A kick in the tukus

Tuesday, October 24, 2006
So I've been given a polite reminder via my sis that "no news is good news" only flies for about a week before an update is necessary. Sorry, all. First of all - I don't know where the last week has gone. Or month, for that matter. And secondly... I don't have a secondly. Let me think. What have the Dalys been up to?

Josie turned 21 months old last week. Unreal. She's going to be two before we know it. Then she'll be going to school. Then she'll be driving. And graduating. And crap - I've got to stop, I'm having heart palpatations.

So like I was saying, we decided it was time to give ye old toddler bed a try. Sunday we schlepped the bed into her room, now her AND EVE'S room with the grand idea that it was time for Eve to move into the crib since she's been sleeping through the night. After some minor room adjustments the room was set up to my satisfaction. And seemingly, to Josie's liking, as well, as she climbed and inspected her new "big girl" bed. Nap time on Sunday went swimmingly in the new bed, except it was quite strange for me to have her wake up and get out of the bed on her own and try to open the door to her room. This is scary, uncharted territory.

So we were off to a pretty good start and I was feeling optimistic. Along comes bedtime Sunday night. Josie goes to bed. Pat puts Eve to bed a couple hours later, in the crib, in the same room with Jo. This is monumental. I'm upstairs, apprehensively listening on the baby monitor. After 3 tries, Eve finally falls asleep. 11:30 comes. Josie falls out of bed. We did put a squishy body pillow down in case this happened. Pat puts Jo back in bed. She fell out again around 2:45. Pat put her back again. She was quite confused. 3:45 comes around, and Eve wakes up, screaming. I go get her, and poor Josie is laying there, on her back, wide awake. I get Eve back to sleep after a bottle, and decide not to bother Jo again, so bring Evie back upstairs with us. But I can hear Josie on the monitor, chatting away to herself - for the next hour or so. Pat finally goes down and rocks her, and lets her go back to sleep in her crib. We caved. But the poor kid had a rough night without much sleep so far. In hindsight, we probably should have just let Jo get used to sleeping in the bed before tossing Eve into the mix, but hey - live and learn. So for now, Jo's back in the crib at night while we look for siderails, but napping in the bed during the day, and Eve is back with us at night. We'll get there, eventually.

Eve got over her bout of bronchiolitis and handled the nebulizer treatments just fine. But then on Saturday, our 6 year wedding anniversary, she decided it was time to spike a few high temps and have a very crabby day. So we nixed our night out dinner and movie plans (complete with overnight sitter) and cared for a sick baby instead. Of course, on Sunday, she was peachy fine again. Impeccable timing, Eve. :) The past couple of days she has been reaching out for and grabbing toys and just today she rolled to her side in her play gym. Granted, this move was in order for her to see the television more clearly, but hey - I'll take it. She's already 3 and 1/2 months old and getting so big and animated and... real. You know what I mean, right? When they're newborns they're real... but just kind of squirmy and sleepy and hungry. Now she interacts and smiles and looks for us. So fun.

But this is getting long and babbly and Eve is actually asleep so I should be, too. Patrick is playing hockey tonight, an early game at 9:20. Those boys are crazy. Sometimes their games don't start until 10:30. Insanity, I tell ya. I hope he can play okay... he was complaining about being sore after playing some touch football on Sunday. I told him he's getting old. He didn't appreciate that.

No news is good news?

Tuesday, October 17, 2006
There's not a whole lot new going on with us right now, which I guess can be a good thing!

Patrick is playing in a fall hockey league on Tuesday nights, Eve is sleeping through the night and keeping us laughing during the day, Josie is growing and learning and challenging and jumping and pretending more and more all the time and I am enjoying my time with them immensely.

I return to work on Monday, November 6th, so am trying (and failing) to hold on to each and every day of my leave as it slips away. But we're making the most of the time I have left and I am so grateful that I am able to spend as long as I have with my girls. It sounds like I'll be returning to the division, albeit a new department, where I have spent most of my time at Minnesota Life, and I am excited for the new assignment and opportunity I've been given. I will continue to work Monday through Thursday and am lucky enough to continue to be able to have Fridays off. It's going to be interesting with two in daycare, so we'll see how we manage after things settle down when I return to work.

