NaBloPoMo

You may have noticed that I have been posting a lot lately. I actually have posted a blog entry every day during the month of November as a part of National Blog Posting Month (NaBloPoMo). There were days when I struggled to get it done and one or two where I was late (due to international traveling so give me a break). But, I did get a post done for every day. I will hopefully win a prize for my efforts. Expect me to continue blogging but at a lower frequency.

Our First Date

Wednesday night we went on our first date in over three months! That was one of the hardest things about our trip to Norway. We did not really get time away from Katherine for time as a couple. The only two dates we had while we were there were in early September when my parents came to visit. Katherine was at a stage where we would take her out with us but it seemed that half of our energy was on keeping her out of trouble.

So, Wednesday we dressed up and went to eat fajitas at Chuy's (yummmmmy!). Then we went to the Meyerson for the Dallas Symphony's dress rehearsal of Beethoven's 9th Symphony. This show is sold our for all four performances this weekend so it was a treat to be able to go FREE to the rehearsal. I actually enjoyed the rehearsal. The quality of the music was just the same as a performance but they would stop at the end of a movement and redo parts.

The Dallas Symphony Chorus also performed. I am horrible at knowing which composer and which symphony matches to which music. The last movement of Beethoven's 9th is what we would refer to as "Joyful, Joyful We Adore Thee". It was sung in German and absolutely beautiful.

So, we are glad to be home so that we can date again. We already have Nana and Pops booked for a few holiday events and an overnight trip for our anniversary in a few weeks.

Toddler Travel Tips

I keep forgetting to post on this topic. I am sure many of you have traveled with babies and toddlers. Traveling on extended, international trips with a toddler is challenging but having a toddler should not deter you from traveling. Here are some tips that I can share from our experience.

• Try your best to book your flight around when your toddler usually sleeps. On international flights this is somewhat easy since it takes so long to get from point A to B and chances are that the toddler will sleep for some of that time. Try not to be clearing customs when they usually sleep.
• Of course planes get delayed and connections are missed so the best schedules can get messed up.
• Take plenty of food for your toddler. This is especially important on travel days as kids usually do not like airplane food. Hey, I don't really like it either.
• We learned to take several cans of veggies and a can opener on weekend trips because sometimes it is hard to find a grocery store and they have much shorter hours in Europe than we are used to in the US.
• If possible, stay in an apartment rather than a hotel. You can either rent from a family, through a service or through a corporate apartment chain. This was a life saver for us because when Katherine went to sleep we could watch TV or read without keeping her up.
• Plan to travel at a much slower pace than you are used to. We would try to see one sight before lunch and one, maybe two sights after. I learned that having an itinerary with more that that just left me frustrated.
• Plan for naps. If you are lucky, your toddler will nap in a stroller and you can continue to see things while they are napping.
• Have more than one mode to carry your toddler. They get tired of the stroller so move them to the back pack. They will want to walk and it will frustrate you.
• Find kid-friendly sights or parks. I normally would not have seen the Pippi Longstocking museum in Stockholm or stopped to visit three playgrounds in Helsinki but for the sanity of all of us, those things were required. You cannot expect a toddler to go all day without some play time.
• Realize that most rules at home are bent while traveling. This means that your toddler who normally eats mostly organic food will eat french fries and pizza. It makes it hard to discipline. Pick your battles.
• Find a meaningful souvenir for your toddler. For us we have chosen to buy books about the destination.
• Jet lag is a killer. I recommend trips of at least 2 weeks with a toddler. I have heard that it takes about one day for every hour of time change to adjust and I would say that was pretty accurate for us. It was a 7 hour difference and it took a week for Katherine to get on schedule.
• Be flexible and be patient! This is probably the most important tip. There will be meltdowns. Flights will change. They will get hungry in the middle of a museum. There will be diaper disasters. Just remember, you will never see any of these people again.
• Take a ton of pictures. Katherine will not remember a single bit of this great Scandinavian adventure but she will have a lot of pictures to prove where she has been.

