Edenborg Edition

Back to the Future

2011-05-27T19:56:00.000-05:00

Dissertation's done

Moving on to something new

And no more haiku.

http://www.nataliedee.com/

Beware, consitent blogging coming soon ...

You Name It

2010-12-05T20:51:00.000-06:00

Before I even opened the box that contained our Christmas decorations today, the first memory I had was of a small wooden angel ornament. It's not an ornate ornament. And my reason for liking it has nothing to do with the holiday. This ornament has my name on it. I know, it doesn't seem like a big deal. (And as you can tell, Grace wasn't quite so impressed with it.) The thing is my name was spelled right on this tiny piece of wood. And that was -- and apparently still is -- a big deal to me. Here's why.

These days I go by Kate. I was born Katherine and was called Katey. As a grade school kiddo, I had a heck of a time finding anything with my name spelled right on it. Many other kids had folders and pencils displaying their names. One of those kids was my best friend Katie. Everything had her name on it, not mine. The spelling of "ie" was much, much more prevalent than "ey." (And mind you, back in the late-70s, early 80s it wasn't so easy to get things personalized like it is today. Heck, you can even have your dog's name embroidered on a pet bed.)

I rather liked being Katey with an "ey." It suited me and I was proud of it. And it was especially fun once I learned to write in cursive and could use the tail of my "y" to cross my "t." That said, I still longed for seeing my name on things. Oddly enough, when I started my newspaper journalism career in college, I decided to change the byline on my stories from Katey to Kate. I finally had the chance to see my name -- Katey -- in print and I changed it. Sometimes I kinda want to go back to my Kateyhood. Back to the day when I first saw my name in print, on an angel ornament.

Turns out that Grace got her own angel ornament with her name on it this year, a snowman angel, but an angel nonetheless. I'm sure she loves seeing her name in print as much as I do. Or she will. Once she's old enough to read, that is.

Keeping Watch

2010-10-07T09:53:00.000-05:00

Day-to-day routines

Replaced by a new normal

Time keeps keeps on ticking.

I put my dad's watch on my wrist the day he went into the hospital and have been wearing it ever since. Planning to give it back to him very soon.

Hair Haiku (Delay Due to Dissertation)

2010-08-16T11:03:00.001-05:00

Had a slight delay
Hair is not cut nor colored
Needs to happen soon.

www.nataliedee.com

** I am a fan of Natalie Dee's comic illustrations. Much of what she does isn't quite as ... errr, uhhh ... clean. This one seemed suitable
and appropriate for my family friendly blog.

Doing Once Done

2010-07-27T10:57:00.001-05:00

Seems like everyone has some version of a summer to-do list but since I have this one thing that needs to get done this summer, I thought it made sense to write a Post-Dissertation To-Do List. And here it is. The items are in no particular order, just the order they popped into my head.

Plan Japanese-esque garden for our yard

Minus the water features, otherwise known as mosquito breeding grounds.

Relaunch the blog

Perhaps under a new name, how exciting.

Get a quilt rack

It's the little things, I tell ya.

Hold a garage sale in spring

Oodles of stuff -- baby stuff, my stuff, random stuff, stuff-stuff -- piling up.

See some great bands/hear some great music

Ok, so I've already been doing some of this, this summer. I have to stay sane somehow.

Take some time alone with Jay

It'll be great to be able take some time together where I'm not even the slightest bit distracted by the everlasting, looming project.

Take an improv class

Bet that took you by surprise. Very much outta my comfort zone.

Do some training activity with Ella Puggeroo

She deserves some one-on-one attention from us -- at least that's what she's told us.

Play soccer

Not as easy as it sounds. I need to learn more about the game first and all the lessons around here are for kiddos.

Do a weekly cool craft or adventure with Grace

This is one of the most motivating items on this list.

Write a kid's book

Have had some ideas bouncing around for awhile. Just need the time to pin them down.

Write my own book(s)

Something I would love-love to do, or at least be able to focus on it.

Ah, focus. That's what's been shifting so much over the last five years. So much of what has happened in the last half decade was never on a to-do list, but I'm so glad it was done.

Social Media Salon

2010-07-14T09:38:00.000-05:00

I got a shorter haircut relatively recently (you know, a cut where people ask "I thought you were going to grow your hair out?") and now I'm rethinking what I want to do with my hair. It's one length (bangs too) that is right at chin level. I haven't colored it in three years, so it's a medium brown, very straight.

Here are my options:

Keep it at the present length and color it
Cut it shorter
Cut it shorter and color it

Keeping it as is, is not an option.

I tend to get stuck in ruts when it come to hairstyles and such (another blog topic entirely : ), so I thought I'd toss this out here on the blog and Twitter (follow @kateered) to get a wider variety of perspectives. This strategy was inspired by a co-worker and fellow blogger -- Molly at The Snyder 5 -- who sought feedback on formal dresswear.

Please vote for which cut and/or color look you like (A is the top photo and F is the bottom photo; I think you can figure out the rest).

A: COLOR = Bold, chunky blond, red highlights CUT = Similar length to mine right now, but she has bangs.
B: COLOR = Very Subtle, highlights CUT= The length of her hair is just a touch longer than mine.
C: COLOR = Even bolder, chunky blond, red highlights CUT= Shorter than mine, with bangs and layering
D: COLOR = Deep red, burgundy highlights CUT= Shorter than mine
E: COLOR = Blond, light highlights in the front CUT= Shorter than mine
F: COLOR = Full blond (not likely to go this route) CUT = Shorter than mine

You can provide your feedback in these ways:

Tweet on Twitter (follow @kateered)
Comment on Facebook
Post a comment on EdenborgEdition.blogspot.com (right here!)

I thank you in advance for your insights and will keep posting about the incoming votes and final results. (Don't let the faces in the photographs bias you. Just because a cut and color makes Jessica Simpson or Keira Knightley look good, doesn't mean it'll do the same for me.)

Music to My Ears

2010-07-04T22:25:00.003-05:00

Even though I haven't yet written about it here, music is very important to me. I can't sing, I can't play an instrument (but for a few -- very few -- chords on the guitar), but I love music. (I even created an South Park-themed avatar with headphones to illustrate my liking of music.) So, I'm thinking there will be many blog posts on this topic to come.

But as a starter, I hit shuffle on my iPod and took note of the first 10 random songs that came up. Here they are with some commentary. I've also put the links to the albums these songs are on on iTunes in case you're interested. I like to be handy like that. (This was also inspired by fellow blogger Marketing Mama's recent plea to hook her up with some new music.) And no, no one is paying me to recommend them. And since these aren't my top 10 favorite songs, so I am not really even recommending them. They are mentioned because they happened to come up in the mix.

You are now entering Kate's iPod:

1. Noella Rae: Brenda Weiler -- Singer-songwriter from the Midwest who played the 400 Bar in Minneapolis a lot. I went to quite a few of her shows when I lived in the Twin Cities and she's awesome live. Love, love all of her albums. She has such a powerful voice and reminds me of the girl/woman I see myself as -- in my mind : )

2. Something In the Way: Best Coast -- This is a new girl band I just started to listen to. We'll I guess that would mean they're a new band to me, not new in general. Their sound is 60s garage rocky with the girl group sound. The "oldies" music I listened to while growing up definitely has influenced my present musical tastes.

3. The Right Place: Monsters of Folk -- This group is a great mix of some of the top musicians in -- the realm of music known as indie-rock. I'm not sure yet exactly what indie-rock means to me except that these guys rock the folk world.

4. New Shoes: Paolo Nutini -- Jay and I share iPod music and this was one of his purchases. This guy has a dancy cool sound. It's creative and soulful. You'll like it.

5. Idumea: Anonymous 4 -- This group of women sing inspirational a capella -- very soothing. Great for dissertation work. I usually can't study while listening to music with lyrics. Still, I get sick of listening to Mozart and since these voices are not singing in English, it's a very welcome break.

6. I'll Cover You: Original Broadway Cast of Rent -- This album reminds me of when Jay and I first started dating. He had seen Rent and really wanted to share the show with me. I listened to the music before I saw the show. Our relationship and that show will always be connected in my mind and heart.

7. When I Drink: The Avett Brothers -- This has been my obsession band for the past eight months or so. They've been around for a number of years but I just found them toward the end of last year. I heart them.

8. The Sweet Part of the City: The Hold Steady -- Neat. This is the concert my husband is at this very moment. He hearts them.

9. Paranoia in B Major: The Avett Brothers -- Love this song. Not surprising that a second song from this band showed up. They have by far the most songs on my ipod. I'll count them ... 56. Told you I was obsessed.

10. Winter's Come & Gone: Elizabeth Mitchell -- This is from the first kid's album I got for Gracie. It's still by far the one I like the most.The best song on this album is her version of Bob Marley's Three Little Birds. Much easier on the ears than Elmo's Song.

And we now I return to my dissertation soundtrack. Hello Mozart, my old friend.

Dissertation Haiku, For All of You = Part II

2010-06-22T21:14:00.001-05:00

Only six more months

Until the final deadline

It needs to get done.

The sooner I get done, the sooner I get to
spend more time with this little face.

How's that for motivation?
** Yes, those are socks on her hands.

Dissertation Haiku, For All of You

2010-05-30T19:59:00.001-05:00

Data entry done

Coding now begins -- how fun

Want to be in sun

** I know a haiku doesn't need to (and perhaps shouldn't) rhyme, but I lucked out.

Hello to Good Buys

2010-05-24T13:45:00.001-05:00

So, I'm not really a shopper.

My parents, husband and best friends can attest to how not-fun it can be to shop with Kate. I'm frugal and I don't like crowds. Recently I've come across a shopping experience that helps address one of my shopping issues: the multitude of consignment sales that pop up this time of year. There was one near my hometown a few months ago so I decided to partake in full force as a consigner, volunteer and buyer.

I hadn't really gotten rid of very much of Grace's clothing and so we had two bins and two huge boxes of her clothes and two other boxes of miscellaneous items (this isn't including any of the big items like swings and bouncy seats). So I decided it was time to let some stuff go. If (if, if, if, if, if) we decide to have another child, I kept some favorites and some necessities, but I winnowed the "stuff" in half. That left me with over 150 items (mostly clothes) to sell. Those of you who've priced things for a garage sale know how tedious the task can be, even more so for a consignment sale where there are particular rules, good rules but ones that make the process slower than you'd like.

The volunteering part was motivated by my desire to get into the sale early. Volunteers get in a day before regular shoppers. This was great for a crowd-avoider like me. Or so I thought. As I was hanging up some items on the rows and rows of kiddo clothing I overheard some one say: "Then when they open at 5:30 everyone just runs." I inquired further and yes, they were indeed refering to the volunteer pre-sale, not the sale-sale. I started calculating how many volunteers were working my shift, times the number of shifts ... yikes. This was going to be over a hundred shoppers.

I showed up to the pre-sale 15 minutes early and had to park on the street and stand in an already parking lot-long line. I happened to stand next to someone who was in the same mindset as me. We both were not fixated on needing to get any one thing. No "Cabbage Patch Kid/Tickle Me Elmo/Toy Of The Moment" stampeding for me.

Once inside the pace was brisk, but no one was rude at all. Big ticket items where gone quickly but I did snag a few choice deals for Grace. And found some cute outfits that were higher-end brands that I'd never ever buy at full price but would spend 2 to 5 bucks on.

Then my bag and shoe obsession kicked in:

They were just too cute to pass up. Those that remember my True Colors post are likely shocked to see the pink theme in these items. And then there's this ... I bought her a play kitchen. But wait! I also got her a chair that looks like a tree stump with a lizard on it.

Domestic chore-themed toy + outdoorsy reptile-themed seating = my very own Little Miss Muffet.

** Ok, I know a spider isn't a reptile and the little girl didn't likely make her own curds and whey ... but still : )

The Long and The Short

2010-05-02T15:10:00.002-05:00

I REALLLLLLLY want to blog more -- I have lots to say. But here's why I'm not saying it right now. It starts with "diss" and ends in "ertation." It is what I need to get done-done before I can be the dedicated blogger that I'd like to be. This long paper/book/project/unwieldly weight-on-my-mind needs to be done in December 2010, no ifs, ands or buts. See the True Colors blog post for a reminder of the general gist of my research.

(As you'll notice, I have been "finishing" my dissertation since 2008 -- I haven't been in the right "mood" until this year : )

So, why am I blogging about this? Two reasons: a) As an FYI to those who check in regularly. And b) As a way to keep me honest. Keep me on track. Keep me accountable. If I have all of you aware of my task then I need to make and meet my goals. Accountablity to the masses (heee) will be good. Once a month I'll write a longer blog. But at other times I'll be doing a dissertation blurb or brief Edenborg update. These might, if you're lucky, turn up in the form of haikus.

Diss Lowdown: This weekend I must continue to tackle data entry (reading children's periodicals from the 1920s and 1930s). Two more publications to go. By the end of May I should be done with this stage and on to data analysis by June.

Let the accountablity begin!

Getting Lost

2010-04-05T07:50:00.001-05:00

Apologies for leaving your question unanswered. I left you dedicated readers hanging -- anxious to find out what I think of Lost. Or maybe you we too busy thinking about what you think about ALL of the unanswered questions of Lost.

I want to commend those of you who've been dedicated watchers of the show. Wow. I would've gotten frustrated long ago. As I indicated in an earlier post I'm a newbie to the show. That said, at this point, I feel like I know just about as much about what's really going as long-time viewers.

Jay and I watch the show on DVR so he's able to stop and explain bits of who certain people are or tell me what a certain place or object meant in previous seasons. We mess with each other every now and then saying "Ohhhh, I get it." Or "Ahhh, it all makes sense now."

I did have a proud moment when watching it one night. I figured out that Claire was Jack's sister on my own (before they reminded viewers of that this season). Small victories.

I have to say, it's interesting to see who shows up on the show -- such as the guy who played Chip on Kate and Allie, back in the day. He had a gun! Chip shouldn't have a gun. Where's his mom? Was his mom Kate or Allie? And was "Kate" Jane Curtain, or was she "Allie"? And what's the other mom's real name anyhow?

Who knew one show could instigate so many questions?

Body Movin'

2010-03-18T14:25:00.004-05:00

I bought a jogging stroller for a reason. But that reason comes and goes. In spring and fall I feel motivated to jog. Summer, not so much. It's no fun running in sticky weather. And winter, forget it. Jogging in freezing temps or inside on a track makes the task that much more of a challenge.

It's nice out today, I'm home and I'm inspired by my husband's plans to start running. And I need a break from this dissertation work. The perfect time to jog -- if there is such a thing. The last few years I've done the Couch-to-5K program which is supposed to allow my body to adjust to the fact that I'm asking it to do something I don't do very often. Run. I usually get through the nine weeks of the program and then am reminded that I really don't like running.

