Happy Friday!

even Doctors CANNOT predict the future

Sam never threw up. Not once really. Okay, maybe a large spit up or two but I don't think that counts as the stomach flu. She has never really gotten sick. She had a fever for three days with nothing else; weird. But I don't think it could have been the stomach flu like the doc predicted because she never got any of the other symptoms that go with stomach flu (like an upset stomach!). Whatever, the fever is gone now and while she is still pretty fussy I know that she is cutting teeth so I am going to chalk it up to that.
We had a pretty good weekend. Friends of ours came over and taught us Peanuckle (I have NO IDEA how to spell that!). It was so much fun, I think I am addicted. Hard to learn but fun once I started to get it. One of the other highlights of the weekend is the project that Chris and I took on. We got motivated and cleaned out the storage area in our basement. We discovered several things while we were down there. One - I am a pack rat! There was so much random crap in boxes that I just couldn't throw away. Two - We CAN use power tools! We borrowed a sawzall from friends and Chris used it to cut wood for the shelves we were building. I was quite impressed with how easily we worked together to figure out how to build the shelves, went and bought the materials and then built them over two days. Neither one of us has a lot of handy-type skills so it was neat to see our idea actually work. Here is the space before we built the shelves.

And the after!

And a quick Sam picture or two. She loves reading. And after breakfast or lunch while I am cleaning up this is where I often find her. She will just grab a book (or seven!) and sit turning the pages. I love that she is so happy being by herself and I love even more that she loves books. I am hoping it won't go away anytime soon.

it's coming

Sam has had a fever for a few days now and when it didn't break today I decided it was time to go to the doctor. We went and she looked Sam over. No ear infections. So, what could be giving her a fever I asked. And then our wonderful pediatrician said some of the worst words I have heard in a while "She has the stomach flu." WHAT! But she has barely had any diarrhea and isn't throwing up? She looked at me, smiled and said "It's coming!"

AWESOME!

night/morning from hell

She didn't sleep. I don't know why but the loving, beautiful, offspring of mine chose not to sleep last night. She cried, whined, yelled, or just rolled around until I gave in around 2:45 and gave her a bottle. We changed her diaper three times during the course of the night (once poopy so okay fine I wouldn't want to sleep in that either, but twice it was just REALLY wet; is she drinking too much bath water? and now that she has discovered a love of her bath water how do we get her to stop so she won't pee so much at night? Especially since she doesn't even need the little cups to drink it, if we take those away she just proceeds to put her whole face in the water and drink!). I hate the nights when she doesn't sleep because I just get so frustrated and angry at my lack of sleep that it sets me in a bad mood for the whole next day and I love Thursdays so that really sucks.
This morning would have been great because post-bottle Sam was sleeping great and I was sleeping in a bit until just before 7:00am after my husband had gotten up, dressed, and out of the house virtually undetected the dog decided to BARK! Damn dog (anyone want a golden retreiver?). Good morning Sam and mommy! But it was not a good morning because Sam was still exhausted and fussy but since she was awake I decided that getting to work on time should probably happen so we got up and got going.
Then when we arrived at daycare, of course all of Sam's fussiness disappeared; whatever. And I was handed a bottle from Andrea who said "I don't need this anymore. She won't take the bottle for me, she just wants her cup!" WHAT? I can barely get her to have a sip of juice from her cup and Andrea is getting her to take full bottles from it? Good grief. We have now bought several of the same kind of cups that Andrea is using and will start trying that at home as well. If she can do it SO CAN I!

The one highlight of the morning (be prepared to be sad that I would call THIS a highlight!) was that I discovered one location where the dump trucks have been taking all the snow from the parking lots around here! I spotted a dump truck pulling into a dirt road and realized that back behind some trees there was a field with a HUGE mountain of snow! I have always wondered where those trucks were going...mystery solved. One less thing for me to ponder.

Hope your Thursday is going better. Survivor, Grey's and Bones better be good tonight!

a ruined meal

Have you heard the story from when I was pregnant about how I cried over cold Applebees french fries? Well, for the few of you that have some how missed making fun of me for this...here is the story.
When I was pregnant with Sam I wanted Applebees-To-Go ALL THE TIME! And I ate the same thing every time we got it. Well, one night Chris went and picked it up got all the way home and my order was wrong. Not just a little wrong but instead of my chicken wrap there were RIBS! He was thrilled because it was more food for him but I was so upset I started crying. He called Applebees to find out what they could do. So, he went back to pick up my food. I went with him and on the way to Applebees I started crying because I was so worried that my food would have been sitting in the kitchen the whole time getting cold; my french fries would be cold and ruined. I made Chris call Applebees to make sure that the fries were freshly made. Crazy I know but I love my Applebees french fries!
The reason I bring this up is because if I were pregant right now I would have been BAWLING tonight not just crying. We ordered, I went to pick it up and everything went down hill from there. It took Applebees forever to come out to my car and bring me the food. I finally got the food and headed home. Then comes the train! It was long and I sat there for almost 10 minutes knowing that the food next to me was getting cold. Then the train stopped! I was so pissed at this point (gone from the house for almost 30 minutes) that I just had to turn around and go the LONG way home just to try and get home faster. When I finally got home the food was luke-warm at best, they had included a VERY small amount of my spinach-artichoke dip and the mozzerella sticks were not even close to warm. Dinner ruined! Damn Applebees. Damn train. I hate a good dinner that does not live up to the hype.
Okay, this was really long and pointless but I was so pissed by the whole thing I just needed to vent!

