Looking for a little Leprechaun

Scary night

cymru523 — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 23:02:58 +0000

Saturday night I woke up to the sound of Annie struggling for breath. It was a terrible sound and you could see her stomach sucking in as she struggled.

I called a nurse friend in the ER who could hear her over the phone and told me to ” get her sweet little Annie into the ER now”.

Of course as soon as we got out into the cold air her breathing cleared up…. yup she has a bad case of croup.

Annie was the most cooperative little patient. For a few months now she has been telling everyone she is going to be a doctor when she gets big. For Christmas she got a toy doctor kit and it is by far the most played with toy she received.

She did everything the doctor asked of her, at the end of the exam she didn’t want to leave. Luckily we got right in and out since it was 3am on a Saturday. It helps to work in the ER and know all the staff.

Since then her croup has added to itself in a full-blown cold. She has a deep cough, bad sinus drainage, sore throat, tummy ache and fever.

Not very fun in our house right now. My little drama llama becomes a million times more dramatic when she doesn’t feel good. We alternate being super sweet and cuddly with some epic meltdowns.

Hopefully she will have a quick recovery.

On another note… she has developed a new way of saying mommy and mama. I am not sure how to put it phonetically, but it is sort of a Mooo -my mooooma with a kind of british twist to it. It is really funny.

The other thing going on is she asks me every day if we can go to Grandma and Grandpa’s house in Minnesota. Oh how I wish we could sweet girl…. oh how I wish we could. I miss them too.

goodbye 2011…

cymru523 — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 09:34:59 +0000

I’m not too sad to see you go. There were a lot of hard things this last year. We lost two Aunts to cancer – my Aunt Myrt and Scoops Aunt Donna. My dad and another Aunt diagnosed with cancer ( colon and ovarian) and another uncle who had a heart attack ( but is thankfully doing okay). After my dads surgery , he had a bowel obstruction and remained hospitalized nearly a week. We lost our sweet boy Murphy back in March. We survived an earthquake and a hurricane in the same month. Carol’s moms house flooded and still there is no end in sight to getting the house back to normal. We had to replace our furnace, water heater and stove. I was sick enough with a respiratory problem I ended up in the emergency room for breathing treatments, and I spent 6 weeks out of work with a broken arm. My best friend spent another year fighting with the court and social services for her kids rights.

Not a banner year for us.

There were many good parts as well. We had our new dogs Marley and Toby join our family. In August Annie’s little cousin Emily was born. We got to spend time with our niece and nephews. We got to spend time with Melissa’s family and my family back in Minnesota. My dad’s cancer was caught early and they think they removed it all. Mom’s health continues to be okay – I will never forget the year we almost lost her at Christmas. I am now so very very thankful for every holiday we get to share with her.

I have high hopes for 2012. I feel like good things need to come our way. Stay tuned for our further adventures.

the best present under our tree

Annie and Emily Christmas Eve

AAARGH!!!

cymru523 — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 18:02:57 +0000

Okay……

Anyone else with wordpress? It is eating half of each post – combining all my pictures into one. I am not happy. Everytime I make a post half of it disappears when I post it – go back in and poof…. it is all gone.

I am tired of it.

any suggestions where to go?

Getting ready for christmas part 2

cymru523 — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 17:56:54 +0000

I’ve been trying to do some Christmas crafts with Annie this year. I am so loving her getting excited for Christmas. We made some salt dough ornaments for our tree. It was a lot of fun. Annie especially loved playing in the flour and squishing the dough. She helped cut them out, then we let them dry and a couple of days later we painted them.

Ignore her hair and jammies. Easier to do crafts early in the morning before bathing and getting dressed. Makes clean up so much easier.

Annies handprint

making a modern art printpretty tree.

Getting ready for Christmas

cymru523 — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 10:16:03 +0000

So for some reason this Christmas is one that I am looking forward to in a big way. Maybe it is because Annie really gets it this year. She has been talking for well over a month about how Santa is going to bring her rock and roll Mickey. It is loud and annoying but she mentions it EVERY SINGLE DAY so Santa will definitely put it in his sleigh for her.

One of my favorite memories for this Christmas was when I got home on a Saturday morning after working the night shift and was winding down sitting on the couch. Pretty soon I hear the thump thump thump of little feet on the stairs. Annie came down dragging her blanket behind her. She crawled up onto my lap and I tucked her quilt around us. She snuggled sleepily into my shoulder and whispered ” Santa is going to bring me everything”. It was such a sweet moment of so much innocence.

Of course the actually BEING of Santa is a whole nother story. We went to our local zoo to see the Christmas light display. It was gorgeous. I am really loving this 50 degree weather in December following our freak October snowstorm. At the end of walk they had pictures with Santa. Annie was very excited to stand in line for her turn. When we got up to the front she changed her mind. The girl who was working was great. She asked Annie to do her a big favor and take an ornament up to Santa that he needed. Annie dutifully delivered the ornament and with a helpful little encouragement from Mama she did get “kind of” close to whisper to Santa to bring her her beloved Mickey.

: This is as close as I am gonna get

The light display was really fun and Annie loved the visit to the barn. It was the only area where the animals were out for this event. WordPress is not letting me write anything else below the pictures or let me caption them so I will save more holiday preparations for another day.

fall fun

cymru523 — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 19:20:36 +0000

Wish yard work always stayed this fun

We also got our first haircut. For a home mommy trim it looks pretty nice

before

after

We also had a family day out for veterans day. Along with our Bronx Zoo membership – we get membership to the New York Aquarium. We made our first venture out there. We will definitely go back – but on a much warmer day. We didn’t realize how much of it was outside. The underwater viewings of the sea lions and walruses was probably my favorite part. Annie liked the Sea lion training show. I think her favorite part was the fact they played a song before the show that Elmo sings.

