Princess Dibble

The fanciest stroller in the whole land (it was a gift). Needless to say, they both approve. And so do their parents.

Oh where to begin.

It seems that we have a creative three year old. If you remember your Mr. Brown Can Moo, Can You? There is a part that goes: He can go like the rain dibble dibble dibble dopp. Dibble dibble dibble dibble dopp dopp dopp. This is just one of many books that he has memorized. It is very cute to hear him recite his books, but I digress.

I think the first mention of a Princess Dibble was in reference to one of Elena's toys. He's always enjoyed princesses because of Phantom of the Opera. And who can blame him? They dress a lot fancier than we do on a day to day basis. So yea, the bunny taggie became Princess Dibble. You can kind of see her in the picture below, on the trampoline. Then things took a turn for the humorous.

They get along so well. I hope it lasts.

Oskar is loud. Powerfully loud. The other day he screeched and I sternly (yes, sternly) said "Oskar, please don't screech like that!" and the response was, "It was Princess Dibble!" Dan thought it was an imaginary friend, but luckily he was playing with a Barbie at the time so I thought we were in the clear. I asked if Princess Dibble was real or imaginary and he said she was imaginary. I asked if he knew she was pretend and he said yes. Let it be noted that the next time I had to tell him to be quiet it was a rocket. He has a lot going on in his brain.

Obligatory Easter picture.

During my toddler bath time siesta the other night I heard: "Dibble! That's not safe! (pause) Dibble! (pause) Wake up!" Good Lord, I thought, she's dead. My toddler just killed off his imaginary friend.

Dan asked him about it the next day and it turns out that Princess Dibble went down the drain and back to her castle. She was going to stop by later on to play. Kid's got plans.

"I'm wearing leg warmers!"

In other news, I am done nursing and Ellie is happily gaining weight on a healthy diet of formula. I am so glad to be done with nursing. Before you go and tell me how lucky I am to have nursed a child and how lovely it is and what wonderful bonding it is I will have to kindly remind you the nursing is not automatically a good experience for every woman. Besides exhaustion, pain and crabbiness it also caused me to dread my daughter waking up. Dread is not the feeling I want to associate with my baby. She's too precious for that. As a parent of a baby, you already dread your child NOT waking up. This was just too much. My patience with Oskar was even worse than usual and while he is generally exasperating. this wasn't very fair to him. So now feeding Ellie, which used to take about 6 hours out of my day now takes about an hour and everyone is better for it. It is absolutely glorious.

Despite all odds, the blue eyes are still present!

Not only that but we went back to the doctor and I'm happy to announce that she climbed her way back on the chart and is currently rocking out at the 14th percentile. They were very happy and extremely surprised. I've been lucky that all my medical staff have always been of the "nurse if you can, but if you can't, that's okay too" camp. Especially since nursing was clearly not providing her enough nutrients, even when supplemented with formula. Suffering AND failing is not a great place to be. When I was hating nursing Oskar, at least he was fat and happy at the 105th percentile.

She's a toe chomper.

Weaning went well for Ellie. I recommend introducing a bottle to your baby early and often (once a day) whether it has formula or breast milk in it. This is what I did for both my kids and weaning was not a problem at all. Ellie needed a little extra cuddling one night, and that's it. They were both used to formula by the time they switched to formula only, so I think that helped too.

Whenever we take Elena's monthly pictures, Oskar has to get in there too.
This is fun. Clearly in this one they are both looking at Dan.

Oskar is back on Phantom of the Opera after a considerable break from watching the film. The other day I told him we had to turn it off to go brush his teeth and go to bed. He ran to the bathroom and stood on his stool by the sink angrily sobbing while shouting Angel of Music at me. That's right, he picked the most gentle song from the whole musical and made it sound like a metal song being sung by a heart broken teenager. Good work, son. I asked him if he thought he could play the Phantom's part some day and he said, "Ya-huh, but I don't want to scare people." So if he never plays the role of Phantom, know that it's not that he can't, he's just doesn't want to scare people.;)

He finally gets that the end of Phantom is sad.

