June 9, 2013

Our existence has been offline over the past few months, and we've been having fun!

Our house! Charlotte is going back and forth on what color she wants her room to be - red, pink, green, or perhaps ROY G BIV (rainbow). White will do for now.

We love being home owners! Our current challenge is figuring out what to do with the creeping charlie that has overtaken our front yard (I don't think we have any grass left). Patrick already plans to till the front yard and reseed this fall, so most bothersome, it has now creeped into the lovely flower bed planted by the previous owner. I hope we can figure out how to get rid of the weed without killing the plants. 

We planted a vegetable garden in the back yard! Tomatoes, squash, cucumbers, peppers, oregano, cilantro, and basil. The plants are all ready for some sun, so let's hope the ground can dry up just a bit over the next week. 

We've been fortunate to spend time on the weekends with family. Charlotte would love it if her grandparents lived on either side of us, but the 1.5 hour drive is manageable! She also announced to a woman at the park on Friday night that she has a baby named Molly (her cousin who will clearly receive more and more attention from Charlotte as she gets older). Most recently we had lunch with Molly and Charlotte was a bit concerned that she was eating the table; I can see how it is difficult to teach older siblings manners when they have an infant sibling who gets to do what babies do. Here are a few photos of what we've been up to: 

Four generations of the Mehls-Russell family! Charlotte with Patrick, Grandma Russell, and Great Grandpa Mehls.

We have visited Grandma and Grandpa Distad a couple of times as well! Here is our beautiful little pianist playing Grandma Distad's piano and singing. 

Charlotte has began developing her driving skills by putting her Gator to good use and helping Grandma and Grandpa Distad clean the sticks from the front yard and move them to the brush pile. She first drove it in early April and had trouble steering, but she got some driving in again yesterday and did very well! She only ran into one bush, which turned out quite well because we otherwise wouldn't have noticed the terrified baby bunny underneath the bush. No worries, the bunny was fine and bounced off as Charlotte approached on foot. 

We've also been exploring parks in our new neighborhood. There are at least 3 within walking distance and more are easily biked. We spent most of our time at the local school park, but there is a more unique park, a maze of wooden ship/corridors, just a few blocks away. 

Here is Charlotte in the ship...

and posing for another picture.

Last weekend we enjoyed the Flint Hills Children's Festival in downtown St. Paul. Charlotte enjoyed hip hop dancers and Swoon as well as the many art projects for kids. For example, she made a bookmark with soil - Minnesota has a state soil, Lester, in case you ever need to know. 

In other news, we continue to work on toilet training. Charlotte has confessed that she doesn't like BM, and that's why she doesn't go in the toilet. I look forward to the day she decides that BM is better off in the toilet. I will not miss bringing home plastic bags of poopy clothes from preschool.

Speaking of poopy, Charlotte started calling me poopy head this week, which I tried to ignore/express my dislike of in a way that didn't make it more fun to say. Potential success as today she said "Mommy, I love you and I won't call you poopy head anymore." She makes us laugh every day.

Thought I'd end with a cute photo of Charlotte sitting in our backyard with her baby (not Molly, the plastic kind). Here's to wishing for warm weather and sunshine!

March 23, 2013

We bought a house! Well, we'll close on Monday. It has been an exciting (read: stressful and uncertain) couple of months between when we made the offer in early February and this week when everything officially came together. We drove by the house tonight to let Charlotte peek inside the windows - we are very excited for her to go inside on Monday afternoon. Here she is with the "Sold" sign.

                     

It has been fun answering Charlotte's questions about moving. Questions such as "Will we take my bed?" and "Will we take the kitchen?" have been fun to answer. She seemed to be a bit distressed about moving until today. It helped that Grandma and Grandpa Distad took her to Como Zoo for the day, so she didn't have to watch the packing process. The current state of living in a city of boxes is pretty cool.

We'll be moving the afternoon of March 30th - let us know if you're in the mood to carry some boxes!

We also wanted to share a video! Charlotte participated in "Tumble Together" through Community Ed. Last weekend was her last class and here she is demonstrating her expert frontward roll, sweet patience, and developing bar skills.

March 9, 2013

It has been a momentous weekend for our family - Charlotte spent her first night away from us, and she had so much fun! Patrick and I had a commitment all day today, so my parents picked her up last night and got in some quality time with Charlotte. She had a great time reading, playing with Barbies, and baking a cake with Grandma (pictured above). We missed her a lot, but it is a relief to know that she can do well overnight without us in case we're ever in a pinch. Not to mention, the cake is delicious. 