Cute pig tails

Aren't these the cutest pig tails you have ever seen? They are complete with matching curly ribbon bows compliments of Aunt Jaime. Sorry it is not a better picture. Katherine and Robert were on the move today.

Who is this man?!

We decided to take the girls for a trip to see Santa. It did not go that great. Katherine screamed and squirmed. Sophia did not cry but has a very uncertain look on her face. I am considering this a dress rehearsal for when Katherine is wearing her Christmas dress. Hopefully that trip to see Santa will go better.

Comparing Cousins

Katherine is blessed to have 5 cousins. Emily is 5 years older than her at 6.5, Nathan is 4, Ty is 5 months older, Hanna is 6 months younger and Sophia is 1 year younger. It is a lot of fun that she has three cousins that are within a year of her age. The funny thing about cousins is that since they share grandparents, they share half of the same genetic make up. Take a look at the photos of Katherine, Hannah and Sophia. It is obvious that Katherine and Hannah are cousins. They both look just like their dad and their dads (brothers) look a lot alike. They look more like sisters than cousins. But look at Sophia. She looks like her daddy who is my brother but she and Katherine don't seem to share any of the same genes. They look like strangers, not cousins.


Hannah

Katherine

Sophia

Almost cold turkey

I am not talking about Thanksgiving when I am talking about cold turkey though there were plenty of turkey leftovers. I am talking about nursing Katherine and the desire to wean her in the near future. This morning she slept until 7:30 instead of 6:30 so I was actually close to ready to get up for the day. So, when I got her out of bed I did not bring her to our bed to nurse her and fall back to sleep. Instead we got up and went in to eat breakfast. She ate more than usual which should be no surprise since she was not full on milk. All morning I tried to keep feeding her and distracting her until we went to church. After church we went to my parents where she ate lunch as soon as we got there. I had Sam put her down for a nap and she only cried for about 3 minutes. After her nap it was at least 30 minutes before she requested "Moolt" (her new way to say milk). So, I actually did nurse her at that point. She did not request it again until we were almost leaving my parents house at 10pm. We went home instead and I gave her Cheerios to eat in the car. At home I put her in her pj's and put her in bed. She did want to nurse but I decided to try to put her down without it. I set a 5 minute time limit of crying but she was silent after only 3 minutes.

So, in one day we went from nursing 6 times to nursing 1 time and falling asleep every time without it. That is pretty close to cold turkey, at least for one day. We will see what happens the rest of the week. I think the key factors will be getting up and starting our day when she wakes up rather than starting out by nursing. That begins a chain reaction of eating instead of nursing. The other important thing is to stay busy so that she is distracted. I find that she wants to nurse more when she and I are home all day not really doing anything.

Thanksgiving Part 2

Thursday's Thanksgiving festivities continued when my brother Will, sister-in-law Jaime and niece Sophia arrived from California. Sophia and Katherine are almost exactly one year apart. The last time they were together was 5 months ago when Sophia was not sitting yet. They are having a lot more fun together as they are able to interact and play more.

Both girls were on the floor as Aunt Jaime waved a scarf over their faces. There were many giggles by the girls.
Katherine had a new interest in her exersaucer when Sophia was playing with it.

We gave them a bath and there were more screams than laughs. Both girls usually enjoy bath time so we were not sure why they were so upset over this bath.
You can tell in these photos that even though Sophia is a year younger, she is one pound heavier. No more hand me downs as they wear the same size. Let the hand me ups begin!
Sophia tried several new things to eat at Thanksgiving dinner. She was not too thrilled with any of them and made some really funny faces.
This time Sophia was not excited about sharing though Katherine actually was playing nicely. I think she felt crowded.
Katherine loves her Pops.

21 months

Katherine, you continue to be a joy and delight. You are so much fun. I love having a toddler in the house. It is such an adventure.

A few funny or new things that you are doing this month:

• You babble all the time. Sometimes you are quite animated with hand gestures as you are telling your story. It is especially funny when you retell something like when you got hurt. You point to the offending object such as the wall you ran into or the floor you fell on or the shoe you tripped over and you go on and on about what it did.


