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Wow, where to even start? I can’t even remember everything that has happened since my last post. The highlights: Jason+Lily+pony= LOVE, girls night, vacation week, new job, illness, Thanksgiving.

Lisa and I organized a girl’s night at Mom’s house where we brought snacks, movies, and “spa supplies” and had a girls night in while Mom was recovering from surgery. Since Jason was going to be alone with Lily, he decided to take her down to his Mom’s house to ride Jesse Pony one last time (for the year), and visit his Mom. They had a great time, and they both survived their first “solo” (without Mommy!) trip out of town.

The week before Thanksgiving, I took a full week off work (vacation time)! I needed some time to catch up on things and not feel like I was constantly drowning in “to do” lists, and to get some extra rest. It was a FANTASTIC week, I got a lot done and felt much better going back to work. Unfortunately, that Friday Lily started to get sick. I wasn’t sure what was happening at first, but she had a low grade fever (100.3) and just seemed tired and like she wasn’t feeling well. Over the weekend it turned into a cold, but I still had a nagging feeling that I should bring her in. She had been exposed to pertussis (Whooping Cough) the previous week at daycare, and I didn’t want to risk her getting the really bad cough and getting REALLY sick. So, the day before Thanksgiving I got her into see the Dr who did a nasal swab and put her on antibiotics as a precaution. Turns out it was a good thing I listened to that gut feeling, because it came back positive! Luckily we caught it REALLY early so it never got worse than a typical cold, and she didn’t have to suffer through that horrible cough.

On Thanksgiving we went to my Aunt’s house for our traditional family meal. It was fun, but it was so obvious how much things have changed. Lily, Claire, and Abby got to join us this year at a “kiddie table” next to ours, but they were too excited to be sitting next to each other to eat much. While Lisa was doing the dishes, I was helping watch her girls as well and let me tell you - three almost-2-year-olds are utterly EXHAUSTING! At one point I was talking with Claire and lost sight of Lily and Abby. I found them a few minutes later in my Aunt’s room with an OPEN BOTTLE of Excedrin PM!! I couldn’t tell if they had eaten any at first and my heart just stopped - I was totally freaking out. I did find one pill on the floor with some of the coating dissolved so I think one of them put one in their mouth and spit it out when it tasted so horribly bitter. Luckily they were both fine - perhaps even better than I was after that kind of scare!

The day after Thanksgiving, we headed down to Rochester for Thanksgiving Part 2! Jason’s Dad drove in from near Madison and was able to meet Lily for the first time, and Lily got to hang out with her other cousins (Arian, Khavy, Dominic, Tali, and Eanna). It was a fun trip, and it was so much fun to watch all of the kids together and see how much they’ve all grown!

Slightly out of order, but during my week of vacation, Jason received a job offer! He accepted the position and today was his LAST day at Hopkins! On Monday he starts working for Community Action Partnership for Ramsey and Washington Counties (CAP). I’m very excited for him, but very sad that our time working together has come to an end. I will miss seeing him during the day, miss carpooling and eating lunch together! However, I think this is going to be a great job for him and I know he’s really excited about it, so as bittersweet as his leaving is for me, I know it’s for the best and I am really happy for him!

Finally, I got a cool new camera! A Canon EOS Rebel T1i DSLR camera. I have a plan (3-5 years) to open my own business, and this (along with taking the classes it came with) is my first step. None of the pictures from this post are from the new camera, but you can see some from my first night of playing with it here - http://picasaweb.google.com/jill.woyak/20091129NewCamera#.

I can hardly believe it, but my baby girl is going to be TWO YEARS OLD in only 10 days! I will do an update about her birthday in a few weeks, but right now I’m in shock that it’s even December - much less her birthday already! Where does the time go?!?

Terrible (and sometimes Terrific) Twos

October 22, 2009 Uncategorized 1 Comment

From 2009-10-20

We are still dealing with major mood swings over here! From absolutely adorable to absolutely frustrating in 0.2 seconds flat. Must be the Terrible Twos? Last Wednesday we dropped her off at Grandma and Grandpa’s for a sleepover because they were going to watch her while we were at work on Thursday. Well, the work project ended up taking much longer than anticipated (we worked almost 22 hours - 7:30am-5am Friday), so she ended up spending an unexpected 2nd night there as well. She had a great time and even got to hang out with her cousins, but when we came to get her on Friday she was SO. MAD. AT. US. She threw nonstop tantrums until she finally fell asleep that night, and even tried to order me out of the car to walk home. Ever since then, it seems like it’s really kicked off an unbelievable streak of bossiness and we have at LEAST one major tantrum a day. I’m not liking this trend so far!