So now that I've communicated my ambivalence for running I'll let you know what I'd really rather do. Swim. But given that we're out in the woods, the closest pool is 20 minutes or so away. That I can handle, but in order to swim laps I have to join a gym (which doesn't make financial sense to do just for swimming) or swim at the my old high school pool which isn't heated and might not have lanes open for lap swim.

Long story, short. I need my exercising to be convenient. Running is that. So I'm off. I'll let you know how day one of week one goes ... be back shortly.

Later in the afternoon

Not tooooo bad. Before I headed out I downloaded a free running app for my iPod touch called 321run (thanks Jay : ). It lets you know when to run and when to walk so you don't have to use a watch to track the time. Anything that makes the process easier can help keep me moving. My iPod just might help make me a runner. Nothing can stop me now ... except maybe the snow we're supposed to get tomorrow.

Strolling into Spring

2010-03-15T10:49:00.001-05:00

"Peoples! Peoples walking!"

Peoples were indeed out and about yesterday. I felt the need to get outside with Grace for a bit, so we took a stroller walk around in town. I contemplated jogging, but that urge left me quite quickly. Just being outside without a bulky coat was refreshing enough. We went around a few parks and through a college campus so there was a lot for Gracie to see.

As we strolled I realized in many ways this was Grace's first spring -- at least a spring that she could interact with. As we took our walk she took on the role of tour guide calling out things and pointing:

"This way." (Directing me to cross the street to get a better look a what some "peoples" were doing.)

"Ooo, ooo. Catch." (Commenting on some college "kids" playing Frisbee.)

"Birdies! Aww. Awww." (That's her bird call.)

"Ooohhh." (In reaction to a skateboarder.)

"Go Mommy!" (Directing me to go faster up a steep hill. Great little personal trainer : )

Guess I didn't need to go for that jog after all.

Cutting Remarks

2010-03-09T12:55:00.003-06:00

Grace had her first (real) haircut this weekend. Jay and I have trimmed her bangs a number of times over the past months, but she's never had a haircut-haircut.

Gracie has these curly curls. Very cute, but tangly. Her hair was almost to the middle of her back. It was getting caught in bibs and stuck in her mouth. And it was becoming great collector of stray bits of food. It was time.

No beauty salon for this girl. We took her to SportsClips where her dad goes. They have little TVs that we thought might help keep her distracted if things got a bit sad.

She had a few seconds of tears, but then caught a look of herself in the mirror. Then she was distracted by the others getting their hair trimmed -- two young boys. And then she realized there was a TV right by the chair. As a true 2010 mom, I brought my ipod touch with as well (that's my hand in the picture). I've loaded some Sesame Street podcasts and other toddler distractions on to the gadget.

Three inches were taken off and it made for the perfect length for a toddler. I kinda wanted to go a bit shorter, but didn't have the heart to have them cut out all of the curls ... yet.

** And of course she was offered a sucker before we left : )

Healing Words

2010-03-04T11:00:00.007-06:00

I've been sick and/or injured for almost two months now and just so you know, I don't deal well with not being healthy. I don't whine about it -- I get frustrated with it.

A perfect example: I was coughing so hard a few weeks ago I pulled or tore something in my lower back. I felt a pop and knew that movement wouldn't be particularly fun from that point forward. While I spend my workdays at a desk, I spend my nights and weekends with a toddler. We spend so much time on the floor playing. We also spend time running around -- mostly doing races down the hallway. Some time is also spent on me picking Grace up to console her after a fall, give a hug or transport her to her time out spot. This back thing limited all of that.

Grace and I were alone (well Ella was there : ) in the house when my injury happened. As I forsaw my limitations I started to cry out of pain and frustration.

Gracie looked at me with her concerned face all scrunched up and asked, "Mommy sad?"

I explained, "Mommy's got an owie."

She looked at me and said, "I kiss it."

And she did.

The pain, of course, was still there, but my state of mind and heart were all better.

Weekly Wondering: Stuck on the Sucker

2010-02-26T11:48:00.001-06:00

People seem to feel the need to give my kiddo candy, this is especially grocery store cashiers and even doctors. And not only is it candy, it's almost always a sucker.

Two problems with this:

1) They hand this to the child as you are leaving where ever it is you're at. That means after we get outside I'll need to pry the candy away from Grace as she wails, "Minnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnneeee!" Fun times.

2) I'm pretty sure Grace hasn't had a sucker before. At least not to my knowledge. This means if I do let her have it, I'd likely find it stuck on the seat of the car, in Elmo fur (see picture) or, even worse, her in hair. Grace always drops things when she's in her car seat -- sometimes intentionally as if to say "Hey, I'm going to toss this on the floor and tell Mommy to get it because it's a fun game to play while she's driving."

So, I ask, why suckers? There's got to be some other item that could work, something else that says: "Here you go, thanks for being a good toddler and not shrieking in our store/waiting room/urgent care office."

Weekly Wondering: The Case of the ipod Touch

2010-02-17T08:01:00.003-06:00

A few weeks ago I lost the case that I kept my ipod Touch in. Since I toss the thing into my bag everyday when I head to work, I need to have it in it's own case so it won't get all banged up. When I looked around to find a temporary fix, I thought to look in our coat closet. And there it was, the yellow and multi-colored bootie was the perfect size. It serves its protective purpose. But I'm hesitant to take the "case" out of my bag when I am in public. I don't think Jay even knows that I've been doing this -- he does now.

Which brings me to a something I'll plan to post on a weekly basis to get comments, insights and responses. I'm calling it my "Weekly Wondering."

What does having my ipod Touch in a baby bootie say about me?

Monkey See

2010-02-14T13:30:00.014-06:00

I don't like to cook, but I really do like to bake. So figuring out what kind of cake to do for Grace's birthday each year will be something I look forward to. Since Jay's on a diet this year, I thought it would be a smart idea to do cupcakes instead of a cake so that those who came to our birthday gathering could take the extra cupcakes home with them. It so happened that I saw some cutely decorated cupcakes in a magazine. They looked fun and easy so I showed the picture of them to Grace and she exclaimed "Monkeys!!!!" Yep, these were it.

The photo and recipe have been on my fridge for over a month but I never read over the ingredients or cupcake procedure that closely. I was in for an mini-adventure. (The use of this term will become clear shortly.) I added the cupcake ingredients to our weekly grocery list and headed to the store. Two products almost put a halt to my plan. It was all going smooth until I was trying to find mini-Oreos. I'd never looked for these before and assumed they'd be in the cookie aisle. I also assumed they'd be by the other Oreo products. I started to panic when they weren't were I thought they'd be. What else could I use? These cookies were the monkey ears, what other food would work? Then as I walked further down the aisle, away from other Oreos, I found them in a bag, right next to gingersnaps. How odd and how handy, all at once. I needed gingersnaps too. Phew. So now to the next mini-item. Mini-M&Ms. Here my assumption was that they'd be in the candy aisle. Being Valentine's weekend there were a plethora of bags of small packaged candies. I dug around and didn't find any that included mini-M&Ms. Ahghhhhhghhhh. Again I started thinking, what would be the same size as mini-M&Ms that I could use for eyes? The only thing that came to mind were those little red hot candies, but then all my monkeys would look possessed. I finally found an entire bag of little packages of mini-M&Ms that was tossed in the wrong bin. I grabbed 'em and thank goodness we had everything we needed. Lesson for Kate: Read the fine print in these magazine recipes.

So the day before Grace's party I started the baking process. This was the easy part. Even making the homemade frosting worked well. Then the decorating. It was make or break time. The prep of the decorating implements was fun at first. I needed to "clean out" the filling of the mini-Oreos. Tasty. (Yes, I used a knife, not my tongue!) Then I read the directions to the next part: "Cut the gingersnaps." What do they mean by "cut"? The first few I took a knife to promptly shattered. Then I tried a few other things which resulted in treats for my pug assistant. Finally I used a knife to score the top of the cookie and then picked it up and snapped it. It broke right where it was supposed to. Another phew. After opening seven packs of mini-M&Ms to get the necessary 36 brown ones for the monkey eyes, I was ready for the cupcake assembly line to begin.

First the mouth, then the ears. Mouth, ears ... on all 18 cupcakes. Now the part that could be tricky. The eyes. The tube of frosting I had was too big and if I put an obnoxious amount on the cupcake it could ruin it. I did a few "test eyes" on the back of some of the shattered gingersnaps using the non-brown M&Ms. One turned out very well so I felt I was ready to move on to the real thing. I ended up having two test monkeys. With not enough white frosting they looked ... eyeless. But then I got the hang of it.

The last few steps. First, little bits of frosting for nostrils. Got it. Done. The last step, little tuffs of frosting hair on the monkey heads. I skipped this last step. I'd created some quite cute cupcakes and I had an inkling that this last touch could be the end of their cuteness. (I took this photo of some of them before I realized that a few were caged monkeys. Hee. Notice that I have the magazine image placed way away from my cupcakes so there is not the opportunity for a direct comparison. Ha.)

Grace's birthday party day arrived and I was wondering if all the work was worth it. When I saw this little face consuming a monkey face, I had my answer.

The Truth -- It Hurts

2010-02-09T16:03:00.008-06:00

Two years ago today I was being lied to by well-meaning labor and delivery nurses.

"You'll likely give birth before noon." = Grace was born at 3:18 p.m.

"You're through the worst of it." = Hmmm, not sure what their definition of "worst" was -- but I don't think it was the same as mine.

But I thank them for their lies because it made me realize the truth. The fact is, in my heart I wanted give birth naturally, I just wasn't brave enough to make that declaration. Their encouraging (albeit non-truthful) words allowed me to be honest with myself.

The nurses said that I'd forget the pain of giving birth over time. But I haven't and don't want to. The pain of labor and delivery is part of what I experienced on the day that we got to meet our daughter. It's a part of our history together. It'll always be with me.

Since we're talking truthfulness, I feel obligated to be totally honest about something. Grace is the most beautiful, hilarious, smart 2-year-old you'll ever meet.

And that's no lie.

Less is More

2010-02-06T15:01:00.003-06:00

Jay and I eat very different meals. And by that, I mean different from eachother, not different than what other couples and families ate, although it was likely that too. We knew that we would need eat as a family once we started having kids (or in our case, kid : ) For a long time I was hyper-obsessed with fat content and eating "healthy" foods. Jay ... well, he was pretty much the opposite. So, some of our usual meals would be me eating vegetable soup or a baked potato and him eating a multitude chicken tenders in buffalo wing sauce (many of them) with blue cheese dressing. Neither of our methods were model eating by any means. For the past few months, our meals have continued to differ, but with a purpose.

Things have changed.

Jay's been on weight managment program. He's eaten mostly shakes and oatmeal and nutrition bars for the past months. He's lost 70-some pounds since September. He's looking and feeling great. His motivation? Grace. She's so active that he wants to always be able to keep up with her, and be around for her too.

Jay's done awesome. (Here's before and after pictures. He hasn't worn the soccer jersey since college. And he says it fits him better today than it did back then.)

He hasn't whined or been grumpy about the diet. Not at all. And now he's eyeing fruits and vegetables Grace and I are having with interest. (Since I've been "cooking" for just Grace and I, I'm eating better than I ever did. Providing a balanced meal for Grace means a balanced meal for me too.)

Let us not forget that this eating healthy shift has occurred in the land of cheese and beer. The fact that I'm not dragging Jay to Friday night fish frys every week might be to his advantage too : ) We've avoided having any snack temptations in the house which has been relatively easy. The things I snack on, dried fruit and granola bars, aren't things that tempt Jay in the least. The only item that I feel I sacrificed for him was a little thing called Jumbo Rice Krispies. Those things are good! So good that a box rarely lasts 24 hours in our house. Serious.

At the time Jay started the program, we both happened to read the book Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think (by Brian Wansink). A very, very interesting book that really gives insight into why we eat so much often without even knowing it. (Owning big dinner plates we feel like we need to fill with food -- mmm, pasta. Motivation to clean said plate -- don't want to waste any food! The convenience of not so healthy foods -- hello candy bar from Ms. Vending Machine. You get the picture.) Such obvious things, but things that are fixable without going on a diet-diet.

We're looking ahead to healthy, tasty family meals (which we have realized is indeed possible) and enjoying some special treat meals (ahhh, McDonald's, you know we love you.

Jay's also been working out regularly. While he's always been active (softball and volleyball in particular), it wasn't a regular part of his week. We are very much looking forward to family fitness (spring, where are you?). A handy Christmas gift -- Mr. Lawn Tractor -- will mean Jay spends less time mowing on weekends, and more time with Grace and I.

Since Jay's made such a huge change in his life, I've given in on something I have protested for years. Jay wants us to go bicycling as a family. Sounds like a simple request, right? Well he happened to marry someone for whom the phrase "It's just like riding a bike." does not apply. I have had many bikes in my life, but for some reason I've never been very good at it. (Meaning, I get on the thing and fall over and bruise the heck out of myself.) So I balked at the idea of family bike riding -- until now. Inspired by Jay's dedication, I'm willing to give it a try again. As long as our bike trips don't lead to the McDonald's drive-thru, I think we're on the right track.

Making Up for "Lost" Time

2010-02-03T08:10:00.011-06:00

I've never watched Lost. Ever. Not sure why or how that happened. Perhaps the show debuted when I was working on my dissertation so I felt that I didn't have time for another hour-long drama (we were already watching 24 among many other things). That was 2004 and now it's 2010. Lots has changed, but two things remain the same. Still working on the dissertation and still haven't watched Lost.

I'm told by a reputable source (Jay) that I'd really like the show. He didn't watch it right away either, but got caught up over the years. I remember catching glimpses every now and then, and asking him, "What the heck is going on?" I guess that's a common reaction to the show.

And now it's the last season. What are my options? I'm not one to watch television by myself, so I can't see myself catching up on the show over the next few months. Not to mention the lack of time I have when I get home (teaching an online course, developing another online course, working on the aforementioned dissertation and most importantly, being a mama and wife).

Then, last night Jay mentioned that he DVR'd a pretty decent synopsis which provides the main gist of what's happened. After watching that, we'll watch the last season together.

I know there'll be some haters out there, saying "You can't do that! We've invested years into this show and now you think you can just watch a Cliff Notes version and jump right in!?!"

Yep. That's pretty much what I'm going to do.

Boot-a-liscious

2010-01-17T19:48:00.007-06:00

** I know I said I'd update this weekly, but visits to the ER, urgent care, a trip to Texas and the inability to avoid some deadlines, derailed me a bit. In order to make up for it I'm going to provide you with a three part story -- otherwise known as a trilogy. **

The Boot Trilogy

Part I: I have big calves. OK, disproportionate calves. I have size 6 feet and size more-than-6 calves. Not particularly a problem unless you want knee-high boots. I want knee-high boots, and have desired them for many, many years. Each winter (or late spring when lots of sales are tempting me), I try on at least three pairs of boots. Sometimes all at one store. Sometimes at many stores. Each year I'm disappointed. This has been going on for a number of
years. End of Part I.