Oskar got a bike! It is a tiny bit big, but the one that fit a bit better was $199, so that wasn't happening. He is doing well with it, but will definitely have the training wheels on for a while.

Elena Falls off the Chart

I love Oskar's eyes. So much. This photo doesn't quite capture it, but they are stunning.

You do things when you're a parent that you thought you would never do. For instance, I said my kid would never eat McDonald's. At least not as a young child- eventually of course it would probably come up. The crafty little bugger stole two of my nugs when I was indulging a pregnancy craving. So, really, I haven't bought him McDonald's but he has consumed.

Ellie-3.75 months

Let's do a size comparison. The above picture is Ellie at 3.75 months. Below is Oskar at 2.5 months. How did I make both these babies? You'll notice that Ellie is a bit more tightly wound than the lounging Oskar as well. THAT trait is no mystery.

Oskar-2.5 months

I've always been a bit picky regarding cleanliness. I'm fine if things get a bit messy, but downright dirtiness bothers me. As such, potty training has been difficult. Oskar is house broken now but little dudes are little dudes and too often I find myself thinking, "Well, at least pee is sterile." This makes me sad. In my mind I see King Theoden: "How did it come to this..."

Elena got baptized! It was fun to have all of our family here. Nothing makes your house feel smaller than when you try to shove 20 people in it- five of whom are 6 and under and take up an astonishingly large amount of room. We were lucky to have a wonderful pastor baptize her and were super glad that Dan could just be a dad. Ellie was a star and slept through the service and woke up happy for the pictures at the end. We also got a beautiful Faith box from the Men in Mission at the church which is possibly nicer than most things we own.

I know most people saw this on Facebook, but oh my goodness I just love it so much.

Totally ready for the cabin this summer.

Do you know what is difficult? So many things, I know, but I'm going to talk about children in photographs. Oskar is generally quite photogenic. I guess for Ellie's baptism he just had a bit too many bits of crazy in him. Looking through the photos it's like he's trying to be all of the Three Wise Monkeys at once. Add to that a kid who hates being in pictures and another who confuses a smile with a grimace and let's just go ahead and be thankful that everyone could be there. Forget trying to get Elena smiling. That was not even worth an effort worth making. Another thing that makes it hard to take a nice photo? Waking up at 4:30 AM. I don't know if you know me, but "Morning Person" is never a title that I've earned.

Dan's siblings are Elena's Godparents.

We had Ellie's 4 month appointment yesterday. She seems to be moving up the chart in length and head size- I think her length was at about the 15th percentile! She, however, has fallen off the weight chart. This isn't great, but they aren't too concerned yet. We will go in for a measure in a month and worry about it then. The girl eats ALL THE TIME, so I find this particularly frustrating. No, I'm beyond frustrated.

Tranbys!

In all other respects Ellie is doing great. Very strong and alert and full of personality. She has a beautiful chuckle/giggle and tells me very loud and lengthy stories in the middle of the night, which honestly, I could do without. At least she is generally happy at those times. I can't believe how loud she is. She is so tiny! Where does it come from? Girl is going to be a great singer because of this. If you sing to her she will sing along. It is so sweet. Understand that when I say 'sing along' I mean she makes noises that are lengthy. I'm not claiming a prodigy here- just cuteness.

At about three months, Oskar was giving me a good, solid 6 hours of sleep every night. That was delightful. Ellie is no such champion. If I'm lucky she might have a five or six hour stretch, but it will start at about 8:30 PM so I can hardly take advantage of it because of, you know, life. I guess I take advantage a bit, because this is when I can actually get my work done, but I would love some sleep as well. Maybe someday. 

Nelsons!

