Saturday, June 30, 2012

Funny Things She Says

Afternoons and weekends are a riot at our house.  I think we laugh about 80% of the time.  Mostly it's about stuff that Annika says now.  She really makes it obvious what phrases we overuse and that she's listening to every single thing we say!

She always says "look" and points to things now.  Not sure which one of us does that.

The other day on the way home from Josh's work she told me "I told daddy, come on, get up, and then I kicked him and cried.  Daddy cried.  No, no, bad girl, no kicking.  Sorry daddy."  I guess I got the full story on that one.  On the weekends when I try to wake up Josh I always tell him "come on, get up" so now she does it to him every day during the weekend.

Then another day she had to pee and she says "I need to go potty.  Can you hold it?  Yes.  Wait till we get home."  I guess I don't even need to say anything anymore!!

She told Annabel a few weeks ago "No touchies (that's how she says touch) the feet babys (her name for Annabel).  No touchies!"

She had an accident in the car the other day because she couldn't hold her pee till we got home and said "Oh no, pee pee in the panties.  Not good, not good.  My panties are wet!  Yuck, bad girl, pee pee in potty."  Seriously, we can't even reprimand her for anything anymore, she does just does it for us!

Josh and I went for physicals together with our new primary doctor.  We had to bring the girls with us (yep, they kind of have to go everywhere with us) and when the doctor was listening to my heart and lungs Annika kept saying "momma's crying, daddy, momma's crying".  Josh kept telling her that I wasn't crying but she just insisted. When my exam was over she looked at me and said "I NEED a hug and kiss".  Such a sweet girl!

Every time I call Josh during the day to see how he's doing Annika yells in the background "say hi to mommas, say hi to mommas".  Then when she says hi she ALWAYS says "hi mommas, move it, move it".  She's saying "move it, move it" like they do in the song in the Madagascar movie.  I don't know why she always has to mention it but it's funny.

Friday, June 29, 2012

Sister Love

Annika: Really?  You are going to try to make me pose with her again?
Annabel: Hey, it's not all that great posing with you either!!


Annika: I hate posing with the baby!!!
Annabel: Hahaha, I farted.

Thursday, June 28, 2012

Uh Oh, I Did It.


"Don't rush me when we're grocery shopping.  I have a lot of things on my list and I don't want to forget anything."

OMG.  I said it to Josh and my mom used to say it to me all the time when I used to take her shopping.  In fact, when my dad and I went to Sweden back in 2007 Josh took my mom grocery shopping one day and she said this to him!

Wednesday, June 27, 2012

**Random**

~I'm a little surprised Annabel has no teeth and no sign of teeth.  Annika had 2 at 6 months old.  Another thing to prove how different babies can be!

~I hate not being able to go out for a run in this rain!  I haven't been on a run since Friday, luckily I was able to get out for 4 miles.  I'm off work on this Friday again so I'm hoping to get a run in before Annika's check up at the dentist.

~I did take one picture from our rainy weekend:


Look how big Annabel is!!!  This was taken in our garage.  We have a porch but it doesn't have a roof, just screen, which sucks when it rains.  We ended up hanging out in the garage all weekend long and our neighbor and her two kids that are 11 and 13 hung out too.  We had a really good time drinking wine (just the adults), eating snacks, playing football in the rain (the kids and Josh) and listening to music.  Who would have thought that our neighbor would like all the same music as us??  Anyone who likes Incubus and Sublime is okay with us!

~I found a dance school for Annika that takes 2 year olds since she'll still be 2 in September when classes start.  It's just called "dance" it's not specific to ballet, tap or jazz so I'm interested to see what it's like.  It's right down the street from us and it's only $40 a month.  I can't wait to sign her up!


Tuesday, June 26, 2012

Rain, Rain, Go Away!

I'm not sure if people knew but tropical storm Debby has been sitting over us for days now. We've had almost non-stop rain since Friday!

I haven't been out to take pictures but you go to this Facebook page you can see some of the damage that happened steps from where I work.  Actually Monday I was pretty surprised I even had to go into work as we were under tornado warnings and tropical storm warnings.  I usually leave the house before 6am to go to work but I waited till almost 7am until the blinding rain and strong winds had slowed down.

