Happy 2nd Birthday, Abby!

It seems hard to believe, but our sweet Abby turned 2 on Friday!  Unfortunately, she had strep throat and a check-up in Iowa City on her birthday, but we certainly made up for it today with her birthday party. If she did not completely understand the whole concept of birthdays up until today, she is definitely a fan now!  She was showered with very girly gifts from family members, feasted on purse cake and ice cream, and enjoyed the spotlight for the day.  Here are a few of the highlights:

Since we've been on a bit of a hiatus from blogging over the past few months, here are a few other updates and pictures from the last few months.

We had our house painted over the summer and have a variety of house projects and repairs that have been keeping us busy over the past few months.  Brant and Ben are putting on one of the finishing touches - the shutters!  Choosing the color was quite a fiasco... ugh.  After much time and uncertainty, they look sharp, and are actually the first color we chose.  Go figure!

Ben and Abby have become quite the duo.  We love that they are such good buddies and can entertain each other endlessly!  Giggles coming from the playroom are like music to my ears.

Ben has continued to take swimming lessons.  He really enjoyed swimming this summer and has continued the lessons (indoor, of course) into the fall.

Soccer!  Ben participated in a 6 week soccer team, and Brant was the coach of his team.  He seemed to enjoy it and it was a nice introduction to team sports... very low key!

Brant and I traveled to Boston in August so Brant could get a second opinion on an eye condition (diabetic retinopathy).  While there, we enjoyed a few days together in the city.  He had surgery in Iowa City on September 7 and just found out this week that both eyes now back to 20/20 vision!  We are very thankful!

Halloween time!   With the birthday party this weekend, we celebrated our family Halloween party last weekend.  My friend Pinterest helped me plan a ghostly art project, and a meal full of breadstick bones, apple teeth, hot dog mummies, and ghost-krispie bars.  This is the kind of stuff I love!

Enjoying our abundance of fall leaves.

All three of my loves!  This is a glimpse of everyday silliness.

INSERT HERE: Photo of me finishing my first half marathon last weekend!

Yep, I don't have any pictures of it, but if I did, it would be of a sweaty, tired version of myself.  The highlight for me was seeing Brant, Ben, and Abby as I rounded the corner before the finish.  I certainly needed the pick-me-up, and it propelled me to the end.  I beat my goal time by four minutes, so I was pretty happy... and sore!

As I reflect on the past few months, we've certainly had our ups and downs, but all in all, life is pretty darn good!  Hopefully, it won't be February before I make it back to the blog again!  Here's to hoping...

We Love Summer!

That's right - we love summer!  The kids and I have been home on summer break for almost two weeks and have been having a great time!  As you can see, we've spent some time playing in water and in the sprinkler at home, but we've also been out and about a lot.  Unfortunately, I either forget the camera or don't take any pictures.  Abby  is also at the stage where she wants to look at the screen instead of getting her picture taken, which makes it quite challenging to capture her cutest moments.  Anyway, we've enjoyed story time at the library, the splash park, several parks around town, and even the zoo.  With Ben being 4 years old and Abby being almost 20 months, it has gotten so easy to just get up and go.  Both kids are a delight to take nearly anywhere!

At home, we've enjoyed playing outside.  As you can see from the picture above, Ben really loves to draw what he would term "gigantic" dinosaurs on the driveway with chalk.  He is sitting next to his T-Rex masterpiece above.  While at home, we've also been doing little crafty projects.  We've made paper plate suns, egg cartons bugs, played with "slime" (cornstarch and water), made ice cream in baggies, and done lots of cutting, pasting, coloring, and gluing.  I also found window markers made by Crayola, so one day, we drew all over the porch windows.  It was really fun!  Of course, I also can't resist slipping in some math and literacy activities that I call another "project"... Ben doesn't know the difference and I find it quite exciting - that's the teacher in me!

As you can guess, Ben is still really interested in dinosaurs.  He also likes playing with his Legos and cars.  Brant and I have noticed that Ben's imagination is really running wild lately.  He teeters on the edge of reality and fantasy all the time, to the point that I have to clarify with him whether he is pretending.  Last week he decided he was going back to Florida for vacation, so he and Abby took all the clothes out of his drawers and packed them (ironically, they were all winter clothes) in his Lego bins and backpack and told me he was ready to go.  On other days, we act like animals.  Since I ran Dam to Dam, he tells me he is going to go to his race, but that his race is a car race.  The conversations he has with himself are interesting, and pretty priceless.  The expressions that he uses and the way he converses with us, and sometimes tries to negotiate with us, shows how much he is really growing up.