Hope all is well with everyone - and Happy Birthday greetings to Becky and Peggles!! Hugs and kisses to you both!

Hey! Check out this book!

Thursday, October 12, 2006
"Violette Between" by Alison Strobel

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1578567947

My bookclub read this selection a few months back, and the author is a friend of my friend, Meg. How cool is that? We all enjoyed the story and even got to have a conference call with Alison at our bookclub meeting. So, yes... we do talk about the books!! :) Alison is doing a blog tour to promote her book, so please, check it out!

A synopsis:
Violette is the quintessential artist: passionate, emotional and full of life. After suffering a great loss she finds herself enamoured with a new relationship and asking if it is truly time to move on.Christian lost his wife years ago and understands Violette's pain firsthand. He offers her a chance to love once more and hopes to build a future with the spirited artist. But just as Violette and Christian begin to feel something unexpected, tragedy strikes again. Violette retreats into her past - and she finds that she may not want to comeback. This is a captivating novel that asks what is more precious: the memories of one who is gone or the memories waiting to be made with someone new?

If you want, check out Alison's website and her blog.

Enjoy!

Take a look...

Tuesday, October 10, 2006

Above: There's nothing better than playing in the leaves at night. Josie thinks she's quite fabulous in her animal print hat passed down from Cousin Emilie.
Eve is all smiles in her massage chair... actually, I have to look, but I think I have an almost identical picture of Josie in the same outfit and same chair.

Above: This is the day of Bob and Steffi's wedding. Steffi made the mistake of laying her sunglasses on the table. Josie thinks she is also quite fabulous in sunglasses. And, of course, she is.
And here is Mason, who just HAD to hold Eve. Eve doesn't look so sure about the whole deal. "How old is this kid anyway? Does he have a license to hold me??"

Above: Caught in the act. Those two are quite the dynamic duo. This is a very common scene in our house.
And Eve, again, all smiles. :)

Wheezy, Raspy, Hacky, Snotty, Squirmy, Sleepy and Smiley AND a bit of divine intervention?

No - not the new 7 dwarfs - just our Evie. I took her to the doc yesterday (sad news, the new doctor we just started seeing is moving her practice closer to her home in Ham Lake and leaving our clinic. bummer.) as the cold she'd been battling off and on for the past few weeks got a lot worse over the weekend. After checking her out and taking a chest x-ray, she was diagnosed as having bronchiolitis. So we have to get her set up for nebulizer treatments and then take her back in on Thursday. Bring on the cold and flu season - can't wait, it's already off to a smashing start.

On a different note, as some of you may know, we've been having a problem with the passenger-side sliding door on our minivan as of late. The automatic lock didn't want to unlock, and it was very inconvenient having to heft Josie in and out without the convenience of the sliding door.

Anyway, we hadn't made the time to take a serious look at it, and we'd occasionally yank on it a bit and hope for the best, but to no avail. Well, we went to church on Sunday, and afterwards Pat was in the van leaning over the passenger front seat to buckle Josie in, while I was leaning against the van, hitting the unlock button and pulling on the sliding door lock, hoping it might just decide to give in and open for us. As I was doing so, Pat made some offhanded comment about how during the petitions he should have prayed for God to fix the door on our van. I'm not kidding you, after weeks of hoping we'd hit unlock and it would open, and getting no results... I hit the button one more time, and it unlocked. We were a little speechless and quite frankly, freaked out all the way home. Hmm. Perhaps we'll make it to church a little more often. :)

Ups and Downs

Thursday, October 05, 2006
Wow. So Pat and I, being the impulsive crazy cats we are, decided that we NEEDED to go to the Twins playoff game yesterday. Pat headed to work, and ended up finding someone selling tickets online. We were prepared to go to the 'dome without tix in hopes of finding someone outside selling if we needed to. But we didn't have to resort to that, Pat got the tix, I took Eve to play at Daycare Betty's with her sister for the day and we hopped the express metro transit bus to downtown Minneapolis. It was a beautiful day, and I was soooo excited! The bus ride only took 20 minutes, we got dropped off right in front of the 'dome, and Pat and I enjoyed some highly overpriced beer and fatty foods on the plaza before gametime. What luxury! A day without kids, yummy corndogs, and a post-season baseball game. We felt like we were being so naughty and sneaky, skipping out on the kids and work to go and play - it was great!