Part II: I had not even intended to go shoe shopping, but I was waiting around in Kohl's while Jay was exchanging some items. Ah, a boot sale. Hmm, lets take a look. What's this? A pair of cool looking boots on sale for $45 (marked down 50%!). Let me try those on. So I plopped down. Unprepared for my endeavor I had on athletic socks and jeans. Not the best attire for trying on boots. But I gave it a try anyway. I slipped the first on to my right foot. Ziiiiiip. What?! It fits my foot and calf? Huh? What?! I was so excited I almost ran down to the exchange area one-booted to show Jay. First I wanted to try on the left one. So I slide my left foot in, and ziiiii ... hmm. Seems to be stuck mid-calf. Aha, there was a bit of string there that it must have been catching on -- tried it again ... ack! I took the boot off to test the zipper -- it slid up and down with ease. Ah, it's fixed. Back on my foot it goes. Here we go, slide the foot in and ziiiiii--iiii. Dang it!

Since this process had taken quite awhile Jay had returned and repurchased some items and came over to the shoe section to find me red-faced and frustrated. He was impressed I had a boot on (he was, in fact, the one who helped me label my disproportionate calves phenomenon). I explained my dilemma and asked for his assistance. He started to help with the zipper. OWWWW. Not gonna work. So close.

Not only are my calves disproportionate to my feet, they're also disproportionate to each other. I didn't have big calves. Just big calf. I called it quits for boot shopping for the winter.

Part III: A week later I half-heartedly went to the mini-department store in my hometown "mall" with Grace. The reason I call it a quote-mall-unquote is because when I was growing up one of its two anchors was a grocery store, in the mix with a few clothing stores, shoe store, Hallmark, Radio Shack, Maurices (where I ended up getting most of my clothes as a teen), and the place where I got my ears pierced. Ah, a jewelry store too. It also had a supper club type restaurant if I remember right. I'm likely missing something ... anyways. So I went there to take a look at some things for Grace and Jay and just perused the boots. I strolled around a bit before I decided to try some on. I tried on the first pair, which fit! But I didn't like the way they looked and wasn't about to buy something just because it fit. After a few passes around the store, I tried on some more. I had Grace with and she was doing really well for an almost 2 year old. But she was on the edge of antsiness by the time I tried on the fourth boot. She'd been wandering around the shoe section playing with the foot sizer, repositioning that handy shoe mirror and pulling shoes off the rack to try some on herself. Still she was being good enough to let me concentrate on the task at hand. That said, nothing fit right and/or looked weird. I went back to the first style I tried on -- this time in black, hmmm. Ok, these fit, and you know, I kinda like them. They have two zippers. One regular zipper and the second for extended sizing, for women with "athletic calves" -- heee. So that's what I have. How nice of them to put it that way. This adjustable sizing was perfect. Who knows what my calves will do during the next few years? It's not likely they'll get any smaller. These boots were mine.

At this point I've only worn the boots once and no one noticed, and why should they? Most people can wear boots without such a saga. The lack of hoopla over my new footwear is a fitting end to this trilogy. (Get it? Fitting end, because no boots fit me before, and now I have a pair that fits and it is the end of the story. See how that works? :)

New Edition

2010-01-06T10:50:00.007-06:00

Now that Grace is almost two we've decided to shift blog gears a bit. Of course, we'll still feature Grace's adventures (often co-starring Ella, her pug sidekick), but we start telling you a bit more about us grown ups too. Given the shift in focus I thought I'd also give the page a new look as well -- this will likely will be a work in progress. Right now it looks a bit like the Minneapolis Star Tribune masthead. You can take the journalist away from the newspaper, but can't take the newspaper away from the journalist ... or something. And to go with the newspaper theme, I'm going to do updates on a weekly basis. Can you tell I'm all about procrastinating other projects right now?

The Good, the Bad and the Funny

2009-11-02T08:57:00.008-06:00

As all parents know, there are definite ups and downs in parenting, and sometimes the boundaries between/amongst these highs and lows are blurred.

The Good/Bad:
No more ear infections for Grace! That's the good. We got ear tubes for Gracie and we had been told how great it would be. But that night and the 10 or so days after weren't so great. Grace would not go down to sleep without a fight, a screaming, shrieking fight. In fact I was going to write a blog post right around that time but thought better of it. To get a sense of the how we were doing, here is what I jotted down … "Usually our blogs are cute and clever … I just don't have the energy -- mentally or physically -- to be cute or clever right now. Actually the lack of sleep doesn't bother me. It's the lack of being able to figure out what's wrong.”

While the tubes were ultimately a good thing, the timing might not have been the best. Grace had just gone through a big week of newness, as often happens in the life of a toddler. She had just transfered to a new room at day care, she attened her first Minnesota State Fair and had gone through her first (and hopefully, only) surgery. All that on top of exponential learning and development and making of connections. Some of those connections might have been part of the sleeping problem, and thus, part of our sleeping solution. Grace had made friends with all of her stuffed animals (all of which she called “babies”). Her room was pretty well stocked with these babies and at night she’d often stand in her crib and sob, saying, “babies, babies, babies.” One night we decided to remove these distractions and that happened to be the night when we got our good sleeper back. This was just in time for her first trip to Grandma and Grandpa Gorman’s cabin. As you can see in the photo she was always in motion. Days filled with playing in the sand on the beach and watching a friendly squirrel made for an exhausted Gracie -- not to mention a well rested mommy and daddy too.

The Funny:
So, the more words Grace can say, the funnier she gets. And sometimes what she says isn’t as funny as how she says it –- we’ll that and the fact that Jay and I hear Gracie's funniness in ways many others might not. For example, Grace is finally saying “Mama.” When she says it, it is often in that tone that sounds similar to part of Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody, you know where it talks about killing a man and how life has just begun … OoooOoooO. So sometimes an exclamation of "Mama!" can start off a Edenborg household mini-karaoke session.

Another word she says a lot, a lot is “colors.” She’s got a book she can color in and a magnetic board that she “colors” on. So she’ll often walk around repeatedly requesting to partake in the activity by exclaiming “colors.” So it happens that there is an rap song called Colors, where part of the background is the rapper saying “Colors” in a repetitious manner. So sometimes this leads to a bit of an Edenborg freestyle rap session. Such amazing creativity that Grace inspires!

Now, I’m not comparing our daughter is Freddie Mercury or Ice T, but she sometimes demonstrates a vocal range (at least the high-pitched notes) of the former and the beat-box ability (accompanied by some spittle) of the latter.

So, these days we're back to normal, albeit a new normal. But who knows, by tomorrow I might be singing a new tune.

Fancy Foowork and Footwear

2009-08-18T15:48:00.016-05:00

So, Grace just did the cutest thing ever. Again. And again. And again. Wait, did I become one of those moms who's enamored with everything her child does? (Disclaimer: There are a number of not-so-cute things about Gracie. In fact, some of these are so prevalent they've led to nicknames: "What's up, ear infection baby? or "How's it going diaper rashy butt?" or "Hi there buggery nose." OK, now that's out of the way, on with the cuteness.)

I was on the phone with Jay, telling him how Grace had just tried to put shoes on the pug. I started the description by saying Grace had done the cutest thing ever. It was then that I realized I'd just used the "cutest thing ever" phrase the night before. Still, a toddler trying to put shoes on a dog ... that's cuteness squared.

Some other cuteness which you may (or may not) appreciate ...

British (yeah) baby: Grace often sounds like she's British and it cracks me up. When we put her shorts on she says "shoats" -- so cute. Um, maybe you have to be there.

Hearty laugh: When she's being tickled or is particularly amused she has this really authentic laugh. Definitely not a girly "tee-hee-hee."

Assume the tickle position: If Grace wants to be tickled she'll lay flat on the floor and wait for someone to tickle her. If we don't take the hint she'll tickle herself and say "didle, tidle, didle." The pug often wanders over and looks at the kid like she's crazy.

Dancing machine: Lately we've been dancing around the house a lot. While Grace likes lots of different songs (some of which aren't even children's songs, yea!), lately she's preferred some of the classics. We stay with the basic steps for our acoustic version of Ring Around the Rosie, but she pulls out some freestyle moves to a CD version of the Hokey Pokey. Some of them look somewhat similar to dancing I did on speakers at bars in college. Yipes.

Weeeee?: No, this isn't about peeing, it's how Grace requests to slide down my legs or be tossed in the air by Jay. She'll walk up to us and ask, "Weeeee?"

Melmo: We let Grace watch 10 or so minutes of Elmo's World a few days a week. This has led her to believe that Elmo (or Melmo, as Grace says) lives in the TV. Every TV. I have to say I rather enjoy the show, I'm sure that will change once I see Mr. Noodle be goofy for the umpteenth time. That said, I think I'll always giggle when Elmo asks a baby something.

Shooos: This girl loves footwear. Grace could play and play and play with shoes -- especially mine. I have to say, this obsession with shoes likely comes from me. Many of you who know me, might question that, but it's a repressed obsession (due to the fact that I'm a thrifty person). We went to the mall this weekend with "Auntie" Kim and walked over to the clearance shoe racks. Grace was almost vibrating with excitement at the display of such an array of shooos. By the way, she also likes bags -- handbags, backpacks, purses, you name it. Again, my fault : )

Busy, busy: Just watching her go-go-go is entertaining. She's constantly busy with one thing or another. As you can see in the photo, her hands are always in motion. And the same is very true for her legs. She tries to get to places so fast that she falls over. Thus, we've signed a plethora of injury reports at her day care. Despite our hopes that her name would bestow coordination and balance upon her, Grace seems destined to follow in her parents' (stumbling) footsteps.

Team Player

2009-07-14T11:29:00.007-05:00

When Grace started tossing a ball down our hallway, I started wondering what type of sports she might get into. She's got quite a good throwing arm, better than her mom (although that's not saying much). A few months ago I purchased a little plastic bat at a garage sale, perhaps against my better judgment. Anything with a bat and ball is very much outside of my realm of expertise or interest. (I am scarred by my co-ed softball experiences in high school phy.ed. class. Let's just say it wasn't fun.)

Of course, Jay likes sports -- both playing and watching. And I mostly don't mind sports -- sometimes playing, sometimes watching. Jay's always been play something, usually softball or volleyball, every since we met. He's even done a bit of soccer and football. Myself ... well I'm more of an individual sport type of person. Golf and racquetball are what I did the most (although I haven't done either recently). I'm also more of a work-outer (swimming, kickboxing, pilates, and running -- running is last on the list for a reason : ) I did have a volleyball team going for a few seasons though and found out I'm not too terrible at that. Jay and I even played on the same team for a bit and that went quite well too. So, what I'm getting at is she'll likely be playing something. Especially now. Girls' sports options have exploded since I was in school. It'll be interesting to see what she chooses to participate in.

What might be even more interesting is to see which teams she becomes a fan of on the spectating side of sports. Living where we do and given the parents she has Grace is very much a border baby, exposed to the Vikings and Packers, the Twins and Brewers, Gophers and the Badgers, the Timberwolves and Bucks, the Wild and ... oh, well. Right now we are trying to give teams equal opportuntity as you can see in the photos. For those of you that know us, it will interest you to know that it was Jay's idea to buy the Brewers' T-shirt and my idea to buy the Vikings cheerleader outfit. Our luck, she'll decide to become a Bears fan.

Toddler Tales and Tails

2009-06-24T12:31:00.008-05:00

The subtle transition from infant to something more advanced snuck up on us. One day Grace was sitting in her high chair being spoonfed pureed green beans (nummy) and the next day she's Brett Favre, flailing fully-formed beans across the kitchen. The quarterback comparison suits her because those tosses are often intercepted (by a pug : ) Her appearance has changed from having just enough fine hair to cover her little noggin to sporting wavy curls which are often in pigtails. Grace has gone from watching the pug do ... well, whatever it is that pugs do in their free time ... to interacting with her, encouraging her to chase, share her meal or come downstairs to play.

All this has has made me realize, and this may sound odd to some, but I don't see Grace as being mine. By that I mean the following: When I watch Grace, I see her as this little individual person learning, chatting, absorbing the world around her. Sure, I'm her mom and need to parent her by giving her direction and guidance, but it's her individuality that makes me feel the most like a mom. When she puts a bucket on her head or hands me a sample of the substance coming out of her always runny nose or runs after a ball saying "giggity-giggity" like a crazy little wind-up toy, I am proud. Sometimes grossed out too, but still proud : )

This pride is often mixed with those melty mom moments when I realize how much she's made me grow. This often happens at bedtime. As I cradle and cuddle her in my arms before placing her in the crib, I am now aware that this tall girl will soon be too big to be held that way. While she might outgrow my cuddle capacity, she'll never outgrow the space she's created in my heart for her.

Smarty Pants (pun intended)

2009-06-03T09:06:00.006-05:00

Even though Grace has moved past being on all fours for transportation purposes, she still is quite the doggy imitator and that started early on in her life. One of the first things she learned as a baby was a response to the question, "What does a doggy do?" Here's how it happened: I initially thought that I was going to teach Grace some baby signs to help her communicate and so we started reading her a book that showed her different ways to "say" common household objects -- one such object that was common in our house was the dog. The sign for dog was to stick out your tongue. I added panting noises for emphasis (and entertainment : ) Not too long after that Grace was making the association, and when asked what a doggy does, she'd pant. Never mind that Ella doesn't pant unless she's really in a hurry, such as when a Cheerio has dropped on the floor.

Grace also learned to pet Ella nicely pretty early on, a lesson she sometimes forgets when she gets excited and starts bopping the dog on the head. We have a very patient pug when it comes to Gracie. I think she recognizes Grace is great provider of nibbles and tidbits as you can see by the photo.

Oh, yes, I can't forget this. Our daughter fetches. We have always played a game of fetch with Ella where we toss a stuffed toy (named Mr. McFurry) down a hallway and Ella scampers and brings it back to us. Grace has loved to watch this and squeals with excitement as Ella trots past her as she retrieves the stuffed animal to me. After about five tosses or so, Ella tires of the game and Mr. McFurry is abandoned at the end of the hallway. At that point, Grace looks at me, looks at Mr. McFurry and then toddles down the hallway to bring the lonely toy back.

As you can tell, we think our daughter's probably the smartest toddler in the world. We were very proud when she pointed at the dogs on TV when we were watching the annual Westminster Dog Show this spring. She panted to demonstrate that she knew what they were. We were very impressed ... until she pointed and panted when we showed her the deer grazing in our front yard. Good thing this little doggy has time to learn some new tricks.

In Sickness and In Health

2009-05-05T08:07:00.003-05:00

A certain pink, bubble gum flavored liquid sits in our fridge. Yes, we have our first bottle of amoxicillin. After more than a week of Gracie just not being herself we took her to urgent care on a Sunday morning. Aha, ear infection. She's almost 15 months old and many people are surprised that this is her first bout with one of these. We were very glad that we knew what was causing her fussiness, but we were also feeling like bad parents for not bringing her in earlier. We'd attributed the non-Gracie behavior to teething for about a week. She also was drooling and had a runny nose. Then we attributed her semi-restless nights to the fact that she'd started day care and was around lots of kids and lots of new situations. A lot for a Gracie brain to process. Still, even with all of that, she usually she slept through the night with a dose of Motrin, so when we had a rare intense night waking, we rethought our diagnosis.