You may have noticed that Ellie definitely has red hair. It is super cute. I have a friend in town that has really vibrant red hair, actually, her whole family does, and Ellie definitely looks more like her kid than mine right now. It probably doesn't help that I get to church and hand Ellie over to her as soon as I can, but still, it's pretty funny.

Oskar loves flowers. I got these at Costco, brought them home and he goes, "My flowers! Thank you SO much!"

I am living proof that if you do not get an appropriate amount of sleep you will be sick forever. And 'living' is putting it generously because I'm not doing great. All I want is to be able to breathe through both sides of my nose at the same time. Is that too much to ask? According to the last two weeks, yes, yes it is. Oskar, Ellie and I all got colds, mine is lingering the most. Better me than them, I guess.

Dan is leading mind blowing discourse on the merits of cake.

I apologize for being so lazy with the blog, but it is simply not a priority. Somehow feeding and caring for children and working take priority over writing a blog. Crazy, I know. We have been doing much better round these parts with making and eating real meals. Heck, I made tortillas the other day. And a 3 year old ATE them. I may not be a domestic idiot after all. 

Doing what he does best.

The above video is Oskar singing "Oh yes oh yes it's springtime!" to the tune of Vivaldi's 'Spring' brought to our ears originally by the Little Einsteins. He started singing it when he went outside and it was nice the other day and pretty much sang it all day. He is holding a tiny coffee pot that he found somewhere that we now use for birdseed. I thought it would be fun to get him a Little Einsteins rocket and all the kid figurines for his Easter basket, but apparently the series is old and all I can find are toys at collectible prices. I will not be spending $200 on a TOY for a CHILD. Thank you very much. That is absolutely insane. By the way, misspelling Einstein makes one feel really stupid.

This video is of Ellie laughing- don't mind my fake laughs and giant head. 

Dorisa rambles on and on... and on...

My three year old doesn't always wake up in the middle of the night, but when he does it's two minutes after I've laid down. Seriously, the instant I lay down it would be fine, but he gives me just enough time to relax and trick me into thinking I get to go to sleep and then he ruins it all. Last night he wasn't even awake. He was just moaning in his sleep about how his slipper had fallen off.

They are so sweet. Sometimes.

My 10 week old baby can roll from front to back. This isn't supposed to happen until about four months. I think it's her way of telling me not to underestimate her because of her size. She can also scoot. It looks very funny and a bit pathetic, but it's great. She is sitting pretty at the 5th percentile and honestly, I have no idea what to think about that. She is just so tiny. She is about 10 weeks old and is almost as long as Oskar was when he was born. Although it should be noted that Oskar "shrank" an inch once that weird doughnut bump on his head went down. She is very strong and very aware though, and yesterday she had a little giggle. It was hearty and wonderful.

Oskar had a play date with a friend the other day. He doesn't get a lot of opportunities to play with boys near his age so he went a bit nuts (daycare is mostly girls). There was an amazing amount of little boy craziness happening and if volume is any indication they both had a blast. Afterward, Oskar had an epic crash. Witness:

"I not hungry! I hungry!" (The crash. A big nap was the answer)
Photo credit to Dan. He made me write that.

Oskar is mostly potty trained! Hooray! It's still a bit dicey when I'm home alone with both the kids and I'm nursing Ellie. That's 45-60 minutes where it is very hard to drop what I'm doing and help him in the bathroom, but if we're lucky we make it work.

I have been going to the gym! Pretty consistently! It is tricky sometimes because of the exhaustion from having a tiny thing who makes me feed her for 6-8 hours every day, but it is definitely nice to have some time alone. I don't really get any time alone unless you count time spent in the bathroom. And I don't.

My middle name is Joy!

Oskar can finally kind of do puzzles. He has a cousin who is an absolute puzzle wizard who still puts him to shame, but he's finally starting to understand what to do. His patience isn't great. The pieces of the puzzle set we have are a little hard to get together sometimes and he often gives up in about 10 seconds. We'll get there.

