Face To Face

My Mom arrived today, after an uneventful flight (there's nothing better than uneventful and boring where flying is concerned).  We are happy to have her here - Vivian helped me pick her up at the airport and was literally flying down the airport to go give Omi a hug, and even Annelee hugged her when we got home. 

I'm sure it'll take me a while to post again, so until then I'll leave you with a quick collage of the goils!

Face Painting Gone Wild

Casey and Ernie were in town a couple of weekends ago.  The Saturday shaped up to be rather rainy, which suited us lazy adults looking for relaxation just fine, but somehow, the kids still expected entertainment.  So we invited Rowan over and Casey painted their faces.  They looked fabulous.   This was not enough for the girls, though, they wanted to get in on the painting action.  And, boy, did they ever.  There are several additional paint iterations that did not make it into the pictures.  A lot of fun was had by all participants!

Work in progress

Rowan completes the doggy-look

The witch and the dog

Casey was a saint to let both girls work on her simultaneously

As soon as Vivian was done with me, she immediately moved onto her next "victim"

Quite possibly one of the scariest family portraits ever!

2 Year Well Visists Past and Present

As I was looking for Vivian's 2 year well-visit to compare to Annelee's just now, I noticed that I had written most of it, but had never published it.  Whoops.  So, I figured I might as well give you both of them in one post.

As an aside, I read somewhere that you get a person's likely adult height if you double their height at 2 years.  Both of our girls will be just over 6 ft according to that, and I guess that falls right in line with their parents being tall.

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Vivian

Let's get straight to the vitals:

Weight: 30.0 lbs
Height: 37 in
Hair: Dark blond
Eyes: Pink

Wait a second. Pink? Aren't they supposed to be blue? I had noticed that one of Vivian's eyes was a tad pink when she woke up that morning, but I hadn't thought much of it until the pediatrician diagnosed her with pink eyes. Drops for a week - three times a day - a huge struggle every time. But, it's what needs to be done if Vivian is to return to daycare.

On a more positive note, the rest of the visit went really well. As the pediatrician walked in, Vivian was saying "sticker". The pediatrician said "Wow. Just with that one word I'm definitely not worried about her language skills. That was a perfect 'st'."

She was fine with everything else, too. Reassured me that knock-knees are common at Vivian's age and often correct themselves.

Gave us some tips about discouraging Vivian's repeated coming out of her room after we've put her to bed, and her need for one of us to come into her room pretty much every night.

There were no vaccinations done; but she is still due for one. I will schedule that in a couple of weeks, hopefully in conjunction with an H1N1 booster, and even a regular flu shot if they have that.

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Annelee

Again, let's get the height/weight out of the way first.  Annelee continues to outweigh Vivian by a few pounds and is just a tad shorter than Vivian.  But at least she didn't have pink eye (she got that out of the way about a month ago ;)  )

Weight:  31lb 11oz (14.4 kg).  This puts her in the 93rd percentile
Height:  36.75 in (93.3 cm).  This puts her in the 98th percentile
Hair:  More than Vivian at that age.  More blond, more curls, more length

After we were asking about her walking (or lack thereof) at our last visit (which also didn't get written up, sorry), Annelee was zooming around the doctor's office as Dr Kisslinger walked in.  Most definitely no concern there anymore.  We do still need to go back and have her hip double-checked, but in all likelihood, it's just a formality.

Annelee got her cough checked out, we talked about her rash a couple of weeks ago with the fever (probably just one of those viral things that 2-year olds are prone to in the summer time), but her lungs are clear.  Again, all is good.

Language is something we are going to watch, but Dr Kisslinger said she was just looking for some two-word phrases and a handful of distinct words at this point, and we have that pretty much covered.  As usual, our kids listen to what the pediatrician said, and Annelee suddenly is digging out the word books to practice words and starting to chat more.  I'm pretty sure she will not need to be evaluated for language next time we go to the pediatrician.

Just like Vivian, Annelee did not need any vaccinations this time around, so yay! 

Back for another well visit in 6 months (and hopefully none inbetween).

Now, if only I could remember the tips the pediatrician gave us for discouraging Vivian from coming out of her room every evening and most nights, they would still come in handy ... for Annelee ... :)

Home-made Pizza

I had promised a post about Will & Vivian's home-made pizza a while ago ... well, here it finally is.  The photos aren't super great, but they get the action across.  Will prepped the pizza dough and all the toppings and then together, they put on the sauce, Vivian added all the toppings, and Will put the pizza in the oven.  And we all got to enjoy the yummalicious result!

Chef Will makes the necessary preparations

Sous-chef Vivian is being introduced to the art of evenly spreading the pizza sauce

And then she goes wild with the toppings!

The pizza easily passes the Annelee-test!