the cutest dress

So more to share from the weekend...

We did go out for dinner Saturday night so I guess you could say we celebrated Valentine's Day a bit. The food was great, service was horrible but Sam looked ADORABLE!
The pictures were so dark that you couldn't really see the dress to I had my sister do some picture editing magic so that is why the colors a bit odd.


And here are a few other fun moments from the weekend...
She has become obsessed with knocking over block towers. Why is it that kids think this is so much fun? It was a great visit and as always made us wish we lived closer to both of our families. As Sam gets older and starts changing even faster it is harder to be so far away from family and know that they are missing fun things.

so much

First, Sam bled for the first time on Friday (besides the bleeding that happens from getting shots). I was vaccuming the stairs and away from her for just a few minutes. When I heard her scream I looked over and she was bleeding just above her eye. She had fallen and hit her head on the side of our coffee table and split open her eye lid! I was terrified. I couldn't tell how deep or big it was. There was only a little bit of blood so I didn't think it could be that bad but I was still scared. Because of the low amount of bleeding we decided it was just a small cut and shouldn't need medical attention. He cleaned her up and put neosporin on it. She has a bruise and a pretty ugly looking cut but otherwise she is fine. You will see the cut in pictures in a bit!

How was your Valentine's? Chris and I have never really liked this holiday. I don't really care about it so he uses that as his excuse to not have to do anything. It's really fine with me; I would much rather have him surprise me other times of the year with flowers, candy, gifts, and romance at other times throughout the year (which he does). So it worked out great that Chris's parents were able to come up this weekend for a visit. We had an awesome visit and they got to see all of Sam's new tricks/skills. Sam also got her first birthday gifts and had so much fun playing with her new toys.

Here a few pictures from our weekend. The weather cooperated for long enough that we could go for a short walk.

We saw a bald eagle soaring over us!
Okay, I'm tired so I will tell you more about the weekend and share more pictures tomorrow!

i am a horrible photographer

I have no idea how to get close shots of my daughter that are in focus, with no red eye and don't make her look horrible! I played around with my camera a bit this afternoon with her and came to the realization that I really do not have any clue how to use my camera. So, not great pictures to share but enjoy anyway.

This one is kind of fuzzy and not that close up.

This one is close up but the red eye was so bad she looked like the devil. I used a picture manager thing to reduce the red so now her eyes just look boring.

Red eye problem again. But don't you just love those little teeth!

And this one is close up but she does NOT look cute! HA!

So, I need help or my poor child will just always be dependent on her Aunt to get good pictures. Which doesn't work out so great now since she is 8 hours away. I tell her all the time that I wish I could keep her in my pocket and just pull her out whenever I had a photo-op kind of moment.

While I was taking all the pictures she was just content to play with her little Oscar book and kept talking to herself so much that I switched the camera to video to capture some of her mumbling. Turn your volume way up and you can hear some of it.




And here is a video of our first attempt at coloring with crayons. All the marks on the paper are from me trying to demonstrate to her how much fun coloring is. She didn't get it. The worst part I think is that I had myself convinced that she might actually color. I had even written at the top of the paper "Sam's first attempt at using crayons - 2-11-09" thinking that she might actually do something worth saving! I would have been happy with her making even the slightest mark with the crayon!




Clearly she didn't get it.

VOTE!

And you thought voting season was over!!

My sister's blog has been nominated for Professional Photographers Fresh Blog Contest and I REALLY want her to win! So please go here and vote for her. Her entry number is 0308.
It just takes a few seconds.

