more to share

Here is a bit more from our St. Louis trip...
We got to spend a great night with my good friends Tracy and Brad. Sam was not sick yet so it was actually a good time. They got Sam the best music set, which Sam loves already. Its a bit noisy but I think that is what they wanted!!


Today was a big day....to end 2008 Sam waved goodbye (or hi I'm not quite sure!) to me and she CLAPPED!! And not the kind of clapping where her hands just happened to come together but she slapped them together on purpose!! I am so proud. We have tricks now!

Okay, SO LONG 2008 and HELLO 2009!!! Have a fun and SAFE night everyone.

home!

I have two homes.
There is one home where I grew up, have more memories than I can count and always feel comfortable. I spent the last nine days at this home. It was wonderful to be home. I got to spend real quality time with all of my family, cook with my mom, shop with my mom and sister (grocery shopping counts!) and party with lots of people. Sure there was an ice storm, sick/crying/fussy/out-of-control kids, two trips to the emergency room, two trips to urgent care and sleepless nights for everyone but it was still a great visit. It wasn't the perfect Christmas and will probably always go down as "2008 The Sick Christmas!" but we made the best of it. I just hope we all recover quickly and get back to life as normal. But with all the problems, I sit here in my current home and want to get back in my car and go back to the comfort of being close to my family. I miss them immensely already. I hope they know how much we appreciate them, love them and are grateful that they let us invade their lives for nine days (Chris and I are pretty sure we wore out our welcome on day six or seven!!).
Here are some of the great moments from the week...



We are home now, unpacked, showered and getting ready to eat dinner. Chris and I are both sick (probably just colds) and Sam is still coughing really badly. I am hoping that the antibiotics will kick in soon and help her find some relief.
More to share but I am too tired so it will have to wait till tomorrow.

christmas blues

I look forward to the 23rd, 24th and 25th of December all year long. They always prove to be three of my favorite days of the year; filled with family, love, peace, excitement and tradition. This year however things are not going exactly according to plan.
My nieces and nephew are sick. Okay, I know that for those of you that follow my (whole) family you know that this is nothing new. But this time Bailey has pneumonia, the docs are thinking Parker may have asthma which is causing her two month old cough to keep getting worse, and Grayson just spent last night in the ER and now we know that he has RSV! So my nieces and nephew are REALLY sick. We know that when family around us is sick there is a very good chance that one or all of us is going to catch what they have but we didn't drive all the way down here to not see them and I am not afraid of catching a cold. It makes me a little nervous for Sam to catch RSV but if it happens we will deal with it; it still won't make me not spend time with my sister and her family during Christmas. But for my sister when your children are sick, when you are getting NO sleep because of fussy, not sleeping kids, when you spend five hours in the ER on the 23rd it kind of puts a damper on your Christmas spirit. I hate that her family is not perfect right now; it breaks my heart. But she is the strongest person I know (proven last night when she held her son as he had tubes stuck up his nose and was just screaming, she sat there very calm and comforted him knowing that it needed to be done to help him...I would have NOT been able to be there for my child the way that she was for Grayson. I am just not that strong) and she will make it through this hard time and still make memories, have fun and keep a smile on her face.
SO sick kids have changed plans and made things a bit more complicated for the family but the weather is also not helping the holiday spirit. An ice storm hit this area on the 23rd (which is the night that our WHOLE family, mom's side, gets together; a huge party that we spent all day getting ready for) and so only a handful of the family was able to make it out for the party. There are people that have not met Sam that I was so excited to see and now I don't know when we will see them. Just a bit disappointed. But we made the most of it and some other family and friends came over instead. It was great to see them and we still ate great food and played games.
I am trying really hard not to get too down. I want to still enjoy our holiday, have fun with my family, my husband and make memories on Sam's first Christmas. But I have the Christmas blues. Things are not perfect and I know it will be 364 days before I get these days back again.
Tonight is an amazingly quiet dinner with just my parents, church and then off to sleep to wait for Santa. As long as I don't ruin the traditional Christmas eve bread things should go okay tonight. (keep your fingers crossed about the bread!)
I am going to get the Christmas spirit BACK, not sure how but I swear that I will.
Hope your holiday is illness and ice free!!

Here is one AWESOME moment from the party last night -


Note - Just to prove how strong my sister is go here to read just how she is NOT letting her sick kids take away her holiday spirit!

she just wouldn't bleed!