Her patching is down to 4 hours/day, and Grandma got a little creative with the positioning of her patch. We like it. In other Charlotte updates, we have backed off on even talking about toilet training. She seems to have some anxiety about going BM in the toilet and so we're encouraging her to go in the bathroom, even if it is means going in her pull-up. It's not working. She goes when she knows no one will notice (while wearing her snow pants, for example), and then doesn't tell us. She has diaper rash. She is getting pretty good at cleaning her own bottom, though. 

January 13, 2013

Happy New Year! I have a pretty good excuse for the lag time in our post - our Mac crashed! We used our Mac to upload photos from our camera and to upload the blog, so we've been out of commission for a while. The saddest part of losing our Mac is that we lost all of our photos from April - September 2012. Before that they were backed up on an external hard drive, luckily. Lessons learned: 1. Back up photos on the external hard drive more regularly and 2. Upload photos to an online program - Patrick created a SmugMug account for us, so hopefully we'll be all set (at least for a couple of years until technology changes).

This post coming to you from our snazzy new computer with Windows 8, which will take some getting used to. We had a lovely, wonderful Christmas and couldn't have asked for better. Here is how we celebrated...

Charlotte loves Sunday School and church. She definitely makes sure Patrick and I get there if at all possible. The 3-year-olds were angels in the Christmas Pageant, and all of Charlotte's grandparents, Aunt Kelly, Uncle Tim Molly, and even our neighbors came to watch her. Here she is after her Christmas Pageant looking just a little excited:

 

The week before Christmas we stole a few extra days to celebrate the holidays by taking a little mid-week trip. Our first stop was to Duluth, and while Patrick attended a meeting online (super-dedicated U of M employee!) Charlotte and I enjoyed a peaceful lunch at Va Bene, an Italian Cafe, with a fantastic view of Lake Superior. That evening we visited Bentleyville with Grandma and Grandpa Russell. Charlotte slept during our first walk through the lights display, but conveniently woke up as we were leaving...so we walked through again.

  

We spent the night at the Edgewater Inn and Waterpark - Charlotte loved it! Our room was just around the corner from the water park, and there were hardly any other families there. I've heard it is much busier on the weekends, and we loved having the run of the place!

 

But wait, there is more! After a night in Duluth we drove south to Eau Claire to have dinner with Santa (and the whole Russell family - including Great Grandma and Grandpa!). Charlotte was not the least bit shy, dominating Frosty and Rudolph's time, giving Santa big hugs and high fives, and ringing bells with the carolers. Here she is with her favorite holiday friends:

 
 

After a couple days at work it was time for more vacation! We spent Christmas Eve in Eau Clare with the Russell's. Charlotte wore the jingle bell antlers as we opened gifts:

 

And even posted for a Santa Hat picture with Molly.

 

Charlotte woke up at home on Christmas morning and couldn't wait to try out the scooter from Grandpa Russell while wearing her snazzy Hello Kitty outfit from Grandma Russell.



Santa delivered on her wish for Baby Jaguar and Diego Rescue Pack. She was very excited.



So excited that she couldn't contain herself. Here she is jumping up and down with joy.



After opening gifts at home we headed to Grandma and Grandpa Distad's house. Charlotte demonstrated her now well-mastered gift opening skills, but was caught off guard when Grandpa and Grandma escorted her to the basement to pull a sheet off of her last gift. With Daddy's help she uncovered her very own Gator. She climbed on eagerly and jumped off just as eagerly after driving it into the wall. Come Summer 2013 Charlotte will be traveling around Grandma and Grandpa's yard at 2.5 mph. Little does she know there is the potential for work here - I have memories of picking up sticks in spring time...



Charlotte and I had restful Christmas week at my parent's house while Patrick returned to work. We enjoyed watching Brave, which Charlotte received for Christmas, approximately 5 times and playing games with Grandma and Grandpa.

We wrapped up our holiday celebrations with extended families and began 2013 feeling very blessed. As Charlotte opened her gifts I couldn't help but think of kids who do not receive any at all, an important reminder to teach Charlotte gratitude and compassion - in addition to the joy and love she felt a lot of this year.

We haven't taken any photos since Christmas Day! Patrick did upload a video recently of Charlotte's dance skills. She loves dancing, and does it whenever possible. Despite what Grandma and Grandpa Russell may comment (see previous blog post), Charlotte has excellent moves. Just last night she was break dancing during a dance contest at our neighbor girl's birthday party - so sad to have missed getting video of that!

Happy New Year!

January 2, 2012

Christmas Dance

November 25, 2012

Happy Thanksgiving! We have had a wonderful weekend and before I fully accept that tomorrow is Monday I'm going to post some pictures of what we've been up to lately.

