Anja fix it

Anja has had an eventful few weeks. Mostly funny things - nothing truly monumental. Except for balancing the federal budget. But you know, all in a days work.

She has decided to start potty training again. Mostly at daycare though, unfortunately. We did decide to take full advantage of this round, however, and gave in to the reward system. It sure is incredible how much a package of 90 Sesame Street stickers being put on a purple file folder hanging on the fridge can motivate a 2 year old! But she's slowly improving. Who knows, maybe she'll actually be out of diapers during the day by the time Kif makes his/her appearance!

She also has started trying to help around the house a lot more. Here she is helping Daddy with the dishes. She thoroughly enjoys starting the dishwasher, too.

Besides her usual goofiness, she's started using her vocabulary to make us laugh more. For example, dinner time conversations are always interesting.

Dan: "What's Mommy?"

Anja: "Mommy a girl."

Dan: "What's Daddy?"

Anja: "Daddy a boy."

Dan: "What's Anja?"

Anja: "Anja a silly girl."

She has also started to proclaim her love for various things. Namely her toy train that we keep in the car, hot dish, and Yo Gabba Gabba.

But I think my favorite story from the past few weeks was definitely when she, Dan and Jim were out in the garage. Anja loves to play out there with Daddy and helps him "fix" things - like the tires of the car and rearranging his tools and bolts that he leaves laying around. But this one day, she was out there and picked up a wrench, proclaimed she was going to "fix Daddy" and proceeded to smack him in the head.

Awesome.

Of course, time out occurred and she refused to apologize for over 25 minutes. I finally got out of her and her toddler English that she didn't think she had to apologize because she honestly thought she was fixing Dan.

Love it.

In addition to smacking Dan upside the head with wrenches, Anja also now enjoys poking my belly button and yelling "Poke the baby!" Luckily, Kif doesn't seem to mind. In fact, even with a ton of poking and prodding the other day, stubborn, calm, and apparently sleepy Kif refused to wake up and move during a fetal echocardiogram the other day. S/he wouldn't get off his/her belly. Fetal echo attempt number 2 will be on the 1st. Hopefully Kif will cooperate this time.

And since I've managed to keep the diabetes under control with very little insulin so far, they've actually tentatively scheduled Kif's birthday to be March 16th! Crazy to think that we may already know his/her birthday.

In other news, Uncle Mike was in town for the past week or so for the various Chau birthdays. It was great to be able to spend time with him again. Anja loves playing with him. And bossing him around. I think he enjoys spending time with her, too. And taking bizarre (*Edited for Mike's benefit to add: creepy) pictures.

Due to the number of Chau birthdays in a one week span (3), Anja has now mastered the art of the birthday blow toy.

Thank goodness. I was starting to worry.

And we finally had our first major snowfall. We got nearly a foot and Anja was very excited to go outside and play in it. She kept demanding that Daddy build her a snow man. Once he finished shoveling, he obliged and built a little 2 foot tall snowman for her.

She immediately kicked it over, giggled, and said she was ready to go back inside.

Halloween

For Halloween this year, since I really dislike the "holiday," we decided to forgo tradition and dressed Anja up as a little German girl. Yup, we put our blond haired babe in a Dirndl. Specifically this one that we bought in München.

We knew she'd grow out of it quickly, so despite sounding like something that an odd parent would do to their child (which it still may be), it really was a financially responsible (and freakin' adorable) decision. Don't believe me? Check out these pictures...

We practiced on Saturday at Nana's house, where her older cousins could show her the ropes.

She caught on all too quickly and immediately went back to the other side of the glass door we used, closed it behind her, giggled, and knocked until she had emptied the candy bowl.

On Halloween night, we hit up a few houses (around 5) and she got down a few of the important phrases like "Treat" and "Happy 'ween!". Then we stopped at Grandma and Grandpa's house. After she successfully received candy at the door, we hung out inside for 20 minutes or so. Every time the bell rang, she ran over to Grandpas and asked for more "Candy treats." Smart little lady.

She was very proud of all of her candy and has been asking to do it again since then. Luckily for me, we've got another year until then.

Denver and Kif's Cameo

Last weekend, over MEA, Dan and I took our first (and much needed) trip by ourselves since Anja was born. We spent 2 nights in Denver and stayed at my aunt and uncle's condo in the heart of downtown. We had a fantastic and relaxing time, but were also very excited to return home to see our little lady! Anja spent the weekend with Grandma and Grandpa and thoroughly enjoyed herself and wore herself out. All in all, every one had a great few days, but it was obvious we all missed each other, too. By the way, we are now accepting bids for a full weekend of babysitting for next MEA. Don't wait - the offer will be snatched up soon!

In other news, today was our Level II ultrasound. Everything went incredibly well. I think even the doctor there was amazed. She wasn't our normal doctor since we were referred to the hospital for this ultrasound due to my insulin dependency. Even according to her, Kif and I were both in much better condition than she could've hoped for! That being said, I am looking at having a bunch more tests coming up until Kif is born. The extra ultrasounds and non-stress tests I already knew about. I will also need to have a fetal echocardiogram done (precaution only, probably only once) and biophysical profiles (basically really quick ultrasounds that measure things like amniotic fluid) 2-3 times a week starting a bit later.

In the mean time, we can relax knowing that Kif is a healthy (and obviously cute!) little boy or girl. The tech did confirm that it is one of those two, so that's nice. : ) Kif is measuring right on to the date and has 10 fingers and 10 toes and the same nose that Anja has, apparently.

So, here are a few pics of Kif from today and a short video of the 3D/4D portion of the ultrasound! Way too cool!