Luckily we've only had our power flick off and on a few times and we have no flooding.  A few of the roads we usually drive on are flooded though and there are a lot of down trees and power lines in the entire area.

I hear that we're supposed to continue to have rain until next Monday!!  It's so depressing to not be able to go out for a rain or take the girls out anywhere!

Monday, June 25, 2012

Who Sleeps In Your Bed??

This is Annika's bed and what it looked like one day after her nap.  As you can see she sleeps with a lot of toys.

 We have Babe, another pig, Violet (a LeapFrog dog), Elmo (who sings the A,B,C's), Madeline is throw in the corner for some reason, her favorite blue monkey and then all the little random toys.  I also just noticed there's a sea horse under her bed that plays music, that was actually a Christmas present for Annabel that she keeps stealing from her.


From the far left by the pillow we have "momma duck".  Momma duck is actually a hippie rubber duckie.  Then we have "pink car" and "yellow car".  Next up is "daddy duck", he is a Frankenstein rubber duckie.  Then a penguin (I think it's from "Surf's Up", we've never seen it but Annika loves penguins), then a cow, then one of my old My Little Ponies (to her it's another cow for some reason, she refuses to call it a pony), then another rubber duck followed by green frog, yellow frog and red frog.

And don't think she doesn't realize someone is missing for a second.  In the middle of the night she'll wake up screaming for "momma duck" or her cow and then find them herself before I can even get out of bed.

I have to say that I'm a sucker for allowing her to sleep with whoever she wants.  I did the same thing when I was little.  I actually remember my parents telling me I was limited to 20 different stuffed animals because at one time I was way too crowded in bed.

Sunday, June 24, 2012

Running with a Baby

This is another post moved over from my old blog, originally published May 26, 2011:

Yay! I had a fellow blogger ask me a question about running with a baby. Perfect! I needed something to blog about besides I feel like I'm going to puke 24/7 now, how I'm wearing sea bands to control it which means I am now wearing sweaters in the 90 degree heat to hide them or the fact that my monster red headed 18 month old likes to eat earrings. (clearly I was pregnant with Annabel when I wrote this!!)

So running, with the monster, here we go:

The longest run I've done with Annika was 6 miles when I first started training for my first half marathon. It was on the beach, where the sand is sort of hard right by the water. I ran with a group so I believe we took about 1 1/2 hours to complete it since they have this "we won't leave anyone behind" stuff. Sorry, I like to run my speed and leave some behind, that would be why I run alone now!

How did I survive the 6 miles with Annika or any distance for that matter??? I feed her, a lot. I won't lie. It's a thing we call "shut up food" and it's awful (and we never leave home without some sort of "shut up food" packed with her). If she cries I feed. We have a jogging stroller with a large basket below. I carry in there my water, my Gatorade, Annika's sippy cup of water, and a large container of goldfish. I sprinkle some goldfish on her tray and she snacks. Then she usually sits back and relaxes a bit and takes in the scenery, then she freaks the fuck out, I give her more goldfish and the process continues. Another thing that helps her is if I listen to the i-Pod without headphones on so she can listen. She loves listening to music and sometimes I can see her feet moving to the music.

It works though. I was doing 5 miles at least once a week with her for a while and she was handling it well even though the goldfish consumption in our house tripled.

The other question was how long will Annika tolerate her stroller? As long as there are goldfish she's pretty good. I wouldn't take her for longer than 2 hours though because she'd probably get uncomfortable but on that 6 mile run she actually fell asleep about 30 minutes before we finished which was wonderful!

Saturday, June 23, 2012

Chalk

Funny that we've been coloring with chalk on the sidewalk outside our townhouse for the past two weeks and then I see this article about a neighborhood banning children from using chalk!

Seriously??

I'm pretty sure chalk is a pretty innocent thing and it washes away.  In the summer it rains so much that our fully decorated sidewalk from this weekend is already washed clean away.



