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Jason and I had a fantastic time in Duluth! Our B&B was fantastic, the (king size!) bed was incredibly comfortable, the whirlpool tub was unbelievable, and the food was incredible. We actually went out on the town for a bit and went to a couple of places for drinks, which we haven’t done in a LONG, LONG time. I got a laugh from the signs in a few places that said “Unattended Children will be given an expresso and a free puppy.”

We also saw Lake Superior, watched a boat come in and the bridge lift, went to Gooseberry Falls, and drove a bit on the North Shore. All in all, it was an incredibly nice and very relaxing trip. Definitely something we’ll have to do again! Lily did very well at Grandma and Grandpa’s, even though we missed her a lot. Jason was laughing at me watching all the little kids wherever we went, but I couldn’t help it! I was imagining what Lily would think of this, or how she would react to that, or even what she’d eat. After 17 months, it’s just automatic at this point!

There was some concern whether or not we’d actually get out of town in time to make it to our Duluth vacation as we were suddenly hit with a bunch of unexpected stuff both at home and at work right before we left. On Wednesday, we found out there was going to be a power outage in our building (that houses all our servers and district network equipment) on Thursday morning from 6-7am. That afternoon, we also got a call from our neighbor telling us the tree that dropped a major branch on our house last fall completely BLEW DOWN. Very, very luckily it didn’t hit ANYTHING as it fell directly across the patio in front of our house, so there was no damage and nobody injured. It was truly, unbelievably lucky. As for the work crisis, I just ended up starting work at 5am, and things went pretty well, so we made it out of town - and a little bit early, too!

Lily is doing GREAT. She continues to astound me with what she understands and the words she knows. I really do think this age is my favorite so far! She has a number of songs she still loves to sing, and she’s added “Baa Baa Black Sheep” to the repertoire (check the video, below, to see a snippet). I just crack up everytime I hear her say “yes, sir”. hehehe, seriously adorable. The picture above is one of her new sneaky tricks, she’s learned she can push herself back from the table and give herself enough room to put her feet on TOP of the table. Mommy is not too happy with that trick! You may also notice her new shoes in that pic - we FINALLY got her in to have her feet sized again and found out her old shoes were definitely too small. So, we bought her these new shoes - and a size SEVEN which just seems huge to me. She seems to like them pretty well so far!

As I posted in my last post, they opened the splash pad at the park near our house a bit earlier than expected because of the warm weather. On Memorial Day I had the first chance to bring her down to check it out. It really is pretty cool, and MUCH nicer than the wading pool that used to be there! Lily loved watching the kids running through the water, but got pretty shy and scared when I tried to bring her up to the water as well. I think it’s going to take at least a couple of tries, but I’m hoping she loves it by the end of the summer! I know I would have loved something like that when I was a kid!

Ok, now to leave you with Lily’s “Baa Baa Black Sheep” video. The way this normally goes is that I will say (or sing) “Baa Baa Black Sheep, have you any wool?” and she’ll sing “Yes, sir.. bags full..”. then a bunch of nonsense. It makes me smile EVERY TIME. I dare you to watch this video and NOT smile. Seriously. Can’t do it, can you? Talent agents - leave a comment and we’ll have our people call your people.

Baa Baa Black Sheep from Jill W on Vimeo.

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.

P.S. looking at my pictures this week, it appears Lily has quite the shoe fetish! I have NO IDEA where she gets that from!

Happy Mother’s Day!

May 10, 2009 Blog, Lily, twins 2 Comments

Hope all of you Mama’s out there are having a fantastic Day! We had a great time. We spent the afternoon over at my parent’s house celebrating Mother’s Day and My Dad’s Birthday. “The Boys” (Our Brother Greg, my husband Jason, and Lisa’s husband Ryan) cooked BBQ chicken on the grill, beans, salad, a delicious salad with strawberries and raspberry vinaigrette. And they did all the cleaning, too!

Lily and Jason gave me a FANTASTIC Mother’s Day present. On May 21st Lily is going to stay at Grandma and Grandpa’s house and Jason and I are going to stay in an amazing-looking room at a B&B in DULUTH! What’s crazy is that neither one of us has ever been to Duluth - I don’t know how that’s even possible, but there you go. So, anybody know of anything we should absolutely check out while we’re there?!? Please let me know! Plus, Jason helped Lily make this adorable card with her little hand print on it that I will cherish forever (see first picture).

Other than the excitement of today, we’ve had a rough couple of days. Lily started out being a bit extra whiny on Thursday, and even took an extra early, extra long nap at Daycare. On Friday she was acting pretty lethargic and clingy and I thought maybe she was starting to get a cold, but I wasn’t sure. Even at the park, she wanted to sit and watch the other kids play rather than play herself and that’s pretty unusual! On Saturday she woke up with a very stuffy nose and was obviously not feeling well - her eyes looked so tired and sad that it just about killed me. She was so tired that she slept until almost 9, and I laid her back down for nap at 10:30 and she passed out for 2 hours. She took a 2nd (short) nap later that afternoon as well - and this from the girl that’s been on one nap a day since 9 months old. By Saturday afternoon she was running a pretty good fever (a little over 102) and was just really lethargic - she actually sat and cuddled with me on the couch and I let her watch some cartoons and Baby Einstein videos because I knew she wasn’t feeling good at all. We had been planning sleepover #2 with her cousins Claire and Abby, but decided to cancel and wait until everybody was feeling better.

I put her to bed pretty early on Saturday night, then Auntie Lisa came over! It was fun to hang out just her and me, with no kids around! We got to drink wine and eat junk food, and watch Gilmore Girls episodes, and just chat. I really miss hanging out with my sister, and hope we can do that again much more often! By the time Lily woke up this morning, she seemed to be doing a bit better. She was still running a slight fever this morning, but that broke after her (early) nap. She still has a cold and isn’t feeling great, and her eyes look incredibly tired, but she is at least babbling and playing again. I hope the worst is over and she continues to get even better!

Other than that, Lily is still learning new things all the time. Jen (the Daycare woman) said Lily can identify every other kid at Daycare now. She also has started singing songs (mostly “Twinkle Twinkle” and this swinging song they sing at Daycare) which just cracks me up every time. Twinkle twinkle, by the way, goes something more like “Tinkle Tinkle … STAR! how i won… are. Up HIGH. …. SKY!” I have been trying so hard to get her singing episodes on video, but that’s hard enough to do when she’s feeling well and since she’s been out of it a bit there has been no chance. I promise I’ll keep working on it!