We were happy to have Gracie's sickness pinpointed, because right around this time I started coming down with something AND the swine flu news broke. (Given that both Jay and I work at health-care organizations, health stuff is a constant part of our daily conversations -- and now even more so. We're well-informed worry warts.) I haven't gotten fully sick, although now I have a bit of a cough, a persistent tickle in my throat. (Why do they call it a "tickle" when it's so dang annoying?) Jay is staying healthier but we're now wondering if we've just all got allergies. Who knows.

Being sick hasn't slowed Grace down at all. In fact she's a confident walker these days. She's got a few pairs of "real" shoes now. The first pair I had her try on were some that a co-worker gave us. They had doggies on them -- perfect for my daughter. As you can see, she wasn't quite sure what to think of these crazy things on her feet. These 101 Dalmatians shoes were a bit big yet so we were scrambling a bit to get her a pair that fit before she started day care. I looked online to figure out sizing and good brands. While I care about her little tootsies, I wasn't going to spend $40 on shoes she'd wear for a month, so we headed to Wal-Mart.

Before Grace was born I'd planned on not buying her items with movie or TV characters on them. Well the best fitting -- and best priced -- shoes happened to have Cookie Monster, Elmo and Oscar on them. Heck, these guys were around when I was a kid (well at least Cookie Monster and Oscar were), so they can't be that bad. No Dora or Hannah yet, whew. Even though she has her own shoes now, it seems like her favorite ones are still mommy's. She loves pulling all of them off the shelves in my closet and tossing them in to the bathtub. She also has started trying to put my shoes on her feet.

It's fun to see her mimic the things we do. (To clarify, I don't toss my shoes the tub : ) Sometimes these actions are just amusing, like when she scratches her belly like her daddy does. Sometimes the actions are useful. One of the earliest things Grace mimicked were the motions we do when we wash our hands. That one might be coming in handier than we thought.

Getting Right to the Point

2009-03-24T11:48:00.009-05:00

I know, I know. It's been a long time since my last post. So I thought I'd do an update on all the
"-ings" --

Sleeping: That crying-it-out weekend has had a huge payoff. We totally trust that Grace will get herself down to sleep. And if she doesn't, we know something is wrong (teething, sick or Bitsy Bear "escaped" from the crib).

Walking: This is the big one that everyone asks about. Grace still finds crawling to be the most efficent way of getting around. That said, she has taken a few steps on her own but not a full-out walk yet. Verrrrrry close.

Teething: A few weeks ago we realized that Grace had four molars coming in at once. She'd been a bit on edge, but was a real trooper. These teeth are still in process. Stubborn buggers.

Standing: She does stand for a short period of time unassisted, usually when she's somewhat distracted and playing with something (like her new cell phone).

Eating: Our girl is a great eater. She communicates well when it comes to how she feels about the food she's eating. "Numm, numm, numm, numm." And that's a direct quote. She is so the opposite of what Jay and I were like as kids from what we hear. When I gave her brussel sprouts for the first time I wanted a record of it. We videotaped it so we could tell Grace one day: "See, you used to like brussel sprouts!"

Watching TV: We watch a little bit of TV with Gracie, especially on Sunday mornings when some fun kid's shows are on. She likes watching and sometimes squeals a bit. Watching her makes watching Elmo tolerable.

Dancing: Our love for music has passed on to Gracie, and so have our dancing "skills." She does a little boogie when I put on some kid-friendly CDs. She also activates the many toys we have for her that are music based. On one toy she knows exactly which button to push to get songs to play. She often does a mix-master Gracie session and hippity hops a bit.

Flirting: Grace is a pro at this. I took her to a cafe recently and ended up being there for longer than we'd anticipated. I was worried that Grace would get ornery and bored. Instead she watched people and waved and smiled and played peek-a-boo, especially with the boys : )

Laughing: These range from giggles to hearty laughs. Grace's got some definite tickle spots which triggers some of the laughing. She also laughs when she realizes others are laughing and she wants to join in.

Talking: Grace sure can talk a lot, but what she is saying is still mostly a mystery to us. 'Da-da," "bye-bye" and "hi" are solid words she has a handle on, and sometimes "ball." But ma-ma is still pretty random.

Endearing: So this is not a true "-ing" is the sense the others are, but deserves an update nonetheless. Jay and I have our favorite things that Grace does -- often involving kissing and hugging. With Jay she does the goofiest, yet cutest kisses. As he comes in for a smootch she opens her mouth wide. (Jay said she better grow out of that habit : ) For me, my favorite thing is when Grace crawls over to me, pulls on my pants to pull her self up and stands up hugging my legs with her little face and big smile peering up at me. No words are needed.

Party Surprise

2009-02-14T20:44:00.010-06:00

By the time most kids are one-year-old the parents have dealt with many sicknesses, but Grace has only had a few sniffly days and has been otherwise relatively healthy. We're thinking that we got a bit of a reprieve because we endured her stay at Children's Hospital when she was a few months old. But wouldn't you know it, the Saturday before her first birthday she woke with a fever. She wasn't herself, not especially crabby, just not as cheery. She was super sleepy and had very long naps -- something I would've cherished if she was healthy. Instead, I anxiously awaited her awakening so I could take her temperature. Given how I was taking her temperature, I don't think she was as anxious to have it taken. Or at least it was a different kind of anxious. The long naps gave me time to perfect her wonderful pawprint cake (with decoration by dad : )

We flipped through our baby books trying to recall what to do with an infant who has a fever. The resources all differed. One said to call the doctor when her temp was 102.6. Another said wait until it's 104 and a third said 103. Then I called the nurseline (a few times) to see what we should do. They were very helpful and eased my mind a bit.

We were thinking we had it handled for the night and were in the process of giving her some fever reducing medicine. Turns out that medicine was also vomit inducing, at least that was the case that evening. It induced, not once, not twice, but three times. And in rapid succession. Since that was the first we'd experienced projectile vomiting with Grace, we knew we should consider ourselves lucky. But we didn't feel so lucky that night -- especially since we were just about to eat dinner when the incident occured. A few hours later -- after clean up of the floor, feeding chair, clothes, baby, and pug -- Jay and I commented on how surreal that had been. I can only imagine what was going through Gracie's mind at the time.

She woke the next morning and still had a temp, so we started making phone calls to cancel her birthday gathering. We had a low key day, just grandparents and a few other stopped by. Not to worry though -- as you can see she did the requisite cake smooshing. She was a bit more chipper than the day before, but didn't have the energy to celebrate fully.

As we went to bed that night we decided that if she still had a fever the next day -- her actual birthday -- I'd stay home from work take her to urgent care. When she awoke that Monday, lo and behold, no fever. I was so happy she was better ... but a small part of me was disappointed that I wouldn't be home to celebrate her birthday with her. I remembered the nine months she spent with me in my tummy. Followed by the 12 months we've shared as a family. I realized that I thought about and still think about her birthday every day -- and I always will.

Taking a Stand

2009-01-11T15:31:00.024-06:00

Grace has been such a great sleeper for the past 10 months. She’d soothe herself down and everything. But lately because we’ve either thought she was teething or sick (or wanted to avoid her crying when we were in a houseful of people on a trip to Texas), we’ve rocked her down to sleep, meaning she’s totally asleep or close to it when she’s placed in her crib. Basically we’d fallen into a routine of bad habits. As a result, she’s been hard to put to bed lately and for the last week she was waking up in the middle of the night. Well, actually it was often even before midnight.

On top of this, Gracie's developed a strong attachment to me and sometimes will cry when I leave the room. Not a very good thing when you’re trying to put her down to sleep.

After a challenging week, we concluded that she’s not teething, is getting enough to eat and is not sick. So that meant we could try something we’d been avoiding -- letting her cry it out. It’s called simply CIO for those parents in-the-know about sleep issues, and there are many opinions on this method, strong opinions both ways. We won‘t get into that here.

Jay and I decided I’d give this a try while he was gone for the weekend. We figured if both of us were around, one would convince the other to give in to her cries. I texted Jay throughout the days and nights to let him know how things were going. I also thought it'd be useful (to myself and others) to document my baby adventure. This is pretty much exactly what I jotted down throughout the sessions:

Friday

Today/tonight we begin the great baby experiment.

Morning nap

I started the morning nap process at 9:43 a.m. and she was down by 9:56. I didn’t put her down totally asleep and she was fine with that. A good start to the day. Will do the same process for afternoon nap and then the grand finale, tonight.

11 a.m. She’s still sleeping. I’m thinking the ease of this morning nap might be deceiving since she’s so tired.

11:22 a.m. Grace starts waking up slowly. A good nap.

Afternoon nap

1:38 p.m. We start the nap process.

1:51 p.m. I am out of room. She watched me leave, gave a shout out squirmed and flopped around. She was laying down, then standing up, and back down. Wimper. Cry. Sob. Stand.

Let the CIO begin.

Her cries are sounding like swears. Must remind myself that this is good for her. We want her to be able to go to sleep on her own. All my babies, independent.

Thank goodness for this video monitor. I am not sure I could do this with out being able to see she’s OK. Plus it’s somewhat entertaining.

Ok, now for the 5-minute check in.

Ooooh, that pissed her off just like they said it would.

Now the swears are worse.

Think I’m going to go see if the mail has come.

Wow you can hear her all the way in the garage. Oh, great, we got a parenting magazine in the mail. How handy.

Almost time for the 10-minute check. Heading in …

Now it sounds like she’s swearing in German. The tone of her cries makes it sound like she’s saying: “I’m so disappointed in you!” In German, of course.

She’s so determined to not fall asleep. Good thing pug is not phased by her crying and can be my furry sanity through this.

Hold up. She sat for a minute. Oh, now she’s up again.
Now she’s down.
Now she’s up.

This is an interesting way to pass the time.

Went in for the 15-minute check. She’s so exhausted but so determined to stay awake.

Next check in 20 minutes.

She’s sitting and sobbing. Looking around.
Makes a mommy’s heart hurt.

She’s quieting down …

I think she’s sleeping sitting up.

And we have sleep.

2:50 p.m. About an hour.

Not so bad to do during the day … now tonight might be a different story.

And the night has begun.

Started putting her down around 7:40 p.m. and it is now 7:51. She’s crying and standing.

Now it’s 5 minutes later and I will give her a visit.

She’s almost doing more bouncing than crying. Not sure what that’s about.

And I’m going in.

And I'm back and I hear the “disappointed” cry.

Back in around 8:10 p.m.

She’s so dang strong-willed and stubborn. Where did she get that from?

She’s sitting, and she's up.

Do I go in? Waiting a bit.

She’s sitting and whimpering. Wobbling like she’s about ready to …

Now sitting up silently, wavering. Not ready to give in yet.

And we have sleep! 8:19 p.m.

Awesome! About 30 minutes. Now my only dilemma is a night waking.

Saturday

She slept in ‘til 7 a.m. When I opened her door and she was sitting up just looking at me. We were both happy as you can see in this picture : )

Naps

The morning nap wasn’t totally uneventful, but she’s settled on her own after 20 seconds of crying. Then the afternoon nap happened in car.

And the night has begun.
Starting the nighttime routine at 7:21 left room and left at 7:36 p.m.

Starts out in the standing position crying. Looking like she’s going to toss her doll Bitsy Bear out of the crib. She’s dangling it over as if threatening me. “If you don’t come in here, I’ll drop her. Don’t test me, I’ll do it!” Makes me think she knows I’m watching.

I’m going in for 5-minute check unless she sits down.

Deciding not to go in. Seems it might escalate things instead of calm things down at this point.

She’s not screaming … so I’m making the judgment to not go in.

Change of plans. I had to go in to fix a crib malfunction.

Ooooooooooh she’s not happy. Not one bit.

She’s quieting, playing with her hair.

And we have lay down. 8:04 p.m.

Now lets see if we have a full night. I sense, no.

Sunday

But I was wrong. Ye of little faith. We all (baby, pug and I) slept in 'til around 7 a.m. again! A couple good nights of sleep has never been so meaningful. I think it was a confidence builder for everyone. Jay and I are more confident in our parenting decisions and Grace is more confident in being on her own. We'll she's not totally on her own, of course. Bitsy Bear is there for her, sometimes as a comfort object, sometimes as a hostage.

True Colors

2008-12-23T10:48:00.008-06:00

As many of you know, I'm finishing my dissertation (I've been "finishing" it for the past few years now : ), and my topic is images of girlhood in the media. When I was pregnant, there was a part of me that was worried about having a girl. I didn't want to end up over-analyzing my kid's childhood. To tell you the truth, I haven't been that preoccupied yet, although I do pay attention to how gender-focused babyness can be, especially what I call the pink/blue dichotomy. I was going to buy a sippy cup a few months ago and my two options were a pink cup (with princesses on it) or a blue cup (with cars on it). I decided to postpone my purchase and later bought one that changed colors when you put cold liquids in it. Ha! Take that, you producers of gender-specific sippy cups.

I'm not opposed to pink and we dress Grace in pink on a weekly basis. That said, I do have some outfits that could be considered more boyish because they are sans bows and glitter. Many of these have doggies on them, because, well, I love dogs. Turns out the "boy and his dog" thing is prevalent in baby clothing because I've only found one doggy top in the infant girl area of the store. Most of her doggy-themed clothes are from the boy's section. When she wore one of these non-pink outfits to a holiday craft sale I had people ask how old he is. I understand that clothes are all strangers have to go on when trying to identify the gender of a baby, but it just bugs me that no pastels = boy.

Still, I am not as hyped up as I thought I'd be. I love seeing Grace in girly clothes just as much as I like seeing her in overalls. (If you look closely at this picture you'll see her onesie has pink and glitter on it.) I am excited to see her play with the doll we got her for Christmas, just as much as I'm looking forward to seeing her play with cars and trucks. If she ends up being more of a girly girl than I was/am -- and it wouldn't take much -- that's fine with me. I just always want her to know she has choices.

My mom offered to by her a knitted hat at the aforementioned craft sale and I selected the pink one, hoping to plop it on her head and dispel any confusion. Grace promptly grabbed the hat and yanked it off her head. Her choice. That's my girl!

Gestures of All Kinds

2008-11-13T14:06:00.007-06:00

I really enjoy taking Grace places and that's so the opposite of what I thought I'd say before she was born. Part of the reason is she's so dang sociable and chatty. So much so that it's hard for us to figure out when/if her first words have/had happened. Usually it's the parents that are trying to convince others that their kid's said his/her first word. But in our case, others have been trying to convince us. I finally got a library card at the Menomonie library and while I was filing out a form Grace looked at one of the librarians and made a "hi" sound. The librarian looked at me, and asked, "Did she just say hi to me?" I said, "Maybe." The librarian was convinced after Grace repeated the word a few more times and told me, "I'm going with it. She said hi." Then the next evening we had company and she seemingly said hi to our friends. They did a double-take and had the same reaction as the librarian, again convinced that Grace had just said hi.

