11,100 pounds

Of materials removed from our house during the construction process and taken to the Dane county landfill. I just found all of the receipts.

17 months old

It's the start of a new year and I think we are finally hitting our parental-stride (aka not continually in a state of dead-ass-tired or sometimes what-do-I-do?). Our little Elsie is so smart and bubbly, quick to smile, great laugh, loves to run and climb and becoming more and more interested in reading books. She also LOVES our phones, playing games, pretending to talk, watching videos. Doesn't care too much about the TV, but Spencer and I simply cannot work on our phone or laptop if Elsie is around.

Spencer has been seriously taking one for the team by taking all the night shifts (usually) and I can put her to bed and get up with her. I usually leave for work ~8:30 so that gives Spencer an extra 2 hours to sleep in the mornings. Sleeping in general is finally getting back to sleep-through-the-night, though in the past I think it happened 3 times, never back-to-back. We are at the stage where we are sleep training her to go to sleep on her own, so far has just been lots of put her in the crib awake, she cries, pick her up, she calms down, put her back in the crib, repeat forever.

She's got 12 teeth now, still waiting on those canines. Plenty to get lots of good chewing done. Eating 3 meals a day with at least 3 snacks. She doesn't sit still for more than 3 min so we give her what we can and do lots of snacks. Spencer is especially good at getting her to eat a bunch, though sometimes he kind of forces it in her face. Tried refried beans the other night, that was a hard NO, instantly spit it out. Otherwise, I can't think of many foods she doesn't like, mostly textures, such as chicken.

January was the month of baby announcements or deliveries. I think 5 friends of ours are in that boat. Pretty much everyone we know puts off having kids until very late 20s, mostly 30s so I guess we're at that age.

She's got tons to say these days, lots of single words, lots of "no", understands most of the questions we ask her. Instead of "yes" she'll just point again to what she wants. Favorite game these days is to point to things/body parts around the house or in books. We almost have to be careful what we say now, as if I mention, for example, "we should go get that downstairs", she will immediately rise and go to the door to go downstairs, and whine until I come with. She's super smart, can watch us do something and repeat it whether we realize it or not.

Temper tantrums aren't too bad, if she starts one we rarely give in but distract her with another thing. We have a couple go-to's, the Snowmen aren't up anymore, unfortunately, but giving Arthur treats almost always works or looking at pictures on our phones. The thing that grates my nerves the most is her "whiney voice". The pitch and intensity, usually when she's super hungry or tired. She gets super clingy and wants to be carried everywhere. Listening to this at the end of a long day is torture, likened to Betty's own personal form of hell, nearly up there with going to the dentist. But by this summer she'll be using sentences, and before long she'll be outsmarting us with her arguments ;) An aside, this idea brings to mind a quote from a co-worker of mine, "Blast you, Betty, for using my own logic against me!" when we were talking about having to do our undergrad's jobs over winter break. Before long we'll be saying that to her.

Couple of 6+ inch snow storms followed by -27F!!! So seriously winter around here, they called it a polar vortex, Trump calls it "proof that global warming is a hoax". There was some insanity last week at work (UW-Madison Dept. of Chemistry). The building I work it is pretty old, like from the 70s, but there have been renovations over the years and it is essentially 3 different buildings smashed together, I work in the oldest and middle building. Because of the crazy cold campus was closed from ~5 pm Tues-noon on Thursday. That Thurs, one of the buildings (not mine) heat was completely lost. Then Friday, when we were all getting back up and running, at noon a pipe burst on the first floor in my building (the middle one). Insane flooding occurred, like ankle deep at one point, and water flooded the first, basement and subbasement floors. So everyone was evacuated, and our lab had to move all our most precious samples as the power was likely to go out at any time as well. We are located on the fifth floor, so none of our equipment was in serious danger, but no one can access the building until further notice as they need to dry out and replace lots of things.

Speaking of flooding, Spencer has been on especially high alert for our sump-pump failing and our own basement flooding as well. He got up and even set alarms to check throughout the night! So far so good. I can say we are the most prepared we have been to deal with it.