In the last few weeks, Abby's talking has really started to take off.  We've noticed that sometimes she is hard to understand because she is trying to put a string of words together, but the number of words and phrases she is saying has really increased.  Some of my favorites with her lately is that she has merged words together to create her own.  For example, "Mankie" means "My blankie" and "wa-ink" is "Want a drink."  We are also finding that Abby is going through an "in-charge" stage.  I have managed to curb her from saying "Mine!" to "My turn", but she wants to do everything herself, from brushing her teeth to climbing in her seat to dressing herself.  I know I'll appreciate this independence and determination when she is slightly more coordinated to actually do these things in a timely manner, but right now it has proved to be a bit challenging.

In other news, I finished Dam to Dam last weekend successfully!  The race was a 20K (12.4 miles) and I ran it is 2:02:58, which was slightly under a10 minute mile pace.  I was pretty happy about it, as my goal was to run 10 minute miles, and I didn't feel all that great for a majority of the race.  I was kind of nervous about the whole thing, probably didn't stretch like I should have, and didn't sleep well the night before.  All in all, I was pretty proud of myself.

Catching Up

 If you ever wonder where your shoes (or gloves, in Ben's case) are in my house, just check my kids' feet!

 Hunting for eggs at Grandma and Papa's house!  

An art project over Spring Break was painting Easter eggs.  Since Ben is allergic to eggs, so dying them isn't an option.  Personally, drawing eggs on white paper and letting them go with watercolors would be my first preference anyway!

Although the picture is blurry, you can somewhat make out the ADORABLE pink shoes Abby wore on Easter!  She was quite the cutie pie!

I think the title of the post pretty much sums it up... a constant game of chase my tail and playing catch up!  What's new?!  I think from the pictures above you can get the general gist of both spring break and Easter.    We are now on to thinking about and looking forward to summer.  Ben's eyes light up at the thought of going  swimming, playing in the sprinkler, and going on picnics.  My eyes light up too!  It is definitely time to be able to step away from the day-to-day for awhile and rejuvenate.

Ben is excited to start swimming lessons next week at the Y.  We've been hoping to get him signed up for several months, but haven't managed to get past the waiting list for weekend classes.  So, he is scheduled for Tuesday evenings.  Judging on last summer, he seems to love the water and it seems like something he will really enjoy.  Getting him into the water without Mom or Dad might be another story... I'm keeping my fingers crossed.  In other Ben news, Brant built a swing set for the kids several weeks ago and Ben LOVES to swing in his new "big boy" swing.  I love that both kids can swing at the same time instead of having to take turns on our old swing that hung from a tree!  Now that the weather is nice, he is also back to loving baseball.  When he was looking at books the other night, I said to Ben, "Pretty soon, you're going to be a reader!"  Ben looked at me in disgust and said, "No, I'm not going to be a reader, I'm going to be a baseball player when I grow up!"

Abby had her annual appointment in Iowa City two weeks ago to retest her urinary reflux condition.  We found out that nothing has changed and it is still grade 5, which I wasn't too surprised about.  However, the doctors were a bit concerned about her blood pressure being on the high side, so we are now monitoring that daily and emailing the results to a nephrologist on a weekly basis to make a decision about next steps, if any are needed.  That threw a monkey-wrench into the day, and extended our appointment by several hours, but we're glad it all is being closely monitored.  Everything shows that her kidneys are growing and functioning fine, but the doctors want to do a few more tests, so we'll be doing that here in Des Moines over the next month or so.  I'm slightly frustrated at the run-around I feel like I'm getting on getting these things scheduled, but that is another story.  Besides having too many ureters and them not functioning correctly, Abby is a healthy, happy little gal!  She is starting to say more and more, but often still in her own little language.  We hear "All done" constantly, she has her own jargon for saying "Want a drink", loves to tell everyone to "Stop!", and a variety of other words and phrases.  She is also very attached and affectionate towards Ben lately, giving lots of hugs and kisses and copying the things he does.  It is pretty neat to watch!  Luckily, he eats it up!

