Wind, Foo-foos and Molars

This past month has been quite challenging with Emma.  She has not been sleeping well at all, and her mood reflects this.  I went back through this blog the other night to see if what I had written about Lucy at 22 months could shed any light on Emma at 22 months.  I was surprised to read that Lucy had just finished getting her canine teeth and it would be months yet before she started working on her two-year molars.  Okay, I thought, maybe that explains the sour mood as Emma is getting her two-year molars a lot earlier than Lucy did.  I also read that Lucy was sleeping the best she had in her life at 22 months and I feel like Emma is sleeping almost as bad as she ever has.  I say almost, because it hasn't gotten to the point where we are having to sit upright with her in a chair because of her tummy, but she has been spending a lot of time in Will's and my bed which makes for some very tiring nights.  After getting up so many times to calm Emma down, I just give up and bring her to our bed.  Which is really no better than being awake in her room with her, but at least I get to lay down with blankets on me.  However, she spends the rest of the night kicking, head butting, pinching and rolling all over us.  This kid is like a bull in a china shop.  I woke up one morning with dried blood all over my lip and another morning with a bruise between my left eye and my eyebrow.  

Emma seems to have developed some night time fears, which is several months earlier than Lucy did too (again, according to this blog!).  Several weeks ago we had a very strong wind storm at night and a piece of aluminum siding outside Emma's bedroom window became loose and kept flapping loudly in the wind.  This was the start of the fears, and before the night was over a large branch hit the window which not only startled Emma, but her mama too!  Ever since that fateful night, she keeps talking about the wind being as loud as a truck and how she wants to sleep in mama and dada's bed.  The conversation goes something like this: "Wind, loud.  Truck, loud.  Mama Dada bed nigh-nigh."

To make matters worse, Emma has developed a fear of dogs.  She never liked dogs and cats, but now it is at extreme levels.  If we go to someones house where a dog or cat lives, she refuses to be set down and freaks out uncontrollably if I need to set her down to say, tie someones shoes.  After she discusses the wind as loud as a truck before bed, we move onto how she is afraid that dogs will bite her toes.  "Foo-foo (dog) toes no bite!" she repeats to me over and over again as I try to calm her down for sleep. With all that being said, I realize that the below pictures reflect nothing of the emotional distraught, exhausted little girl we have had to handle with special care this past month.  So, forget everything I just wrote and tell yourself that based on the below pictures, she was as sweet as can be this month.

Here she is below, hanging with me in the kitchen early one morning before the sun came up.  There gets to be a certain point in the night where I admit defeat and just call it an early morning.

Because of her little sleep, by the time dinner rolled around she was usually such a hot mess she refused to sit at the table for dinner.  We don't have too many rules at this house, but one of them is you have to eat at the table.  She missed several dinners because of this, and yup, you guessed it, got up even earlier the next morning because she was hungry.  It seems we just can't win.  Here she is below looking contrary to everything I've just described to you.

If Emma had it her way, she would eat sausage at every meal.  She will usually ask me for sausage and pancakes when she is hungry and if she is lucky enough to get sausage as part of her meal, you better eat yours first or she will beg you for yours and you will end up with nothing.  Just ask Lucy.

This little dear is starting to develop a love of rainbows just like her big sister.  She loves rainbows and can name most colors correctly now too.

When we bring the eggs in from the chickens for the day, she will ask to see the egg basket and name all the colors of the eggs.  "Blue egg, brown egg, geen egg.  White egg?" Our chickens don't lay the white eggs available at the store and depicted in every storybook.  Emma has noticed this, and always asks why there aren't any white eggs.  The light colored eggs in the picture below are actually blue and light green, even though they look kind of white.

Emma loves hanging with older kids.  Here she is below doing just fine with Lucy and her friend Grace playing a bean bag toss game.

 To get Emma outside has been an energy sap to say the least.  She refuses to put on gloves, hat, scarf or snow pants.  Fortunately she will put on her coat and boots but this isn't enough warmth to play in the snow or go for a walk when it is 20 degrees outside and the snow goes past her knees.  I usually have to wait until Will is home to get her outside.  Then and only then will she allow you to pin her down to get the snow gear on because she doesn't like the idea of Lucy and Will outside without her.  Here she is below showing her doll Polly the snow and telling her it is cold.