Birthday Girl

Annelee's birthday fell on a "school day", so our morning was really not much different from any other day.  After we got back from daycare though, she got to open her presents and then we had what we thought may be one of her favorite meals for dinner.  She ate a good amount of it, so we weren't far off.  Can't wait until she can actually tell us next year what she wants for dinner.  We had cup cakes for dessert.  Annelee also took cupcakes into daycare with her that day, so she certainly had plenty of them that day.

Last year, Vivian got to unwrap all of Annelee's presents (and loved it, of course).  This year, Annelee needed a little bit of help, but enjoyed doing much of it herself.  Her presents were all a big hit ... with Annelee and Vivian.  Vivian has been struggling a bit with the fact that for the first few days, Annelee has the right to play with them any time she wants (what a hard concept for a 4-year old with new toys in the house!), but she's done ok with it most of the time, and has gotten to take advantage of Annelee's earlier bed time and nap time :)

On Saturday, we had a little party for Annelee.  It turned out "litteler" than we anticipated due to a couple of last-minute cancellation, but was fun nonetheless.

My favorite part of Annelee's birthday was probably how she beamed and danced when we sung "Happy Birthday" to her.  No shyness or coyness there!

Unwrapping presents

Vivian was always close and eager to help

The ladybug from Marion, Sebastian & Tobias has already traveled substantially with us ... to the grocery store, and just generally in the car (the stars are great to see on the ceiling even during the day).  Maybe one day it will actually make it's way in the bedroom, too!

"Baby Claire" from Omi

Turns out, the water table is also good without water.  I should've left it that way, because Annelee was soaked even before dinner was on the table.  That also explains her bedraggled look with the cupcakes later :)

Just fill the pen with water and draw ... when the water dries, the colors go away. 

She blew out the candles all by herself!

The puzzle game from Grandma.  Vivian's already done all of them, Annelee is still working her way through them.

And last, but not least, a quick video of the water table pre-water.  Click here if you cannot see the video below.

Annelee is 2!

I'm pretty sure I just wrote the "Annelee is One" post last week ... what happened?! 

It's been a busy year for Annelee.  She finally started walking a few days shy of 18 months and is now running.  Language is definitely blossoming, too. She's parroting much more and slowly adding words to her vocabulary. She moved to a big-girl mattress a few weeks ago and is most certainly developing her personality.  A delightful mixture of very caring, extremely boundary-pushing and just plain cute and delightful.  After months of being a total and extreme Mommy's girl, she's now becoming a bit of a Daddy's girl. An equally nice and frustrating (for me when I try and put her to bed) change.

Happy Birthday, LeeLee Leesburgh!

August 2011

 

 

September 2011

October 2011

November 2011

December 2011

January 2012

February 2012

March 2012

April 2012

May 2012

June 2012

July 2012

Early Morning with LeeLee

I had just recently gotten into the habit of getting up at 7am on my non-Highmark days and getting stuff done around the house before the girls woke up around 8 or so when we moved Annelee to a big girl mattress (no bed yet, just the mattress).  As a direct result, Annelee started getting up earlier.  I suspect that previously, she would wake up, realize she was still in her cage, um, I mean crib, and go back to sleep.  Now, she gets up and finds Mommy.  Vivian often remains asleep.

So this is how I found myself with Annelee all perky and wide awake the other morning.  She didn't want to get dressed, so we just wandered downstairs, where Annelee insisted on putting on Vivian's flip-flops and her supergirl baseball cap and then we headed outside.  Apparently, my lack of coffee was showing, because Annelee turned to me when I stopped and said "Mommy, go go go!".  Luckily, I caught this on video since it was quite cute.

We walked for bit and then returned to our front-yard where I sat down and Annelee puttered around for a few minutes and then went into the house and - as she is wont to do with any open door - closed the front-door.  No big deal since the door is virtually always unlocked.

Needless to say, this time, it was still locked from the night.

Whoops. 

No big deal, we have a spare key in the front yard.  Except ... I had used it some other time and not yet put it back outside.

Whoops.

Still no big deal.  I decided to just ring the doorbell and wake Vivian up so she could open the door for me.  Except ...

Our doorbell, which sporadically stops working for a few weeks and then suddenly starts again ... yes, you guessed it ... it decided today was the day to stop working.

Whoops.

My last resort (short of tracking down one of the approximately 38 people in Pittsburgh who have a spare key, all of which would be at work at that time) was to try and make my way into the house through a different opening.

I remembered that the bathroom window downstairs was closed, but not locked.  So, I went around the house, found something to stand on, pushed the window open, cleared the window sill and squeezed my way into the house, hoping the neighbors wouldn't see me.

Then I marched up the stairs back to the front door where Annelee was still happily playing.  She didn't even seem surprised that I was outside the front door one minute and coming up the stairs from the basement a few minutes later.  And Vivian was of course still asleep and none the wiser.

It was most definitely time for coffee and the hope that the rest of the day would be a little less eventful!

Yo, Momma, let's go for a walk!

If you can't see the video of Annelee telling me to go already, please click here.