Just in the (St.) Nick of time

We made it out of London just in time. There has been horrible fog in London that started the day after we left and tons of flights out of Heathrow have been cancelled. It would really stink to be stuck in Heathrow with lots of cranky holiday travellers.

We're at Amma and Afi's house have loads of fun and seeing old friends. Anna couldn't be happier -- lots of attention and a Christmas tree with a number of ornaments to rearrange.

Christmas came early!

I just found out that the grant for my work has come through! Hurray!!!!

P.S. We're off tomorrow morning to spent Christmas with Amma and Afi in DC. 8 hours on an airplane with Anna and Elsa (and Carlos). Fingers crossed that we arrive in DC with our sanity intact.

9 Months ...

and sitting pretty. Elsa still doesn't seem interested in crawling. She just wants to stand or scoot around in circles on her bottom.

Am I in Kansas??

A tornado touched down in northwest London this morning. Yup, you read correctly, a freakin' tornado! What on earth is going on? Thankfully, only a few injuries and no fatalities. By the way, I'm in southwest London, so just some really really crazy weather here this morning (torrential rain, hail, thunder, lightning and whiplash-inducing winds).

By the way, I just looked at the earlier post. When I said that Anna was a little star in her Christmas show, I meant that she was a little star like in the sky rather than the star of the show. Of course, I thought she was a star, but the reality is that Anna was a bit overwhelmed with so many people watching the show. She had her back to the audience a good bit of the time. I got a number of pictures of the back of her head.

Three

Miss Anna is 3 years old as of Monday. What a busy week we've had!

Sunday: Anna's birthday party. Her friends (and their parents) came over for a lunch-time party. They all had fun decorating paper crowns with stickers, and eating potato chips (who knew that Kettle chips can keep six 3 year olds quiet for 30 minutes!!).

Monday: Anna's birthday and observation day at her gymnastics class. Carlos took the day off of work and he was able to spend some extra time with the birthday girl. We spent 45 minutes laughing at observation day at her gymnastics class. There is a little girl named Olivia in Anna's class that is very taken with her. She's one of those little girls that has the mother hen instinct, and Anna is her little chick. She always wants to hold Anna's hand and help her with the activities. Anna doesn't seem to mind, but a couple of times it looked like she'd had enough.

Wednesday: Christmas concert at Anna's school. Anna was a little star in her school's Christmas concert. The whole thing was super cute, but I'm not not interesting for anyone who doesn't have a child in that school.

Phew. Now I need to get ready for a meeting on Saturday with the organization I work for. Hopefully, I should find out if the grant has come through that would allow my job to be expanded and paid! Woohoo. Fingers crossed.

Waiter, there's a fly in my soup, or

in Anna's case, "Mamma, there's a stegasaurous in my Cheerios." Pause, then she added, with an explanatory tone, "a dinosaur." Glad that Anna thinks her mother is a little slow.

All I can say is, way to go for her nursery school. Her teachers are teaching her so many new things. Some mornings, they have a whole collection of plastic dinosaurs out for the kids to play with, and Anna must have learned some the names. She's also started correcting me when I say "yea" instead of "yes" (which I do all the time).

By the way, there wasn't a stegasaurous, or any other kind of dinosaur, in her Cheerios.

We had a good night with Elsa last night, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed for tonight.

8 Months (already?!?), Breakthrough #2 & Anna's New Friend

Elsa has reached the 8 month mark (still no crawling, but she stands like a champ). On one of the pictures you can get a look at the first tooth. Tooth #2 has just broken through, and Elsa is finally starting sleep better.

Miss Anna has made a new friend at school. She informed me on Friday that she played with "Julie-fish" at school today. Turns out that "Julie-fish" is called Julius by his mother and father.

Breakthrough!

Elsa's first tooth has finally made its long-awaited appearance! Hurray! Maybe I'll get some sleep tonight. Hey, I'm ever the optimist.

Random thoughts

• Will my stomach ever stop feeling like a squishy marshmallow?
• Will Elsa ever become a good sleeper again? (please, little tooth, just come out already)
• Am a scarring Anna forever by reading silly fairy tales for her? (she is currently obsessed with Cinderella and Rapunzel; it is the "and she married the prince and lived happily ever after" bit that worries me)
  
• Will Carlos be home for more than two days at a time? (I think the answer to that is no. At least not until Christmas.)

By the way, no trick or treaters. That means I'm left with lots of candy. Oh dear.

It is the simple things

There are small things that just can make one's day. For instance, I just finished folding some dry laundry. The key word here, folks, is dry. Yes, I have a dryer!! Most people wouldn't get too excited about having a dryer, but I haven't had one (or one that worked properly) since August 2003. The lovely Bosch dryer arrived today, and I wasted no time setting it up. Dry clothes in under an hour -- woohoo. At our last house, we had a horrid contraption known as a washer/dryer. Basically, that means the machine neither washes your clothes very well, nor dries them very well. Talk about frustration. I can't wait to wash my towels and have them be all soft and fluffy. I realize it isn't very environmentally friendly of me to get so excited about something that uses up so much energy, but London just is not a dry enough place to hang out your laundry to dry.