• You have started the annoying toddler girl scream. I have no idea where you picked this up since I do not recall you being around any screaming toddlers. For no reason you will just scream out. It is usually when you are excited about something. If it is just you and me, I choose to ignore it and that usually works. If we are where you bother others, I try to get you to stop but you find that funny and just do it more.


• Daddy started a new game with you. You often point to and name those in the room - "Mommy, Daddy, Mommy, Daddy" so daddy started having a roll call. Now when he says that you point to and name each person and they raise their hand and say here. You have added yourself though you say "oooou" meaning "you" instead of "me". We are still working on the pronouns. It is a difficult concept.


• In the morning you usually end up in our bed. When you are ready to get out of bed and on with the day (earlier than mommy and daddy are ready) you say, "mommy, daddy, up, eat, bagel, juice". It is very clear what you want!


• You are very nurturing to your baby dolls. It is so sweet to see as you bundle them up, carry them around, feed them and play with them.
  


• Recently you are really into Baby Einstein DVD's and you get to watch one a day. You love it and beg for it. You point to the computer or DVD player and say, "mooooooomeeeee" meaning "movie". You say it really drawn out and almost sad.


• You love to help mommy clean. If you can get your hands on a towel, washcloth, paper towel or baby wipe you will wipe the floors, walls, chairs or any other available surface. When you spill (accidental or on purpose), you say "mess" and then want to help clean it up.


• This week you started to tap your foot. You are not really doing it with music and it does not seem you are impatient with anything, you just tap away.


• Whenever you get on our elevator and you are not in the stroller, you run in, go to the back, turn around and start to stomp and turn around. It makes a fun noise.


• You have started to say "thank you" or "tuu tuu" when I give you something without me telling you to. What a polite little girl.


• You love to tickle. The tickle monster comes out when you tickle mommy, daddy, baby, the choo-choo train and even yourself.


• When we get home you point all around the room and tell me to turn on the lights.
  In the morning I go to your closet and ask you what you want to wear. You always say blue. You don't have many blue things so I guess we need to go shopping.


• You have now learned all of your colors. You had not learned them before not because you were not capable but because mommy never tried to teach them to you.


• When we were in an art museum, I asked you what color you saw the most of. It was 4 geometric pieces arranged in a single frame. Blue was the dominant color. But, you said "white" then I realized. White is the most if you count the mat around the 4 pieces. Smart girl!


• The other night a friend came over and kept making cat noises. I guess they sounded real because for the next few days you were convinced that there was a cat hiding behind the couch.


• You have started to put things in the trash that do not belong there. One night I went into the bathroom and saw a plate, ball, pacifier and burp cloth in the trash.


• You often do not like to wear a diaper and would prefer to go with nothing. I bought you some big girl panties and you really like them. The inevitable happens though and we have a mess on our hands.



• You are starting to really enjoy singing and have really cute motions to the "Itsy Bitsy Spider" and "The Wheels on the Bus". Mommy needs to brush up on her songs because I am getting tired of the same few.


• You have the cutest run. Your entire body swings back and forth.
  

This has been a big month for you. We finished our 14 week trip in Norway. You had to tell all your friends goodbye. You were a trooper on the way home. We had an 8 hour flight, a 3 hour layover and a 4 hour flight. I think you are finally adjusted to the jet lag.

On your 21 month birthday you were able to visit with a lot of different family members. You saw both sets of grandparents, Uncle Ryan, Aunt Carissa, Ty, Uncle Will, Aunt Jaime and Sophia. It was a lot of fun and we have a lot to be thankful for.

Thanksgiving part 1

This year is technically a year to spend Thanksgiving with Christy's family. But her brother and his family were not arriving in town until Thursday night. So we were able to travel a few hours to visit Sam's family. We were less than two miles from our house when we were in a small traffic incident. We were parked at a light when a furniture delivery truck in front of us started to back up because they were out in the intersection and the light had changed. We could not get the car in reverse and backed up in time so they hit us. There was no major damage, just a few scrapes and the bumper is out of alignment. It was a bummer and put us about 30 minutes behind schedule.