Those are the excitements of January, here's some Elsie fun facts:

Loves

• Running, going in circles, going up and down her little playground, her ball pit, climbing the couches and chairs, chasing us around house.
• Walking/running in circles around ottoman, and also pushing her lawn mower around play ground while making the vrooom noise. The lawn mower we speak of was a Goodwill purchase that she picked out of a giant messy corner in the back of the store. She immediately was obsessed with pushing it around. Though I was sure she would play with it at home, I also realized it had additional bubble-making potential. So when we got it home I opened it up and added a bit of glue to secure 1 gear, thus fixing the bubble-maker. The addition of a mild detergent to the bubble reservoir and gentle pushing then returned the lawn-mower to its former glory. Elsie was not as impressed by our feat as I, and even when the bubbles ran out, she happily continued to push her lawn-mower in circles around the living room.
• Loves putting necklaces and sunglasses on, playing dress up with her dolls
• Crazy legs with Dad
• Painting her toes and fingers! She noticed I had painted only 1 of her toes the other day, and asked her if she wanted to paint the rest. She gave me a excited look so I told her to go grab the box, not expecting her to know what I meant. She knew exactly what I meant and proceeded to go exactly where it was, grab it and bring it back! I only showed her that box once, like a month ago, smartie-pants! Then we spent the next half hour paint our toes and one of her fingers :) She LOVES to blow on them and dry them. Then next morning she saw the finger we painted and immediately went to blow it, haha. So cute!
• Speaking of blowing, she is a pro at blowing bubbles now! I still hold the bubble container cuz she'll spill it everywhere.
• LOVES her baby dolls and her Mao sleepie
• Airplane with Spencer, he's such a good sport. Pretty much every night we have an after dinner crazy time to get the energy out and he tosses her around and runs around with her, and plays hide and seek. I join in most times, but I can't throw her around like he does :)
• Her picture book (Book of over 200 pics of everyday objects)

Hates

• Hates having her hair done and having things in her hair. How long did I wait for her hair to grow in....
• Hates swim baby G-ma Melanie got her?! It's not as soft as her other ones, maybe that's it? Its a cabbage patch one. 

New Moves

• Tons of words, dog is a new one, cat, "woof" to bark like a dog, still calls all cats "arthurs", wa for water, no, sings songs with her own words
• Matching the correct top to bottom for cups, Tupperware
• Runs everywhere
• I've noticed she plays with her big toes like Dad does, and is slightly pigeon toed
• Put that and boots on all by herself
• Taking bottles apart and putting back together
• Putting necklaces on sunglasses
• Putting diapers on baby
• Block puzzles are easy at this point
• Has a picture book and knows tons of objects in the book, its her favorite thing to do.

Photoshoot was easy this month :) Got a cute video, some actual smiles, waves and took some frames from it. Enjoy :)

 

Christmas 2018 Faribault, MN

For our final travels of the 2018 holiday season we traveled to Faribault, MN to be with my side of the family. I had to work Thursday, Jan 3, 2018 so we pushed Little E's nap back as long as possible before hitting the road. She ended up napping for a whopping 45 minutes during the trip :(, though Spencer made record time (3.5 hrs), which was fab! The snowman saved the day again, we watched a video I had of that for like 30 min on repeat. She was pretty sick, but her cold cleared up within a day and Spencer and I ended up pretty sick the remainder of the trip.


Friday was Grandma day, as everyone else had to work. Grandma was busy busy in the kitchen so we played a bunch, ran in circles, played with the new play kitchen set grandma got for $35 off Facebook, played fetch with Millie and went on small walk. Laura and Lena showed up after work ~5 to hang out for a couple hours, which was soooo awesome! Thanks for driving down! And Mary and Sam came for dinner and stayed for some games. We played "You don't know JACK!" for the first time, tried out some more inventions with Patently Stupid and some other TV/phone games. Pretty fun! Sam had a particularly useful invention to prevent butt-chuckies, the SPIKE PANTS.

Saturday was a busy day, traveled down to Rochester, MN to see some of my mom's side: Charlotte, Frank, Sherie, Ron, Dustin, Tony, Toni, Ally and her boyfriend Travis. We spent a few hours eating pizza and chatting at Victoria's, then hung out at Charlotte/Franks. Mom brought some newspaper clippings of birth and wedding announcements, etc. and I think the brothers and sisters and in laws had a good time catching up and talking about ancient history.

We headed back to Faribault for a couple hours to hang out and open some presents before Lena's bedtime. Sam and Mary stayed late again to play some Cards Against Humanity. My mom got me a couple expansion packs, and when she and Laura came to Boston for my 30th birthday she played with me and my friends and she ended up winning! So I knew she would be a hoot, but my dad I had never played with and he can be a little reserved. Turns out he also has a raunchy side and ended up getting second place in our most recent game.

I picked on him for one of my black cards, "During his midlife crisis, my dad really got into _____". The winning card: "the ol' penis in the popcorn surprise". Haha, and after I announced the winner and laughter slightly subsided, my dad says, "Got her again". We almost died of laughter. I wish I remember whose winning card it was. Mary likes her cards to be funny but make sense. Sam likes the most raunchy, outrageous cards. My mom likes wacky, funny cards. My dad likes his cards to make sense, also, but he is not afraid to use offensive humor, like jew jokes.