Along with the "hi" is often a wave. She has two styles of waving right now. One is a graspy, grabby wave and the other is more of your homecoming queen-on-a-float wave. The first gesture that she learned though was from our nanny. The ever-popular "so big" with arms stretched over her head in a touchdown motion. She does it if we ask: "How big is Gracie?" (She also sometimes does it when I ask: "What do the Vikings never get?" Hee.)

My two proudest teachings so far are doggy related. Grace was initially grabby when it came to interactions with Ella, but I always would show her how to pet a dog nicely and I would say "nice pet" in a soft tone. So now Grace does smooth petting motions and says "Nice." Well not really. She says some sort of "word" in a soft tone though and it's super cute and an especially good lesson for her to have learned. Grace is quite the dog person already and loves to crawl after Ella. Poor pug who's used to napping 20 hours a day gets exhausted with all of this activity sometimes. The expressions on the faces of both of our girls in this photo really says it all. Gracie says: "C'mon, lets play!" Ella says: "Where's the off button on this kid!"

The other dog-related teaching occurred through me pointing at dogs in her books and pointing at Ella and saying "doggy" and then panting like a dog. Grace will now mimic that. Very cute, not very practical. Practicality can wait.

Little Things

2008-11-01T19:17:00.009-05:00

I got up in the middle of the night one night last week ... well not in the middle of the night since it was quarter to 4 ... anyway Grace woke up. Since she goes to bed before 8 p.m., if she gets herself awake after 2 a.m. or so, she's going to be hungry. She only does this once a month or so, so I don't mind getting up too much. We are usually not totally sure why she wakes up. It could be that she gets herself into an awkward position, although she has the ability to fall asleep in the weirdest poses -- in fact, we call her yoga baby when we see her in the monitor sometimes. Then we were thinking that we may need to turn the heat up a bit. (She might have her mom's preconditioned coldness.) But after a few ornery evenings and naptimes we think it's just that she's getting a plethora of teeth. So on this fine evening/morning, I got a bottle made and went in. She was wimpery and I popped the bottle in her mouth. She grabbed the side of the bottle with one hand and held the bottle up. One hand. This was the first time she ever truely held her own bottle. After a few seconds she started to use the other hand too. As I sat there and watched, I was thinking that it was highly likley she needed a diaper change, as it had been about 8 hours. So I thought I'd tempt fate and put her down on the changing table. She kept holding her bottle througout the change. I was so proud. Proudness over "little" things -- noises, movements, looks, interactions. Those little things add up so quickly these days and are in fact a big deal.

Speaking of big deals. We've had trouble with our laptop computer lately and it just so happens that we download all photos of Gracie onto that computer. I save them on to disks in three-month increments so this was the weekend I was planning on doing just that. But last Sunday the computer locked up and wouldn't let us get our documents. At first I was ornery about it and mad at myself for not saving them more frequently. Then I was sad that we may lose all the photos we had of Grace from ages 6 months to 9 months. (Her Halloween pumpkin photo was taken after the computer meltdown.) The missing photos would be especially noticable because I'd purchased a little photo album thing which had a separate book for each of these quarterly increments of photos. Then I became OK with it. I figured it'd be just a story we'd tell Grace when she was older. "Back in 2008 we used this thing called a laptop computer where we stored digital photos of you ..." Jay was ultimately able to recover the images, but we've learned our lesson and are asking for an external hard drive for Christmas (hint hint). This will not be happening again ...

Sound of Silence

2008-10-24T09:54:00.008-05:00

Gracie and Jay have taken a trip to Elk River to visit Grandma Patti and I’ve stayed behind to work on my dissertation. For those that don’t know, the labor and delivery of this 200-some page paper has been drawn out and painful. Giving birth to Grace was a snap compared to this task. I need to be disciplined because I know Jay will not be pleased if he comes home to a pug that knows 5 new tricks.

I have been so excited to have this 36 hours alone (well, with pug : ) to focus on my work, but I’m missing my little girl. It's so quiet and calm! Grace has so much going on these days with substantial changes in her mobility, vocality and size. She’s officially crawling. It took a few trial runs, but she’s got it down now. She especially likes to follow Ella’s tail. Good thing the dog’s still quicker than the baby : ) Since I can no longer trust that she’ll stay where I put her down, I take Grace around from room to room with me when I need to get things done. One place she’s come to like a lot is our walk-in closet. I bring her in there when I’m trying to get ready to leave the house in the morning. While I’m figuring out what to wear, Grace rearranges my shoes and sometimes pulls down a shirt or two. It's almost as if she's trying to tell me what I should put on. I never thought about wearing strappy, sparkly high heels with my pink "Got Milk?" sweatshirt. Might just have to give that a try.

Chatting, “singing” and clapping are now common sounds around the house. The clapping is awfully cute, the "singing," not as cute. ("Singing” is what I like to call her shrieks.) Now her chatting, on the other hand, is indeed cute. She's much more expressive these days. She really puts some emotion into her “words.” When she’s upset, I swear I hear some four-letter words in her babbles.

A big change lately is the transition to a bigger car seat. She was starting to look like a giant in the infant seat and seems a lot more comfy in this new one. No more infant seat means that when we go shopping she actually has to sit in the cart like a big girl as you can see in the photo. (Yes, when I went to Kmart last week I was the goofy mom snapping pictures of my daughter in a shopping cart.) She loved grabbing at things as we weaved through racks of clothes.

Speaking of clothes, I keep getting asked what Grace is going to be for Halloween. My answer: “Whatever costume is cheapest when I go shopping next Friday.” I keep looking for clever, easy baby costumes (any suggestions?). We’ll see how ambitious I get. Tune in next week.

Moving Forward – Looking Back

2008-10-11T21:26:00.004-05:00

Last weekend we had the chance to get a glimpse of what life was like before baby. We had tickets to a concert in St. Paul and signed up Grandma Patti and Grandpa Dennie to watch Gracie girl overnight. (It took a lot of arm twisting : ) Then Grandma Jane and Grandpa Greg agreed to take Ella for the weekend, so we were totally “kid” free.

The weekend was good for us all. Grandparents had a good time taking care of our girls. And perhaps more importantly we were comfortable with being away. I even fully slept through the night – something I didn’t do at all the first night we spent away from Grace. (The restful sleep might have had something to do with the fact that when we were at the concert I had a few drinks, the first in over a year.)

On the way to pick Grace up we commented on how it seemed like we’d been away from her for much more than 36 hours. When we reunited it was great to see that little smiley face.

The whole family was smiley that weekend, because we just learned we got renters for our house in Apple Valley. Although we’re extremely happy we got renters, there is a bit of sadness about officially leaving the house. The main reason: it’s Gracie’s first home and our first home as a family. To prepare for the renters we needed to redo the nursery which had been custom painted with Snoopy and Woodstock. While we do feel a tinge of sadness, we’ve also come to realize how much (and how quickly) our house in Menomonie has truely become home. The open floor plan really fits how we function as a family.

Speaking of floor plans, Gracie’s exploring ours more fully. She’s so very close to crawling. In fact, the other night I was readjusting her crib mattress and set her on the floor close to me, but not right next to me. I turned my attention to the mattress for a few minutes and turned back and she was tugging on my pant leg. She's always surprising us with her mobility. In fact, I heard her wake up around 2:30 a.m. a few nights ago and turned on the monitor, expecting to see her kicking her legs a bit. Instead, I saw her sitting up, looking around and exploring her new view. (Thus, the lowering of the crib mattress.) As this video shows, she’s much more adept at sitting than crawling at the moment.

We’re excited for her to become more mobile and independent, but are also a bit melancholy and nervous. And it’s only the beginning …

Take a Look

2008-09-21T15:40:00.010-05:00

Jay and I always get comments about who Grace looks like. The resemblance can’t be based soley on hair and eye color because all three of us have brown eyes and brown hair. It seems like the “She looks like Jay,” comments outnumber the “She looks like Kate” comments by a slim margin. (Regardless, everyone agrees she's a cutie as you can see : )

Here are some other themes:

Newborn -->Infant: Personally, I think she looked more like me when she was a newborn and is starting to look more like Jay now.

Features: Another comment is that the top half of Gracie’s face is all Jay, and the bottom half is all me.

Mood: The resemblance seems to shift depending on what mood she’s in. When she’s thoughtful and contemplative, she looks like me. When she’s laughing and mischievous, she looks like Jay. (This isn’t based on just my opinion, but I can’t divulge my sources : )

Speaking of family resemblances, I did this Yearbook Yourself thing that has been on a few friend’s blogs. If you haven’t seen it, it puts your photo into yearbook photos of different eras. Quite interesting and such a good use of my free time, I might add. A few photos were eerily familiar because they looked so much like relatives, especially my mom. Others also showed me what I would have looked like if I’d have developed my styling skills in high school.

For your entertainment:

Bet that some people (i.e. Jay) would say the glasses in this photo (1966) aren't that much different than ones I acually wear today.

This looks a lot like my mom at that time, or so I think she did, since I wasn't around in 1966 : )

And finally, this (1990) is how I would've looked if I could've ever gotten the hang of how to use the dang curling iron. Truely a skill I've never mastered.

And that might be for the best. That said, I was the recipient of many a perm in the late 1980s, so I'm not sure that's any better. I'm hoping Gracie never learns what the perming experience is all about and I'm crossing my fingers that she doesn't ask her mom for curling iron tips.

The Perfect Storm

2008-09-11T10:47:00.009-05:00

A disclaimer: I still realize that we are super lucky and have a great baby – and we are so fortunate that she’s as good as she is, especially when it comes to sleeping. That is why when she was difficult to get down last Thursday night, it took me off guard. This sleepless trend continued and intensified over the weekend, through Wednesday.

We started off with a fun "girls' night" (Jay was in Vegas). As you can see by the photo, Grace was fine during the day, but come bedtime – yipes! She’d be near sleep or fully sleeping as we placed her in the crib. But when her head hit the mattress those eyes flew open and the yowling began. Since she’s been so good, we hadn’t heard that type of cry since before we moved.

I realized that a number of things were going on in her little world and caused what I like to call (dum, dum, dum): The Perfect Storm.

Here’s thoughts that might have been going on in her cute little head:
* My daddy’s out of town.
* I’m eating a green food with a funny texture (green beans).
* Everything around me is sooooo fun to look at (pug) and grab for (pug).
* I fill my pants right after Mommy puts me in my crib (perhaps because of that weird green stuff she feeds me).
* My Grandma Patti is visiting me this weekend! She’s fun. She gave me a cow and sings to me.
* I’m went to a party (happy adoption day Dominic!) with two big dogs, four kids, one baby, many toys and many adults.
* I like my mommy and I kinda like to know where she is at all times. Mommy?

It’s a lot for even an almost 7-month-old to process! Given that Jay and I tend to be analyzers/overthinkers/obsessers, I wouldn’t be surprised if Grace had that trait too. Maybe she just had a lot going on in that little noggin and wouldn’t let herself go to sleepyland.

Then Sunday night I discovered another factor that contributed to (dum, dum, dum) The Perfect Storm: A tooth pushing through. Aha! She’d been fine when her first two came in, but apparently this one was different.

On Monday night, Jay was introduced to the bedtime struggle and we discussed when/if we’d try any cry-it-out options. We decided if the sleep struggles continued after this tooth came through, then we’d give them a chance. I warned Jay that I might need to leave the house. I don’t deal that well with Gracie’s yowling. Crying I can deal with. Howls that sound like “Mommy!” … not so much. This was obviously tooth pain, so we gave her some pain reliever and added a few things to the bedtime routine – a book and a fella we like to call G. Raffe. (He's been mentioned and pictured in previous posts.) We read/gnawed on a book. Then when we put her down, her giraffe stuffed animal accompanied her. After a bit of wimpering she grabs G. Raffe and drifts off to sleep. Whew.

Is that another tooth I see coming through? Good thing we can count on baby Tylenol, Oragel and Mr. G. Raffe to help us weather this storm.

Way To Be Tall

2008-09-02T15:49:00.011-05:00

We went to our new pediatrician for the first time a few weeks back and wouldn’t you know it – Grace is in the 97th percentile for length. She’s thriving according to the doctor.

Speaking of being in good health, as some of you know, I recently got motivated to try running/jogging/moving on my feet faster than I would by walking. I’ve been trying the “couch to 5K” workout – yes, that’s actually the name of the program – which eases you in to the whole thing. The program's advice says to not rush the process and that’s fine by me. My last experiences with running were ones from track and field week in high school, and they involved searing sideaches and intense wheezing. To make this go around more favorable, I’ve taken Grace with me on at least one “run” a week. It’s a great motivator to look down at that little grinny face. Sometimes she even appeases me by grabbing on to the side of the stroller as if to say “Whoa, mommy. Slow down! You’re running so fast that I have to hang on for dear life.” My own little personal trainer!

The runs I’ve gone on alone are those that I've done around our house. Those have been fun, too, but for different reasons. The first time I gave it a go I had just walked around the corner of our driveway in time to see a doe and fawn crossing the road about 15 yards away. And then a few nights ago I was going to go out for a jog close to dusk. Then I heard a grunting sound coming from the wooded area around our house. Ummmm. Right then seemed like a good time test out our elliptical machine that we just got set up in our basement.

Regardless of how I do it, it’ll be good to get myself into shape because soon I’ll be chasing Grace around the house. She’s accomplished the freestanding sit and I imagine the crawling and walking will be here. In this photo she look likes she's trying to transition from the seated position to one of more mobility. Her face seems to say, "But Mommy, all the other babies are crawling!" Not so fast little one ... not so fast.

Dive In

2008-08-07T09:50:00.011-05:00

A few weekends ago we were once again reminded how lucky we are. We were in for a long day on a road trip to St. Cloud for Grace's baptism. We were on the go from 8 a.m. until 7 p.m and Grace didn't fuss for more than a few seconds throughout the entire endeavor (thanks in part to Grandma Jane whose job it was to keep her occupied during our drive … something tells me she didn’t mind the “job” too much.)

Grace didn't mess her beautiful dress (photos coming soon) and looked so cute with her little barefeet kicking about : ) She also did great afterward, being passed around and hanging out with family. She was especially interested in hanging with Uncle Adam. It was an eventful day as she sampled some of the sweet and sour things in life -- some lemonade from Grandma Patti and a taste of frosting thanks to Grandma Michelle.

Even though she tends to have a devilish little grin on her face most of the time (see photo), Grace was an angel during her baptism ceremony. She was especially intrigued by the basin of water and looked like she wanted to dive in and splash around.