I know it's hard for you to believe that this sweet face could put up any resistance.

Most of the time she does have fun when she gets out there but still hates her snow pants. We have compromised on this, and just put a second pair of fleece pants over her first pair of pants.  Here she is below making a snow angel.

As long as winter outwear is involved, Emma prefers to play inside.  Here she is below diapering her babies.

 Playing in a box...

And using rolls of toilet paper as pom poms.

Here Emma is below wearing her sunglasses upside down and looking quite fierce.

 On another car trip I tried showing Emma how the sunglasses go right-side-up and realized that they actually stay better on her face the way she put them on - upside down.

Finally, Emma got her second haircut of her life this past month.  This time, we had the luxury of staying home and Will's cousin Shannon came and did the honors in our kitchen.  Once Emma saw that Lucy's haircut was painless, she couldn't wait to climb up in the chair.  Here is a before shot:

 And the after shots...

Thank you Shannon for cutting her bangs so it doesn't look like a boy haircut!

And if you can believe it, Emma has way more hair at 22 months than Lucy did.  What can I say, my kids seem to start out in the hair department slow and steady.

Let's hope next month Emma sleeps better, especially since we have some tough couple of days coming up.  Tomorrow is my dad's surgery to remove his cancer and the following day is Luke's 5th birthday.  Emotional and cranky doesn't even begin to describe me right now and I'm sure Emma's behavior this month is just the toddler version of me, combined with fears of the wind, foo-foos and those darn molars.

January False Start

I would like to say that 2013 is shaping up to be a great year for us, but we are off to a rough start.  Shortly after the new year my dad was diagnosed with an aggressive form of prostate cancer.  There are many emotions involved when a family member is labeled with the six-letter "c" word, and I liken it to the grieving process with several different phases that do not seem to progress in any kind of sequential order.  After anxiously awaiting test results to determine if my dad's cancer had spread we received the great news that it has not metastasized.  So, January started a bit rocky, but we are hoping that it was merely a false start, and that 2013 will still be filled with good health and blessings.  Silver linings to my dad's diagnosis include increased family time as well as the realization as to what is truly important in life.  Emma has a special bond with my dad - after all, he is the one who coined Emma's most favorite phrase - "squeeze tights" and I think that her "squeeze tights" will be just what my dad needs to kick cancer to the curb.

My dad also has a lot to look forward to this year which I think will help in his recovery.  The same week we received the good news that my dad's cancer had not spread, we learned that my brother Mike and my sister-in-law Jenna are expecting a healthy baby boy in May.  It will be exciting to have a grandson on earth to help dilute all of the high-pitched fun that comes with having three granddaughters.

Will also had what we thought was his last kidney surgery this month.  The surgery went really well and he was back at work the very next day.  After the procedure, the doctor was confident that the last of Will's stones was gone.  Unfortunately, we found out at his follow up appointment the next week that only half of the last stone is gone.  He will have to have another surgery, but not for another six months so his kidney has a chance to heal from the trauma of the last several months.  Here is Will below, after being told that his last stone was gone.  Just another false start, but we are confident that the sun will not set on 2013 without him being kidney stone free!

 Both Lucy and Emma seem to be experiencing a growth spurt this month.  At first I thought their insatiable hunger was just their bodies catching up from the lack of calories consumed when they had the flu over the holidays.  It has been several weeks since their bout with the flu, and they are still eating like a pair of adolescent boys.  Their pickiness has lessened and their shirts and pants seem to have shrunk overnight.  Here they are below wearing their "twin" shirts for the last time before I had to retire them into the outgrown clothes bins.

I never enjoy switching out their clothes into the next size.  First of all, it is a lot of work.  Here are only some of the many clothes bins.

Secondly, I am very sentimental about them getting bigger and it makes me sad to put away all the outfits that I have attached so many great memories to.  

I am lucky however, that Emma is in the same clothes that Lucy wore, so at least I get another round of memories to make the daunting task worth it.  

It's crazy to me that the shirt Emma is wearing in the below picture is the same shirt Lucy wore on the day she met Emma for the first time in the hospital.