Ohh ohh, AND, I won a free t-shirt out on the plaza, too! Yippee - could things get any better? Yes, they could! We ended up being only 4 sections away from Meg and Joel, so could wave and make obscene gestures at them, and count how many beers Joel consumed and trips to the bathroom he made (just kidding, Joel!) - it was almost as good as actually GOING to the game with them! And we knew of about 3 or 4 other friend-couples at the game, too. So fun!

Well - all was going along swimmingly. The game was exciting, back-to-back homeruns to tie up the game made the strangers around us feel like our best friends, and we thought FOR SURE we were leaving with victory in our hands.

But everything fell apart in the 7th. Poor Torii. Pat just told me this morning that it was exactly 4 years ago to the day that Torii did the same thing... and we were at THAT game, too. How sad. Perhaps we should think about passing on going to postseason baseball games from now on. Extreme happiness turned to deflated depression in the blink of an eye. So we left the Metrodome with heavy hearts, then to add insult to injury, had to wait forEVER for a bus back to downtown St. Paul, and the bus ride was not only packed, but excruciatingly slow. But we're not giving up hope yet... it's not over! If anyone can do it, our Twinkies can. They just have to, it's been such a fun season.

So my little Eve-rs had her 2-month shots this morning, finally. She's had the sniffles and coughs off and on, so I waited to have her get them... but finally decided she shouldn't wait any longer. She screamed, the nurses bolted, and now all is well. Hopefully she takes them as well as Josie always did. She is such a trooper. All smiles and coos - she was so happy this morning, it was like she just couldn't smile any bigger and happiness just oozed out of every pore. She's such a sweet pea.

What's new?

Wednesday, October 04, 2006
So much going on lately. Here's an update:

  • Eve is sleeping through the night. The past few nights she has gone from 10:30 or 11:30 pm until anywhere from 5:00 to 7:00 am.
  • We are cautiously optimistic that this sleepy trend will continue!
  • Last Friday my Mom, Erwin, my sister-cousin Julie (it's a long story, don't ask!) and her son, Mason came up for a day visit. Josie had a very good time playing with all of Mason's fun farm toys. Julie - there's a round bail here at my house, hope Mason hasn't missed it :)
  • Saturday we went to a courthouse wedding for our friends Bob and Steffi. Then to dinner at Olive Garden and to a mini-reception at Bob's place. The wedding was decided on and planned in about 10 days, and the ceremony took about 2 minutes! It was a beautiful day outside and we were so honored to be able to celebrate with Bob and Steffi! Congrats!
  • Sunday continued with more beautiful weather and a golf outing for Patrick. While he was golfing, the girls and I went to watch some of the Twin Cities Marathon with the Gronaus, minus Joel, who was golfing with Pat. I am so happy that I have friends like Meg who bring me out of my cave once in a while and make me experience something new. I had a blast, and Josie loved being outside and playing with Lucy.
  • Sunday evening we went for a walk to enjoy more of the beautiful day. For a change of pace, we've been visiting a different playground than the one down the street from our house. Just to mix it up a bit. We're wild and crazy that way.
  • Yesterday I took the girls down to my sister's house where we celebrated my Mom's birthday. It was an impromptu party that turned out to be just "the girls." So much fun... and so much yummy food! Thanks, Sissy!

I have some fun pictures of some of this stuff that I'll try to post soon. Right now, I'm going to go enjoy the luxury of a shower. Happy Wednesday... and GO TWINS!!!


Oh... I was going to tell you that Josie's favorite new show is "Dancing With the Stars." She dances, and twirls, and stomps, and smiles while the contestants are dancing... it is ADORABLE. She even makes Pat and I get up and dance with her. So fun.