Happy Easter!

I've decided to make a return from my bloggin hiatus.  My goal is to make this a regular (or at the very least, semi-regular) thing once again.  I've missed it, and it encourages me to make an effor to take more pictures of the girls (something which I am terrible about).  If you are one of the three or four people to have visited my other blog/recipe collection, I've started that one up again, too...only I've moved it...it is slightly changed and is now located here http://fromsugartospice.wordpress.com/

The past several months have been crazy-busy with work (I've been teaching Advanced Placement Economics, a project which has been a killer....considering that I've only ever taken two coures in Econ - once about 12 years ago and another around 6 years ago), and when I came home, the very last thing that I wanted to do was open the computer. 

The pregnancy on top of that has drained me even further.  It took until around week 16 (I'm around 19 1/2 right now) to feel anywhere near normal...and not just nausea and fatigue.  For about three months I lost interest in, well, almost everything.  I think I went that long without baking cookies...and you know somethings got to be wrong when I'm not baking.  But...I feel like I'm back.  And that's a very good thing (perhaps not for my waistline...but my waistline is going to expanding anyway over the next five months, right?).  Speaking of being 19 1/2 weeks pregnant...I have an ultrasound later this week....so stay tuned for news as to how many "x" chromosomes this little creature has! 

We've been back in our regular routine after spring break for a week, and have 8 weeks (or, 38 days...which sounds shorter) to go until summer and I'm pretty excited.  Spring break home with the girls was fun (although I think that Ian was going a tad stir-crazy, he's not as good about staying home as I am...I could regularly go a full week without leaving the house - except to go outside/on a walk/etc), and we (girls included) are very much looking forward to more time at home together, and more time running and playing outside.  Over break we got a few projects done around the house - I'm almost done with the girls' room, and got about half of our pictures hung up on the wall (its only been....what? 6 months?), we picked out and ordered carpet for our living room (I'm so very excited that I will only have to live with the laminate flooring in there for another three weeks!), and I began planting my garden.  Its just a small raised bed, about 4x12 feet, we thought about putting in two but decided that since we will have a newborn in the middle of the "harvest" it would be best not to overextend ourselves.  We build the bed last fall, and filled it this year (maybe everyone knows this and I'm just out of the loop...but...news for Cedar Rapids/Linn County folks - you can get all the free compost you want at the Linn County Compost Center over by Mount Trashmore), and at the end of break I planted spinach, three types of lettuce, radishes and peas.  I also started some peppers, chiles, and tomatoes indoors.  (I should have done those several months ago but, well, see my previous paragraph.) The radishes and lettuce are beginning to sprout...so excited to see how this experiment will turn out!

This week has been all talk about Easter.  The girls are so very excited for the Easter Bunny to come tonight, and to get to hunt eggs and everything that goes with it.  We dyed eggs this afternoon, which was fun - instead of buying the dunking-type of dye this year, we bought some paint-on kind and they loved it:

 I had to include this one (above)...for the LONGEST time, it has been awful trying to get both girls looking at the camera with pleasant faces, let alone a smile (probably part of the reason we don't take many pictures).  So I asked the girls not to say "cheese" but instead to smile, like they were happy about something...apparently this is Evaline's "Happy Face"

And here, they wanted to show off their finished eggs...and their messy hands :-)

Here's wishing you a very happy Easter!

Five

Five little monkeys jumping on the bed.  Five little monkeys swinging from a tree.  Five little ducks went out to play.  There are five fingers on one hand, and five toes on one foot.  Num-ber five...is a-live! I am exactly five years and five days older than my sister.  Five days comprise a work week. A job well done is celebrated with high-fives.

And sometime on or around August 30th...

our little Petersen clan will welcome a new member...making us a family of FIVE!

2011...how did I do?

Eh.  Not great, not terrible.  Several of my goals for 2011 I hit and then some.  Others I didn't come anywhere close.  Flip over to the 2011 page to see how I did.

Coming up for 2012...

