1st Hat

Okay, so this is the first hat I crocheted for Bonnie's photoshoots. This hat is meant for a 0-3 month old. I hope it fits. It seemed a little tall to me, but I just followed the instructions. :) The flower in the original pattern I didn't like, so I redid it with this one. I'm happier with how this one looked on the hat. Hope you like it! :) More hats to come...

Getting Big

I love this little girl! Soooo much! One week and she'll turn 1 years old! I can't remember what it was like without her, so boring, I'd immagine. I'm so grateful I had 4 wonderful years to enjoy being a Mommy to just Nolan. I think our relationship has been very good since he had one on one for so long, but we were all so happy when Annika finally came to join our family.

Babyproof

I keep waiting for the day that I'll need to babyproof the house, after all, my baby is almost a year old. I guess it's mainly this display shelf I have that is the only thing that is really off limits in the house for kids. I never have to tell Nolan anymore, he just knows. He'll inform any kid that comes over not to touch anything on it, I've never had to tell him to do that either, he just does it. I have a babygate that I used with Nolan at one point, to block off all the untouchable items, but I haven't had to bring it out yet for Annika. She knows she's not supposed to touch "mommy's toys." There are only a couple things on the shelf she'll touch every now and than. I don't mind. She gets up real close to it sometimes, and looks at everything and I can tell she wants to touch everything soooo bad. It takes everything in her to hold back. What a good girl!

This picture is her favorite thing to grab at, but she's very careful.

"Oh PLEEEAAASSSE, Mommy, just let me touch your pretty things!"

My Little Helper

I've said it once, I'll say it again, Nolan is such a good big brother! He loves to "babysit" when I need to get some work done. He does a good job! Annika loves her brother so much and is always watching him. Nolan is always asking me what he can do to help me. I always try to think of something to keep him busy and most of the time he is very helpful. Today, when he asked one of the times, he didn't hear me and came a little closer and said, "What did you say, princess, I didn't hear you." :) I hope this sweet boy never changes. He always talks about the house he will build me some day when I'm an old lady. Often times when we are driving down the road, he'll point out a little area that would make the perfect place to build my granny house. He's got good tastes, I approve everytime.

Ahhh, Stop Flashing That Light At Me, Mom!

I thought I'd share these. They just make me laugh. The camera seemed to be bothering her eyes this day...I think the flash from the red eye reduction (even though some have red eyes still :P).

Hairbows

I started a new hobby that I am having way too much fun with...making hairbows. What do ya think? I'm trying to get good enough to where I can sell some on etsy. Don't look too closely at the imperfections, but overall I think they turned out pretty cute.

I Just Wanna Walk, Mom!

She Crawls!!!

Okay, it's official! Annika just now crawled! She did it while I was in the kitchen and she didn't think I was watching her, BUT I saw her do it!!! It was only a short crawl, but she did it. Now I just need her to do it AGAIN. She decided she'd rather walk into the kitchen and is now pulling the magnets off the frig. We'll keep working on it.

Nightmares And New Tricks

Last night, Nolan woke me up crying. This time instead of saying he had foot cramps, he said he had a nightmare. Hmmm. I asked him what he saw in his nightmares. He said there were scary hyenas. Hmmmm, wonder where he got that from. :P I told him he needed to think of a happy or funny picture whenever the scary ones pop in his head. I told him when I was a little girl and had nightmares, I thought about the Carebears. It seemed to work because he fell back asleep. I asked him later today what he ended up thinking about to chase away his nightmares. He said he thought of me doing the can can dance. Silly boy. Whatever works!
Today, Annika tried out some new tricks. She is able to stand alone without me holding on to her or her holding on to anything for several seconds. She gets so excited till she just can't stand it any longer and plops down. It's so cute! She has a new favorite game called put the binky in Mommy's mouth and watch her spit it out, (or more like blow it out since it never really gets inside my mouth, don't worry) than pick it up and work it back in my mouth and we repeat this over and over. She gets laughing so hard she can't hardly aim the binky to my mouth. Then, when she's had enough, she'll plop it in her mouth. Probably not the most sanitary game, but whatever! Oh boy, what I go thru to get a good laugh out of my baby! Her little personality is starting to come out and it's so fun.

"Sir, do you work here?"

Kind of funny how all my posts have something to do with the kids. I guess that's my life right now! So, here's something to laugh about today. Everwhere Adam goes, people think that he works there, Staples, Smart and Final, Sam's Club, etc. You name it, those are just a few of them. We can't decide what it is, if it's his clothes, since most of the time he's in black chef pants and a red polo shirt, or the way he carries himself, or what, but people are always asking him, "Sir, do you work here?" One time at Staples, 4 times on the same trip, he got asked if he worked there. The first guy who asked, saw the other three guys ask and told Adam later, "boy you must sure get that a lot." :) Several times, people don't even ask if he works there, they just start asking him where something can be found. Most of the time Adam actually knows, so he'll just pretend he works there and tells them where it is or walk them to it to be polite. It cracks me up just thinkin about it.

Shriners Visit

Wouldn't it sure calm your nerves if you met this guy at the front desk of every hospital? Today we visited Shriners Hospital For Children in Sacramento. I was very impressed with how kind everyone was the minute you walked in the door. This was the clown who was sitting in the check in desk and pulled out his card to give to Nolan. He told Nolan to put this card in the garage if you have any rats and it'll scare them away. :P We also met several "therapy dogs" that are used to help the children be happy. The nurses were all very nice and they gave nolan a nice gift to welcome him. It was a crayola glow station drawing thing. They must have a ton of toy donations come in to be able to give a gift like that to every kid. Anyways, after all the millions of questions the nurses asked we finally met the doctor. He comes in and the second Nolan sees him he says, "You look like an OLD man!" Well, he did have a full head of white hair and was pretty wrinkly, so leave it up to my son to tell ya how it is! :) I'd immagine working in a hospital full of children he has several funny jokes to tell his wife when he goes home that night. Anyways, he was a really nice doctor. I learned some things I never knew before. At first I kind of thought this was a joke because it seemed so off the topic, but the more I think about it, it could quite possibly be correct. The Doctor explained it pretty well to where it made sense, but basically when Nolan wakes up with "foot cramps," most likely it's just him having a nightmare and since we've been giving him foot massages every time he wakes up screaming, that's automatically what the problem is, right? So, yes, he could be having growing pains, but most likely there's nothing really wrong, it's just a nightmare he's having where he's half awake anyway and we assume it's just his feet so we start massaging them. So, he told us to put a glass of water by his bed and for the next few times when he wakes up screaming to tell him to take a drink and show him how to rub his feet himself. Than, gradually when he wakes up screaming, there won't be so much focus on his feet. I don't know if that made sense and really it didn't sound very good to me. Sometimes Nolan we'll be crawling to our room because it hurts too bad to walk, so I don't know, but I guess I'm willing to try it. Anyways, we than went to the x-ray room and took an x-ray of Nolan's legs and both feet, which we've had done before and that's the main reason why we came. We knew that his bones were messed up and were told that he would need surgery to fix it or it could cause arthritis down the road. Well, his legs were just fine. His feet, still the same thing, nothing worse. The left foot has the four toes, with one of the toes missing a digit and it curls under the third toe. His right foot has all five toes, but only four bones and one of them splits into two toes. However, this doctor said no surgery was necessary at this point and he doesn't think there will be a problem with arthritis. It's so interesting to me how different two doctors opinions can be. Who knows, the first doctor could have been in it only for the money. Well, at Shriners, it's all free, so he's not looking for another patient to make money off of. The Doctor said he doesn't want to mess with bones in the feet unless it's really necessary. It may look funny and be a little uncomfortable, but that's easier to deal with than surgery and all that. The main problem we'll need to keep an eye on is his 4 toed foot, which is a lot more narrow, will eventually have problems in normal shoes. There's no reason to spend money on it now he said, since Nolan's feet are still growing, but when he's around 14 or so, we'll need to get something to insert into the shoe so his foot isn't flappin around in there and getting all blistered up or whatever. So, every 2 years we should come in and get it looked at, but as of now, surgery is not necessary. Wahoo! I am a Shriners fan!!! Some day when I have a million dollars, I'll donate it to Shriners Hospitals. :) Or at least a thousand dollars. Some day...

#14 Things That Make Me Smile... :)

#14. Well, I guess I haven't been very good about sharing something every day that makes me smile because that would probably get really boring. Today, Nolan and I were coloring out of one of his giant coloring books. I was noticing how lightly he was coloring and mentioned it to him. Normally, he likes things nice and bold and dark, so it surprised me to see him coloring this way. He said something along these lines, "Well, I'm trying to think like a grown up and grown ups don't color so dark, so I'm trying to be more grown up and color lighter." Wow! I just kind of smiled to myself. I've said before how some of the things that come out of Nolan's mouth are so different that what you would expect a 5 year old to say. I hope my boy doesn't try and grow up too fast, but it's fun to see him mature in just little ways like this.

Ride Em Cowboy!

Nolan got this rocking horse a few years ago and has been happy to pass him down to Annika. He loves sharing his special toys with his little sister.

I love the look on Nolan's face in the pic below.

4th Tooth

Annika's 4th tooth finally broke thru yesterday! Yay!

Yay for Shriners!

Well, I went to check the mail and found a letter I've been waiting for from Shriners Hospital. They want to check out Nolan's feet on January 11th. Hopefully this will be the first step to getting his feet fixed. It makes me a little anxious and nervous, but I know it needs to be done. I've been pretty much dreading this for the past 5 years. Hopefully we can put the surgery off at least a couple more years, but we'll see what they say.