Special Every Days

It's been a while since you've heard from us. Maybe that's because life has been seeming so... everyday. Every day. Many of these ordinary days I forget to document with a camera. And it doesn't help that it feels like summer may never arrive. Granted, we've been getting a few teaser days of sunshine and warmth interspersed amongst the rest. But if you want to feel good about the future, don't check the extended forecast.

So here's what we've been up to lately. Michaela is a big 22-month-old now, and words are pouring out of her left and right. She learns and says new words every day. She also gets increasingly frustrated when we don't understand what she's saying (how do 'cracker', 'towel', 'Tyler' and 'tired' all sound the same???). For some reason I also don't understand, she is insisting on calling the dog 'Tigra' which is the cat's name. She calls the cat by the correct name, as well, so things can get a little confusing. Michaela also loves to play outside. These photos were taken on a Sunday afternoon adventure at a neighborhood park. It's funny how checking out and evaluating new playgrounds has become a family hobby.

She loves to swing high!

Cresting the top of a (small) play structure

Michaela also loves to color and play with her dolls (diapering, feeding, rocking, and putting them to sleep). The picture below is from Easter when she got to sit down and color with Papi. The trouble with coloring with Michaela is that she likes to draw on your picture, which can be devastating for a perfect colorer like myself.

The week preceding Easter was spent working on building a deck in our backyard. After backbreaking labor by many people - two of Michaela's grandpas, her Daddy, her Uncle Dave, with supervision by Aunt Abbey and myself - the deck is done! We're very pleased with our results and have already had a couple of BBQ's outside on the deck. Ahhh...

Lastly, my wonderful husband put a lot of work into what was supposedly "my" project - our raised beds for our vegetable garden. They are beautiful and now they are growing little green produces, which I don't know yet when I am supposed to harvest because this is my first attempt at a garden. But I'm very excited, nonetheless.

Potato plants. I didn't know what potato plants would look like. What a city girl!

What you can't see in the center are little carrot sprouts; on the right, bell and jalapeno peppers.

Tomatoes and crazy wild snap peas. I'm so excited to eat them! (Not pictured: lettuce)

20 Months!

We celebrated Michaela's 20-month-a-versary yesterday with a fun visit with friends. The photos may not reflect it because it was nearly impossible to get any two of the three children - ages 14 months, 20 months, and 28 months, in the same place at the same time. So like any self-respecting parent, I focused on taking photos of my own kid. Anyway, we had a very fun time playing with Lily and Isaiah (and Sarah and Kalina). We went to a park and took in as much vitamin D as we could - swinging on a big kid swing (and kneeing Isaiah in the head when he got too close - sorry!) going down the tandem slide with Lily, and generally running around in the bark chips. Good times.



Kalina helping Lily try the monkey bars



Isaiah is not so keen on trying the monkey bars and tries to jump down



Michaela checking out the curvy slide compared to the straight slide

After all that exercise we needed some food, so we walked to lunch at Wendy's - possibly Michaela's first lunch at a fast food restaurant, at least that I remember. While my daughter loved to eat the french fries, dipped in both ketchup and ranch, she refused to eat the pieces I had broken up for her into bite size, and only ate the whole ones. After a whopping two chicken nuggets and a mandarin orange brought from home, she was full. Oh, except for the bites of frosty I grudgingly shared. Add to that a walk back to Kalina's house in the sunshine, and it was a delightful celebration day. Thanks friends!

Ode to Joy

Some days in this rainy, rainy spring it has been challenging for me to look on the bright side (I mean, really, I could barely even see, it was so dark outside). So one day recently when we had a sunny afternoon for a walk I wanted to document the signs of spring that I could see. They bring joy to my heart and I wanted to post them so that, in case we don't get another sunny day this spring, I can look back on them and enjoy the beauty, and persistent hopefulness - these plants know spring is coming- of God's creation.

These are actually my flowers, newly planted last fall in our front yard.

Baby blueberry plant, one of eight, planted along our front fence. We may have fruit in like 5 years.

Learning to take time and smell the flowers (with our nose, not our fingers)

adventures at home and abroad

Michaela and I have been spending a lot of time at home lately, considering the weather and Adam's super busy work schedule. Michaela recently has been enjoying the aprons Grammy made her. She prefers wearing them both at once. And she also demands that I wear my apron the same time she has hers on. Unfortunately, I do not look as cute as she does.

On the one sunny day we had on "spring break" week - which really means nothing to us at this point - Michaela and I went to the Sherwood wildlife refuge and went for a walk. She probably walked 3/4 of a mile all under her own power (and at a very slow speed for me!) As much fun as the walk was, and looking at the birds and playing in the gravel, the most fun by far was weaving in and out of the bicycle rack at the head of the trail. Who knew we didn't even need to leave the parking lot?!

safety first?

Grab the camera, take a photo, all the while saying, "Michaela, I don't think that's too safe."

freezin' in central oregon

At the end of February (yes, I'm still a month behind in blogging cool things that we have done, perhaps that's because we're so bogged down with the uncool things we're doing... staying inside because everything is constantly rainy, gray and muddy) we took a break from the mundane and went to Black Butte with my parents. Poor Adam, unfortunately, had to work, but Michaela and I took off on a great adventure. Michaela hadn't really seen snow before, and there was plenty of it. It was also the coldest I have ever been - the last morning there the thermometer read 10 below zero when I got up in the morning. But the snow was a nice change from the rain - at least I thought so, don't think Michaela was so sure. These are the only pictures we got of her in the snow because this was the only time she allowed us to take her outside and play in the snow.

