Saturday, January 30, 2010

Trip to Appleton


This morning, Amelia and I got up early and drove to Appleton, WI to have a late breakfast with my friend, Erik. I, of course, managed to get lost in downtown Appleton. I always get lost, no matter where I am. It's a gift I think. Anyways, we were only a couple blocks from where we were supposed to be so it didn't take long to get un-lost. It was nice to catch up today. I hadn't seen him in two years, so we were overdue. Amelia was a perfect little traveler, as usual:


She kept pulling her blanket up to her face:


One thing I love about her is that she knows where to go in the car:


I always put her on the seat so I can put our bags down and get situatued to put her in her seat. She always tries to get in herself! I know it is because she likes to play with the buckles but I like to think it is because she is just that smart :)

When we got home the first thing she did was play with her favorite toys:


Oh yeah, I should mention they are cat toys.

Amelia also played a little hide and seek with us, using her bedroom door:


When it was closed she would peek through the cracks at us. It was pretty cute. Well, the face in the picture might not be the cutest...

Now Amelia and her daddy are watching her first Disney movie together, Snow White.

Friday, January 29, 2010

Friday Fails - Mail


That package in the picture has been sitting on my backseat since before Christmas. It has some odds and ends in it for my cousin in California. Well, today, after Jason dropped me off at work he went to the post office to get it mailed. Finally. We also had a few other things to mail and stamps to get. However, we still have a few things to mail. We couldn't mail them today because I, of course, bought the wrong size bubble mailers for them:


One day I will get all this stuff sent and out of my hair!

More "fails" can be found at myblessedlife.net!

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Family Fun

Today was another lazy day for us. Those have been happening a bit too often lately... We all napped at 11 until...nearly 3! While we admit that we must have needed the sleep, I still feel like we wasted the morning/early afternoon!

Amelia has been sucking in her lips FOREVER. It is the reason that her chin get all dried-out and red from time to time. I think it is pretty cute:



After our early dinner (of tacos), we all played together. We started out with Amelia's toy piggy bank:


We tried to explain to Amelia that it is more fun to put money into the bank than it is to take it out. She didn't agree with us.

Next Amelia and her daddy moved on to the farm. Amelia hasn't been too thrilled with this toy since she got it for Christmas. Jason showed her that it isn't scary. Here they are on the farm:


They both went through the farm. I am serious. See for yourself:


Once Jason went through, Amelia went through. His plan worked at least!

Once Jason was done on the farm, Amelia kept at it. She decided opening the door was overrated eventually and just climbed right over it:



Here is a short clip of her walking with her shopping cart. It isn't the best example of this skill but it was the best I could get on video :)



(she kept getting stuck at the end of the coffee table today)

We rounded out the evening with a bath and a bottle. Jason gave Amelia some sweet hair during bathtime:



What do you think of her 'do?

That has been our day. Nice and relaxing. We do a lot of that now that school is over! Life has been so much simpler, mostly, for us and I think we are all loving it. This week the spring semester started and I am not there, I had no books to buy, nothing. It is starting to sink in that it is really over :)

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Running Around

I am pretty exhausted tonight. Amelia and I ran around town all day. It is almost time to crawl into bed and watch some SVU on DVD before bedtime :)

I do want to share this incredibly short, and I'll admit it - staged, video of Amelia. She does this to us all the time and it is so hard to catch on video so I had to work with her a little tonight on it.



She is so smart. She takes off in a direction towards something/somewhere she shouldn't be and when she hears us coming she pauses and then quickly either lays down on her side or sits up, like she wasn't doing anything wrong. The other day she was headed down this same hallway and I yelled, "hey!", and she stopped, laid on her side, looked at her kitchen, then at me, then back at her kitchen and grabbed one of the pots like she was playing the whole time. As soon as I turned my back she continued booking it down the hall, with the pot. Her intelligence is astonishing to me sometimes. She is so smart!

I also want to share some of the silly sights that we saw while out on our journeys today...

Asset Protection at Target:


How modern of them.

A giant, bright yellow, advertising chicken:


I'll be honest, it didn't make me want to eat at "Wing Zone" at all.

Lastly, here is the tired little baby that I had to wake up when we finally got home for the last time:


She was drooling all over the place!

The Ball Shooter


For Christmas, Amelia got the above Playskool Ball Popper (we call it the ball shooter) from my friend, Marie (aka Auntie M). Marie thought Amelia needed it because all the kids in the nursery at her church love the one there. I agree. Amelia, however, had a different take on the whole thing. See for yourself:

Take 1:



(she nearly knocked the camera from my hands when she was trying to get to my lap)

Take 2:



(yeah, she claps when she is upset. It's kind of strange. It is one of her Nana's favorite things about her.)