Enough about that.

Elsa is still working on getting over her stuffy nose. Part of the problem seems to be that she's working on her two first teeth and I remember that teething always gave Anna a runny nose. Maybe the same is happening to the Chubster. She really seems rather miserable. Poor little one.

Other simple things that make me happy:
- hot, milky tea on a rainy day
- biting into the perfect apple - crispy, juicy and a bit tart (rather than mealy, dry and sweet - yuck)
- when Anna and Elsa sleep until 8:30 (this doesn't happen very often)
- Elsa's bear hugs
- reading bedtime stories with Anna

I wonder if I'll get any trick-or-treaters tomorrow?

Happy Halloween ... early

We went to a Halloween party today. Not much exciting to report from the party, but here are some pics of the girls.

Stuffy

Minus Carlos, we've all got colds at the moment. I feel like my head has been stuffed full of cotton balls (or cotton wool as people say here). Anna had a tremendous amount of energy today despite the fact she had a torrent of snot flowing out of her poor red nostrils. She ended the day by jumping in her bed like a maniac for 10 minutes. I got exhausted just watching her. Elsa is also all boogery -- probably from the fact that Anna is always touching her. She was not quite as energetic as Anna today, but still pretty feisty. Elsa really really wants to crawl, but all she can manage to do is push herself backwards. I don't think that's going to cut it for her.

Executive Summary

With the new house, Anna starting school, Carlos traveling constantly and me trying to work on Tuesdays and Thursdays, I just can't keep up!

House: Loving the new house, but the 50 steps from top to bottom are literally kicking my butt. We've still got a bit of work to do on it, and now have a bit more after a pipe burst in the ceiling of our family room while my mom was visiting.

Carlos: He's actually in London this week. Poor guy has been traveling like it was going out of style.

Anna: She's a hoot. Ever since she started school, she's full of funny things. The other day, while my mom was visiting, she went upstairs to get something from her room, and told us: "You stay here people". !?!?

Elsa: Now 7 months and 20 lbs. Very juicy and delicious. The only problem is that she's teething and reaching the separation anxiety phase so she's not sleeping all that well. It stinks to go from having a good sleeper to a bad sleeper. I really hope this phase passes quickly.

More details and photos to follow!

Boo Hoo Day Two

Day two of nursery school didn't go too well. I got a call at about 11 am (school is from 9:30 to 12:30 every day) from one of Anna's teachers asking me to come and pick her up early. About an hour after I dropped her off, she started crying and nothing would settle her down. What happened??? Yesterday she was fine, no tears. Today, it was the end of the world. Que pasa Anna?

Here are some other recent pics of the girls.

First day of school & a 6 month old Garbanza

I’ve been MIA for the last month or so, haven’t I? Well, the good news is that we’re closing on our house the day after tomorrow – Friday. Woohoo! So, next week is moving week. Yikes. Moving has been crazy pre-children; it was crazy when we moved to London with Anna, and now I have no idea what to expect with Anna and Elsa. Fingers crossed all goes well.

Today was Miss Anna’s first day of nursery school. All went well. No tears. Thankfully, two of Anna’s friends from playgroup are in the class. When it was time for me to go, Anna was holding hands with her friend Riley as they went off to the play-dough table. It was very cute. All the children at Anna’s nursery school wear smocks at school, and it was adorable to see all the little ones running around in their different colored smocks (Anna’s is yellow). Anna wouldn’t pose for me in her “first day of school” outfit so I had to settle for a picture of her and Elsa in the stroller as we were heading out the door. Hopefully, she’ll pose for me in her smock tomorrow.

Miss Elsa is six months old! Unbelievable how fast she has grown. Suddenly, she’s grabbing everything that comes near her, and chatting all the time. I can see her attempting to start crawling, but we’re not there yet. Her latest developments are two-fold. First, we’ve discovered that Elsa has a bit of a dairy intolerance. I noticed after starting her on solids that she was really itchy and scratching her skin very badly. For a while, it looked like I had dropped her in a rose bush; she had scratches all over her legs and arms. I couldn’t figure out what was going on. After taking her to the doctor, we guessed that she had developed eczema as a result of her increased intake of dairy through the formula that I was using to mix her cereal. Clearly, the dairy in my diet was only irritating her slightly, but as soon as we introduced formula it was too much for her to handle. So, I found a new formula and stopped eating most dairy. Lo and behold, smooth skin again! Development number 2, Elsa has developed a new move that I’ve called the “I’m so happy to be alive” move. I need to capture it on video. It is one of the greatest things to see. When I lay Elsa down in bed, especially when it is in my bed, she usually starts to do a full body wiggle with arms and legs pumping accompanied by an enormous smile. It just screams out: “I’m just so happy.” It makes you want to eat her up in all her juiciness!

A horse, a potty and a bribe

Have I been duped by a 2⅔ year old?

OK, here comes the inevitable potty training story.