Speaking of water-based adventures. Grace loves baths now. We stopped giving her baths in the plastic tub we had over the kitchen sink and transferred the event to a inflatable bathtub that we place in our master bathroom. It makes for a funny site – a big jet bathtub with candles placed around it, complemented by an inflatable rubber ducky tub in the center of everything. We made the transition because she’d gotten so splashy and grabby in the sink that we had more water on us and the floor than we had in her tub. Now she can splash away to her heart’s content.

No wonder Grace found the baptismal basin so appealing.

Girl Power

2008-07-31T18:59:00.005-05:00

We have one strong little girl. Strong in many ways. For one, she’s strong when it comes to pain tolerance, as she produced two teeth with ease, something that we really appreciate. That said she isn’t very attune to how to eat with them. When we sit down to have rice cereal meals, she sprays food all over her new feeding chair. Even with the mess, she looks like such a big girl sitting at the table with us.

Grace is also quite physically strong and uses her little fingers to pull hair and pinch the heck out of my arm. In fact, I had little baby finger-sized bruises on my arm for a bit. It’s hard to believe the girl with this sweet little face can do that.

Then there’s the strong voice. She likes to do a shrieky sound a lot, especially if she’s encouraged to do so. (Jay’s not a big fan of this sound, but I’m guilty of cheering her on : ) The other week she decided to shriek through the grocery store … just because. A sound Jay’s a bigger fan of is Grace’s hearty laugh. She’ll do it if you tickle her or amuse her in just the right way. For awhile it was by grabbing her knee or tickling under her chin. Then it was when she played tug with a burp cloth and most recently it was when Jay tickled under her arms.

Grace will make both the shriek and laugh sounds when she watches her favorite pal: Ella. She really likes Ella a great deal and that makes Kate very happy. Ella still isn’t totally chummy with Grace, but will lick her every now and then. She will also appease Grace by sitting while she pets her. She always looks like she’s just tolerating the little tyke. Grace will win her over soon enough. Once those Cheerios begin flying they’ll be the best of friends.

Online / In line

2008-07-21T20:44:00.004-05:00

Part of the reason we moved to Menomonie (other than Jay's great job offer, of course) is because we realized we wanted a simpler, less hectic lifestyle, We are very happy with our choice. That's not to say there haven't been some growing pains during the past month. One is the lack of Internet until now. Jay and I are both people who have become accustomed to checking online for many things: email, weather radar and most recently, Facebook updates. When we had to resort to dial-up for a few week or so I decided to postpone most online activities. To be honest, it wasn't that bad, especially when you have a 5-month-old to keep you busy : ) That said, I still did a little dance when we got reconnected.

I became aware of the second smalltown adjustment when I was in the checkout line at the grocery store. The lines are definitely shorter so I thought I'd be just zipping in and out. But then I noticed that the cashier got into conversations with everyone that went through. This was something that I hadn’t seen in years. Definitely not what we’d experienced at Cub or even Byerly’s in the Twin Cities. At first I could feel myself getting frustrated, thinking “C’mon, c’mon. Let’s go!” But then I remembered that I was really not in any hurry to get anywhere and calmed down. I didn’t even flinch when each person in line in front of me pulled out their checkbooks to pay for their groceries. Again, something we rarely saw in the metro. Now I’m used to, and even appreciate, the slower pace.

So now I know you’re probably itching to know what’s new with Gracie. Well, a few things. She’s gotten a taste of some food – the wonderfully tasty rice cereal mixed with breastmilk. Mmmmm. When I try feeding Grace, Ella gets so excited and begs for the cereal (she does love rice and cereal so it makes sense : ) So, I look at her and say, “Ella, you don’t want any of this, it’s yucky.” Then I turn to Grace and say, “Want some of this? It’s so yummy.” So I’m lying to one of my girls. Grace hasn’t really gotten the hang of the swallowing thing yet, especially when she’s distracted by Ella as you can see here:

And now for some breaking news, Gracie’s first tooth is coming through. Tonight she wasn’t really interested in eating and so I put my finger on her lower gums and sure enough, a little bit of tooth was poking through. So far, she’s a teething trooper … but the night is still young.

Out with the Old, In with the New

2008-07-05T07:48:00.008-05:00

We're officially living in Me-no-monie. (We're really residents of the town of Spring Brook, which I call a suburb : ) Everyone's adjusted well. Gracie is growing so much and doing new things every day. I don't see her much on the days I work. That's hard, but it makes me enjoy those late-night feedings more. Plus I get to spend much quality time four days a week and I can't ask for much more than that! We thought you'd enjoy seeing one of the fun activities she's taken up lately -- sucking on her foot.

Here's a little recap of our lifestyle changes:

New house: We love it! The great room is truely great. Everytime I walk into our living room/kitchen/dining area I smile.

New electronics: We "needed" (I should take the quotes off of that, because we did need these items) a new TV, new speakers, new satellite dish ... all of which make the place seem even more like home. The "local" television stations are still Mpls./St. Paul so we can watch our regular evening news and most importantly (to the head of our household) the Vikings games. The main issue we're struggling with is internet access (one of the reasons I haven't posted in so long). No broadband available, so we're going the wireless route right now and that's been inconsistent. It's a hard shift for a couple who's gotten very used to highspeed connections.

New neighbors: We haven't officially met our real neighbors, other than chatting with them for a minute here and there. But I'm talking about our other neighbors - the wildlife. There's a family of rabbits that we see a lot which I find to be very cute. But I know if I attempt to do any gardening they'll become not so cute. Then there's the tree frog that I found on our deck. I thought he had passed on to froggy heaven, but nope, he was just sleeping.

New commutes: Jay's got a nice drive to Eau Claire where he says he sees more cows than cars. I see my share of cars on my drive to St. Paul. It hasn't been too bad so far. Not sure I'll say that in winter though. The new iPod set up that Jay's promised me should help too.

New child care: We now have a nanny. We loved our in-home daycare in Apple Valley and were especially sad to leave that behind. But we had the idea (actually Jay's reminds me it was his idea) of hiring a nanny for the summer to help us transition into our new schedules. It's been working out very well. She happens loves doggies too so Ella's super happy.

Usually people are remiss in posting to a blog because there's nothing new to say. Not the case here! There's been so much to say this past month, but so little time to say it.

Now she's a big "G"

2008-06-08T18:02:00.009-05:00

Grace, being the mature four-month-old that she is, is so over the activities of youth (birth to yesterday : ) She's beyond just being held, changed and fed. She's moved on to bigger and better things, like bouncing, jumping and grabbing. Her bouncy seat is finally be used for it's intended purpose -- bouncing. And as for jumping, as you can see in the photos and video, she's a big fan of her Jumperoo. Then there's grabbing. Purple elephants, cardboard pictures of Snoopy and Mom's clothes are all common targets. She also likes to grab her own clothes, especially when Mom is trying to get her dressed.

Seriously though, she's matured quite a bit. For example, she's a better napper and quite a good little traveler. This weekend Grace and I went to Menomonie to interview some nanny candidates and then on to Eau Claire for cousin Brady's graduation party. She was super good. Just a bit of fussing now and then, but overall she made a great impression on everyone. She marketed herself well to the prospective nannies and grinned at her cousin. (Since he's going to Madison on a golf scholarship, we're hoping he can teach Gracie that skill so she'll have college paid for too. We're thinking ahead ....)

Hold on a minute, I'll be right back. Bedtime has turned into awaketime.
Correction: It's wide awaketime ... I'll finish this post tomorrow.

And I'm back (the next morning).
Good thing this post was about maturity. After two attempts at putting Gracie to bed in her Miracle Blanket we realized that it had finally lost its usefulness. Within minutes of putting her down, her leg started to emerge and that was the precursor to escape of the arm. So we decided to give a new sleeping implement a try: the sleepsack. Since it's basically a blanket that zips up, the sleepsack allows her a lot more freedom (i.e. access to her arms). We thought we were in for a long night. While she did wake up three times throughout the night, she also fell back to sleep before I even had a chance to turn on the video monitor.

Our little girl's growing up : )

Lowercase "g"

2008-06-03T18:50:00.006-05:00

Gracie's new thing -- beatboxing (a.k.a. making raspberries, a.k.a. making use of drool). We're quite the proud of her, case she's quite good at it. She's got the arm gestures down and everything. Yo, we do indeed have the coolest kid around. See for yourself.

While our beatboxer doesn't have any bling yet, she did wear a dress for the first time this weekend. Shockingly we didn't take pictures of it, but I have a feeling it will be a summertime outfit staple. It's green, it's cute, it's easy to get off and on, and most importantly, it offers quick diaper-changing access.

Our little hiphopster rounded up her entourage (i.e. Ella and I) for a walk this Sunday. This was the first walk with baby in stroller and pug on a leash ... together. I'm sure we were interesting to watch, swerving around the sidewalk when pug wanted to go one way and baby and I wanted to go another. But all in all it was a decent trip. A few close calls, but no stroller-pug fenderbenders this time around.

Grace is riding in the most basic baby transportation for the time being, a nice simple, reliable and practical stroller. But before too long I'm sure we'll be adding accessories and/or upgrading. Perhaps some big speakers, a GPS and a drop down TV screen or two ... that's how we roll.

Face of Change

2008-05-31T10:57:00.004-05:00

So as some of you may know, we're moving ... to Wisconsin. And no, it was not my idea. Jay is voluntarily going across the border. I'm lucky to have married such a guy. He was offered a great job in Eau Claire that is a perfect for him, so Gracie is going to grow up a Wisconsin girl. This video we took of her recently shows the many emotions that we have gone through in making this decision:

First, happy and excited, then a bit nervous and surprised we're making such a big change, then thoughful and a bit melancholy about all that we're leaving behind in the Twin Cities (such as, family, friends, pizza delivery, Chipotle, ...). You read that right -- no pizza delivery. We've found a house outside of Menomonie (yes, we have some very happy grandparents : ) and it's far enough out that we need to figure out how to get some basic services that we've grown accustomed to, being the city folk we are. The trade off is a great home surrounded by trees and nature.

I'm going to remain at my job at Gillette Children's in St. Paul and have been lucky enough to work out a schedule of working three long days. This will allow me to spend even more time with Gracie, which is the biggest plus of all.

Sleep Over and Out

2008-05-26T09:26:00.003-05:00

This long holiday weekend was eventful for the Edenborg family. It started off with the first night we spend without Gracie. Grandma Patti volunteered to have a sleepover with her. So this weekend we took her up on it and headed to a B&B in Wisconsin. I'm not going to deny it -- it was so nice to get 8 hours of sleep and not have one ear open to hear any peeps or whimpers. It was great to see her little face when we returned on Saturday. That evening when we put her to bed around 8:30 p.m., we were prepared to return to small batches of sleep. When we woke at 6 a.m. the next morning Jay asked me how many times I'd gotten up to feed her. My answer: "None." She'd more than slept through the night. We called Grandma Patti and asked what drugs she'd given our daughter and could we have some more : ) We thought it might have been just a fluke, but then Sunday night she more than slept through the night again. I hope this is a new sleep stage, but I'm also aware that it could just be a blip.

In an earlier post I'd mentioned Grace chatting with a lotion bottle. I recorded that for your viewing pleasure. The visual is a bit dark, but you can hear how into the conversation she gets.

Maybe she's telling the lotion bottle how excited she is about becoming a Wisconsin girl. More on that in my next post.

Heads Up

2008-05-17T09:40:00.014-05:00

Grace (and I) did great with the first week of day care. We have a great in-home provider who really eased our minds about this transition. She updates us on how the day went and told us that Grace loves watching the other kids. I imagine they do much more interesting stuff than us adults. My days at work were good too. I wore real clothes (not comfy pants or hooded sweatshirst) and real shoes (not slippers or footie socks). I had real conversations (by "real" I mean conversations with words : ) And I really looked forward to picking Gracie up.

Now we put her to bed between in the early evening, so we make the most of the time we have with her when we get home. On Friday Gracie surprised us by holding her head up (see photo).

Grace is only in day care four days a week, but it's still quite the adjustment. I'm so used to being with her all day that it was weird to not be. I remember three months ago it freaked me out to think I'd be caring for this new being all day and all night, and now that I'm no longer doing that ... it's different. Not good, not bad, just different.

Firsts and Lasts

2008-05-11T21:10:00.006-05:00

Gracie's a thoughtful daughter. She got me a Mother's Day card and told her dad to get me flowers -- a great first Mom's Day. (It was also great on a different level because I was able to get my favorite pair of pre-pregnancy jeans on!) The day was the perfect end to a week where Gracie and I learned a lot. She learned that naps are a good thing and I learned how to get her to take them relatively painlessly. If only I'd mastered this before the last week of my maternity leave ... Yes, tomorrow I'm taking Grace to day care for half of the day so she can get a feel for the new routine. Who am I kidding? It's so I can get used to the new routine. It'll be good for her to see new faces and places. Lately it's been so fun to watch her. Even when she's just sitting in her swing looking at the toys in front of her you can almost hear the gears turning in her head, processing all the new things she is learning.

On a lighter note, Gracie's been chatting so much lately, testing out different sounds on anyone and anything that will "listen" -- today she had a 10 minute conversation with the lotion bottle on her changing table. Giraffe and Snoopy must not be very good listeners anymore.

Mother's "Last" Day

2008-05-09T09:53:00.008-05:00

Here's the Miracle Blanket update that I am sure you've all been anxiously waiting for. (For those who are curious, I've included a link to the Miracle Blanket website that show's how it works. It's like a straight jacket, but works wonders.) Gracie's allowed it to stay intact since the first report, so that's good. Also, she is getting used to sleeping while wrapped in a plain-old, regular blanket (see photo). Nothing like a laid-back, chilled-out baby : )

And in other big news ... Grace is three months old today! Happy day! And that means that Mom is going back to work next week. Not-so-happy day. I'm sure once I'm back into my work routine it'll be OK, but it hit me this morning that this is my last day like this with Gracie. While I will often have Fridays off, it'll be different. My first lesson in letting go. I'm all about learning, but these types of lessons aren't much fun.

Miracle (un)Maker

2008-05-06T08:32:00.004-05:00

BREAKING NEWS BREAKING NEWS BREAKING NEWS BREAKING NEWS
(Apple Valley, Minn.) Miracle Blanket has lost its miraculousness. Updates will follow in the days to come ...

Littlest Pink Lady

2008-05-05T14:22:00.016-05:00

The weather's warmer (at least for today), Gracie's growing like a weed (and a cute weed at that : ), and we were going to do some visiting today (congrats Valerie on your Minnesota twins!) so I thought we'd put her in some non-sleeper style clothes. She has quite the array to chose from: dresses, overalls, capris, t-shirts, pants, tunic tops and your traditional onsies. (Not to mention a windbreaker jacket and a hooded sweatshirt that I can't wait to get on her : ) This not quite three-month-old has been into three to six month clothes for the past few weeks due to her long legs so I knew we may miss the window on some cute outfits if we didn't start dressing her up soon.