So yesterday Sam had her nine month appointment. It was just Sam and I because they said that she wouldn't need any shots this time so I told Chris he didn't have to come (yes I am a wimp and like to have back-up when my daughter has to get shots!). Well they were WRONG!
They did all the usual stuff (head = off the charts!; height = 29inches, 90th percentile; weight = just over 20 pounds, 75th percentile) and then said that they would need to prick her finger for a blood screening and she needed the flu shot. Damn it I had to do the hard stuff by myself. But okay, I can be a strong mom and get through this with her. The nurse came in with to do the finger prick and Sam didn't cry at all...but she also didn't bleed! No kidding the nurse held the tube under her finer for over five minutes and barely got a drop. The room was so cold and Sam's poor hands were so frozen that the blood was just not flowing. So the nurse gave up and said she would have to draw her blood for real from her arm! Now, getting blood drawn makes me cry, yes every time I cry! But you don't understand...my veins are very weak and it can sometimes take 2 - 3 tries per arm before they finally find a vein that will fill the tube. So I was scared for Sam. While that nurse went out to get the blood drawing stuff another one came in to do the flu shot. She was great and super quick but of course Sam screamed. I got her calmed down from that and in walks the other nurse to draw her blood. She couldn't find a vein. Never stuck her, thank goodness. She never even saw one in her arm well enough to stick the needle in anywhere. So she gave up again. Left, again, and came back with a hand warmer to try and get the blood in Sam's finger flowing. So we sat and chatted and let Sam play with the hand warmer for a few minutes. Then she pricked Sam's finger, this time Sam screamed and the blood came flooding out! Blood actually came out of both holes that she had poked and was dripping all over the place. Sam continued to scream.
All in all we were there for over an hour and Sam was not a happy girl but she made it through it all and so did I.
Good grief!

Enlund family moments

And some of the funny moments from the weekend...

Who needs presents when you can have BOWS!





How about a little dog butt in your face?





Notice how excited and enthusiastic about the slogan I sound...Sam not so much!!

Enlund Christmas 2008

What a great weekend!! So much to share from our Christmas celebration with grandpa and Nana.
It was great to see them and spend the whole weekend doing nothing but catching up, eating great food and playing with Sam. It was a wonderful Christmas celebration. And the presents weren't too shabby either! Sam had presents to open not only from her grandparents, but from the great-grandparents and her Aunt Lori and Uncle Carl. So many new toys!
Here are just a few...
This was the first gift that Sam opened on the Enlund Christmas morning. It was a Baby's first Christmas ornament that she got to then hang on the tree. So cute.

Two Plan Toys from Aunt Lori and Uncle Carl that are just amazing.

She got a book of the ABC's of golf from grandpa and Nana. It is pretty surprising that they didn't really have to stretch to get most of the letters. Okay, X and Z were pretty big stretches but other than that most of them actually worked!!
Love the Disney princess bike that grandpa and Nana gave us, but the batteries my need to come out!
Here is Sam testing out the slagon (sled+wagon=slagon! is what we decided to call it) in the living room.

Chris and I got some pretty amazing gifts as well. I got my dream vacuum the Dyson DC17. It can suck up anything and I have already vacuumed the whole house. I love it!!
Then we also got this AMAZING stroller. Apparently my sister helped out with the selection of this bad boy (THANKS AUNT JOJO!) and I don't think it can get much cooler. They also got us the double stroller converter kit so that we can still use it when we have a second baby. Both gifts were such a surprise and I can't wait to test out the stroller when the weather warms up.

Thank you so much Grandpa and Grandma Hill, Aunt Lori and Uncle Carl and Grandpa and Nana!!!
Merry Christmas Enlund Family!
More to share from the weekend...be back later!

just fun stuff

She has learned how to stand up in her crib now and when you go in there after a nap or in the morning she peeks her head over the tail and just smiles at you so big. She seems so proud to be standing there. I just love it. So this morning while I was taking Polly out Sam was waiting patiently for me in the family room. She crawled her way over to the door and discovered that the door was cold and apparently delicious! (I actually went back inside, got the camera and then came back out to get a picture of her licking the door!!)
Sam's favorite hair style right now (okay, the easiest hair style for me to do!) is one sprout directly on the top of her head. This is a picture of what her hair looks like when the sprout comes out at the end of the day. Last night at dinner her hair and face were such a mess we just had to get some pictures!

And here is what had both Chris and I cracking up last night during bath time. Sam not only finds glass doors delicious but bath water too!



In about an hour Chris's parents will be arriving for the weekend. We are doing Christmas with them this weekend. I am so excited for them to see all the new things Sam has learned how to do and for Sam's first time to open presents for Christmas. I think she is going to sit in my lap, pull open the paper and be so excited when she gets each gift! hahaha okay maybe not but I am thrilled to have some new toys for her (or me!) in this house.


Merry Early Christmas Everyone!