Kif's Birthday Update

I had another routine pre-natal appointment today (18 weeks) and found out a few things that I wasn't expecting. First, let me say that things are still looking very good for Kif and that I have felt him/her moving for a few weeks now. (I think Kif's a night owl.) At our first appointment, we were told that Kif would be born 1 week early since it will be a repeat c-section. Turns out, since I've already been started on insulin for the gestational diabetes, I now have what is considered a high risk pregnancy. Awesome. In other words, they're going to keep a close eye on me including regular and frequent ultrasounds, non-stress tests (NSTs), and they'll eventually start me on growth hormones (for Kif, not me, for all you smarty pants folks out there...) to make sure that Kif's lungs and everything are mature when they do the c-section. The hormones are because, if my doctor was a bettin' kind a guy (which he is), they'll be moving up Kif's birthday by a week, possibly two. So now we're looking at the beginning of March instead of mid-March.

On the plus side, if we were to make it to 39 weeks (only one week early and the day from the original plan), Kif would very likely have been born on St Patrick's Day. But I suppose that's still better than the day after...

**Update: Kif decided to make Mommy and Daddy feel better about everything by allowing Daddy to finally feel some kicks tonight! : )

Barkaly shoes

At Target a few weeks ago, Anja and I were shopping for brown shoes for her. Instead of liking anything I showed her, she zoomed in on a pair of sparkly shoes. They were black and apparently the most beautiful thing she had ever laid eyes on. But they didn't have her size, of course. Her next favorite was the same thing in red. Guess what one size they didn't have in those, either. The one sparkly pair they did have in her size she wanted absolutely nothing to do with. Apparently silver is NOT the new black.

Fast forward until today...

I was sorting through a few boxes of clothes from my sister for Anja when I discovered the Holy Grail. It was the same pair of sparkly shoes that she had been eyeing at Target. And they were black. And...they were her size. She immediately stopped playing with her kitchen set and ran over, demanding that I put on her "barkaly shoes." (Sparkly sounds an awful lot like broccoli right now, fyi.)

So she pranced around the rest of the afternoon in that outfit. Cargo pants, white athletic socks, and a green Sesame Street t-shirt. And her black barkaly shoes.

This evening we went over to Grandma and Grandpa's house for Grandma's birthday party. By we, I mean Anja and I. Dan apparently caught whatever Anja had earlier this week. Before leaving, I convinced Anja that she could wear her sparkly shoes if she let me put on this dress I've been dying to get her in. She obliged. Since Dan was holed up in a bedroom full of disease, I opted to take pictures of her cute little outfit to show him later rather than parade her through the germs. I got the type of boring shot that I expected, pleased that I got the full head-to-toe look.

What I didn't expect was to get a shot like this:

Boy, are we in for some tr-uh-ble!

Projectile

Monday afternoon we got that dreaded call. Whenever we see the name Lisa show up on caller ID, we worry. Most of the time, it's a non-issue. But this time, the worry was warranted. Anja woke up from her nap in a puddle of her own puke.

Mmmmm...

Needless to say, we were asked to go pick her up right away. Dan drew that straw since I was still at work. His car didn't make it home in the same condition that it left in. Neither did he. Or Anja. The carseat was later hosed down, the car taken to a detailer, and Dan and Anja's clothing went in the first of several loads of laundry while Anja went straight into the tub. So while Dan did laundry, I washed chunks out of her hair.

Mmmmm...

Then we camped out on the living room floor on a big splash mat...er...blanket. Here she learned that an old Cool Whip container can be used for things other than a dog dish (when we dog sat Grandma and Grandpa's dog, Maggie).

(Not the actual container...I'm not strange enough to take a picture of it. Geez.)

Later we discovered that, despite her appetite for it, Finish Pancakes was not a good idea, but the bib was.

Mmmmm...

Later we also discovered that, despite the fact that she was doing much better, the tiny amount of milk that she tried was also not a good idea, but putting an extra non-fitted mattress pad on her bed, covered by a sheet was.

Mmmmm...

Dan stayed home with her most of the day yesterday, and I took over around 2 for the rest of the night. Here's a portion of the email that he sent to his co-workers late the night before, explaining why he wouldn't have something done by that afternoon:

Around 2:00 I got a phone call from my daycare provider that Anja was projectile vomiting on other children. While momentarily proud of her accuracy and vigor, it did require me to go fetch her. Unfortunately, when there were no other children around her parents, my car, her car seat, her bed, some unfortunately placed Wii-motes, and a pumpkin served as excellent stand-ins. Needless to say, the release is a bit delayed.

What I was able to conjure up yet tonight was the dependency installation instructions, which can be found here [insert link] (these will be bile free).

Luckily, she is now puke-free for over 36 hours and is back at daycare. Dan will be in Duluth presenting at a conference the rest of the week and managed to get the rest of the puke smell out of his car before picking up some friends to ride up there. At least we hope he did. I didn't check and he has no sense of smell. Now I feel bad for his friends.

Sound sleeper

Anja is now in a big girl bed. She's very proud of that fact. And we don't use railings, but she's pretty good about sleeping close to the wall. Most of the time.

The other night, Dan and I were watching TV before heading to bed. Suddenly, there was a loud thud. The monitor was on and we didn't hear anything, so we went to see if the cat had done something stupid upstairs. Turns out, the cat was sitting behind us in the living room. So we went up to check on Anja.

What we discovered was a very sound sleeper, who had landed face down, spread eagle on the floor next to her bed. She only woke up when we picked her up to put her back in her bed.

I suppose it's a good thing that she's such a heavy sleeper since she'll be right next to the nursery.

And for the record, today Anja wants a baby brother. Yesterday it was a sister. I guess either way she'll be happy.

Or mad.