In an effort to actually eat decent meals together as a family I have started preparing and freezing meals which I then heat up in a crock pot. This has been going okay. I haven't made any amazingly delicious dishes yet, but it is food and it's not mac & cheese every night. For now, I will call it a win. I have many more recipes to try so we should find some that are legitimately good. Not just edible.

So much personality.

I also have started eating smoothies on a daily basis. It is a fantastic way to get some fruits and greens in. I add in my protein powder and my omega 3 supplement and I have an amazing little healthy treat.

Play time.

Three year olds are not the best. They are so difficult. Every meal is a struggle right now as we are forcing Oskar to try new food. Luckily at times Oskar is very funny and surprisingly clever. He still has some verbal doozies. Like "Cinderbagella" for Cinderella and sometimes he says babagel instead of bagel. My favorite is when he adds a 'b' sound to mommy so it sounds like mbommy. Some other recent gems:

"You must have had a very good nap."
"That's right! I have so much energy now! To sing! Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!" (said while jumping on his trampoline.)

"la la laaa la la laaa la la la la laaaaa... FORTISSIMO! LA LA LAAA LA LA LAAA LA LA LA LA LAAAAA."

"I can not believe it! Mommy eat my banana! That is not fair! This is terrible!" and yes, 'I can not believe it' was said like Quincy on Little Einsteins. Speaking of Little Einsteins, Oskar loves it. He sings the songs they feature on there all the time. The other day I was wondering how much he was learning about the composers so I asked him who he likes better, Mozart or Dvorak. He responded with, "I like to play with my toys." Hooray for having a normal little boy. Well, on the spectrum of normal I suppose. I do enjoy his quirkiness.

"Who else are you going to play with at daycare? Are there any boys there?"
"Ya huh. Bobby*."
"Oh yea? Is Bobby nice?"
"Yes. Bobby plays volcano with me"
"Wow, that is so cool, Oskar."
"No. It's hot."
*Not his real name :)

Dan was just trying to get Oskar out the door and kept being a frog. I told him to stop being a frog and he made his arms into wings. We get no where fast in this house.

I think one of my favorite things about Oskar right now is how incapable he thinks Dan is of taking care of Ellie. When she starts crying and I'm not around Oskar immediately says, "Mommy can help her!" Oskar knows that Dan can't do anything.

Ellie has reached the age where she is quite aware of how she gets her food. She gets this psychotic look when she is about to eat. It's hard to understand that such a tiny person can understand and have so much excitement, but she does and it's great.

"She's so sweet" everyone says. Yea. Right. Y'all have no idea.

This is a fantastic book. Read it.

Here are some pictures of updates to our kitchen. It took me so long to post these because I wanted it to be clean and finished, but it wasn't happening so I thought I would just get it done with. New paint, cabinet hardware, back splash, under cabinet lighting and curtain (which matches the dining room chairs).

NW Corner Before

SW Corner Before

NW Corner now. Still figuring out how to get a microwave and vent above the stove. Any volunteers?

SW Corner. I don't know what all that reflection is on the left hand side. It really isn't shiny paint.

Kitchen art! I might lower it. It's a bit high.

So yea, in our opinion the kitchen looks better now and I hope you enjoyed playing "Spot the Oskar." I also refinished a table to use as our dining room table. When it's treated a bit rough it's a mixture of feelings. One part of me goes, "Ugh, I worked so hard on that table/those chairs" and the other part of me goes, "Thank God I didn't spend any money on buying a new table and chairs." The second thought wins every time.

Various stages of refinishing the chairs. They had orange velvet cushions in VERY bad shape.

Table Legs Before

Table Top Before

After. There is another chair. It's not done yet.

Thanks for reading!

Elena Gets a Bad Case of the Chomps

WHAT?!?