These videos are from today (well, at this point yesterday). A few weeks ago we tried to get her to see that it is a fun toy and not scary. Here is Jason enjoying the ball shooter:


He wasn't able to convince Amelia that it is a fun toy though. She is still scared, as we found out tonight. In fact, she is so scared of it that we keep a blanket over it so she can't see it. Earlier this month it got to a point where if she saw it she started to cry (hence, the blanket). We thought a few weeks with it out of sight/out of mind she might enjoy it. Nope. Not yet. We'll try again in a month or two.

**We feel terrible that we find her reaction so hilarious that we had to record it. Come on though. It is pretty priceless. We really wanted it on video so we can show her one day. She'll laugh. She won't even remember the terror the ball shooter once brought her.

Monday, January 25, 2010

Season = Over

The Viking's season is over. Jason was pretty down last night. After the game he texted me that he was "emotionally exhausted". As you can tell, he takes his football very seriously. Before the game I tried to get a good picture of Amelia and this was about the best I could get:


She must have known the game wouldn't end the way her daddy wanted.

Amelia and I are making a run to Target this afternoon but other than that it will be a day at home...until I have to leave for work that is...

Sunday, January 24, 2010

Walk This Way...



...not that way :) She only goes backwards, so far!

Amelia is all dressed up for tonight's game. She'll be watching it for a bit with her daddy and his friend, Ben, before bedtime tonight. I am off to work.

Thursday, January 21, 2010

Friday Fails - What a Week!


This week was full of fails for me. Little things that I laugh about now. Some big, some small. So many silly things happened this week. I know I can't think of them all but here are some of the things that I "failed" on this week:


Baby Food Fail: We finally cleaned out the refridgerator this week. Among the things thrown out were avacadoes...avacadoes for baby food. Avacadoes that I bought before Christmas... When we were getting ready to go home for Christmas I realized they were still sitting out so I threw them in the fridge so I could make the baby food when we got back. Well, I never did and now, a month later, I finally parted with them. The apples still seem ok so I can make applesauce this weekend or Jason and I can eat the apples!

Laundry Fail: We did our laundry Monday. Among the things that we washed was all of the guest bedroom bedding because Ludo was holed up in there pre-surgery and we figured we should wash it all since it was covered in litter! Well, it is now Thursday night and this is what the spare bed looks like:


I still have not made the bed! I don't honestly think I will do it tomorrow either! Oops! I might as well have left the dirty stuff on there for the cats to lounge on for another week or two!

Car Seat Fail: This fail is a bit more serious than the others...


See the problem in that picture? One of her buckles isn't done! When I buckled it something must have been caught in there so it came open while we were driving! I need to make sure I double and triple check that from now on! I know it must have been our error because I don't think there is any way she could have gotten it un-done! I am so thankful we weren't in an accident with her belt like this!

I would also label today a "fail". We didn't do one thing today! Amelia got up at one in the morning, finally went back down closer to two and then slept until 1030! Since we don't really set alarms anymore that means we also slept until 1030! We got up, I had a headache (which I often do when I sleep in) so we stayed in our jammies. We ate lunch and then all went down for naps at 1 p.m. Jason left for work right before 3 and Amelia and I napped until 4. What a lazy day! While it was nice to lounge and relax all day, I feel so incredibly lazy and that is why I am calling today a "fail"!

For more "fails", visit myblessedlife.net!

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Little Helper

Amelia is always wanting to help out. Like today, she helped me look through her Rubbermaid of larger clothes:


Once we, I mean I, had sorted the clothes into size piles (18 mos - 3T), Amelia came through and did her thing:



She grabs everything and just throws it over her shoulders until there is nothing left. Then she moves on.

We learned tonight that Amelia has lots of pajamas! I need to make a mental note of that so the next time I see cute jammies at Target I hopefully won't be so tempted to get them for her!

Our Morning

This morning we had two appointments on the East Side to get to. Two appointments at 10:30 actually. Jason had an appointment and so did Ludo. I had to drop Jason off really early at his appointment so I could make it to Ludo's appointment on time. Why? This is why:


The streets are all closed off. Yesterday morning there was a huge fire a block from my work that destroyed 4 businesses and the [10] apartments above them:


150+ firefighters and 35+ engines from Milwaukee and surrounding cities fought the fire. Everyone got out, alive, which is the important part.

Things have gotten better since last night. Last night when I went to work more road was taped off than was today. You still can't get within a block or two of the intersection it all happened at though. The vet is 2 blocks straight down the road in the above picture. With all the one way roads in the neighborhood it made for an interesting trip.

