New Years

This year, we were lucky enough to have my sister Kim and her hubby Mark volunteer to babysit the kids overnight on New Year's Eve. At a hotel. Because they drove in from Chicago.

We are very, very lucky...

Anja - 2011 Wrap-up

It's amazing to me how much Anja has changed this past year. I guess it's not so much that she's changed as much as it is that she's grown up. She is still a hysterical young lady ("Do you have a baby in your belly? Because your tummy is sticking out!" - said to Dan) who dumbfounds me with her intelligence and speech abilities. According to most "your child should be doing ___" websites, in the 3.5-4 yr range, she should be starting to form more complicated sentences of up to 6 words. I don't think Anja knows that sentences can be that short. She talks constantly and only occasionally comes up for air. But it's always entertaining! She loves to role play with her dolls (and does so in the most adorable little voice), as well as with other kids and grown-ups.

Her fascination with holidays is a new development. Luckily for us, she understands that the holiday only lasts a day (or two for Christmas). So, despite the fact that she'll talk about the holiday for days, weeks, and months to come, she doesn't think that every day should suddenly be Halloween or Christmas. She does like to talk constantly about what the next holiday will be like. For example, she's already told us several of her ideas for Halloween 2012 costumes, including, but not limited to Hello Kitty and a "baby Virginia." Also of importance is that anything she sees that she wants, she has determined she'll ask for from Santa next Christmas.

During a regular week, Anja goes to swim lessons on Monday (loves Miss Paulette, whom we'll be sad to see leave after the start of the new year),

dance on Wednesday (with Miss Gwen; probably her favorite of the 2 classes), and preschool on Friday mornings. Right before Christmas, her dance class had a little performance. They did a "dance" to the Sugar Plum Fairies Suite from the Nutcracker and otherwise did the rest of their normal class routine. The room was pretty packed with parents, grandparents, and siblings, all eager to watch the group of 3 year olds give a flawless, well choreographed and rehearsed performance. Or at least giggle and place bets on the number of girls dancing to the beat of their own drum. Anja was one of those girls. In fact, Anja decided her performance would be helping the teacher. So instead of laying on the ground and waiting for the teacher to awaken her with the magic wand, Anja went around trying to wake up the other girls. It was pretty hysterical.

Anja's version of "Pique, pique, back to the middle"

After the show, Nana and Boppa and I took Anja to Baker's Square for dinner and pie. The girl loves her some pie! While we were there, Boppa thanked her for letting him come to her dance class. She immediately interjected, "Dance show, Boppa! Not dance class! Silly Boppa!" She may not be much for attention to detail in the class/show, but she certainly is when it comes to how people reference it!

Here are some of the things that Anja currently enjoys doing:
- singing (usually along with some musical toy of Ian's; naked whenever possible)

- jumping rope (ie: jumping from the top of the 2 stairs into the living room while holding said rope)
- playing music (our piano, Ian's toy piano, Ian's toy drum, her harmonica, flute, or maracas) This also usually occurs in band form, so someone else must be involved. Also, she loves to sing while playing, especially if a guitar is involved somehow. Frequently, the song is "I totally rock" (from "Bubble Guppies". Sigh).

- painting

- taking baths with Ian (won't take a bath without him; must be a shower if she's on her own)

- swimming (with or without her kitty hat and pink goggles)

- art projects (at daycare and preschool mostly)
- doing her "homework" (using a dry erase marker in a wipe off workbook to practice her letters and "dot the dots" - ie: connect the dots)
- drawing (crayons, colored pencils, markers, pretend markers, Magna Doodle)

- going shopping (Target and Fleet Farm are her favorites, but she does like Ace's popcorn)
- going to the Swiper Ride Store (MOA); she's finally gotten over her fear of the rides, just in time for Disney World!
- going to the zoo, where she recently met Diego!

- playing with her dollies and kitty
- helping with Ian and trying to make him laugh (which she's really good at!)

We are very lucky to have a sweet, loving, funny, intelligent, caring, talkative, inquisitive, and talented little girl!

Ian - 2011 Wrap-up

As 2011 draws to a close, Ian has a few more accomplishments to add to his list.

*Ian now takes baths in the big bath tub. If he's by himself, it's an ok experience.

If he's with his sister, it's like he won the lottery.

*He now says mama, dada/daddy, hi, and bye. Those were in order of how often he uses them. He's still definitely a mama's boy. But he's still a man's man and loves remotes and hanging out in his diaper, playing on the computer.

*He has also started waving. But only if you wave first. And usually after you've already left.

*Despite the constant uttering of the phrase "He's going to be crawling any day now!" that has been repeated almost daily for the past several months, Ian still refuses to actually crawl. He loves standing and is getting quite proficient at scooting, but shows no interest in crawling or walking. But why bother? He's got lots of people to just pick him up!

*Ian is now transitioning to being a formula baby full time. We made it to 9 1/2 months and will fully transition by the time he's 10 months. At the same time, he's starting to use a sippy cup (with assistance). On a related note, Ian now has 4 teeth up top, 2 on the bottom, and at least 2 more on the way.