From 2009-10-20

Lily has been doing some nice things as a part of this age as well, so I don’t want to give the impression that it’s all bad. She has been doing a really good job of sharing and taking turns, both of which are important skills to learn. In the picture above, Gibson was sleeping on the couch so Lily decided that he need to have her lamby (lovey) to sleep, so she brought it to him. Then she decided that she was tired as well so she went and got her blanket and set up on the couch by the cat. It was pretty cute! Also, today she ran up to the front door and said “Bye bye!”. Jason and I asked here where she was going and she replied, “I go to the moon. Be right back.”

From 2009-10-20

Last weekend we FINALLY had some decent weather - no rain and upper 50s - so we managed to spend a lot of time outside and even went to a few apple orchards and pumpkin patches! Both of the places we went had little petting zoos, so Lily got to see and feed a bunch of little animals, and one of the places even had PONIES! It wasn’t quite as exciting as Grandma Gayle’s house and Jesse pony, but Lily did get a small ride on one of those ponies, which she really, really enjoyed.

From 2009-10-20

Have I told you yet about Lily’s addiction to the show Word World?. She LOVES that show! It’s not a bad show, it teaches letter recognition and spelling and basic beginning reading skills. Grandma and Grandpa have a DVD of 4 episodes and we she has them all memorized and we hear about them ALL the time. The memorable part of that show is that they make things out of the word for what they are. Like, the Dog looks like a dog but is also made out of the letters DOG, if that makes sense (click the link if you don’t understand what I’m saying!). The thing I’ve noticed with Lily is that it seems to be helping her recognize the shapes of words already, even if she can’t put the letter sounds together yet. So, the other day we were playing one of their online games and they had the letters for the word HAT scrambled on the ground so you could pick them in order to spell HAT. The letters were arranged as “AHT” and Lily pointed to them and said “ant!”. I was pretty amazed!

From 2009-10-20

Other than that, there hasn’t been a lot of excitement going on. Lily is getting very excited about Halloween and has been practicing knocking on doors and saying “Trick or Treat!”. Tomorrow I have the day off at home with her so I’m hoping we can spend some quality time together since I think she’s been missing me a lot lately, and I’ve missed her. I’m not sure yet what we’re going to do yet - it looks rainy and cold so it’ll be an inside day for sure.

From 2009-10-20

Have a great weekend!

Have you given up on me?

September 22, 2009 Uncategorized 3 Comments

Wow, sorry about that - I think this is the longest I’ve ever gone without a blog post. Things have been INCREDIBLY busy and stressful, and there hasn’t been much room in life to write down what we’ve been doing! I’ll skim over the highlights, but apologize in advance for anything I miss - it’s far too much time for my brain to hang on to details.

First of all, we had a bunch of birthdays during August! Grandma had a birthday on August 14, I had a birthday on the 16th, and Auntie Lisa had a birthday on the 23rd. So, to start out, on the weekend of the 14th-16th we had Grandma’s birthday, then the next day was a 50th wedding anniversary celebration for my Aunt and Uncle, then Lisa and the twins had a sleepover at our house! That Sunday the 16th was my birthday, and a house-warming party for Uncle Greggy, which was also a b-day celebration for me, Grandma, and Auntie Lisa. Whew!

The next weekend was Auntie Lisa’s birthday, and Claire and Abby’s baptism. The girls did a really good job and I don’t have a single picture because I was the photographer with Lisa’s camera. The next TWO weekends we had visitors from Rochester - Jason’s brother (both times), with Shannon (first weekend), Arian (first weekend), Tali (both weekends), Eanna (both), and Dominic (2nd weekend). It was a lot of fun to see them all again, and give the kids a chance to play together! The only sad part is that we never made it to the splash pad as promised. Lily really seemed to hit it off with 2yo Eanna, and the two of them seemed pretty evenly matched.

On their second weekend up, Eanna had some unsupervised “fun” in our upstairs office/guest bedroom! She got into the desk and found some markers (including a sharpie) and colored ALL over herself and the wall, and some on the desk. She got in big trouble, and I felt bad because I kind of get how that happens so quickly. Anyway, she mostly just managed to get the wall in this little nook we have, so it should be really easy to paint over, and I’m thinking about painting it a different color than the rest of the room anyway.