Wednesday night we were the only one at Grammy and Grandad's house so there was a lot of grandparent time. Usually there are 5 grand kids so this was a special treat. Katherine had fun building a tower with Grandad (or she says daddad).
Then she had fun climbing into the wagon that the Lego's come in. She kept wanting to be pulled in the wagon. Finally we showed her how to pull her baby and that was better.
Grammy bought her a baby carrier for her baby doll. It is similar to the one that mommy used to carry her. It was pretty cute.
On Thursday Uncle Ryan, Aunt Carissa and Cousin Ty arrived for lunch. Ty is 5 months older than Katherine. They usually are with the other grand kids and it is general chaos so it was fun for them to only have the two of them to play. They got along very well and there were no struggles with sharing toys!

Grammy and Grandad set up a card table for the kids and even ate with them so that the parents could have a more peaceful Thanksgiving meal. That was nice.

We left an hour or two after lunch to head back home to see Christy's family for Thanksgiving part 2. Stay tuned for photos of that adventure.

I love my puppy!

Since we have been home, Katherine is smitten by Hooligan. She liked Hooligan before we left but in the three months we were gone something changed and now her first word in the morning is "puppy" and throughout the day I bet she says "puppy" hundreds of times. She always wants to know where Hooligan is.
Hooligan has a bed in our bedroom. Katherine will go get books and sit on the bed to read to Hooligan. Usually Hooligan gets up as soon as Katherine but today she stayed there and listened to the story. It was pretty cute.
Katherine loves to pet Hooligan. She also has started to label Hooligan's parts. She points out her eyes, ears, teeth, tail and knees. I think Hooligan is starting to enjoy Katherine more as well.
An unrelated but funny thing happened yesterday. I had a small package of Oreos on the kitchen table. There was only one left and Katherine climbed up to get it. I was slow and distracted and before I knew it, I had looked over and she had opened it up and was licking the icing out of the middle. I have no idea how she learned this. I rarely eat oreos and I just eat them whole, without splitting them open. It was funny.

It's time for this to stop

You may think that this photo is of an early morning wrestling match. Not quite. This is actually a photo of me nursing Katherine this morning. Since we have returned home from Norway and Katherine is adjusting to jet lag she has joined us in bed each morning. I try to nurse her back to sleep. She is quite active and does what I call "nursing gymnastics". I usually wrestle to keep her still but let her continue for the sake of the photo.

So, yes, I am ready to wean. Many are surprised that I am even still nursing as she turns 21 months tomorrow. Overall, I have really enjoyed nursing Katherine. My original plan was to exclusively breastfeed for 6 months, continue to a year and see what happened from there. I had no idea that this is what would happen. I never set out to nurse a toddler. We never did have much of a schedule. I would just nurse on demand. That has meant that the frequency has varied quite a bit. My theory is that most babies, if allowed to feed without schedule or restriction would actually nurse at least a year and a half. It seems that everyone I personally know that has had that philosophy has experienced that.

Now, I am ready to wean. I am ready to have my body back. I spend at least an hour a day attached to a toddler. The problem I have is that I don't quite know how to do it. When you never have a schedule, it is not as simple as changing the 10 am feeding from nursing to a bottle. I try to divert her with snacks or activities and sometimes that works but other times she seems just desperate. I don't like to make her cry when I know what the solution is. Originally I was going to wean her while we were in Norway but with all the changes and the fact that she and I were together all the time it was not really possible. Now that we are mostly adjusted to the time change, my plan is to have her down to nursing only before nap and bed by Christmas and totally weaned by her birthday. If it happens sooner then great.