I have another new tab for 2012.  Not as many this year, some of the ones that I didn't make in 2011 I'm attempting again in 2012.  Some of those are in a scaled back version.  Some are repeats.  Some are refinements of the old goals.

Here's wishing you a Happy New Year...may you have joy, happiness, and motivation to do accomplish all of your 2012 goals!

Pictures I should have posted back in November

Our first (and only, I think) snow fall.  It resulted in an accumulation of around 40 flakes, but the girls had an awfully good time running around as those flakes were falling.  And of course they had to get out their new snow shovels (birthday present) and begin helping to shovel the driveway.

Turkey cookies for Thanksgiving.  So much fun to make!



After staring at a mostly-bare cupboard, we broke down and took the girls to Applebee's on their "kid's night".  Despite the free kids meals, we ended up spending about $10 more than we normally do on stupid stuff like appetizers and beer.  But C & E got their faces painted - and had a ball with it.  One butterfly, and one bee.  Cute as can be.



For their birthday they got these cute dolls from their Grandma Barb and Papa Pete.  These dolls are sort of like a more modern version of a paper doll.  They have these snap-on mix-and-match clothing options.  I heard the girls laughing hysterically in the other room (seldom a good sign) and this is what I found.  They had taken their shirts off and were pretending to dress themselves in the dolls' clothes.  Oh girls.

Evaline

I think Evaline might be a little jealous of her sister's glasses.  Well, maybe not of the glasses themselves, but of the attention that she's getting from having them.  Make no mistake, after three years of not being able to see, Cora deserves some attention.  But, maybe Evaline does, too.

And it just so happens that I've got an Evaline story up my sleeve. An Evaline story that has absolutely nothing to do with the photo above.  I just thought that was a pretty cute picture of her.  And yes, those are Thomas the Train underpants.  PS.  Why do they only make Thomas underpants for "boys"? Why can't girls like Thomas, too?  Why, according to the underpants makers, do my girls have to be satisfied with either princesses or Dora?  C & E don't even know what Princesses are...I'm not even sure that they know the word, why would they want to wear them on their tush?  Enough.  I'll save that for another time.

Back to my Eva story.

Eva is our shy girl.  When we go someplace new it usually takes her about a half hour to warm up, if there are lots of people there, it might take her longer.  She's got a bit of me in her - if she's in her comfort zone, she's great, but out of it and well, it takes some warming up.  She's pretty much always been this way.  She was the one who experience more separation anxiety as a baby.  When they were at the large daycare, she had the more difficult time getting comfortable in the large-group setting. And so on, and so forth.

This past weekend, however, she amazed us all.  It started with the visit to Santa.  She happily sat on his lap AND talked to him about what she wanted for Christmas.  Who would have thought?  She won't talk to hardly anyone, but she talked to him.  Well, I mean, maybe it shouldn't have been a big surprise, I mean, it was SANTA after all.  And for hours afterwards she talked about how nice he was.  (Cora would hardly go near him even with Ian holding her.)

Then, at the large Wiley Family Christmas on Sunday Evaline commanded every one's attention (about 40 people) when she stood on a chair and declared that she would now sing a Christmas Lullaby: "We wish you a Merry Christmas and Happy New one Year!"  Which she sang at the top of her lungs, and when she received ample applause, she promptly replied with an encore performance.  And a HUGE smile on her face.  She was LOVING the attention.  (Cora was happy to sit quietly with her Aunt Katie.)

Considering that her run looks more like a prance...I'd say we've got a girl headed straight for show choir on our hands.  (If she's got her mama's vocal chords, they'll just have to choreograph it so that she is conveniently positioned away from all microphones...just like they did with me in Varieties...)

Crafty(ish)

I'm not the craftiest of people. I can't always make things turn out in real life the way they look in my head.  But I love projects. (Ian would argue that I love starting projects...but am easily distracted.)  And I have a couple that I've finished lately and thought I'd share.

1.) The biggest is one that I don't have a picture of yet.  I made a matching set of cross-stitch Santa pictures - but I have yet to frame them (see...it's the finishing things I have problems with...).  And Christmas is four days away.  Sigh.  Perhaps next year...  When they are framed I'll share them, even if it's July.  They only took me about 7 years to do...(with many other projects started - and some even finished - in between :-)).

