4/11/2012...in status updates

• I love having a three-year-old who enjoys Glee as much as I do (probably more!) (as she dances around the living room).

• This morning I took the girls to an organized play group with my friend Heather.  It was great to see her and meet some other really nice moms.  I don't get out enough.

• I got to try one of those new Dorito tacos, and all I can say is - it tasted exactly the way I expected it would.

• Hollie asked me to hold my hands out flat, palms up, so that she could build a house on them with her blocks.  As she started, she looked at me sternly and said, "Don't eat it."

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We road-tripped for Easter.  Just took the ferry over to the Olympic Peninsula and had a nice escape from the routine and from the nail-biting wait for our new house.  We didn't have a camera, but we took some awesome video.  It really is beautiful up here.  I'll get the video posted as soon as it's edited down.

Blake's 9-month check-up

20 lbs. 2 oz. (75th percentile)
27 inches (60th percentile)

Lookin' good!

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Also, we will be staying in our furnished apartment until the end of the month.  Unlikely that we'll be closing on our house before then, but hey, every little bit helps.

We'll keep you posted.  :)

Something to think about

Hollie has been educating me about the Easter Bunny today.

First of all, it's the Easter Rabbit.

Secondly, "The Easter Rabbit isn't a man-rabbit - the Easter Bunny is a lady-rabbit."

I guess you really do learn something new every day.

The 10-cent roller coaster tour

To make up for the inability to take pictures, I decided to take some video of Hollie brushing her teeth last night. I always sing her the Brush Your Teeth song by Raffi (couldn't find a good link), which always gets Blake very excited.  It quickly escalated from there...

[Do not watch this if you're prone to motion sickness!  This is 14-minutes of pretty shaky camera work.]

Mama's commentary

I'm disappointed that Blake didn't get as excited as she normally does during the ch-ch-ch-ch's.  She practically dances most nights when we sing it.

No, my hip-hold is not normally that awkward-looking.  She was slipping down the whole first minute or so, until I set her down.

Hollie embarked on this apartment tour entirely unprompted.  I don't know what inspired her!

At 3:56 - "There's my book about going potty."  Love it.

I love how when she doesn't know the word for the heater or the outlet she just says, "There's...that."

Yes, we are using cardboard boxes as tables in the playroom.

Yes, we tend to use "take video" and "take a picture" interchangeably.

The wild animal noises at 10:47?  All Hollie.  No kidding.

At 11:40 - That was a pack-n-play bassinet folded up in our room.  Blake slept in it for maybe the first week we were here, before we moved her to Hollie's room, so I was really surprised that she remembered what it was.

At 12:30 - "There's my knee.  There's my owie."  It had been healed for a while, but she always remembers her owies long after they're gone.

Yes, at 13:27 she is pointing out Daddy in the bathroom.  :)

You found us!

Yay!

It's my birthday, so I have to get back to the festivities (we just got home from the library and have a stack of new books to read over...and over...and over), but I'd like to briefly update all of you on how we're doing.

• We are still living in the furnished apartment provided by our relocation package.  Our thirty days are up at the end of this week but we are waiting to hear if they will let us stay longer.  We were waiting until the last possible moment to see if we would have some news on the new house, but nada.  Don't worry, we have a several options on the table if they can't let us stay here.  
• I have lost my camera battery charger, which is the #1 reason why there hasn't been any posting going on at all.  I've looked and looked, but finally gave up and ordered a new one last night.  Picture-taking and posting will start up again ASAP.
• Blake is crawling like a fiend.  Wow, can she go fast!  We have to grab her quick whenever someone's going in or out the front door, because, no joke, she'll try to escape.  And the poor girl, it took her two weeks to figure out the layout of this apartment on her own.  Until then, she would sit and cry if she was left in a room all alone.  
• Hollie.  Oh, my three-year old.  She picks out her own outfits now (it is not open to suggestion), and boy, some of them are doozies.  Pictures to come.
• On a related note, one night about a week ago she refused to put on her "bedtime underwear" (aka Pull-Up), and insisted on wearing her regular underwear to bed.  Of course, we let her.  She was probably ready for this transition months ago, but with holidays and the big move coming up, we waited.  She has been waking up to use the potty nearly every night right from the start, and staying dry til the morning about five of every seven nights.  Using the Pull-Ups was really just for my convenience, for the sake of doing less laundry.  So, last week Hollie took the reins away and decided on her own that she was ready, and hasn't looked back.  I think in the last week I've had to wash the sheets maybe twice, so she's really not doing any better or worse. 
• We took her to her first gymnastics class last week.  I just felt so bad that she hadn't gotten any good interaction with kids her own age (aside from the playground) in over a month.  This class was only for the kids - parents could watch from the sidelines.  This is the first time we've taken this kind of class and I really had no idea how Hollie would do.  I won't lie - it was hilarious.  Her class had five kids, aged three to five, and one teacher, who was quite a bit younger than me.  She tried and tried to keep the kids attention, but with other classes going on, and the older kids using the big balance beam and parallel bars, it was a real struggle!  Many of the things she did were simple and fun enough for them...hopping along a row of spots on the floor, crawling through a tunnel...but every few moments one or two kids would just go wandering away, before being called and herded back to the group.  The very last thing they did was jump in the foam pit.  I though Hollie would jump right in, because the pit had been the obvious aim of her wandering at least twice earlier in the class  She watched all the other kids just in one at a time, but when she got up to the edge, she gave it some thought...sat down, and carefully climbed in to join them. 
• Daniel brought home Ivar's fish and chips for my birthday lunch.  

That's all.  Okay, not so brief.

Can't wait until my charger gets here and I can start taking pictures again.  

Until next time!