It was the last week of school, which is always hectic trying to wrap up the year, move a classroom (I've moved classrooms almost every year that I've been teaching, so for me, it goes with the territory), get mountains of late work corrected and grades finished up.  This year, however, we also had three little girls battling ear infections (Willa's led to a fever of 105!!), Willa was teething, Evaline's eye doctor's appointment, and we were getting ready for a trip to Omaha, NE where my brother was getting married (more on that later, hopefully soon).  So, with all of that, I forgot about taking Willa's 9 month photo.  And actually, if she didn't have a doctor's appointment, I would have forgotten about her turning 9 months at all.  So...here I am to update at 10 months instead.  Some of the stats will be a tad old (well, a month old), but I'm pretty sure that she hasn't grown much.

So, doctor stats first: She weighs 19 pounds and is at the 60th percentile.  She is   inches tall, and is at the 15th percentile.  Her head is still enormous, coming in at the 94th percentile once again.  She is just now at ten months starting to wear a few 12 month things, but they fit her on the big size.  Her nine month clothes for the most part still fit perfect...so while she appears to be a big, chunky baby, it's somewhat of an illusion.  She's not really big for her age, she's just a little "short-round".

She's a champ at sleeping and eating.  She goes to bed at about 6:30 in the evening and gets up around 7:00 am (although this morning she got up at 7:45!).  We always put her down awake after some snuggles and she goes right to sleep.  The same is true for her naps, she takes two naps, that last between and hour and two and half hours each.  She's taking four bottles a day, and drinks around 5 - 7 ounces.  She eats breakfast (baby cereal mixed with applesauce or pureed pears or peaches and a touch of cinnamon), lunch and dinner.  For lunch and dinner she has said "Enough!" to baby food: she's simply refused to eat it.  She purses her lips and won't open her mouth, pushes the spoon away as it approaches her mouth, and then slaps at the tray on her high chair.  She was very clearly telling us that she wanted real food like the rest of us.  So, we obliged.  And so for lunch and dinner she has (cut into tiny pieces): tuna, grilled cheese, turkey, or roast beef sandwiches, a wide variety of fruit, green beans, broccoli (her favorite), asparagus, zucchini, peppers, grilled chicken, pasta, pizza, steak, pork chops, and so on...seriously, whatever we are having for dinner, she has too.

She's not crawling yet, but she doesn't really have a reason to.  For a couple of reasons: 1) if she ever looks like she needs or wants something out of her reach, two other little people usually very quickly get it for her; 2) if those other two little people aren't around and she can't reach something that she wants, she just finds something else to play with. She isn't completely immobile, though; she scoots around on her bottom.  She's a very effective spinner, and will slowly scoot on her bottom to somewhere that she wants to be (within a two-foot or so radius). She's a very laid-back little person who is very willing to go with the flow.  If we change her routine, she just rolls with it - whether that is staying up late, or having to eat an hour later than normal, or whatever.  She always wants to be where the action is, if she is left in a room alone (lets face it - she's not crawling yet, so she'll stay put...and sometimes you just have to go to the bathroom) she immediately lets everyone hear about it.  She knows exactly what she wants and she's not hesitant to let us know.  She has different cries/yells/yelps/squawks, etc to let us know how she's feeling or what she needs.  She waves hello and good bye.  She enjoys a good game of patty-cake, and coming in for a snuggle with mom or dad.  She loves music and dancing. She is happiest playing in a room with her big sisters. Particularly Cora.  I've said it before, but these two have a very special relationship.  I think that Evaline might be at a bit of a loss as to what to do with or how to play with a little baby...but Cora dotes on her.  No one can make her laugh quite like Cora can.

Overall, at 10 months little Willa is pretty awesome.  I think we'll keep her :-)

Willa, right now

In some ways it is hard to believe that this little lady has been with us for just over two months.  In other ways, it seems as though she's been here for a long time.  Such is the weird sensation of "time", right?  What is the saying?  "The days are long but the years are short."  Something like that...and it certainly is right.  Some days seem never ending, but before I know it the week is over...and then the month...and then two.

So, at two months, where is Willa? I don't mean "sitting next to me on the couch"...but where is she, what's she like, right now.  First, it was almost a week ago that she turned two months, but we got in to the doctor on the afternoon of Halloween.

Physically, here are her stats:

She weighs - 11 lbs, 15 oz (60th percentile)

and she's  21 3/4  inches long (15th percentile...I'm not sure if she was measured wrong, or if she's built like me!)

Get this one: her head circumference is 40 cm....which in itself doesn't mean much but...that's in the 90th(!) percentile.  Quite the noggin!  Probably because her brains are so big...

It's pretty strange to have such a chubby baby.  At this point, I'm pretty sure that C & E were somewhere around the 5th -10th percentiles.  This girl seems like a giant in comparison!  But she's a happy, healthy baby, and that's the most important :-).

So, what's she been up to lately:

Up until week 3 or 4, she was a very content baby.  She slept most of the time.  She didn't have her days and nights confused...she just spent most of each sleeping.  She didn't fuss a whole lot, and in general, she was very easy.  Then...she started to get progressively fussier.  She slept less during the day, and woke up more frequently during the night.  She started eating less at a sitting and ate more frequently.  She required constant walking around and jostling - she wouldn't allow us to sit with her, rocking didn't help her - only walking around and jostling would help her stop fussing.  After a couple of weeks it was getting a bit exhausting.  Now, she didn't do this constantly...but it was enough. :-)  Oh, and she wouldn't take a pacifier.

After week six, things started to get better. And since week 8 (knock on wood) things have been much better.  She took the pacifier!  She's only getting up once at night (most nights)! She will entertain herself - gleefully - under the floor gym for over half-hour stints!  She likes to sit and be rocked!  She goes to sleep easily!  The past few weeks....life has gotten much easier.

What else is she doing these days: She's starting - just starting - to bat at things under the gym.  She's full of smiles - likes to sit and talk, smiling and making the cutest cooing sounds.  She's very social, likes to be around the action.   She's enjoying her sisters, and her sisters are enjoying her.  I'm getting less uptight about the way that they like to "crowd" and "hover" around her.  At first that made me very tense, but all at the same time, I'm relaxing, they are not quite so..."hover-y", and Willa is getting sturdier...a trifecta that makes for a less stressful house.

I'm about to embark on my last week of maternity leave.  Something that I'm very torn about.  I like my job, so in some ways I'm liking the thought of getting back into it...but...there's a big (BIG) part of me that isn't ready.  But, ready or not, here it comes.  This will be a busy week, too.  I've got a few things to finish getting ready to go back to school, and I have gobs to do to get ready for the girls birthday.  Enough to keep me busy and my mind off the next week.  

Happy Halloween!!

Yesterday the girls didn't have school, so we had our own little party:

Carving pumpkins (they didn't really like this part - they needed a rag nearby to wipe their hands after every reach into the pumpkin:

And finished!  They've named him "Pumpkin Fred" :-)

Roasted pumpkin seeds.  A big hit with Evaline, Cora didn't care for them much.

Coloring their Halloween activity packets:

Impromptu Halloween lunch:

Tonight...time for Trick-or-Treating!!!

Pumpkin Fred - all lit up!

Our little "Thing One and Thing Two"

Willa went as a bag of popcorn :-)!