On November 14 we got to babysit Patrick's niece, Molly, while Molly's mom and grandma attended an afternoon tea at the Arboretum. We were pleasantly surprised at how easy it can be to feed a baby. This Thanksgiving was Charlotte's first since she began eating and we are very thankful for this. Her favorite dishes this year? Pumpkin pie and cranberries.

The incredibly mild November weather has allowed us more time outside this fall than we had expected. Last weekend it was even warm enough that Charlotte rode her trike down our street. Patrick commented that this past spring her feet barely reached he pedals and now she rides with ease.

She has taught (trained) us that when she rings her bell it means we need to run. Whether she wants to chase us, thinks we're too slow, or just enjoys having some power we're not sure.

And now to the present - Thanksgiving Weekend! If you picked up the Star Tribune for the Black Friday ads (as I did) you may have noticed the cover story, Family Homecoming for Twins after 98 Days in 'Preemie Land'. Much of the article resonated with us, in particular the dad's statement, "People who don't have preemies probably never think about prematurity...and people who do never STOP." Even now that Charlotte is a happy, healthy 3-year old and the trips to the doctor are much fewer it is still something we think about frequently. Differently now though, as we are so grateful to have a 4-day weekend home with our active, happy toddler who breathes, eats, and poops on her own.

This year we spent Thanksgiving with my family. Charlotte played hard all day, here she is dancing with some of her cousins (second, third?) to a dance video game. You may notice that the other three kids are following along to the game movements while Charlotte is rocking out in her own style. She fell asleep in the car on our way home at 5:15 p.m. and slept straight through until 8:20 a.m. Whew! What an exhausting day! Luckily we followed it by a relaxing morning at home before heading out to Aunt Kelly's house for a late lunch. It was great to see so much family this weekend.

Friday night we decided to brave the burst of cold weather by taking in the Holidazzle Parade with Grandma and Grandpa Russell. Grandpa Russell surprised Charlotte with a special Holidazzle wand, and it turned out to be quite helpful in keeping Charlotte entertained while we waited for the parade to start. Below are a couple of pre-parade family photo ops.

And with that, the Christmas holiday season has begun. Saturday we picked out our tree and went with a slightly shorter tree than last year. Last year we learned that trees look smaller on the tree lot than they do in our house. Our tree this year is still larger than what we were anticipating at 7.5 feet, but this time around we had no concerns about whether or not the star would fit on top.

Here is what happens when I tell Charlotte I want to take a picture of her with her Santa hat - she quickly pulls it off to hold it up to the camera for me. I was so, so close to getting a picture with it on her head.

And what a great evening decorating the tree. Charlotte put on one ornament before it was time for her to head to bed and Patrick made a special trip to Menards after I broke our tree topper. Charlotte has needed a couple reminders today that we can look at the ornaments but that they need to stay on the tree. Thank goodness we have many stuffed musical creatures from Grandma Russell that she can play with. Happy Holidays!

November 1, 2012

Fall is certainly here and we have been embracing the traditional fall activities.

We carved pumpkins with our friends, the Behlings. Pictured above are Charlotte and Brodan in front of the window clings they hung and beside the pumpkins carved by the adults. Patrick and I carved the pumpkins to the right.

Charlotte has been regularly asking to be held like a baby. Here she is snuggling with Patrick - too cute not to share!

Our Halloween festivities began at the Children's Museum Halloween Party. Charlotte went as a bumble bee and had a great time. She enjoyed all the usual museum activities made even more fun by being in costume plus fun treats and prizes throughout the museum.

Bumblebee or turtle? Who's to say?

This past weekend Charlotte and mom went to Aunt Kelly's for some halloween baking - spider webs and popcorn balls - and Charlotte got to help Aunt Kelly carve her pumpkin. "Help" is a generous description of Charlotte's contribution to this process - she lasted about the length of time it took to take this photo. She was a champ with the baking though - she diligently placed m&ms at the center of the spider webs.

Charlotte played with baby Molly for a bit! 

And then danced the Chicken Dance with Grandma Russell!

Once we got home Charlotte was anxious to try one of the spider webs. She definitely prefers salty to sweet - she ate all the pretzel and then left the middle part made of chocolate.

Charlotte is now old enough to enjoy dressing up in costume and understand kind of what is going on. Here are a few photos from Halloween.

Charlotte donned her bumble bee costume once again for school. Here she is before we left home.

And here is our tiger trudging up to the playground for our neighborhood costume parade followed by trick or treating.

Cutest tiger I know!

ROAR!

This was our first year trick-or-treating and Charlotte loved it. She was pretty excited to follow some of the older kids in our neighborhood around up to home doors and say "trick or treat" - luckily she tuckered out before filling up her bucket with candy. She was relieved when we finally left the group to head home and put on her PJs. Tonight she is cuddling with her tiger costume in bed.