What are you waiting for...GO VOTE!

daycare

I love it and hate it at the same time.
This morning was a rough morning. Sam has a pretty gross runny nose and she HATES having it wiped, but I cannot just watch the snot run down her face and into her mouth! YUCK! So all morning I was wiping her nose against the worst squirming and screaming protest. She refused to eat breakfast, didn't want to be put down (which makes getting myself dressed very difficult), and threw little Sam tantrums every time I refused to let her play with certain items in the bathroom. I was reaching my patience limit with her and we had only been awake for an hour. She was just so fussy.
As I was putting my screaming child into the car to go to daycare I was thinking THANK GOD for Andrea because this is one of those days that going and sitting in my lonely, cold basement office sounds wonderful. When we got to daycare Sam could not have been more excited. She walked (with assistance) right over to Andrea, gave her the biggest smile and then when picked up hugged Andrea (head on shoulder) until I walked out the door.
While I was glad to be passing over my fussy child I was also really sad that she was clearly SO happy to see someone else. I didn't get a hug like that this morning. Was she as sick of me as I was of her? Does she lose her patience with me? I have never thought of it that way before.
I am hoping when I pick her up at noon this will be one of the few days when she is happy to see me and go home with me and NOT one of the days when she screams as we leave Andrea's house.

punishing

We have started punishing Sam. She throws her food on the floor and loves to watch the dog run in to eat it up. I hate that she does this and want to break her of it soon. So, we have started to scold her and slap her hand when she does it. The funny part is that Chris has a harder time with this than I do; which is the opposite from what we were expecting.
When we first got our dog Polly I could not punish her for anything. I spoiled her horribly, never yelled and never punished her. I hated putting her in her crate and was really bad at being authoritative with her. Chris and I have joked since Polly was little that when we had kids he was going to have to be the one that punished. That I would just say things like "You just wait till your father gets home!". But apparently I am better at punishing my child than I am at punishing my dog! I have mastered the hand slap. After only a few short days of sternly saying "Samantha we DO NOT throw food on the floor" and slapping her hand the amount of food that gets fed to the dog has drastically decreased! I am thrilled with the success but sad that my little baby has to start learning lessons and being told no. I have realized that once this begins there will only be more and more reasons for her to be punished (and if she turns out anything like me we are in for a long haul!). I think I will try to savor these days when it is just throwing food on the floor.

warm weather!

We have had several days now of "warm" weather! For us, in February, that means that it has actually gotten into the low 40s! Snow and ice are beginning to melt away and we have been able to go out of the house a few times.

We even found GRASS!!

And the puddles in our backyard (where the river use to be...) have thawed and opened up quite a bit more.

Saturday we also went to the 1st birthday party of a friend of ours Aiden! It was really fun to see Sam interact with all the little kids.

She loved the balloons!

This is Aiden the birthday boy.

They played really well together.

And Sam even got to participate in the ball toss game that Mel set up for all the kids. It was so cute.

The weekend was capped off with a great dinner out last night with friends, a bit of cards and then lots of house work today. It always makes me feel better about the coming week when the house is a little bit cleaner.

Hope you all had a great weekend!!

someone asked for pictures!

I'll do you one better!






My sister inspired us to try our first art project...let's just say it did not go as well as I had hoped!


She looks just a little less than enthusiastic about the whole thing.
And she was way more interested in playing with the paper (throwing it, eating it, waving it around) then putting the paint on the paper!
But I forced her to make something kind of cute so family be watching your mailboxes next week for your first piece of SAM ART!

One Day (MORNING) and...

I ALREADY NEED A VACATION! I have only been home and with Sam for a few hours and I am ready to pull my hair out. She stayed up way too late last night and so her schedule is really thrown off. She wouldn't eat her normal big breakfast which meant that she was crying for a bottle way earlier than she should have been. She refused to play with any of her toys and wanted all of mine (computer, dishes, phone, remotes, etc.). She is crying over the slightest fall or drop to her bottom (which is does all the time since she is working on her walking).
She even cried when she couldn't pull her sock off BECAUSE IT WAS STILL ON HER FOOT AND SHE WAS STANDING! Ridiculous.
I had grand plans of doing laundry, unpacking, cleaning and a bit of relaxing today but I don't think much of that is going to happen. She is napping right now and I am too tired to do any of it. Rats.

I'm Back!

Blog world I have missed you!
I was so busy last week and since nothing really major happened to report on I did not ever do a post. Then I was gone all weekend. But I am home now and even though I still don't have anything major to report I decided I just NEEDED to come on and say hello.

I had a work conference this weekend and it was fabulous! I saw friends and colleagues that I have not seen in a while. Saw some great presentations. Went cross country skiing in some of the most beautiful country in Wisconsin. Watched lots of birds, tracked wolf tracks, found a porcupine den and thoroughly enjoyed the over 30 degree weather that we had on Saturday. Overall just a really great weekend.

Chris had Sam all weekend and it seems like they had a great time too! Their weekend included a grocery store trip, laundry, watching a volleyball tournament, going for a walk, baking a cake, a second trip to the grocery store and lots of playing.

Well, I hope you all had a great weekend!


A couple pictures that Chris took from their weekend...