I decided a while back that I needed to do something to get an exercise routine going that would motivate me and get me out of bed in the morning.  I find that morning work-outs are really best for me, but it was just so hard to get out of bed.  So, I signed up for Dam to Dam, which is a half mile short of a half marathon the first weekend in June.  I've been a 3-4 mile runner since I was about 15 years old, never having run more than 6 miles since high school, so this has been something I'm pretty proud of lately.  My long runs are on the weekend and last Saturday, I ran 8 miles without a problem.  My run this Saturday is 10 miles.  I love the feeling of doing something I haven't done before every Saturday morning!  Not that I needed something else going on in my life besides work and home, but it has felt very refreshing to have something else to take pride in that makes me feel healthy, and just really good about myself!

4 Years Old!

A racecar cake!!

Check out that cake - complete with a firey
crash!

Light up shoes! Ben has talked about all the kids at preschool with lights on their shoes and was in disbelief that he now has his OWN pair!

Ben loves Legos!

Brant built Ben his very own workbench so they can work on projects together and it looks like a miniature verions of Brant's. Ben was floored!

Ben's first bike!

We've had a fun week with several birthday celebrations! We celebrated with Great Grandma Anderson by going out to dinner last Sunday, Uncle Nick joined us on Ben's real birthday (March 6), and we had a party last night with the Ausenhus family. Happy Birthday, Ben! We can't believe what a big boy you are!

Little Lady

In the past month, Abby's girlie-girl side has really come out. She has turned in to quite the little lady in the things she seems to be enjoying and exploring. I'm not sure where all this came from, as I'm not exactly the girlie-girl kind of mom, but I'm pretty in love with how very cute it all is!

This girl loves to carry a purse! Anything with a handle turns into a purse for Abby. Most of the time, she throws the purse over her shoulder, just like she sees me do everyday.
I know I just said I'm not the girlie-girl kind of mom. This is the first pair of tights Abby has ever worn and the whole giddup was a gift. But, it was ADORABLE and turned many heads! Abby felt pretty neutral on the tights. She seemed extremely relieved to take them off that evening. Who can blame her?

Abby cannot get enough of shoes! When things seem to get eerily quiet in the play room, most of the time it is because Abby is around the corner trying on everyone's shoes.

Pushing babies in her stroller is a huge hit! She loves it even more when one of us pushes the other stroller and around the house we go. She also likes to show us how she hugs and burps her babies.

Abby loves putting hats on her head and, on this particular day, was also insistent on wearing one of Ben's vests.

And, nothing like a little multi-tasking to prove that you truly are a little lady. I caught Abby toddling around the kitchen drinking milk and jabbering on her play cell phone. Now that she can say the word "Hi!" we hear it a lot. I also think I've picked up on some "Uh-huhs" while she chats away.

We have also noticed in the last month that the way Abby communicates with us has become clearer. She seems to have her own jabbering language a lot of the time and can become frustrated when somehow, we can't interpret what she means. However, she is very clear in her pointing, nodding her head "yes" and saying "Okay", and nodding her head "no" when something is unfavorable. Her other words include dada, ba (for ball), okay, uh-oh, mama, hi, and more. She likes to think she is very independent, with doing such things as combing her hair (which really isn't necessary for reasons that don't need to be explained), putting her own sippy cup back in the fridge, putting her clothes in the hamper, and throwing away her cups after brushing her teeth.

Obviously, this whole post has been about Abby. However, our Ben is still as sweet as can be. He is very excited about Valentine's Day. He and I did his Valentine's for preschool yesterday and he stuck with it long enough to write his name on seven of the cards, but then got sidetracked with the Lightening McQueen tattoos included with the Valentine's set.

As most of you know, Ben tends to be a picky eater, but he must be going through a growth spurt. Either that or he is turning over a new leaf in the world of eating. I'm hoping for the latter. Ben has eaten entire meals over the past week! This is rare in our house. I'm practically beside myself! In fact, one night this week in which I made meatloaf, Ben had eaten everything on his plate, but had not touched his meatloaf. He said to me, "How many bites until I can have dessert?" I replied, "I don't know, you'll have to eat a lot." He has become a master negotiator and said, "I'll eat five bites and then I can have dessert." I said, "No, six bites." Holding firm, Ben said, "Five bites!" I replied, "How about this, if you eat five bites, you can have one cookie. If you eat six bites, you can have two cookies." Ben's face lit up, and not to allow me to have the last word in this negotiation, stated enthusiastically, "And if I have TEN bites I can have three cookies!" Deal, with the result being the consumption of yet another entire meal! This might not be creating a healthy relationship with food, but at least it is creating a relationship with food - and meatloaf at that! Score one for Mom... and Ben!