It was really interesting to be nursing a toddler while traveling in Scandinavia. In the US I feel weird and like I am a bit of a freak if I nurse Katherine in public or in the presence of others. Not in Scandinavia. It is the norm to breastfeed past the age of one. All of my Norwegian friends were still nursing their children who were Katherine's age. No one ever looked at me funny. In fact. The only time I got funny looks was when I used my nursing cover. They don't bother to cover up. Well, the nursing cover was lost somewhere in Helsinki so then I fit right in.

This was interesting to me because while I was gone I read several news articles about issues people had in the US with nursing in public. While I do not consider myself a "lactivist", I do believe that a woman has a right to breastfeed their baby in public. In fact, this is actually protected by law. Personally, I do cover up. It is not so much because I think I should have to or because I am modest but out of respect to those around me. I know that it would make many uncomfortable if I did not and I would rather be able to nurse Katherine somewhere comfortable than to be told that I needed to do it in the bathroom. Who wants to eat in the bathroom?! I think that people in America are a little over sensitive to an exposed breastfeeding mom yet they do not have a problem with the same amount of skin being exposed as a part of an advertisement or on the beach in a swimsuit. Why is that? Hmmmm.

So, I may be a little weird to many of you. I am quite used to the comments from friends wondering why I am still nursing Katherine. Yes, it is a little awkward at times when she walks up to me and signs for milk. But, I don't have a problem for it and it never ceases to have benefits for her.

Pumpkin Patch

One thing I missed by being in Norway for the fall was taking photos of Katherine at the pumpkin patch. Pumpkins were scarce and expensive in Norway.

I found out that the pumpkin patch at the arboretum was extended and the final day was the day after we got home. So, the next morning we all went to the arboretum and took the annual photos.

Her favorite part of the trip was walking on the hay bales. She did it over and over again.

She also liked to try to carry the pumpkins. She kept saying "heavy".

2 steps back

Well, I thought we were about recovered from jet lag. This morning Katherine was in bed until 7 am. But, her nap today was a little late due to church and lunch. She went down a little after three. Sam and I decided to nap as well thinking we would all be up in 2 hours. Nope, we slept for 5 hours and Katherine slept for 6. Is a 6 hour sleep a really long nap or a really short night? What do you do with a toddler at 10pm who thinks that they are now up for the day? It is now almost 11:30 and Sam and I feel like we have been hit by a freight train and are ready for bed. Katherine is happily playing with her toys. It does not appear that she will be interested in sleep again any time soon. It looks like I need to become a schedule Nazi but I don't even know where to start.

On another note, the weather here has been gorgeous. Our final few weeks in Oslo were quite cold - below freezing for some part of every day. We were fully wearing our winter wardrobe. Today, it was 79 degrees and perfect weather for short sleeves and shorts. For those of you still in Oslo suffering through the cold, that is 26 degrees Celsius - about what the temperature was when we arrived in Oslo in August. Come visit if you are tired of the cold.

Pig Tails

Today we put Katherine's hair in pig tails and it actually stayed in all day long. It was so cute and she thought so too. She kept looking at herself in the mirror. She must have hear me call them both "pig tails" and "pony tails" because I heard her making pig noises and doing the sign for horse. When she took her nap, I found her playing with them in her sleep.

She is our model in the making, look at that pose!

We went to the park for a picnic with our community group. It was so good to see some close friends after three months away. We had a great time letting the kids play, eating and catching up. Other friends were there earlier for a basketball game so we got there early to see even more people. I was able to meet two of the seven babies that were born while we were gone.

Liz asked me that the high and low of our trip was. I had never really thought of it that way. The funny thing is that it was really the same thing. I said that the high was that since we did not know many people or have many activities, we were able to spend a lot more time together as a family. We ate dinner together just about every night, went for walks, played on the playground and spent time together as a family. The flip side of that was the low. We really missed our friends, especially friends from church. Being an extrovert, I especially missed having a lot of friends who shared my interest and beliefs and who knew me well. I was very lucky to have made good friends in Oslo, but it is hard to reach the same level of friendship in only three months. It has been a lot of fun catching up with people.