These two have become inseparable, both in good and bad ways.  They bring out the best in each other and the worst.  When they were taking turns with the flu, it occurred to Will and I that we were no longer the center of their universe.  Lucy kept saying, "I'm lonely!  I want Emma to play with me."  When Lucy was shivering on the couch, Emma kept trying to cheer her up with toys and antics while asking, "Lucy happy now?"  The other day I had a doctor appointment and I had no choice but to bring the girls with me.  I brought fruit snacks as a treat to distract them while I talked to the doctor.  I made a rookie mistake however, when I gave them the fruit snacks before the doctor came in.  They inhaled them in under 10 seconds and I was left with only one magna doodle and a couple of crayons to share between them.  Amateur!  When the doctor walked in, they were still experiencing the afterglow of the fruit snacks, sitting sweetly with their arms around each other.  When the doctor commented on how good they were I told him not to be fooled.  Seconds later all hell broke lose when one decided to take the magna doodle from the other.  Chalk that appointment up to another sweaty lesson learned.

If Lucy can control herself when Emma has something Lucy wants, she can usually convince Emma to give it up.  Lucy has learned the fine art of "reverse psychology" and will purposely say the opposite of what she really wants, just to get Emma to want it, freeing up the original object that Lucy desires.  Lucy has also become more aware of what others wear this past month and is conscious about what outfit she picks out and how it relates to the days events.  When we are out and about, she is fascinated by girls slightly older than her and the outfits that they are wearing.  Maybe her growing interest in fashion will replace her obsession with all things potty related.  Granted, I did overhear her tell Will that the fireworks at the Fire and Ice Festival our town celebrated last weekend made it sound like the sky was tooting.

Will had two snow days in January which was a bonus for me.  The girls enjoyed playing with him and I enjoyed some unexpected "me" time.  Here is what I found after I finished an uninterrupted shower: the tallest block tower I ever saw!

Our chickens are doing well despite the cold temperatures we have had in January.  The types of chickens we have are all cold-hardy, but I still can't help but feel bad for them on especially cold days.  They don't mind the cold so much as the snow however.  So, as long as it isn't snowing they seem to do all right.  Will also designed a simple water heater with a light bulb, extension cord and a cinder block which has made life a lot easier on us since we no longer have to keep replacing their frozen, ice-block water.  Currently we have eleven chickens and are getting 5-7 eggs a day.  Between our families and Will's coworkers we never seem to have an "eggsessive" amount of eggs and I have to be careful not to give them all away.  I refuse to buy store bought eggs when I have eleven chickens!  Granted, we technically only have ten laying chickens, as we found out that a chicken from our newest batch is a he and not a she.  The rooster is not fully matured yet, but seems to be friendly enough and hasn't cock-a-doodle-doed yet.  We've noticed that despite his somewhat aggressive humping behavior to certain unappreciative hens, he is actually quite protective.  When we feed the chickens he always waits to eat until all of the hens have had their fill and is constantly scanning the flock to make sure all is well.  If he keeps up his good behavior we will have no problem keeping him.  Besides, I think Will likes having another guy around the place.

January definitely had a few surprises but we are still hopeful for a great 2013.

Emma at 21 Months

Emma loves to snuggle and I love to snuggle Emma.  This equals a little piece of heaven on earth every time Emma snuggles me, which is often.  She presses her chubby cheek against mine and whispers, "I yuv you Mama."  It melts my heart every single time.  I also like to say, "Hey, Emma?" to which she responds, "What?" and I answer her, "I love you!"  She loves that game and so do I.  I also love it when she wraps her arms around my neck and gives me a "squeeze tight" which is what she calls a hug.  Here are some of my favorite snuggle pictures from this past month.  

I will admit that I have been known to rock Emma way past her falling asleep because I cannot force myself to put her warm, cuddly body in her bed.

I'm not the only one Emma likes to snuggle.  Daddy is right up there too.

Here Emma is below snuggling with her cousin Ellen, and Ellen's Mima.  We miss Ellen now that the holidays are over and she is back in Minnesota.

Emma inherited Lucy's baby doll Polly, who is one of Emma's favorite dolls now and receives many snuggles every day and night.