I made today's outfit selection based on what I thought she was the closest to growing out of. I think we got this one just in time. This cute flowery little pink number fits her just about right today, tomorrow could be a different story. This may just be Gracie's own private fashion week!

The top photo shows her contemplating her cuteness: "Hey, I look darn spiffy in pants. Now let me leave a puddle of drool on this cute pink top."

In this bottom photo Gracie lookes like she was just caught doing something by the paparazzi: "No, I'm not baring my midriff! I'm just trying to locate my belly button. Now where did that darn thing go ..."

Diaperpalooza

2008-05-01T10:43:00.009-05:00

This is a tale of two diapers.

Quick change
1:30 a.m. Awakened by a wimpering Gracie I made my way to her crib and started to unswaddle and change her. We have this handy blanket called the "Miracle Blanket" -- I kid you not -- that keeps her from flailing during the night. It's handy for that purpose, but not so handy when you'd like to make a smooth, uneventful diaper change. While I attempted to cut corners and just half unswaddle her during the change, she decided to do some extra tinkling after I removed her soiled diaper. Sure enough, her gown and a corner of her blanket were wet. We only have one of these miraculous blankets (at $30 a pop, we couldn't justify getting two) and hadn't discussed what the protocol should be when it became soiled. Since it was an outer corner that was damp I decided to swaddle her back up in it. During this entire process, Grace only screeched a little. Plus, I got her changed and reswaddled in record time and in dim lighting nonetheless. I almost woke Jay up to tell him about my accomplishment ... almost.

Holy crap! (literally : )
8 a.m. The fullest diaper I've ever seen. And from a smiling baby who didn't soil her clothes nonetheless! Think she was proud of what she produced.

I almost decided to make this a pictureless post because of the topic of discussion. But then I thought a cute post-diapering picture would make everyone happy. She's getting quite the belly now as you can see. Here's a content Gracie along with a picture of Snoopy and Woodstock. Those two deserve props for often keeping her in that oh-so-nice content state. Seems like Grace usually has a lot to discuss with them she's getting her diaper changed. Hope they're not critiquing my diapering technique ...

Kicking It

2008-04-28T08:07:00.006-05:00

The weather this weekend inspired us to not do a whole heck of a lot except cook. Well, Jay cooked and I cleaned up after him. Grace and I ventured outside for a bit to go to a pet store to say hi to a friend. We knew that dogs would be there from a pug rescue, but turns out doggies from the golden retriever rescue were also there. It was dog heaven for Kate! Grace got sniffed by doggies big and small and didn't seem to mind too much. Someone at the store asked me, "Is she going to be a dog lover?" I relplied, "She has no choice." Seriously though, I think she's decided she likes dogs. Sometimes when she watches Ella she'll break into a big smile. We'll try to capture that soon.

Most of the images we've posted of Grace show her either being swaddled or held. The reality is that she's is quite the alert and active little bugger. See for yourself.

This kickiness isn't a new thing for Grace, in fact it started in my belly. Once we saw how long her legs were, all of those pokes and prods made total sense. This video of her in her swing is just one example of our kicky, tap dancing girl. I keep waiting for her to do jazz hands -- ah cha cha : )

Routine Changes

2008-04-17T12:46:00.023-05:00

We've had a calmer Gracie lately. After Grandma Gorman watched her last Wednesday we changed our routine a bit. Grandma had a really calm day with baby, only one cry and I was wondering why I never experienced that side of Grace. The main thing that was different when someone else watched her that she was bottle fed. Hmmmm. Maybe she was getting more to eat at each sitting and thus was full for longer periods of time. Sure enough, when I extended the duration of nursing sessions she was a much more content Gracie!

We've also made another change, this one to her sleeping situation. We have finally removed the sleep positioner so she's sleeping on her crib mattress now like a big girl. At first we thought we'd have more awakenings during the night, but not so. She does "talk" more when she wakes up, but most of the time she goes back to sleep. We hear these conversations through the baby monitor. We also hear other sounds, which indicate to us that she may need a diaper change : )

Gracie has her favorites already -- at least her favorite things to look at. I believe we've already mentioned giraffe as her changing table companion. He chills out on the couch with her and he also went to the hospital with her (notice the IV in her little arm). (See photos.)

She also likes looking at a little girl she sees in the mirror. It's easy to see why Gracie spends time starting and smiling at her -- she is pretty darn cute : )

Well and Rested

2008-04-14T08:46:00.011-05:00

Gracie's now two months old! Before we know it she'll be crawling, then walking, then driving. True, that last one is ways off yet, but that doesn't mean we haven't started worrying about it already : )

I took Grace to the pediatrician for her well-child check up on Friday -- the one where she gets her first round of immunization shots. The nurse walked in and asked, "Mom, are you ready for this?" Since I'd already had to watch Grace go through many medical tests (including the spinal tap) when she had the fever/eye infection, I knew I could make it through this set of shots without crying. Gracie, on the other hand, let out a mighty yowl when the first needle went in. Still, she calmed down quickly once I picked her up.

The nurse also did measure-ments at her appoint-ment. She's in the average percentiles for head circum-ference and weight but she's in the 90s for height. She might be a lean tall girl, which would definietely help her get that swimming or volleyball college scholarship we're hoping for : ) She's gotten so long lately that she no longer fits into the sleeper she's wearing in this photo. She's still a little peanut though.

The nurse said we'd either have a really sleepy baby or a really fussy baby for the next 24 hours. I was really pulling for sleepy and that's what we got, whew. Ella had a vet appointment this weekend and got her shots too, so both she and Grace were out of sorts. (Turns out Ella may only have three kneecaps as well. Strange.) Now that everyone's well rested, we'll have to take advantage of the nice weather we're expecting this week. I'm going to attempt simultaneously pushing a stroller and holding a leash. I know it can be done, but I'm guessing it will take some practice. Stay tuned ...

Back to Work

2008-04-10T14:54:00.005-05:00

Back to work for me ...
Well sort of. I am going in to work once a week for the next month and Jay's taking over parental duties on those days. Yesterday was my first day back and I indeed missed Gracie. Sure, it was nice talking to adults all day and it was also nice to not have to think about the topics of diapering, feeding or napping. That said, I was constantly wondering what was going on at home. Good thing Jay called with updates and he even sent this photo of Gracie in her Minnesota Wild outfit. Go team!

I'm so glad that I'm able to slooooowly transition to going back to work because I'm not ready to leave Gracie five days a week just yet. Plus, I haven't developed a morning routine -- coordinating feeding, changing and all that fun stuff -- that will allow me to get to work on time. Speaking of mornings, as I was getting ready to leave the house I put my hands in to the pockets of my dress coat and found pacifiers in both sides. I imagine this is just the first of many times that I'll discovering random items in odd places.

Many Faces of Grace

2008-04-07T08:42:00.005-05:00

Our anniversary was this weekend and Grace gave us the gift of 7 hours of continous sleep on Friday night. We greatly appreciated the gesture. Since that night though it's been back to fragmented sleep, which is to be expected of an 8 week old, especially since we're messing with her slumber situation. Not only have we started putting her to bed earlier, we also took her out of a sleep positioner that she's been in since her first week home. Thus she's been a restless sleeper (is that an oxymoron?). So restless in fact that when I put her down for a nap she gave herself her first scratch on her pretty face. Poor little girl.

This photo shows a smiling Gracie -- something I didn't see much of this morning as she was super overtired and cranky. This afternoon the little grin came out though as she watched me make chili. (Maybe it was more a look of shock that I was cooking -- something she's never seen me do before.)

Getting Good

2008-04-02T10:48:00.006-05:00

Grace is discovering her hands. She's grabbing a lot more which is fun to see and sometimes fun to feel. She's also starting to figure out that hands can be better than pacifiers since they're always accessible. Grace will also try to soothe herself by sucking on whatever is close to her mouth. Zippers, fingers, blankets (see photo), Jay's shirt -- she does not discriminate : ) This means that there are slobber spots everywhere, but better that than a fussy baby.

Speaking of fussiness, there's been a lot less of it. At least a lot less of unpredicatable fussiness. This is because I've pretty much figured out that a fussy cry likely means she wants to do one of the following:

* sleep (During the day I still need to encourage her to nap by swaddling, rocking and pacifing.)

* eat

* interact (She'll do this with one of many items: faces, mobiles, items hanging from the light above our kitchen table, playmat, her "ipod," lighting fixtures, ella, etc. She has recently noticed TV screens and we're making sure she doesn't "watch" for more than a second. She really wanted to watch American Idol last night though : )

Between 7 p.m. and 8 p.m. there's quite a regular fussfest. Or maybe she's just trying to harmonize with the American Idol contestants ...

Multimedia Gracie

2008-03-31T18:50:00.003-05:00

In the last post I mentioned that one of Grace's favorite places was her changing table. Here's the video to prove it. The video does have sound -- you'll hear a few grunts and coos.

I was thinking moving pictures might tide most of you over for a day or so (especially if your name starts with "Grandma" or "Grandpa" : )

I'll write more soon.

Gracie's Crib

2008-03-27T11:38:00.008-05:00

Breaking news! On Tuesday night Grace slept six hours in a row! And then, Wednesday night she did the same thing! She is awesome! I'm doing a little happy dance right now. I know that this may not become her regular sleep schedule, but I appreciate her allowing me the continuous hours of sleep.

Gracie's crib is the place to be. At least she tends to think so and that's cool with us. She loves to watch the mobile we have above the matress -- it has music and lights, you know, all the bells and whistles. Then I put her in there for a bit today and she was totally ignoring the mobile and was looking at the images on the bumper. She was totally fixated on the zebra for almost a half hour (see photo).

The other place Grace has a lot of fun is the changing table -- seriously. She looks at the mobile we put above the table and also is a fan of the giraffe stuffed animal we have placed here. It's also her favorite place to do the sprinkler dance that her dad taught her (see photo). If you ask nice he might teach it to you too : ) It's especially fitting that she practices the sprinkler dance on the changing table, because she's sprinkled quite a bit there. I will elaborate on that in a future post.

Dressing up

2008-03-25T11:15:00.005-05:00

We've learned that people love to buy clothes for Gracie. For example, she had an outfit (well actually she had two) just for Easter. The one in this photo one needed to be worn since it said "Baby's First Easter" on it. (Thanks Aunt Sharon!) Jay and I call the bottoms her MC Hammer pants.

So many cute outfits, so little time. We want to make sure Grace actually gets to wear all this fun stuff, she's growing so dang much. Just got her weighed today and she's now in the double digits -- 10 lbs. 5 oz.

This girl's got a more fashionable wardrobe than I do. (This is especially the case now since I'm not quite sure what fits anymore. While I've been lucky to have my tummy go back to somewhat of its pre-pregnancy appearance, my hips are another story. Let's just say there's a shopping trip in my future.) She has some really cute outfits that are the style of clothes that her mom would wear, including hoodies and cardigans. Then there's all the sports stuff for the teams her dad (and sometimes mom) supports -- Minnesota Wild, Gophers, Twins. No Vikings outfits yet though, thank goodness : )

Looking good

2008-03-21T11:42:00.009-05:00

Ah, a nice calm week. No trips to the hosptial, no doctor appointments ... just chillin' with Gracie girl, hanging out around the house. (Although Jay might disagree on the calmness of the night he spent with Gracie this week -- perhaps he'll write about that later.) We've had some exciting moments watching Grace starting to react to her surroundings in ways that show she's thinking. She's also using her hands more purposefuly to grasp things. She's such a smarty, in addition to being alert and beautiful, of course. Those two adjectives -- alert and beautiful -- are the ones we hear most from other people. A few words about them:

"She's such a beautiful girl!" = I've joked that perhaps Jay and I should be offended because this is often said with a hint of surprise, like, "Wow, how did those two create such an attractive baby?" Hee. Both of us were pretty cute babies and toddlers ourselves. That said, we may want to forewarn Grace about the early teens ... not the best time for Jay and I. (And no, we don't plan to post pictures to show you what we mean : )

She even looks cute in the photo above which shows how swollen her eye was the night we took her in to the hospital.

"She's so alert!" = Indeed she is. This little one fights sleep like nobody's business. It's like she's afraid she'll miss something. During the day she only gets maybe four or five hours of sleep. Ella and I are trying to teach Grace about the wonderfulness of naps. Thee dog even demonstrates them for her a number of times a day.

Home Sweet Home

2008-03-14T13:45:00.007-05:00

Gracie's doing just fine -- back to her fussy, sleepy, hungry self : ) In fact, she recovered quite quickly. Here's a picture of her taken on the second night in the hosptial. (Well, it was actually 1 a.m., so not techincally nightime. )

As I mentioned before, Grace was a trooper through all the medical tests, including the spinal tap. She wimpered a bit, but wasn't relatively calm. We were so proud of our brave little girl. Then last night we took the band-aid off her arm (where her IV had been) and she let us know it was the worst thing she'd ever experienced.

We're going to take it easy this weekend and are hoping for very uneventful days and nights ... and some sleep : )

Room 4128

2008-03-12T17:57:00.005-05:00

If we didn't feel like parents before, we sure do now. This post comes to you from the hosptial. I will start off by saying everything is OK. On Monday, Gracie's eye got really swollen. She's had issues with her tear duct ever since she was born so we'd been putting ointment on it, but it'd cleared up -- until Monday.

After Grace woke up from her afternoon nap her eye was very swollen. When Jay walked in the door that evening I said we needed to call the pediatrician. Since she had a fever they told us to come to the ER at Children's Hospital. I had somewhat expected that we'd be given some new ointment and be sent home. But that wasn't the case. Once we saw the doctor we were told she'd need to have a urine test (via catheter), blood test and spinal tap -- standard protocol for newborns with fevers. They don't want to take the chance that it's something more serious -- little ones don't have the capability to fight off infections like we do. And that wasn't all, because the eye was affected they wanted to put her on 48 hours of IV antibotics, meaning she'd needed to be admitted to the hospital for at least two nights. Jay and I looked at eachother, shocked. That said the staff was great in explaining to us why this needed to be done. They also said the next 45 minutes would suck (when they were doing all the tests) and the next two days would be boring. And they've been right.

We were given the option of leaving the room when they were taking blood, urine and doing the spinal tap, but we couldn't imagine leaving her. It was a lot to watch your child go through, but she was a real trooper through all of it. Probably stronger than we were : )

From that point on I've spent the majority of my hours in room 4128. We've been reading, watching TV and napping in between antibiotic infusions and visits from nurses and doctors. The first night both Jay and I stayed but we realized that it made sense for one of us to go home to get a good night's sleep (the cot and pullout couch/bed weren't the best : ). That person (Jay) would then let the other person (me) take naps throughout the day. Ella's appreciated having one of us home too. I hear she's been wandering around the nursery looking for Grace and I.