And one last picture – just cause I think it is cute

halloween tricks and treats

cymru523 — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 07:43:17 +0000

First let me say Halloween had a trick up its sleeve this year. A BIG trick.

This picture was taken before the heaviest of the snowfall and 12 hours before it stopped snowing altogether. We are currently on day 6 in our house with no power. No heat – no running water- no fireplace or woodstove. It is a trick I could have done without.

Needless to say with 400,000 people in the area with no power trick or treating was cancelled in most of the towns. My mother in laws town had trick or treating at the businesses on main street, but not at the houses. We bundled Annie up in her zebra costume ( too cold for Abby Cadabby) and took her to get some candy.

She was very into the whole concept of trick or treat gets me candy! She even remembered to say thank you most of the time unprompted. It was a lot of fun. By the time we hit all of town and started to walk back to my MIL’s, she was done.

She got a couple of hour nap in, then joined Mama, Aunt Jen and I for dinner at a restaurant with heat, light and spaghetti

bet you didn't know zebras liked spaghetti

Annie has been loving the snow though. She likes to go out and make snow angels and wants to build a snow man. I think she is disappointed it is melting already. Little does she know there will be much more to come.

what I did on my summer vacation

cymru523 — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 23:44:39 +0000

So I guess I didn’t update anything since last May. Eeek. Things have been busy chasing around with Annie and I have spent most of my summer pretty sick so now it is time to play catch up. I will see if I can go back and do some posts in the next few days about what we have been up to.

June was just a getting into the summer swing of things. We got a membership to our localish zoo so we did quite a few trips out there to hang with the animals. We have learned many of their names ( Megan the leopard, Chief the bull, Dante the horse etc) Annie continues her obsession with animals. She devours any books about animals and can identify literally over 100 animals. She can tell you the differences in puffers and penguins, geckos and chameleons, all the big cats. It is actually a little scary. She pops up with trivia – pandas eat bamboo, lemurs have a ringed tail. I think we have a budding zoologist on our hands.

At the end of June/ beginning of July we went on another road trip. First to Michigan to see my best friend and her kids, then on to my parents house in Minnesota for a week. It was quite an adventure spending several days in the car with Annie and Marley. Everyone travelled pretty well though – mostly through driving all night so that they slept.

visiting another zoo while in Michiganour family on July 4th

: drumming on our way to see the lion exhibit

The rest of the pictures from Michigan have Melissa’s kids in them so I won’t put them here.

Then we went off to Grandma and Grandpa’s house. Annie had a great time. We went to yet another zoo. See a common theme to our summer? Annie got to play on the trampoline at my parents neighbors house. Even Mommy got in on that fun. We also made our regular trip to the Mall of America while we were out there. The aquarium and theme park in the middle of the mall are a great way to kill time with a toddler.

showing grandpa the water lilies at the zoo

checking out the giraffes - first time seeing them live

wordpress ate the rest of this post then the followup post as well. I will finish it for the third time soon

2 year checkup

cymru523 — Tue, 24 May 2011 08:12:21 +0000

Annie is 28 pounds and 34 1/4 inches. That puts her in the 65% for height and the 70th for weight. She told the doctor ” Annie be two” when asked. I think our ped was a little surprised that she answered. Usually after the sickness of last year all we got were terrified screams while at the peds office. Then she went up to the doctor all wide eyed and shaking and told her ” there is a scary monster”. No idea where that came from.

Needless to say she met all her developmental milestones.

Annie be two

cymru523 — Mon, 23 May 2011 08:51:47 +0000

That is the new phrase in my house. My little noodle turned two. I can not believe how fast the past two years have gone. I looked back at pictures from a year ago and wonder where that baby went.

Annie is a bright, shining ball of energy and attitude. She is smart and loves to put together corrolations. The other day she was watching a matching game with mice on TV. She was looking at it with this scrunched up face and I thought she was working out the puzzle which should have been easy for her. Then she turned and looked at me and said ” Mommy, mice are like mouses” She hadn’t yet learned the plural of mouse and couldn’t figure out why they were referring to a group of “mouses” as anything else.

She also likes to compare things. She will tell me giraffes have spots and zebras have stripes, but the giraffe is the tallest.

She sings entire songs and her alphabet. She is very consistent in using her please, thank you, and no thank you and is working now on you’re welcome. She is quick to say bless you when someone sneezes. She worries about babies crying when we are out. She wants to know why they are sad.

She is also becoming more social. She no longer clings to Mommy and Mama in new situations, but explores her environment and chats with people she doesn’t know.

She and the new dog Marley are getting to be buddies too. She is not afraid of her, and will tell her ” Marley ( which is the one word she has trouble with… she calls her Marr arr reee) leave my _____ ( apple, bear, phone) alone!” This is a step up from when she used to cry with Seamus near her.

She still loves her blanket and needs it to sleep. Being it is the quilt my Grandma made for me when I was a little girl, I kind of hope she never outgrows wanting it.

She is sweet, stubborn and funny. I love this child so much it hurts.

happy birthday my little noodle.

kisses and giggles with Marley and "Blanket"

my beautiful 2 year oldwatching for Mama at the door with Kayleigh

: rollerskates for my birthday! YaY!

: CAKE!!!!!!!!

Annie was all about the cake at her party. All she wanted for her birthday was cake and balloons. She had plenty of each. )