 It seems like Emma has slowed down on dare devil stunts this month.  At least I feel a bit calmer about her physical antics.  Granted, we did have another ER visit for her on Christmas Eve when she woke up with 105 degree fever.  Here she is below playing it safe in a lower cabinet.

 It turns out her crazy climbing is subdued by winter clothing.  She can barely move when she has her snow pants, jacket, hat, scarf, gloves and boots on.  I am seriously considering dressing her up in her snow outfit when I take a shower.  Here she is below after she stepped onto the sled for Auntie Cate to give her a ride.  Instead of sitting down, she just dropped like a lead pipe backwards and then decided that she wanted to go inside.

 Emma got to build her first snowman ever this past month after the weather warmed up a bit and we finally got some good packing snow.  The thermometer was heating up so fast that we built the snowman in the shade in hopes of getting him through the day.

After we built the snowman we went for a little walk around the neighborhood.  When we came back, he had already melted enough to topple over.  When Emma saw our snowman laying on the ground she said, "Oh, Frosty!"  Now whenever we talk about a snowman she just says, "Oh, Frosty!"

The weather heated up so much that the day after we had the packing snow to build Frosty, we were able to play outside with no coats on!  During a Michigan January, this is reason to clear your schedule and get outside.  We hopefully charged up our vitamin D a bit too.

Emma is talking up a storm.  Some of my favorite phrases she has said this past month include:

-Will and I did some major cleaning in the basement one evening after the girls were asleep.  Emma came down in the morning, saw the newly improved basement and said, "WOW WEE!"

-Emma loves to chase Lucy and yell, "ROOOAAARRR!"

-Whenever we ask Emma where a missing item is, she always responds, "Um, office."  Most of the time the item actually is in our office too, which tells me we need to clean out the office.  We were out and about the other day and someone asked where her dad was.  Emma responded, "Um, office."

-The other day Emma had a hot dog at Sam's Club for lunch.  The rest of the day she kept burping it up and would say, "mmmm, hot dog."  Now, every time she burps she says, "Hot Dog!"

-Emma is an eating champ and her favorite food this month is sausage.  Whenever we ask her what she would like for breakfast, lunch or dinner she will respond, "Sausage!"

-Emma is obsessed with the little chocolate Santas and mini M&M's that Santa put in her stocking for Christmas.  They are long gone now, even though Emma capitalized on the fact that Lucy was sick and gave hers to Emma.  The other morning when I got her out of her crib I asked her if she dreamed about anything during the night.  She responded, "Two Santas and two M&M's."  She continues to talk about it and holds up both of her pointer fingers side by side to indicate two.

-Speaking of counting, Emma loves numbers.  Whenever we ask her if she would like something she responds with a number.  She knows that five is a lot and she also knows that ten is huge.  She also counts to ten by saying, "One, Both, Three, Five, Ten."  I also get a kick out of the fact that she tells people she is two.

I can hardly believe that my littlest baby is almost two.  She has been such a joy to be around this past month I have even told Will several times that every household should have a 21 month old in it.  The love, the cuddles, and the excitement at things we would otherwise take for granted are so great to be around.  Don't get me wrong, the price for this level of cuteness is running late for almost every appointment, lack of sleep and a house that constantly looks like a tornado went through.  It is all worth it though, and we love having our almost two year old in our family.

Homebound in December

Despite being homebound with sickness for half of the month of December, life was never dull at Timmerman de Casa.  One morning over Christmas break, we woke up to the sound of gobbling.  Upon further investigation, we found this on our front porch:

Mrs. Turkey was kind enough to leave us a gift before she flew off the porch.  Fortunately, Mr. Turkey, as seen below, didn't venture up.  They are huge birds, and belong to our neighbor across the street who eventually came over and herded them back to his house.