After reading this article I wonder if someone will say something about our artwork outside.  The sidewalk is only used by us and is directly in front of our home.  I haven't seen any other kids in the neighborhood color with chalk.

It's such a fun activity that we're going to buy some more chalk for next weekend.  Our plans are to actually color the entire sidewalk just for fun!

Friday, June 22, 2012

Happy Half Birthday Annabel!!

Can you even believe that this was 6 months ago???



Because we sure can't believe it!


How did our sweet baby already become 6 months old???  Time sure flies with baby #2.  I swear we just brought her home from the hospital yesterday!

But you do realize what this means??  Only 6 months and 3 days till Christmas.  Yikes!!

Thursday, June 21, 2012

Happy Birthday!

Today is Josh's 31st Birthday.  On top of being an amazing husband who pretty much makes me laugh every single day he is, of course, one of the best dads ever to our girls.  He really is and I know people say stuff like that all the time about their husbands but mine really is a winner :)

Here are a few random pics I pulled off of his Facebook page that I thought were cute/sweet/adorable:

Being a goof with Annabel

Carrying sweet, sleepy, chubby Annika!

Love!

Picking flowers

With Annika at 6 months old.

Us, way back in 2007-ish pre-babies.

 Comforting Annabel after getting her ears pierced.

Having fun with Annika in the pool.

Annabel laughing at him!  See, he is a funny guy.

Serving me and my aunt drinks.

Letting Annika do whatever she wants to him!

Being goofy at Thanksgiving last year.

Toddler tossing with Annika!


Wednesday, June 20, 2012

I'm Actually Reading a Book

I have about 1 hour of free time to myself everyday.  Usually I spend that time pretty much wasting it by playing around reading blogs, playing on Facebook or Pinterest.

I'm a total slacker when it comes to reading books.  I have read the entire Harry Potter collection and all the Twilight books.  I read the first Hunger Games book and can I just say I feel like I wasted my time with it.  I know it's like the "trendy" book to read but I didn't care for it.  Anyway, I read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and loved it and the second book in the series but haven't had time to read the third book.

So I heard about the book 7.  I was interested to see how the author gives up 7 things in her life during 7 months that she feels are excessive.  For example, food.  She picked 7 foods to eat for an entire month and that's all she ate.  Then she did it with clothing.  She had 7 articles of clothing and wore those for the entire month.  My favorite so far (of course, I haven't finished reading, I've been trying to finish this book for months) is that her family had to give away 7 possessions each day for a month.

I think about all the excessive things in our lives.  I think I could come up with some sort of 7 challenge for our family.  I've been reading a few other blogs were people are trying the same sort of thing, for example, one person is walking everywhere to buy their food.  That would actually be pretty easy for us since we live barely a mile from Target and about 1/2 a mile from a Fresh Market.

The main point of the author's story is to get closer to God.  I grew up going to church.  We were there every Sunday morning for Sunday school and the service, every Sunday evening and every Wednesday evening.  I haven't been to church in at least 3-4 years.  I used to meet my dad on Sunday mornings at his church sometime.  In the last 3 years Josh and I have only stepped foot in a church to go to funerals, my parents joint funeral and my grandmother's.

I'm hoping to start going to church again soon.  The hardest part is finding a good church that we feel we can grow with.  Josh also grew up going to church every week but he'd prefer to go to the service and that's all.  I like to participate more.  With my parents I used to help teach a Sunday school class, we always had the 4th-5th grade boys class.  Then I'd help with Wednesday night classes for the kids and Vacation Bible School in the summer.  I miss doing those things and I miss that Annika isn't participating in those things!

Now we just both need to get motivated to do it and go and once we get going again be prepared for our own little 7 challenge!

How to Behave in a Cubical


I'm moving some of my posts from my old blog over here, this one is from May 3rd, 2010:


A few of our temps (and a few regular employees) at work seem to not know how to behave in an environment where you sit in a cubical. Unfortunately these people have been moved into the row next to mine! I would love to send this list out to them:

1. Do not sing especially if you sign off key. If you sing all can hear and it's annoying and I will tell on you as I did today (was a bit of a tattler because I was going insane).