 



But she did enjoy looking at the snow on the deck through the window.


We really didn't do much of anything while we were there, besides snowshoe a little, and venture into Sisters (which is really dead midweek in February) and have a yummy yummy donut at the famed Sisters Bakery. We took this picture for Adam to show him what he was missing.

And oh yes! The purpose for our entire trip was to go to my cousin Janae's baby shower. We got to spend time with her the day before, and then go over again for the shower on Saturday morning. I am so excited to find out whether Janae and Mark are going to be having a little guy or a little gal as an addition to their family. Michaela had fun with Nana but wasn't sure about the other 25 people who were at the shower. She did eat her weight in blueberry muffins, though, and slept much of the trip home, completely exhausted from her big day.



Checking out Aunt Karen's pantry, Bella in tow



Children's Museum

In the drizzly days of January, Sarah and I decided to fight off the post-Christmas blues and take our girls to the Children's Museum for the day. Even for such little girls, it was great fun! It was hard to get pictures of Lily and Michaela together, since they (especially Michaela) were constantly moving on to check out something else. And since we used a free pass from the public library and it cost us nothing but gas money to go, we'll definitely go again! It certainly wore out the kids, possibly us moms as well. Enjoy the photos!

Lily - a fisherwoman

Going in? Coming out!

All the attractions with water were the best, as far as these girls were concerned.

Looking sharp in her full-body smock

We probably should have spent the entire day in the water room, because nothing else was quite as interesting.

18 months, 13 days

That's how long it's been since Michaela joined the family. Here's some info about what our little toddler is up to these days. At her 18-month medical appointment, Michaela was declared to be a healthy little gal. She weighs 21.5 pounds (10th percentile for her age) and is 32.75 inches tall (75th percentile). She got one vaccination, but luckily doesn't have to get another one until her 2-year appointment! That will be the longest stint she will have gone without an immunization. The doctor expects Michaela's verbal development to skyrocket over the next few months and encouraged us to try to get her to say words out loud which she currently uses hand signs for (like "please," "thank you," and "more"). Words she does have in her vocabulary right now: Mama, Dada, blanket, milk, more, up (pronounced "bup"), doggie, book, bye-bye, and a very mangled attempt at banana. She understands nearly everything we say, though, and I find it incredible on a daily basis. I had to ask the pediatrician about the 3 'P's at this appointment - peanut butter? potty training? and pillow? The answer was yes to the peanut butter, since we don't have any peanut allergies in the family that we know of. As of now, Michaela doesn't seem to like peanut butter, a great disappointment to her mother. Potty training... the doctor says Michaela is still really young and just said to do all the things I have been doing - sitting her on her potty chair, both clothed and without a diaper on, and waiting for her to do her thing. And Michaela is way past the risk of SIDS now so when I find a small pillow that I like, we'll put it in her crib. Lately I've noticed she's been wadding up one of her blankets and laying her head on it. Hmm.




Using a spoon to feed herself Malt-O-Meal... a work in progress




With cousin Genevieve at Playdate PDX - a fun indoor park!



Unfortunately her 18-month check-up was bookended by ear infections. One at the end of January, and one on the mend now. It was a scary time for Adam and I as we tried to figure out why Michaela was running a fever, was so lethargic and yet cranky, and wasn't sleeping for any length of time at night. The first time I took her to the doctor, she just had fluid in her ears, but it wasn't infected, however after the course of a weekend (during which poor Abbey, Dave and Greyson were visiting) Michaela had developed a double ear infection. Conveniently she loves the pink color and bubble gum flavor of the antibiotic. Then about a week or so after her last one cleared up we awoke to her crying and running a fever in the middle of the night... again. So I gave her a day and when it didn't seem to get better, off we went to the Children's Clinic and it was confirmed - yup, an icky ear infection.  So we're 4 days into this next run of antibiotics, and she's getting close to feeling better again, for which I am very grateful. We have, however, gone through an entire bottle of children's ibuprofen.

But back to happier things... here are some other funny things Michaela's been up to lately:

-- coloring in her coloring book, just a little scribble on each page

-- closing doors (say on me while I'm in the laundry room) and then knocking on them. She also likes to close herself in a room (i.e., the bathroom) and then knock

-- she's into talking on the phone - but only fake phones. Just today she was talking into the calculator.

-- diapering her baby dolls. Actually, I do the diapering, and she does the undiapering. Multiple times per day.

-- climbing backwards down our staircase all by herself. However, it's so much more entertaining if she's also carrying one or two items in her hands.

-- dancing with her index finger pointed up to "This Little Light of Mine"

-- going down slides; the small one in the church nursery she goes down on her bottom, but the big one at the park she can go down feet first on her tummy

-- and of course... READING! We read and read and read and read and read...



Michaela, Isaiah and Lily at Lily's first birthday!!



Family Photos

At the end of the year, Adam's friend Kyle was in town with his wife to visit family, and they kindly stopped by to see us and to take some family photos. We enjoyed catching up with Kyle and Haley, and also enjoyed sharing a meal with them at Chipotle.

Is it 2011 already?

As the approximately 3 of you who read this blog may have noticed, it has been an embarrassingly long time since I last posted the doings of Team Puckett.  I'm not really sure what has happened, except that I started using naptime for something other than writing a blog post. I started out reading the Lord of the Rings trilogy, as cultural enrichment, and it turns out that I am really enjoying them. I only have about 100 pages left to go in the entire story, so please no one ruin it for me! So yes, naptime for Michaela has been decadent reading time for me.  Hopefully in days to come you will get to see some of the exciting things we have been up to in these cold and rainy first weeks of the year.