Speaking of poultry, the perfect storm happened for our chickens this past month.  We usually feed them all of our table scraps.  With a toddler and a preschooler in the house, this amounts to a good amount of "people" food each day.  Once we became sick however, we had to toss our table scraps in the garbage, since chickens are highly susceptible to human respiratory illnesses.  Around this same time, it snowed.  It was the first time our chickens experienced the cold white stuff, since none of them are over a year old.  It turns out, chickens hate snow.  They refuse to walk on it and so stayed huddled in or directly under the coop to avoid stepping on it.  This led to very tight quarters and boredom, as the snow was covering where they would otherwise be hunting and pecking for bugs.  This trifecta of no table scraps, tight quarters and no protein from bugs led them to start pecking each other as they searched for protein in each other's blood.  The runt of our flock got pecked so badly that a fist-sized chunk of feathers was missing from her back and she was bleeding.  Several YouTube videos later, we knew what the problem was and what we needed to do about it.  We upped their protein, shoveled the snow out of their run (yes, their run is now shoveled before our driveway) and put a band aid on the hurting chicken's back, which was no easy task.  YouTube advised us to nab her at night when she was sleeping, as chickens cannot see very well in the dark.  Will convinced me to go outside with him in temperatures in the teens by promising me I could blog about it when I was done.  YouTube said it would be easier, not easy, Will reminded me as we kept grabbing the chicken and having her slip through our hands before we could get the duck tape and cotton ball "Farmer's Band Aid" on her.  Here are the chickens below, sleeping in the coop.

We finally got the makeshift band aid on her, and she is healing quite nicely.  I am happy to report that our chickens are no longer pecking each other and have even upped their egg production.  We are now getting anywhere from five to seven eggs a day.

There has been a lot of translating going on in our house lately.  From the behavior of our chickens, to the words of our sweet Emma, it is really all just a guessing game.  Fortunately for us we have the internet for the chickens and Lucy to help us decipher Emma.  Without fail, if we can't understand what Emma is adamently telling us, we bring Lucy in on the conversation and she tells us exactly what Emma is trying to say.  Emma smiles with relief then, and Lucy laughs at what she thinks is Mom and Dad just being silly.  Why Lucy understands so easily what Emma is saying is beyond us, but it is a very useful resource that is for sure!

We have entered a new phase in positive behavior reinforcement here at the Timmerman house.  Lucy has graduated from stickers and now earns cold hard cash - $3 to be exact - every time she fills up her apple tree for good behavior.  This past month she saved up her money to buy some fabric at JoAnn Fabric to make doll blankets out of.  Lucy ran into a small problem though.  When she arrived at the store, she couldn't decide which fabric she wanted.  After she proclaimed her undying love for over a dozen different bolts of cloth, I got her to narrow it down to four.  Thus began phase two of her education with money: layaway.  In retrospect I should have held firm and only allowed her to buy what she had money for, however Emma had pooped while we were narrowing down the choices and I had left the diaper bag in the car.  I am happy to report that Lucy has diligently worked her way out of layaway.  Here she is below in a fort she made out of laundry baskets and her new fabric.

Not only did the new fabric work well for forts, it also made for great fashion designs, as witnessed below.

After all of the fun with the raw yards of fabric, Lucy and I sat down and sewed up some doll mattresses for the new bunk beds Will made the girls for Christmas.  Lucy had a blast using the sewing machine for the first time and I have to say that these four yards of fabric brought more creative fun to our house than anything we have bought so far.

Almost four is a fun age.  I am excited to start doing more hands on crafts with Lucy that involves more than just crayons and markers.  I am also super excited that she is finally of the age where she understands and enjoys playing board games.  She received a great assortment of games for Christmas, and we love playing Memory, Chutes and Ladders, Cooties, Candy Land and our family favorite, Chickyboom with her.  Besides playing lots of games, we have spent our sick days watching way too much Dora and Clifford...

...as well as reading lots of stories too.

Baths were far and few between in December, due to high fevers.  Here they are below before the great sickness of December 2012 occurred.

About a week before we all got sick, we had some fun at Bass Pro Shops where we saw Santa, had an indoor snowball fight and got to ride a carousel.

Finally, the day before we got sick we were fortunate enough to have my brother and his family, who were in for the holidays from Minnesota, over for lunch.  Below is a picture of the cousins, with my brother's mother-in-law in her element.

We definitely had a lot of family bonding in the month of December and although it was nice to be cozy inside while the snow was falling outside we are looking forward to experiencing January out rather than in!