Lost in the fire was one of our family's favorite places to celebrate, Pizza Man. My family and I have celebrated birthdays there, Easter 2007, my college honors ceremony and more. In fact, it was my mom's favorite place to eat in Milwaukee. Now it looks like this:


The owner of Pizza Man said after 40 years of business, Pizza Man became an institution of the East Side and he hopes to rebuild. I hope so too! It won't be the same though. The interior was stone and woodwork that just can't be replaced.

Kim ate at Pizza Man for the first time in December and had her first glass of wine there:


Well, that has been our day so far. Amelia is napping, Jason is at work and I am going to get the living room picked up (hopefully) before Amelia wakes up! I am amazed at how quickly she can destroy our house and she's not even walking yet!

Monday, January 18, 2010

Cleaning Day

NOTE: The 2 videos on here don't seem to be working right now. They were working yesterday, so I am going to just leave it be and see if they start working again. I am hoping it is just an issue Blogger is having.

Today, on our last Monday off as a family, we cleaned. We cleaned the house and we did our laundry! Amelia is a funny kid. She is terrified of most of her toys that make noise but she loves the vacuum cleaner:


After cleaning around the house, we headed to the laundromat. Amelia tried her best to help out:


She kept closing the door on me:


(I took this through the door)


Wait, that's not right!

While we finished getting things going in the washer, we had to contain Amelia somehow:



Doesn't that look like fun? It was until she tipped the thing over. She didn't get hurt but at that point I had hurt myself:


It has gotten worse since I took this picture too. Basically, as I was closing one of the washers I heard Amelia shriek and turned quickly to make sure she was ok in her "cage". Well, she was. It was a happy shriek. I, however, had smashed my middle finger in the door handle. It is all bruised underneath the nail today. I am not even using that finger to type. It hurts that much!

Amelia is so fascinated by washers:


She is also fascinated with laundry carts:


In fact, we spent a good chunk of the night wheeling a laundry cart around while Amelia crawled after us. She was so determined to catch us! I tried to get a picture of her concentrated little face but they never turned out. I can show you this:


That is how dirty you get crawling around on the floor at the laundromat.

This is a video from yesterday morning:



This is what Amelia does these days. She plays and all of a sudden starts crying. I am to the point where I am starting to think it is hilarious. I know she is fine. I think she knows she is fine too. So why the crying?

ps - I showed Amelia this video and she watched it and smiled. So apparently she thinks it is funny too...after the fact!

Daddy Has Purple Pride

Amelia's daddy is pretty happy today...because the Vikings won yesterday! In fact, they trampled the Cowboys.

Amelia and I got home from church yesterday afternoon and I heard the TV on. I was really confused as I walked into the living room. Then I put it all together, Jason's car was outside and the game was on...he had left work early to watch it.

Part way into the game I took Amelia to her room and dug out a special outfit for her:


She was a cheerleader for her daddy's team. My mom found the outfit at a yard sale, brand new, for $5. I wasn't sure she'd fit into it well (it is a 2T) but it fit pretty decently!

They had fun watching the game together:


We prematurely made a "victory feast" of ribeyes, baked potatoes and cheesy broccoli noodles during the third quarter.

We had one tired cheerleader on our hands by the end of the night:


A close-up of that sweet little face:


Even Poopy has purple pride:

Thursday, January 14, 2010

Kitty Clubhouse

Well, tonight Lucky and Ludo disappeared. I looked around and then realized that I knew where they were...the kitty clubhouse!

What is the kitty clubhouse? Well, it is our bed. Yep. They have managed to tear apart the bottom of the box spring which gave them their own secret lair.

I remember the day we discovered their secret lair. We were getting ready to leave town and I just wanted to make sure they were all here before we left (our neighbor, Ellen, was going to be checking in on them) and Ludo was nowhere to be found. I got really upset because I thought he had gotten out while we were packing the car. After thirty minutes of searching, Jason found him...in the bed. Since then they have continued to make more entrances to their lair, like this one:


Here is a peak into their lair:


Oh yeah, this baby is two floors! Why you may ask? Once they tore down the sides to create entrances, the middle sank down. Two floors are created by a huge down blanket under the foot of the bed and 2 large rubbermaid containers (you know, the long ones made for under the bed) under the bed towards the head). Ludo has chosen the lower level, with the large down blanket I mentioned, as his recovery spot:


Lucky kept him company from above:


(he is atop one of the rubbermaids I mentioned)

There you have it. Everyone has a secret clubhouse at some point in their lives. Even cats.

ps - Poopy goes into the clubhouse from time to time. Tonight, he was more interested in keeping me company while I tried to take some pictures than going in and joining his brothers.