2. Keep your radio volume on medium to low even if you have ear buds in because your cube neighbor can hear it. I personally don't like knowing that you're listening to Miley Cyrus especially when you're sitting 3 cubes over.

3. Watch out with eating smelly foods in your cube. There's nothing worse than smelling tuna all day long.

4. Speaking of tuna...practice good hygiene. Gosh, I really don't want to know when you're on your period, I can already tell from your attitude!

5. Watch your voice volume when speaking on your cell phone. I now know that someone named Julie is living a questionable lifestyle, someone you use to know almost got abducted (but she would have deserved it) and that Jim hasn't been playing golf lately.

6. Also turn off your ringer on your cell phone. If I hear that old fashion telephone ring again I'm going to come over and stomp on your phone!!!!

7. If you would like to have a conversation with your cube neighbor please get your lazy ass off your chair and walk over to them. Have a good old fashion conversation face to face and don't scream over 3 cubical walls to talk to them especially about politics. If I hear you Obama-loving-fools fighting with the one guy in the row that is a Republican I'm going to scream!

8. Speaking of Mr. Republican, you do not know everything so anytime anyone has a conversation within an ear shot of you we don't need to hear your 2 cents. Yes, yes, we know you are better than us all because you are going to medical school. Blah. Sometimes you should just sit quietly in your cube.

9. If you smoke air yourself out a bit. At least 4 of you smoke and when you all come back to your desks after taking smoke breaks together it smells like I'm at da club.

10. And to the Amazon lady that is about 6 feet tall, I small word of advice not related to the cubical, if you wear very high heels and short skirts at your height you force us vertically challenged people to feel even shorter and have the ability to tell what color panties you have on just by looking up. Just be careful you off key singer...

Tuesday, June 19, 2012

Oh Another Poop Story



I know a lot of parents who don't even have poop stories.  It kind of sucks that we have a lot of them.

Thursday during the day Josh slept a little bit more than normal.  He must have been exhausted because he didn't hear any of the activity that Annika was participating in.

Josh moves Annika's potty into the bedroom in the mornings.  He usually takes a short nap while she watches a Blues Clues DVD or something else slightly educational (we limited movies to the weekends only now).  So Annika uses her potty and usually wakes up Josh to tell him she was a good girl and that she went pee, then he has to get up and let her dump it in the toilet (if you don't let her dump it right away it ends up on the floor, lets just say we need a carpet cleaner soon).

I guess Annika pooped in the potty.  Then she didn't tell Josh.  Instead of being a normal human and leaving it alone she played with it.  She put the poop into two small food containers that had snacks in them and closed the lids.  Then she rubbed the remaining poop that was in the potty all around the potty making it almost impossible to clean off!  After that, just for good measure, she rubbed poop into the carpet in three different spots.

Then Josh woke up because he smelled poop.  He knew it was going to be bad but was worse was that he didn't have time to clean it all up!!  He threw away the food containers and had to leave the rest because he had to get ready for work.

So I got home, like 4 hours after this mess happened.  I found some foam carpet cleaner stuff and sprayed the crap (literally) out of the carpet.  Luckily it lifted all the stains but the smell was awful.  I sprayed a ton of Febreeze.  Then as I was sorting out Annika's toys to be sure no one had poop on them I felt a "squish" under my foot.  I closed my eyes, looked at Annika and said "what is on my foot".  To which she replied, laughing, "My poop!!".

After I washed off my foot I put Annika's potty in the bathtub and sprayed it with the shower head to loosen the poop.

Our room smelled like poop for 3 days.  Lets just say I'm glad I sleep in Annabel's room at night.

All Annika has to say about it "No touchies the poop, OKAY???"  Yeah, hopefully she doesn't touchie any poop again...

Monday, June 18, 2012

Our Weekend

What a busy weekend we had!

Annika and I started our weekend with some grocery shopping.  Then we tried to bake a cake, from scratch....yeah that's not happening again...