We also managed to make it to our friend Cameron’s third birthday party, complete with a giant bouncy house and the biggest pizza and cookie you’ve ever seen! We also bought a new car (pre-owned 2009 Mazda 5), started a new school year, went back to our normal daycare (Jenny’s house) which Lily LOVES, met up with an old high school/college friend and her kids at the zoo (will have that in another post), got our steps fixed (FINALLY), and many, many other things that I can’t even begin to list here.

Since I’ve been SO bad at keeping up with you guys, I’ve included not one, but TWO fantastic Lily videos! The first is a video of how Lily, Claire, and Abby greet each other almost every single time they see each other. I see a preview of the pre-teen years, here! Turn down your volume for this one -

Lily, Claire, and Abby - Greetings from Jill W on Vimeo.

Ok, now my new FAVORITE video! Turn your volume UP, UP, UP for this one! Lily says “I love you, Mommy!”

Happy Father’s Day!

June 21, 2009 Uncategorized 1 Comment

From Lily June 5-15 2009

“Walk a little slower, Daddy”,
Said a child so small.
“I’m following in your footsteps
And I don’t want to fall.

Sometimes your steps are very fast,
Sometimes they’re hard to see;
So walk a little slower, Daddy,
For you are leading me.

Someday when I’m all grown up,
You’re what I want to be;
Then I will have a little child
Who’ll want to follow me.

And I would want to lead just right,
And know that I was true.
So, walk a little slower, Daddy,
For I must follow you.”

- Author Unknown

From Lily June 5-15 2009

Randomness and 97 degrees!

May 19, 2009 Uncategorized 1 Comment

There are so many random Lily scenes that play in my head throughout the day, but they don’t always fit in a particular story. I wanted to try and jot some of them down before I totally forget, so excuse the randomness of this post!

Lily has been having this same conversation with us now for the last few weeks, frequently in the car. The conversation goes like this:
Lily: “Mama?”
Me: “Yes, honey?”
Lily: “Daddy?”
Jason: “Yes, sweetie?”
Lily: “Baby!”

She often repeats this cycle over and over again, with the same cheesy grin on her face when she gets to “baby!”. The other day we spent a few hours with Uncle Greggy, so the circle was expanded to include him. Suddenly it was:
L: “Mommy?”
Me: “yes?”
L: “Daddy?”
J: “yes?”
L: “Uncle?”
G: “Yes, Lily?”
L: “Baby!”

Finally, on Monday, we ended up with this:
L: “Mommy?”
Me: “Yes, baby?”
L: “Daddy?”
Jason: “Yes, honey?”
L: “Dinosaur.”

She has gotten very demanding these days with “up/down, on/off, or OUT”. This girl knows exactly what she wants, and tries to make sure that you do, too.

Her bottle of anything to drink is called “mana”. She frequently calls me into her room at night by exclaiming “Binky DOWN!”. By the way, we broke her of the CONSTANT binky habit she picked up while she was sick by putting a froggy hook next to her crib. When she wakes up, she hangs the binky on froggy and he watches over it for her until she goes to sleep again. This is working really well, except now the words “Binky” and “Froggy” almost always come together. “Binky? Froggy! Binky! Froggy!”. Gibson is also known solely as “Meow”.

She picked out some sunglasses for herself this past weekend from Target. They were Dora glasses, which she became pretty attached to, and that shocked me because she has never watched a single MINUTE of Dora. She learned how to say “Glasses” that day, so we frequently get the request for “glasses - ON!”. She also looks at the picture of Dora on the side of the glasses and says “Maya” because there’s a girl at her daycare named Maya who is part-japanese and looks a tiny bit like Dora.

So, on to the 97 degrees. It was NINETY-SEVEN stinking degrees here today! In MAY! How crazy, but I really kind of enjoyed it. Lily, however, got slightly sunburnt despite slathering her in sunscreen. Hello summer, how we’ve missed you!! Also, the splash pad near our house turned on for the first time! It wasn’t supposed to open yet (next month, I think?) but I think they turned it on due to the unseasonably warm weather. I saw probably 20 kids running and screaming through the water, fully clothed.

Jason and I are heading to Duluth this Thursday/Friday, and Lily is spending the night at Grandma and Grandpa’s. This will be the first night we’ve spent away from her! I’m excited to get away, but I am going to miss her like crazy and it will be hard to be away from her.