Thursday, March 14, 2013

Birthday Girl






On her birthday morning, playing with the balloons I put in her room.

(belated) Birthday  to my wonderful, sweet Britta. I am so grateful to be her mom. I am definitely not the most patient mother, but I am working on it. We have so much fun together and I love watching her learn and grow so much every day. She is such a happy, sweet girl and we can't imagine life without her.

The last post I did about Britta was six months ago. She has changed so much since then. She is super talkative. Just in the last two months or so, her vocabulary has exploded and I think other people besides me can now understand her also. She says things all the time that make me laugh and wonder "where did you learn that?" She sang the whole "Rock a bye Baby" song to herself in the car the other day. I think I have sung that to her like once, but ask her to sing "twinkle, twinkle little star" which she gets before every nap and she looks at you like you're crazy.

She counts to ten, but notoriously leaves out six and seven. She sings "A,B,C,W,Y,Z" as her ABCs--it's kind of adorable.

She's recently been on somewhat of a food strike. All she ever wants to eat is cereal--especially "raisy bran." I think she is subsisting off of cereal and milk alone.

She is OBSESSED with Dumbo. Chris found it on Netflix a month ago and put it on one night and now every day she asks me to watch "baby elephant." When I do put it on, she literally sits on the couch for the entire hour and doesn't even blink. It's amazing what you can get done in an hour, by the way.

She loves to play with Play-Doh. She asks me like ten times a day what I am doing and when I ask her back she always answers "playin play-doh" even when she isn't. When she does play with it, it entertains her forever but she makes a HUGE mess. I don't know how she gets it stuck to like every surface of her body and clothes, but she does.

She is off the binky except for sleeping times. I thought this would be a terrible transition but it was actually much easier than I expected. Plus, she loves to throw her binky back into her crib when I pick her up after her nap or in the morning. Sometimes when she gets really upset, she will ask for her binky and I tell her she has to go in her bed if she wants it. If she is really upset she will get in her crib and use it to calm down for a couple minutes and then call for me when she is ready to come out. It is actually awesome, like a calm down "time out" and then I save myself from getting angry (or angrier).

She is a terrible "mine" monster. I cannot tell you how much I hate this word, and the fact that it comes out of her mouth like fifty times a day. The concept of sharing is beyond lost on this child. Another child cannot even look at me with her saying "MY mommy." And that's just little old me, don't even get me started on her toys. Let's just say we're working on it.

Overall, she is so much fun. She loves her Daddy and her Grandma and Grandpa and cousins. She gets so excited when anyone she knows comes over, especially Grandpa. She loves to play hide and seek and have tickle fights with Dad. We couldn't ask for a sweeter girl. Plus, I think she's just about the cutest thing you ever saw. :)

Valentine's Day






I couldn't ask for a sweeter Valentine. This girl caught on pretty quick that Valentine's Day was somehow related to chocolate. She kept asking for her "present" which was all chocolate.  The next morning when I asked her what she wanted for breakfast she said "a chocolate treat." Me too, sister.

My other love pulled through and sent me a beautiful bouquet and chocolates and a teddy bear for Miss Britta. Next year we will actually be together for Valentine's day--I am so excited. We'll probably end up watching TV in our sweats, but at least we'll be together.

Friday, February 22, 2013

And a baby makes four



Coming at the end of August!

Sunday, February 3, 2013

Job

After three years of having a weekend husband, I am so happy to announce that I am going to have a real husband!! I could not be more excited. Most of you know that Chris' job has required him to be on the road Monday through Friday and this has been increasingly difficult as Britta gets older. Starting in April he will be working from home. PURE JOY!! It will be an adjustment for sure, but one I couldn't be happier to make.


Cabin

The week following Christmas we spent four nights up in Leavenworth, WA in a cabin we rented. We spent the week stuffing ourselves (I gained one pound for every day spent there) and riding snowmobiles. Britta loved the snow and probably ate a gallon's worth of the stuff. She was so cute in her snow clothes and such a trooper about talking them on and off ten times a day --more of a trooper than I was, that's for sure.










B and I were big fans of the hot tub. It is the perfect place to eat snow.





I just love watching this girl with her cousins. They have so much fun together. 




Christmas

We spent Christmas in Washington this year and as much as I missed my family, it was nice to stay home and relax. Chris had two glorious weeks off of work and it took me a full week to remember how on Earth I function without him. Then I looked at the dismal state of my house and the fact that I had taken a nap every afternoon that he had been gone and realized "hmmm...I guess we don't really function without him...tevs, let's take another nap, Britta."

Since we were going to be home for Christmas, being the young and naive girl that I am, I volunteered to host Christmas Eve dinner at our house. I couldn't understand why everyone jumped so quickly at the proposition. We had a feast and great fun reenacting the nativity, opening gifts, and playing games. And after the children went to bed, I let out a huge sigh of relief and gave silent props to my mom for doing this every year.

 How festive are these two?

 The adult table--stolen from the church with a dollar store tablecloth. We're classy people.


 We converted the basement into a playroom to try and entice the children downstairs. That lasted 2.5 minutes.









 Some angels and a baby Jesus. Baby Jesus is clearly the one with the doo rag. That's our interpretation anyways.
 Angel or devil? Hmm....
 Nifty gifties.



Christmas morning was wonderful.  We slept in until nine. Leisurely opened gifts and ate breakfast and spoiled Britta like any good parents of only one child should do. She was in a perpetual state of wonderment. Santa really came through with this stroller and baby doll, whom she promptly named Patty. I have no idea where she got that, but we like to call her "fatty Patty" -- Britta is not a fan of this nickname.





Birthday Girl

Twenty six never looked so good--I know you were all thinking it, so I 'll just go ahead and say it. The Dominican Republic was really my birthday present so it was a pretty low-key celebration this year. We had a nice family dinner of fish tacos (I could eat those every day) and a birthday cake that was really cheesecake. My husband knows me so well. Cake...pssh.

Chris did come through and get me some awesome new cookware as well. You know you're getting old when pots and pans are a desired birthday gift. Here's to 26!






Dress up



There is little in this world my child moves more than to dress up in Mom's clothes. They say imitation is the sincerest from of flattery, right? Her necessary accessories include: scarves, socks, and underwear around her neck. Everybody's doing it. 




She also loves to wear my shirts. She fashioned herself a robe out of one of my sweaters just yesterday--on the cutting edge of fashion, this one.



This was a particularly intriguing outfit from last week that included three pairs of underwear around her neck (all clean, thank goodness), a belt also around her neck, some socks pulled all the way up, and of course some red heels. This was all her, I was doing dishes when she clickety clacked her way out to show me.