Okay, so I did the math and recently Elena is nursing for about 40% of the day. And eating additional formula- often about 6 ounces. Super fun for everyone. The upside is that she is starting to eat less at night. I think... I hope? She has also started smiling which is super sweet and gummy. And I'm not talking food coma and gas related smiles, just nice smiles. She is also spitting up less but still gets some nasty vicious hiccups.

On an episode of Friends, Joey asks Susan how much milk she can make and Susan says as much as the baby needs. This is a big fat lie. Make a note of it if you are unaware.

A friend of mine recently asked how it is to have two little ones. I answered that it is straight up insanity. I simply do not understand how anyone has ever decided to have more than two children. Not only is Oskar super whiny as of late, but somehow he lost the ability to sleep through the night. Of course he wakes up as I'm putting Ellie back down after being up with her for about an hour and a half. They are already conspiring against me. They are winning.

Some of you may not have received our Christmas card. We just can't send it to everyone. Here is the feature picture from this year's card. It was very difficult to get. She really isn't that orange, but yes, her hair does look to be red.

For those who are wondering, it is pronounced Ellenah. Not Elayna. We chose the name because we could agree on the name. I wish I could say there was more meaning behind it, because I really like names to have meaning or a story, but it doesn't. Who knows what we would've come up with had she not been two weeks early. Probably the same thing. Elena had been in my mind since I was pregnant with Oskar, but early in this pregnancy I was not feeling it at all. I came around on it about 10 minutes after she was born when we still had no name for the poor thing. I would have loved to have found a family name to use but they were all either too common, too weird or would have brought down the wrath of some German Russians who didn't like their names in the first place and would've thought it ridiculous that anyone should consider using it again.

A look of extreme concentration (pooping).

For the middle name we were between Joy and Juliet. Juliet would have been nice because then all of our names in the family would have had six letters except for Oskar and Elena which have five. However, this was not enough of a reason to commit to saying Elena Juliet over the course of a lifetime. Seriously, it's a mouthful. So we went with Elena Joy. It suits her well and rolls off the tongue. She has picked up quite a few nicknames including Ellie, Elle, Baby Lady, El-tag (rhymes with dog, it's the German word for day), El Dorado, Ellosaurus Rex, Chompette, Chompita, Stop Eating and Go To Sleep. Okay so those last two are just commonly said phrases but they are said so often that they just kind of typed themselves.

This is Oskar singing along to Carmina Burana. He has done better,
but it's hard to get it on video because he gets distracted. I still find it
pretty cute though.

I'm not a fan of new year's resolutions. I think people make too big of a deal about them. I have the same resolution every year: to floss more. And until this moment I think Dan was the only person that knew that. I always fail, but regardless of the year turning over, this is a constant goal of mine. This year I will be joining the legions who are trying to lose weight, but this is mostly because I'm ready to start exercising and it happens to be almost January. By six weeks after having Oskar I was back down to my normal weight. This time I still have about 15 pounds to go. Apparently my BMI is still healthy, which is crazy because I feel just terrible. I'm a little worried because I have only been able to lose weight three times in my life. Two times I was pregnant and one time I was incredibly sick and unable to move for a week. Hopefully these things will not be occurring. I will have my gym membership turned on again and I plan to start making freezer crock-pot meals as well so we get some variety in our meals and start eating a little better without having to spend an hour cooking in the evening because that is just not possible right now. As organic as it may be, Oskar has far to much mac & cheese in his diet.

Seven weeks old and already an old soul. Either that or she's bored. She's
so good at using her arms to prop up her head. It's quite impressive.