*Our little man is a big eater. He's really interested in table food and is frequently seen trying to swipe food off of someone's plate, even his cousin's.

(He was eventually successful.)

He loves pancakes, waffles, bread, peas, potatoes, yogurt melts, ice cream, cake (store bought or homemade), crackers (goldfish, townhouse, cheez-its, etc) noodles, yogurt...well, you get the picture. In addition to whatever he can have off of our plates, he'll often eat 2-3 containers of baby food, a handful of some sort of snacky food (Cheerios, puffs, etc), and then some water or formula. He's a growing boy!

(When he couldn't reach any more of his cousin's food,

he just grabbed the full pancake off of my plate!)

*As a growing boy, Ian is quite proud of how big he is getting and loves to show off that he's "soooooo big!" and then clap profusely for himself. Most of the time he forgets to do the "soooo big" part. But he's also very polite and will clap for you if you do it for him.

*Despite the fact that our little man is getting quite large, we still lug him around in his infant car seat. He can't wear a coat while he's in it, otherwise he doesn't fit, so we just tuck a warm blanket all around him and hope he doesn't untuck himself before we get to the car. It's a catch 22: If we move him to a rear-facing convertible car seat because of his size, we have to carry him around and can't just set him down. But we want to move him to the rear-facing convertible car seat because he's so heavy in his infant seat. We keep saying that we'll move him when it gets cold enough to warrant it. Since it was a pretty green Christmas, it may be a bit before that happens.

Happy 2011, Mr. Man! You've come a long way and we're thrilled to have you in our lives!

Christmas 2011

This year, Anja became somewhat obsessed with the idea of Christmas. For example, she suddenly found it completely unacceptable that we didn't have a star for the top of our tree. An angel wouldn't do, either. It was okay for other peoples' Christmas trees, but not ours. So, after much internet searching, we ventured off to find a star. Luckily she picked one that was appropriate for the size (4') of our tree and was also the least expensive! After hanging all the ornaments ("Except the b'eakable ones. I'm too little to do those. Only grown-ups can do the b'eakable ones. Silly Mommy!"), she added the star to the top of the tree.

Leading up to Christmas, Anja became very interested in Santa Claus. We had an interesting conversation about him one day:

Anja: "I need to go see Santa."

Me: "Why?"

Anja: "So I can tell him what I want for Christmas, silly!"

Me: "Oh, okay."

Anja: "But not the real Santa Claus. I have to go see a pretend Santa Claus."

Me: "Ummm...a pretend Santa? What do you mean?"

Anja: "Well, he's not the real Santa. He's just pretend."

Me: "Who told you that?"

Anja: "You did."

Me: "I did? What did I say?"

Anja: "The real Santa is up in the North Pole making all the toys, so he sends pretend Santas to talk to all the boys and girls. I need to go tell the pretend Santa that I want maracas for Ch'istmas."

Her dream of getting maracas for Christmas lasted longer than expected (2 months), but changed right before Christmas. Then it became a flute. And then she added drums. And a cymbal. And a kick drum. Luckily she fully believes that Santa actually makes all of the toys (hence the need for all the pretend Santas!), so she understood when I told her that Santa had run out of the parts needed to make those other instruments, but she could ask for them again next year. Maybe he'll have the parts then.

This year we traveled out to Wisconsin on the 23rd and spent 2 nights out there. We planned ahead and brought her stocking out with us. Since this is the first year we've personally done a stocking, we kept it simple, but she still loved it.

And since he's so young, we skipped the stocking for Ian. Instead, he scooted around on his stomach in his Santa sweatsuits, trying to get into his sister's castle.

Then we headed from the lakehouse to Grandma Judy and Grandpa Norm's house for a little relaxing and gifts and a lot of food.

Christmas morning, we got up and drove to Minneapolis to be with my family for the day. We had already celebrated Christmas with my brother, Mike, and my sister, Kim, and brother-in-law, Mark, but there were still a ridiculous number of presents to get through. Ian slept through most of it, but we did manage to get a picture of him opening his first present.

It's pretty blurry, but she's hard to capture since she moves so fast. She's opening a digital camera...

And her princess suitcase...

And one of Dan opening his toys, er, tools.

Among Anja's favorite presents were (in no particular order), the digital camera, suitcase, maracas, a jump rope, easel and paints, and monster bowling and clompers (those feet thingies in the first picture).

A picture of Anja's first drawing on the easel. It's a princess!

And her first painting:

Ian's favorites were a toy drum and keyboard.

Oh, and the boxes that Dan's tools came in.

Photo Shoots!

Since we didn't get as many pictures of just the kids as we wanted from our family photo shoot at Heritage awhile ago, we asked my sister, Jill, to take some pictures of Ian for his 9 month photos and a few of Anja, as well. Below are a few of my faves and here's the link to the full set of 500, if you feel so inclined!

And, as per tradition, we had our friend Jim take our family photo at Rice Park.