2.) This is sort of cheating, since my mom did a lot of it.  And she's the one who put on the finishing touches (i.e. velcro) so that it could actually be used (thanks, mom).  We had one of these count-down-to Christmas trees when I was little.  Actually, we used that one to create the pattern for this one.  Cora and Evaline are LOVING it this year.  Putting up an ornament is the first thing they want to do every morning.  And its also a good way to teach them to take turns.  The calendar part is 25 pockets that contains a different ornament to put on the tree - all made with felt and a variety of sequins and beads.

3.) When cold weather hit this year (although "cold" is a relative word - this year with highs still in the mid-to-upper thirties, it still pretty warm) I started wearing my winter coat and scarf.  C & E immediately want one and kept bugging us about having daddy go to the store to buy "girl scarves."  (Dad's the big shopper around here.)  I had a bunch of yarn left over from previous projects (most of them finished), so I decided it would be easier if I just made them some.  I let the girls pick what yarn I should use, and they both picked a variegated pink and purple yarn.  Turned out pretty good for a weekend project :-)

4.) And now...for my next project.  I could choose one of the unfinished ones sitting the a Rubbermaid tub in the basement.  Or...I could start searching Pinterest for something new.  Decisions, decisions.  I think I know which one I'm going to choose.

A Whole New World...

is what my darling Cora has been taking in from around 4:30 this afternoon until she went to bed at 7:30.   We found out last week something we had suspected for some time now - Cora needs glasses.  I'm sorry, let me rephrase that: Cora badly - no, desperately needs glasses.  

A little over a year ago we noticed that when she colored she put her face awfully close to the paper, and found it a little odd (Evaline did not do such things), and said to ourselves "Hmmm, maybe she'll be in need of glasses, but...who knows, maybe she's just odd...she is our child, after all."

As time went on, however, she did more and more "close up" - she read books with her face mere inches from the pages, she'd insist on standing less than a foot away from the TV screen (crying that she "can't see" if she gets any further away), it was almost impossible to read her a story, her face would be completely in the way.  And we said to ourselves "We'll have her doctor check her out at her next appointment."

Her next appointment came in mid-November, for her three-year-old checkup.  We had them do a preliminary check on her eyes: she stood on a piece of tape and was supposed to read off different pictures on the wall (similar to the alphabet check they do with adults).  They pointed to a horse and she whispered to me that it was, maybe, a duck?  When she found that she was wrong, she said she wanted Evaline and then wouldn't say any more.  At first I thought this was cute...she needed her sister for moral support.  But upon further consideration, I'm pretty sure she just wanted Evaline to tell her the answers.

So I made an appointment with the eye doctor, and we were able to get her in last week.  (Quite luckily, the opthamologist that our pediatrician recommended happened to be the eye doctor that I go to.)  Again, they put the pictures up on the wall and asked if Cora could tell us what she saw.  This time it actually was a duck.  But Cora guessed "Babies?"

When the doctor sat down to look at her eyes (they dialate the eyes then hold up lenses in front and have her look at a light, then he uses a tool to look in her eyes to see how they react inside and he can tell what her prescription should be) he started by telling us that "sometimes kids this age just like to be close to things" then he looked in her eyes and said "and sometimes they are incredibly near sighted."

For those of you who wear glasses and know your prescription (I realize I may be talking to a very limited audience here) her eyes are -7.50 and -8.75.  The doctor said he very rarely sees someone this young with eyes this bad.  Poor little thing.  I feel so bad for her - she's been managing in a world where nothing has ever looked right.  I have no idea how she knows as much as she does - how did she ever learn her letters when she can't really see them.  How does she even know what I look like?

Well, that's all a-changin' now...from the time she stepped out of the office until the time we got home she talked non-stop.  She pointed out everything that she saw - from birds in the sky to glowing Santas on the lawn.  I'm so excited for this whole new world that is being opened up for her now.  Wanna see her new look???