Part of the reason that I'm not down to my normal weight is that we have more money right now than we did when I had Oskar, so my food choices are not always great. Now I'm working on getting rid of all my crappy food, but I'm not someone who just throws out food that isn't good for you. That would be wasteful and generally, food that is bad for you is delicious. So I eat it. I love peanut butter M&Ms. I have a party bag quantity of peanut butter M&Ms to consume and I am enjoying every bit of it. I've also decided to drink less V8 fruit juice. It does have servings of fruit and vegetables, but it is expensive and single serving cans aren't great when you consume the quantity that I do. This is also in an effort to get me to drink more water. Nursing seems to go better when one is well hydrated so maybe if I'm not drinking so much juice I will drink more water, which is less caloric and free! In addition to the M&Ms Dan got me a box of wine for Christmas. This box of wine is equal to four bottles of wine. Hehehe. So here's to 2016- the year of water and wine, people!

Elena Arrives in the World

Our kids are much more patriotic than we are. Oskar was born on the Anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor and Ellie was born on Veteran's Day. I mostly appreciate that Ellie knows I'm weird and appreciate fun number things. Oskar is 12-7-12 and Ellie is 11-11-15. That was considerate. Even more considerate was the fact that she cut 2 weeks off my pregnancy. Downside is that I don't have a 9 month pregnancy picture with her. I think I'll survive.

This labor and delivery was not at all like I had with Oskar. This one started with my water breaking at about 2:00 AM. I'm not going to go into details here, but I will say it was every bit as terrible and awkward as I thought it would be. We got Oskar up and we all went to the hospital. Because it was after hours we had to enter through Emergency. I am so glad we live in a community where the Emergency room is boring had only one dude waiting in it. It was so nice and quiet and no one cared that I had a beach towel wrapped around my waist.

She gave us the cute little cry when she was born that we didn't get from Oskar (he came out screaming louder than most adults). She has since found her voice and has quite a set of lungs.

I think it was the strain of lifting Oskar into a cart at Target that instigated all this. He was being extremely uncooperative and there was quite a bit of unusual pain that I noticed after I finally got him where he wanted to be. On that note- anyone want a 3 year old who doesn't listen to anyone ever? No takers? Strange.

He's got life all figured out.

Labor and delivery went fine. MUCH less pain than last time- they had my epidural on full blast apparently. This made it extremely difficult to walk and stand afterward though and I didn't regain feeling in my right leg for probably a good four hours. Last time I was able to stand and shower right after delivery. This time there were multiple almost falls due to my stubbornness in accepting that I was not able to stand at the time. Another highlight is that there was no pre-delivery vomiting! Just one post delivery episode that subsided quickly. Dan now understands that when I tell him to get me the garbage I am not joking around. The hospital stay was pretty good. Had just the right amount of visitors and overall the nurses and doctors were delightful. I especially liked my anesthesiologist.

Absolutely crushing tummy time.

The beginning days of having a child always trick you into thinking you have it all under control. No one tells you that the first few days home are the easy part. New born babies sleep A LOT and even Elena, who ate a ton, didn't eat that much then. It's a couple weeks in  that you find yourself wanting to punch walls. Our walls are plaster so I'm trying to avoid this.

Sometimes she's awake.

Sometimes sh'es very awake.

Ellie has decided that she needs to eat the most food. I usually nurse her for about an hour and then give her 2 ounces of formula. This cycle occurs about every 4 hours. Sometimes we have a very special night (of course) and we do nursing, formula, diaper change, nursing, formula. This fun experience takes about 3 or 4 hours. Not my favorite.

I made her hold her own bottle. I'm sick of feeding her.
(Don't yell at me- I know she is not old enough to hold her own bottle, I hold it for her to be sure she's eating properly)

Oskar is excelling at potty training. This makes us all very happy.

3 years old! Can you believe it?

Oskar had a wonderful birthday party a couple weekends ago. After the straight up neglect and laziness that resulted in having leftover funeral cupcakes for his 2nd birthday (they were delicious by the way) we went all out and got him a Paw Patrol cake for his 3rd. He loved it. We also got him a present this year too, even though he has a billion toys. We got him a violin. He was pretty pleased.

Some day we are going to convince him that you don't need to take off your pants when you get home.

Best day ever.