Anna starts nursery school next month, and she needs to be potty trained before she starts. When I first started thinking about it I thought I had all the time in the world. No worries. She’ll be trained in no time. Think again, remembering what a headstrong child Miss Anna can be. Now we’re down to a month before school starts, and the clock is ticking (not to mention all the other things going on – i.e., we’re probably moving house around the same time as she starts school).

I decided the key to potty training was good, old fashioned bribery. Anna and I went out to the toy store and made a few purchases. For each successful pee in the potty, she gets several stickers of the Disney Princess variety (will someone please tell me where this obsession comes from – we didn’t have any of the princess paraphernalia in the house, but she’s still obsessed). Then, for her first poo in the potty, she was supposed to get a little, white horse. Last Sunday was the first day that we started potty training in earnest, and Anna spent the whole day without a diaper on (unless she was sleeping). The first pee was a little traumatic for her, but she did it and was over the moon with her princess stickers. Then, we talked about what she would get if she did a poo in the potty (the white horse). A little while later, she just sat down on the potty and pooed like there was nothing to it. As soon as she finished she said: “Have the white horsey”. I was feeling really excited that everything was going so well and Anna seemed to be getting the hang of using the potty lickety split. No, she was getting the hang of how bribery works. Once she got the horse, she lost all interest in pooing in the potty. Pees are still exciting because she still gets the princess stickers when she does those, but nothing was happening on the poo front. So, as if I didn’t learn my lesson the first time, I found something new to bribe Anna to poo in the potty. Stamps. I should have thought of this earlier. At Anna’s gymnastics class, the teacher gives them each a stamp on the back of the hand at the end of the class for a job well done. The kids just love getting the stamp. Now when Anna poos she gets a stamp on the back of her hand. It worked like a charm today. Ah, the power of the stamp.

Have you ever looked back at how you were when you were a kid, and thought: “Boy, I really hope my kids don’t do this to me.” This whole horse business reminded me of an incident when I was little and my dad tried bribing me to encourage positive behavior. I think I was about 8 or 9, and my dad thought it would be fun if I would go jogging with him on a regular basis. To encourage me to go with him, he told me that if I ran a mile, he’d buy me a new pair of running shoes and a new track suit. Anna’s princess obsession pales in comparison with my love affair with shoes. Off my dad and I went to our local YMCA. We went to the little track there, and 6 laps around the track equals a mile. I started running and with the rhythm of my running, I heard in my head: “new shoes, new shoes” in time with my feet hitting the pavement. Six laps later, it was time for my dad to pay up. I still remember the track suit – navy blue with different color satin stripes down the side of the legs and down the sleeves. The new shoes were white running shoes with green stripes. My poor dad never got me out on the track again.

In other news from Old Blighty, Elsa is about to turn 5 months. I gave her some rice cereal yesterday, and she gobbled it up. I think she’s definitely ready to start solids. She’s so big that sometimes I worry that my milk supply just isn’t enough for her. Elsa’s also rolling over from back to front all the time. She’s been rolling for a while, but now it has turned into a crazy compulsion – she can’t not roll over. The problem is that she doesn’t know how to get from her front to her back. So, I constantly have to flip her over.

We’re also in the process of getting a new house, but I can’t write about it because I’m afraid I’m going to jinx the process. Once things are firm, I’ll say more.

Pictures from Iceland

What do you think it means?

The heat is really getting to me. I think it is starting to affect both my conscious and subconscious minds (or what is left of them). Last night I dreamt I was grocery shopping and ran into Carlos Puyol (Barca and Spanish national soccer player) and Nick Rhodes (of Duran Duran fame). The dream wasn't very exciting; I just chatted with them in the store and then I woke up. Puyol and Nick Rhodes, what a combo for my subconscious to cobble together!

Too hot to think

So . . . . hot. Can’t . . . . think. Send . . . . cooler . . . . weather . . . . our . . . . way. Please.

There’s no let up in sight for the heatwave in London right now. Temps are in the 90s and there’s no A/C anywhere. Ick, ick, ick and double ick. I cannot handle this.

We had a wonderful time in Iceland. We just relaxed and hung out with family and friends.

Elsa’s now four months old and still a big girl. I’m not sure exactly how much she weighs now, but I think it is somewhere between 16 and 17 pounds. She’s rolling over now, and loves grabbing her toes.

Anna is still Elsa’s favorite person to look at. She makes Elsa laugh and laugh.

3 Months = smiles and laughter

Elsa turned 3 months on the 12th, and Anna was 2 and 1/2 on the 4th. Elsa just a chubby delight these days. She's constantly smiling and now she's starting to laugh. The catch is most of her laughter occurs in her sleep! Very very funny to see and hear. But, today, Anna's antics got the first real belly laugh out of Elsa while she was awake.

We've just returned from two weeks in Barcelona. It was fantastic to be in the sun and amazing weather -- warm with a nice breeze from the sea. Elsa was baptized while we were there, and Elsa's godmother (the lovely Sheryl) came from DC to spend some time with us in Spain. It was a lot of fun to see her. Now we're off to Iceland to visit my family and introduce Elsa to that clan. It should be lots of fun. More pictures and updates when we return!