Of materials removed from our house during the construction process and taken to the Dane county landfill. I just found all of the receipts.
Sunday, January 27, 2019
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
:)
Friday, January 11, 2019
Christmas 2018 Faribault, MN
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.
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