Here is my helper:

And here is part of the disaster.  Both cakes stuck to the pans, bad.  It was just a big crumbly mess and even if it didn't stick it tasted like crap.  This was the recipe I used.

Yep, I will be sticking to box cakes and tube frostings.  Even the frosting tasted like crap!

The finished product.  This cake was supposed to be a Father's Day/Birthday cake for Josh.

After that disaster I went upstairs to see if a certain sweet baby was awake.  She was!  Such a lazy girl, she didn't wake up till after 11am.

 We posed for some pictures.  She's just too cute.

Daddy and Annabel, he's kind of cute too :)  look how big Annabel is getting though!  She's such a tall girl already!

After I destroyed the cake we took Josh out for dinner at one of our favorite places, Old Salty Dog.  Here are my two goof balls cheesing it up.

I've decided to refuse ordering Annika a children's meal at restaurants because we're not going to pay $6.99 for boxed mac&cheese or fried chicken tenders.  Instead she shared with us.  She ate HALF my piece of blackened Mahi Mahi, some of our fries and 2 lemon wedges.  Yep, 2 lemon wedges, she ate them like oranges and loved it.  I was proud of her eating the Mahi Mahi, she even asked for more twice.  Luckily it was a HUGE piece and it was on a sandwich so I still had plenty.

Then we went to the store and bought daddy a cheesecake!  There are 3 blue candles and 1 white candle for 31.

Then after all that eating we decided to run it off!  We did our 2 mile evening walk.  Josh and Annika are about to race here and she's telling him "1, 2, 3, GO!"
Sunday morning, daddy with his girls:

We went shopping to get Josh some new swim shorts.  Old Navy was having really good sales but he couldn't find anything.  I picked up this cute bathing suit for Annika, only $7!  I got 2 tank tops on sale for $6.50 each.  Then we went to Marshalls to look for shorts for Josh and I bought Annabel a much needed pack of new bibs.  So for Father's Day all of the girls got something new but poor Josh didn't find a thing!


 Instead of another evening walk we colored with chalk:

Earlier on Sunday Annika loudly exclaimed while standing on a dining room chair, "I look beautiful in this dress!"  We made her say it again to be sure we heard it right, we did.

My little giggle monster.

At first while we were coloring daddy and Annabel decided to chill at our front door. 

Daddy makes Annabel laugh and smile.

And make funny faces!

And laugh a bit more!

Annika got tired of coloring and since I bought thin chalk Josh and I decided to use it all up coloring our entire sidewalk for fun while Annika rolled around in the grass. 

Josh was getting pretty into it.  He was doing some shading here with his hand.  We both took art in school so we really enjoyed this, probably a bit more than Annika!

 Our masterpiece!  We're going to buy some better chalk so we can really decorate our sidewalk soon.

Sunday, June 17, 2012

Father's Day to My Dad

I've moved this post over from my old blog, I posted this last year on Father's Day:


I have attempted to ignore Father's Day but I know I can't. This is the first Father's Day without my dad. I couldn't even pick out a Father's Day card for Josh this year because I knew I'd see ones that I would have bought for my dad. I don't think Josh minds, or he's kind of forgotten all about it!

I remember our last Father's Day together. He had to work on the actual day but he was off the Friday before. I left work early, picked up Annika from daycare and we went on our first outing together, just the three of us.

First we went to Sam Ash because dad always loved going there. We played around with the guitars and drums and Annika had a ball listening to all the music. When she would hear someone else playing she'd try to get away from me to look in the direction it was coming from.

The we ate at The Old Salty Dog restaurant on Longboat Key. I totally got my love of seafood from my dad. We shared a dozen raw oysters and we both had sandwiches. I gave Annika a taste of her first french fry and she spit it out. It was also Annika's first time sitting in a highchair like a big girl! We sat on the water and watched a big group of mini sailboats go by.

There isn't a day that goes by that I don't miss him. I miss his long drawn out conversations on the phone. I miss hearing him play the guitar. I even miss him driving me crazy asking to borrow money or complaining about mom. I just miss him.










And I really miss how he's missing her grow up: