A blog for doting grandparents

Disclaimer: Many of you probably won't care about this blog at all, but I know all of Hannah's grandparents and a select few others want to hear all these stories.

For all of you who have persevered, cried, and fought towards the goal of only taking one nap (wait! that may only be Hannah and me)-We Have Conquered!! It has been about 2 weeks now that Hannah has only taken one nap a day. It was a rough transition but we've made it. Finally! She may be the only 19 month old still taking 2 naps a day-at least among all of our friends she was.

During this transition though, she seems to have lost the ability to fall asleep on her own. She wants us to leave our hand on her back till she's asleep. Or just stand by her crib till she's asleep. Jesse and I have been frustrated by this-she has always gone to sleep on her own and has regressed. So, we are trying to work back to just laying her down and leaving the room. Today I was trying to just let her cry herself to sleep. I let her go for 20 minutes while I cleaned the kitchen. She was screaming really hard and gagging and decided I should go in and calm her down. I laid her down and got her calm then left the room. I wanted to see what she did so I watched her from the crack in the doorway. She instantly sat up and started crying. Then, she did the unexpected! She started nodding off while screaming. She fell asleep mid-scream and sitting-up! She stayed that way until her head bobbed then she would start screaming again with her eyes closed and nodded off again. This went on for 10 minutes. I was trying not to laugh! It was so funny to watch her fall asleep sitting up and then nod off. I kept hoping she would just lay down and pass out. After 10 minutes I went in her room, pointed to her mattress. She laid down and I never heard from her again. She was out! I wish I could've video'd it.

On a side note: I'm watching Toddlers and Tiaras from TLC and to keep an 18 month old awake they gave her a bottle with "special juice" in it-ingredients: Red Bull, Apple Juice and Coke!!!! I think that's child abuse. Just sayin'. 

I have been working on getting all the baby stuff in the house organized and put away. Hannah had so much fun playing with all her old baby toys! She loved it. I also showed her the box of dress up clothes I have been accumulating for her. She didn't want to put on any of the clothes but she loved the Sleeping Beauty shoes and her necklace. She has worn this necklace almost everyday for the last week no matter where we went.

This is what happens when you eat strawberries and then go play in the sandbox:

Shopping at the mall and playing with mommy's glasses:

Hanging out with daddy on college football's opening day. Fortunately I was at work so I didn't have to watch endless hours of football like Hannah did. Poor girl...

Two Blogs in one day!

A little friend of Hannah's was over today and they had so much fun! Miles and Hannah played in the baby pool, ran around the yard and played on the slide. Here are two videos of the slide-they are basically the same video so if you are in a hurry just pick one :)
Slide 1
Slide 2

Here is one of Hannah thoroughly enjoying herself!
Drinking Water

And here are the pics!!

Later in the day, after nap, after miles went home, Hannah was running around the house in just her diaper then she came over to me shivering. I guess with the air conditioning on and not having any clothes on, she was cold. I was doing a lot of laundry today so I pieced together what I had in the living room, being too lazy to go up stairs and get something. This is what I came up with-

 The shirt and skirt made sense, we keep her elmo slippers in her toy box in the living room, and I had recently found the hat and gloves at a garage sale so they had just been washed. She loved it!

 I liked the little "tail" under her hat!

 She went on to play for a good long time with the whole outfit on and continued to wear the slippers for the rest of the day. 

Then I ended the day by building a beautiful tower out of Hannah's ABC books. I was pretty proud of my accomplishment and wanted you all to be too! (Hey, its the little things!)

Funny things Hannah does now

There are several things hannah does that make me laugh right now.

1) She blows her lips when she's mad or frustrated. Right now she is lying in her crib blowing her lips over and over. I know I shouldn't think her frustration is funny, its just the way she expresses it.

2) Our bedtime routine is to read a book, sing a song, say a prayer. Though lately whenever I (or Jesse) start to sing she shakes her head no and says "dadadadadada". I would be offended if it was just me she was shaking her head no at, but it's Jesse too. Apparently she doesn't like our singing anymore and tries to talk over us. So then I thought maybe she knew that bedtime was coming and thats why she shook her head no. But she does it anytime I sing-in the car, during playtime, anytime. She just does not like the singing lately. Its really funny when she does it though. (since writing my draft of this post two days ago, she has also started shaking her head at her Veggie Tales CD we listen to in the car. She does not like singing right now. If I don't stop the CD quickly, she'll even begin screaming!) What happened to turn her away from music?

3) She will hold her sippy cup up to her baby dolls and make a sucking noise with her lips as they "drink" her milk. She also has taken her dolls for walks in her little doll stroller. She is getting into a doll phase in the last few days. In the church nursery, she rocked the baby dolls in a bassinet.

4) Hannah has lots of great toys but she loves rocks! In our neighborhood there are a lot of granite landscaping rocks. Hannah likes to collect them. She puts them in her doll stroller; fills the cup holders of her wagon, holds as many as she can carry in her hands, fills buckets from her sandbox with them, basically gets them any way she can! I don't let the rocks come into the house but occasionally I find them in her toy box or stuck inside toys. She is sneaky!

5)She plays peekaboo behind the kitchen curtains all the time and for long periods of time. She loves to look out the back window and sits here and just watches the world.

Not so much "funny" as just some info I thought you'd like to know:

Just in the last two days she has started really experimenting with her vocal chords. Making all kinds of sounds and vocal inflections! She has added the word "nana" to her vocab though I don't know what she is referencing. It seems to be just anything she wants, she points to it and says "nana". I'm sure my mom who is Hannah's Nana will get a kick out of that when she hears hannah say it.

She also started making the "Wa" sound in reference to water (in the baby pool and in her sippy cup) and her baby dolls crying (waaa waaaa waaaa). This is a great improvement! I am very thankful the speech therapist at her evaluation gave me some tips on how to work on sounds with her. She seems to be blossoming already! Its only been a week since the evaluation and the in-home speech therapist should start coming to the house next week. I can't wait to see how quickly she progresses!

Hannah's GaGa and PawPaw (which are Jesse's parents) were here to visit last week for about 5 days. We had a great visit which included the zoo, a trip up to a lake in the mountains, getting A LOT of projects done around the house, taking my mother-in-law to her first consignment store, going out to eat, Jesse and I have a date night, and many hours of bonding for Hannah and her grandparents. Sandy took a lot of pics so hopefully I will get them up soon. Also during this trip we learned that Jesse's cousin got engaged and will be getting married next year in Minneapolis. I have never been to the Minneapolis/St Paul area so this will add a new "stamp" on my map! Congrats Aunt Susan on gaining a daughter!

The Dada Dance!

For a long time, Hannah has been a strictly "mommy's girl" but recently this has changed. Hannah gets very excited to see Jesse if he is still home in the mornings and even more excited when he comes home from work. In this video he has been home about 20 minutes and she has been saying "Dada" for most of those minutes. She is in a full on "daddy phase" right now!

Dada Dance!

Play time with Daddy

So, normally I don't work on a beautiful Sunday afternoon when I could be home with my family but we had to make some schedule changes for this week because of a work meeting Jesse had and lack of babysitting. So I had to do a roundtrip to Calgary, Canada yesterday afternoon. When I arrived back in the good ol' US of A, I received a picture on my phone that made my day! It made up for my one hour delayed flight, not arriving home till 11pm, grouchy passengers and a frustrating encounter with a coworker-it erased it all!

She had pigtails in her hair and denim shorts on earlier but these must have been shed during her afternoon nap. Jesse built her an airplane! She loves airplanes right now. And I'm only guessing her and daddy had a lot of fun playing legos and building this airplane together. I'm glad they had this time together just them while I worked. Love everything about this pic!

Hannah's 18 Month Appointment

Now that Hannah is feeling better we were able to have her 18 month scheduled check-up. And guess what I learned?!

Hannah is in the 99th percentile for height!! She is the average height for a 26 month old. I knew she was tall because she grows out of her clothes way before the month stated on the tag for sizing. But I had no idea she was that tall! People are always commenting on how tall she is and I guess they are right.

She was also in the 66% for weight at 25lbs 6 oz. And had a head circumference in the 86%.

The doctor said she was "long and lean" which is what she has always been, though never this long before.

We also went through all the different verbal skills, fine motor and gross motor skills, personal and social communication skills that are standard for an 18 month old. The doctor thinks (as I have thought) that she is having some difficulty with her speech. The doctor referred me to a speech therapist who will come to our house to observe and recommend a course of action. She didn't seem too concerned but said this was the next step to make sure she is doing okay.

I'm trying not to worry about it and just see what the ST says when they come to our house.

Have a great Tuesday everyone!

Garage Sale Finds 7/29/11

So, this morning we woke up and Hannah didn't feel like she was on fire. I took her temp and it was 100.9-she is usually warmer when she first wakes. This made me so happy! She had slept all night with no meds and no waking. An hour later I took it and she had absolutely no fever whatsoever! After playing phone tag with the Doctor I wasn't sure if I should still come for her 10:30am appointment. I hadn't heard back from them by the time we needed to leave so I loaded up and headed over there. On the way the Doctor's nurse called and said I didn't need to come. Well, we were already in the car and it is a friday so why not stop at the community garage sale in the neighborhood just west of ours?!?

This is what we accumulated in our spontaneous trip:

I love knowing what kind of savings I'm getting so I will list here (in this order) the price I paid followed by approximate retail price and then a description or story of the item. You may not care at all, but I do! :)

1)The Kangaroo with baby in pouch-$1; $12; Hannah is really getting into Winnie the Pooh and there are Kanga and Roo as characters so I thought these could fill in for those characters. Hannah picked this out herself at the garage sale. She carried them over to me saying "hop, hop, hop".

2) 3 Winnie the Pooh Books-$.75; $7.50; More winnie the pooh books to read!

3) Once Upon a Potty-$.25; $8; my mom and dad read this to me and my sister Blaire when we were potty training. Our library has about 20 copies of it which we have checked out before but for a quarter, I couldn't pass it up. If you haven't read this book, even if you are potty trained, its a cute read.

4) Wings- $.50; $9; I have been working on a "dress up box" for Hannah for when she's ready for that in a couple years. I figure find good costumes and clothes now for cheap don't have to buy them at full price later. I already have a snow white, cinderella, sleeping beauty dress and some play shoes, pretty dresses and tiaras. Now I have wings.

5) Black Patent Leather Mary Janes-$2; $27 on OshKosh website (same brand)-she is always needing the next size up and these are in almost perfect condition! Good for winter.

6)75 piece set of Toddler Legos-$8; Amazon said $499.99 (I'm guessing that's a typo!!); $19.50; What kid doesn't "need" LEGOS?!

7) Two Elmo's World Movies-$4 total; $22 total; Hannah loves "The Best of Elmo 2" that we checked out from the Library so I figured she might love these too.

8) Purple Coat-$3; guessing $20; this is 2T so she will wear it this winter. And duh, we live in Denver, we need coats!

So I spent a total of $19.50. If I had bought these new and not on sale I would have spent $125! So I saved about 85% off of retail! WOO HOO!