We found out Tuesday morning that we'd actually have to stay 'til Thursday morning, so I've been in a hospital more in the last month than I have in my entire life. Grace's fever went down the first night and her eye started looking better the next afternoon. Even though it's not the most fun experience, the staff's here has been great. Gracie's been great through all of this too (even thought she looks kinda pathetic with the IV hooked up to her tiny arm). She's kept us in good spirits by being especially smilely and entertaining with lots of faces and cooing. I hope to post some photos when we get home.

We'll I better get back to our "sleepover" (what I've been calling these nights in the hospital). I need to gaze at little face for a little bit before we go to sleep ... at least I'm hoping "we" go to sleep.

Photo opportunity

2008-03-06T09:21:00.007-06:00

So the story of the week is that Grace has grown too big for some of her sleepers. When we brought her home from the hospital everything seemed so big on her, so it's amazing to think that less than four weeks later she's already outgrown some of her clothes. We'll have to do some shopping this weekend : ) Her growth is also apparent in the diapers we use. She's right in between sizes right now which makes diaper blowouts more of a regular occurance that we'd like. The diapers that are a bit too small tend to come undone and allow "leaks" and those that are a bit too big just have too much space around the legs, again allowing for "leaks."

Since she keeps changing so much, we continue to take pictures of Gracie on a daily basis -- although we do realize you can only have so many pictures of her in her different apparatuses (swing, bouncy, Boppy, dad's lap, mom's lap). That said, when I placed her in the Boppy last week I couldn't resist snapping some photos. I captured this action shot of Grace:

It's one of those photos that should be in a "Create a Caption" contest that explains what's going on in the photo, for example. Gracie asks "Alright you guys, what did you do with my hands? I had hands a second ago. Ooh, look ... feet." Feel free to post your own thoughts on what Grace might be thinking.

Sleeping Like a Baby?

2008-03-03T08:10:00.006-06:00

I've been dealing relatively well with the lack of sleep. This is partially because Gracie's been relatively good at letting me get shut-eye, sometimes even in three or four hours stretches. This weekend that changed and feedings were requested -- with a squawk -- every two (or fewer) hours. Since she'd been so generous with the hours of sleep for three weeks, this was literally a rude awakening. We're assuming she's going through a growth spurt that is making her super hungry and fussy. Hoping it's just a spurt and not a long term thing.

When I get up at 1 a.m., 3 a.m. and 5 a.m., I often stumble down the hallway and into her room a wee bit ornery. But when I look at that little face I usually am reminded that even though we believe she's the smartest 3-week-old in the world, she needs us to soothe her and give her what ever it is she needs, be that a feeding, cuddles, singing or any other type of soothing.

To counter the our frustration with the fussy, non-sleepiness, Gracie's been communicating in more subtle ways lately -- meaning something in between meltdown and sleeping. There's some cooing and babbling which is super cute.

I thought I'd share some of the things we tell Grace when she's screaming. The most common phrase that comes out of our mouths is "You're fine." Either that or we mock her cries. It sounds mean, but those who know Jay and I know that mocking eachother is something we do -- out of affection : ) When we do it to Grace, she gets this look on her face that seems to say, "Really?" Welcome to the family, Gracie.

Wrapping Up Week One

2008-02-29T09:45:00.006-06:00

So we're nearing the end of our first week and it's been much more managable than I thought. I had visions of a constantly crying or always alert Gracie and a frazzled Kate, but that hasn't been the case. She's been taking a number of longer naps these days (see the burrito baby photo) which allows me the time to get dressed and do these great blog entries that you all love : )

I'm also realizing that my mom skills aren't as deeply buried as I thought they were. A number of tasks that I struggled with a week ago I now finish before Gracie gets into ultimate meltdown mode. For example, I've become more adept at swaddling (aka baby burrito) so our little Houdini doesn't get her arms out quite as quickly.

Well, I'm off to do another load of laundry -- this load includes two outfits, two blankets, a Boppy cover and the cushioning for the swing. Leakproof diapers? I don't think there is such a thing.

Changing ...

2008-02-28T11:01:00.013-06:00

Whew. Just got through a diaper change. It took three, no make that four, diapers and two changing pads to complete the job. Luckily, Grace is usually calm during the marathon diaper sessions, watching with amusement. She is so expressive with her eyes, and is becoming more and more expressive with her facial movements as well. It's fun to see how much she changes each day -- making a new sound or new face, or learning the new skill of smacking me in the head : )

This week we've taken a few trips in the car and she doesn't seem to mind the car seat (see photo). Well, she likes being in it in the house and likes being in it when I'm driving, but is not as big of a fan when she's being carried in it from point A to point B. Ella like's Grace in the car seat too. Baby in car seat means that baby is leaving the house. Baby leaving the house = nap for Ella.

Grace has started to enjoy her bouncy seat. Right now she hasn't quite gotten the hang initiating the bounce herself. As is the case with most of the seats, swings, toys we've received for her, the bouncy also vibrates and has songs. It also has little cute things that move. She could care less about all that but instead focuses her attention on a mobile of farm animals that we've hung from our kitchen light. Gracie likes what she likes : )

Ella's Tale

2008-02-25T13:36:00.009-06:00

So it's my first week home alone with Gracie, so far it's been relatively uneventful -- other than a diaper blowout which required a change of clothes. While she spent some time in her bouncy chair, most of it has either been napping in her crib or on my lap.

Speaking of laps, Ella's longing for the lap time she once had. That said, she's been amazingly tolerant with Gracie. Even when Grace shrieks during a meltdown, Ella is calm and looks at us as if to ask "Are you going to do something about that?"

Ella's coped by finding new spots to hang out in. You've already seen her stake her claim to the baby papasan chair. She's also found out how to be close to me in the nursing chair (see photo), where I spend the majority of my time.

We're thinking Ella will grow to appreciate Grace more once she's in a high chair and is able to flail food down to her. Right now each morning she comes upstairs looking for the baby. I think she still thinks Gracie's presence is a temporary thing.

Even so, Ella also plays the role of guardian which means she needs to be where Gracie is at all times. She'll follow us from room to room, inspecting the swing, checking out the playmat, and helping me stay sane through one of Grace's inconsolable times. This photo shows just how exausting her job is. So pitiful.

Humor Us

2008-02-21T16:50:00.003-06:00

Our daughter sure thinks she's clever. We had just given her a bath and were drying her off in a cute bear towel (picture was taken before the incident) when she decided to let us know what she thought of getting clean. Let's just say the cute bear towel is not so cute any longer. We took her to the changing table to clean her up (again) and she seemed to have a grin on her face, as if to say, "Ha. That'll show you what I think of baths." We couldn't help but laugh. With the lack of sleep and unpredicatable nature of our Gracie, humor is essential in the Edenborg household these days.

Other humourous happenings:

- Jay attempting to get Gracie's hands into little mitts. Those thumbs are so wiggly.

- Kate dumping breastmilk on Grace's head. (I hear it's good for your hair.)

- a never-ending diaper change (it kept coming and coming and coming)

We've seen a few smiles out of Grace lately -- while we assume many of them are gas-related, this one was cute nonetheless.

The photo also shows off one of her most commented on traits -- being alert. When she's not eating, sleeping or melting down, she's looking around at lighting fixtures, book covers, ceiling fans and sometimes even faces. She's going to be a smarty. Wonder who she gets that from? : )

Bundle of Joy

2008-02-20T17:05:00.005-06:00

By now some of you have met Grace in person, but for those who haven't, here are some more photos. I'll write more soon ...

We are Family

2008-02-18T21:43:00.006-06:00

While we haven't quite fallen in to any routines at the Edenborg household just yet (and I'm guessing Gracie won't allow that to happen for quite some time), my daily rituals had gone by the wayside for a few days. Now that I'm back to feeling more like my old self I've started to enjoy the simple things in life again: doing laundry, reading the newspaper, wearing clothes other than sweatpants ... well that last one only happened once (and I don't have a picture to prove it : )

Speaking of pictures, I recently took a photograph that captures what means the most to me in life.

Gracie has made our lives complete. This is my family.

Amazing Gracie

2008-02-15T09:06:00.004-06:00

Grace has arrived, and yes, life has changed drastically, just as everyone said it would. (And everyone said it with a knowing look on their faces : )

It is such an adventure. From labor and delivery (which I won't go in to detail about here) to bringing baby home -- it's so amazing that such a small little bundle can have such a major impact on everything. Jay and I have found strengths we never knew we had. We also are wondering what we used to do with our days and nights. While it's not to say that we haven't watched some American Idol or spent some time online or taken a few minutes for ourselves, but the time spent feeding, grooming, dressing, diapering and even just watching her is so rewarding. (I do realize that this is only the first week, and we may need to remind ourselves of the rewardingness as the weeks go on : )

Grace has changed us ... already made us better people. Sleepier people, yes, but better nonetheless.

Pug's life

2008-02-14T11:13:00.001-06:00

In case anyone was interested to see how the pug was dealing with her change...

some more pics

2008-02-10T16:59:00.000-06:00

it's a girl

2008-02-09T22:13:00.000-06:00

Grace Erin Edenborg

7 lbs 4 ozs

21.5 inches

born 2/9 at 3:18 pm

Final Countdown

2008-02-07T15:23:00.000-06:00

Jay and I always say that we work well on deadline, so perhaps our little one will too. We now have a deadline date for its arrival. If he/she doesn't appear in the next few days, I'll be induced on Monday morning. It's nice to have an end date set, yet it could still happen anytime. Regardless, this time next week we'll be home with our little one.

The past few days I've become a little more sensitive to the aches and pains I feel. Most people tell me, "Oh, you'll know when it's labor," so I haven't obsessed too much about it. In fact, I'm proud of myself for not obsessing too much about this whole experience. While, yes, I've made many checklists and ready a number of books, I reached a point early on where I knew I just had to let go and let things happen. For example, I happen to be snacking a lot. Napping is also a common happening. I know that "the nap" will likely be all I get in the months to come, so I thought I'd get some practice.

Making Moves

2008-02-01T11:21:00.000-06:00

Our due date's today and lately there's been lots of activity in my tummy. Sorta feels like the little one is getting ready to move on out of my belly: taking down pictures, packing up it's belongings, filling out a change of address form, etc.

I don't feel like we're "waiting" yet -- these months have just flown by. February seemed so far away not that long ago.

For right now, I'm quite content and so is the pug. I've been home more than usual lately and she's trying to soak in all the laptime she can get before another little being takes over the space. She still fits herself on to what's left of my lap, making a little C-shape around my belly. We're hoping Ella can teach the kid a thing or two, like how to nap all day and how to go potty on command : )

Worth the Wait

2008-01-30T06:23:00.000-06:00

As our "due" date gets closer, I'm thinking about some of the things I'll looking forward to doing after our arrival. Although I know I'll be totally distracted by this new little face in our lives, I still am anxious to:

eat a Subway sandwich (it's recommended that pregnant women don't eat lunchmeat/coldcuts)
zip up my pants (all the pants I wear these days have elastic waistbands or belly panels)
sleep on my stomach (which has been avoided for for obvious reasons)
snowboard (thought I'd throw that one in there to see if you're paying attention -- seriously though, I'd like to learn how to snowboard!)

But on a more serious note, I've really grown used to having this little stranger in my belly. It's been a unique experience that I won't ever forget and have enjoyed more than I ever thought I would. I'm thinking the enjoyablity may waiver a bit once labor starts : )

Getting Geared Up

2008-01-24T19:12:00.000-06:00

Each day we know we have to be "ready" to become parents -- "ready" meaning that we know it could happen any time now. We were wondering if we'd possibly have our little one early, but then why the heck would it want to come into the world right now with these unbearable wind chills? Smart baby : )

That said, when it does arrive it's got lots of stuff to wear, play with, look at and sleep/eat/poo/pee in. The gadgets and gear are especially fun. Everything rocks and/or makes sounds, so everything needs batteries. And of course, they don't all need the same type of batteries, but all different types of batteries. Good thing we just joined Sam's Club!

Of course, we've tested everything out, especially the baby monitor with the video screen. Ella's been our guinea pug for that. She's been adapting well to the minor changes around the house so far. While she's been good around babies who have been visitors to our house, it'll be interesting to see how she deals with one that is here to stay. And I know what you're thinking. It'll be interesting to see how Jay and I deal with that reality too.

I see many a sleep-deprived post in our future ...

Posts from the Past

2008-01-07T08:35:00.000-06:00

Here are some pregnancy thoughts I had jotted down elsewhere. These remind me how quickly these nine months have flown by.

Sunday, September 30, 2007
Arrivals and Departures
It's disappearing bit by bit. My belly button that is. I never paid much attention to it in the past. But now that it's not what it used to be, I've taken notice. Don't get me wrong, I shed no tears over this change. It's a small thing that represents something much bigger -- things in my life that I've taken for granted pre-baby. The arrival of my bump of a belly has been welcome. Somewhat surprising that a girl who used to be proud of her flat tummy is now even more proud of it in it's new protruding state. Things in my life which will never be the same again. Sure, Mr. Belly Button will return, but it won't be the same. And I'm OK with that : )

Wednesday, November 14, 2007
In Full Swing
I sat down in my car (in the garage) and started sobbing for no reason. We'll not for no reason ... I had a tummy ache, I didn't sleep well, was ornery with Jay (or he was ornery with me, I can't remember), there was something wrong with our clothes dryer, I broke a bowl, I put on the wrong glasses and I forgot to give the pug a goodbye pet. Then in mid-cry (and mid-commute to work) I started to get even more upset because I was worried that it was a sign of things to come postpartum. But I started to calm down. I'm 28 weeks along and this is the first serious mood swing I've had. I realize that I'd gotten used to not being in control of what's happening to my body, but I forgot what it's like to not be in total control of my emotions. Guess I better get use to it : )

Sunday, December 9, 2007
On It's Way Outy
So, this week I realized that growth was occuring while I was at work. In the morning my belly was as it had been for a month or so. When I took a shower that night I saw I was transforming into the owner of an outy. This was also the day I almost ate a paperclip -- I mistook it for a yogurt covered raisin. They look so much alike! So at my last appointment the OB said I was "all baby" which I am assuming means that I'm not gaining weight that I'm not supposed to : ) So bring on the Culvers! She also checked out my ankles for a minute and briefly asked if they were swelling and then realized they weren't. I had to explain to her that I have abnormally large calves for my size.This weekend I realized I'm on the brink on uncomfortablilty and moodiness. Being sociable with people who are drinking is fine. Hanging out with people after they are drunk makes me cranky. Also, the kicks into my ribs are becoming less cute. They are not annoying yet, but just lost the "awww" factor. The beginning of the end ...

Baby Edenborg

2008-01-05T21:17:00.000-06:00

Since the little one is due to arrive in less than a month we thought we'd start getting used to updating everyone on how things are going. We've moved somewhat past the anxious stage and are now excited to meet this little stranger.

If it's anything like its parents it'll be late coming in to the world. Seems like it's having fun in there, squirming around and bouncing on my bladder, so I can understand if it wants to hang out in my belly a bit longer.

It'll be worth the wait : )