Hugs, music, and toy cars

Romelie has a new trick. Yes, our kid does tricks, I know she's not a circus performer or a dog, I don't care, I think it's cute, deal with it. So this one was discovered on Thursday night. Romelie and I were lounging around on the bed and I said, "Romelie, can I have a hug?" She looks at me with big, wide eyes, puckers her mouth like a fish, and gives me a wet ol' kiss (she'd been drinking water, hence the wet). Apparently, she doesn't distinguish between the words "hug" and "kiss" yet but she understands the sentiment behind them both. Well, I thought it was so funny I told her to give Chason a hug when he came in the room - and she did the same thing. So now it's a trick. Be prepared if you ask for a hug.

Let's see...Romelie got to visit with some more of my family; my aunt, uncle, and cousin were in town from Florida last week. My Aunt Cheryl took a pic of Romelie and my dad and me on Father's Day that I thought was pretty darned cute. By the way, we have no daycare this week (Jen's on her one week of vacation that she takes each year), so my dad has Romelie today and tomorrow, and he's even offered to watch her overnight. For some odd reason, she's been waking up in the middle of the night the last three nights in a row (last night we ignored her and she went back to sleep quickly enough, but the other two nights we had to get up with her), so cross your fingers she sleeps well for my dad tonight.

Other news...Romelie, my mom and I went to see a play, and Romelie sat quietly through the entire thing! We saw "The Wizard of Oz" at Stages Theatre Company in Hopkins. This is good, because I got season tickets to The Children's Theatre for next year (and I wouldn't mind checking out another couple shows at Stages), so now I'm optimistic that we won't be watching the entire show from the crying booth.

I mentioned music class last week...we've started taking a class called "Family Music for Toddlers" at Musikgarten of Minnehaha Falls. It's kind of like swim lessons were, only there's no pool. But the adults sing songs and bounce the kids and jump and move around and try to get the kids to join in. Romelie's been doing a lot of dancing lately and seems to have discovered rhythm, so I think she's enjoying herself so far. We've only had one lesson; I'll keep you updated.

On an unrelated note, yesterday Romelie tried to eat a purple (washable) marker. Here is a picture of the results.

And finally, I have officially completed my first week of summer camp - and I finally made my very own invention! These two things are semi-unrelated. Summer camp last week was with 2nd and 3rd graders (most of our camps are 4th grade and up), so it was a little bit exhausting; those kids can get pretty hyper and have a tougher time following directions. But we survived and the kids made some pretty amazing inventions. Well, this week, I'm focusing on our new play and class we're developing on energy generation, conservation, and innovation which premiers a week from Monday. One of my projects was to see if I could construct a car that runs on "solar power." Honestly, that's not really possible with the solar panels we have here, so we decided to build a car that runs on a light sensor instead (shine a flashlight on the sensor and the car moves forward) but call it solar power for the show since, well, the kids won't know the difference as long as we hide the batteries. Well, ladies and gentlemen, apparently I'm more of a genius than I thought, because it totally worked! And I did it with minimal help (just needed some advice when I realized that I had made one wrong connection and it was doing the opposite of what I wanted - on in the dark, off when you shone a light...oops). So after four years of summer camp at The Bakken, I have finally completed my first invention, and it is cool. Even the campers who were here this week who are in middle school thought it was pretty impressive. AND I made it in about 2.5 hours. Think it, make it, improve it, show it! Hell yeah!

Long awaited updates

Since I can't get the video of Romelie's dedication (6/7) up, I'll just tell you that it was short, sweet, and kind. Scott said nice things, Chason and I dedicated Romelie to God, the church community (and our family and friends in attendance) offered their support, and they gave her a tiny Bible. Romelie cried, but it was cute. And there were balloons. Afterwards, some of us went to dinner at Baker's Square where Romelie did her impressions of a businesswoman hard at work.

My mom and Paul took Romelie for three nights up to my mom's home two weekends ago (before the dedication). So Friday night, we hung out with Rachel and Allison, two friends who were visiting from New York, as well as CRYSTAL!! (Who was in town for the week doing the senior all-night gigs with me. See awesome picture of us as gypsies.) Saturday morning I woke up feeling horrible. Nauseous, dizzy, with occasional stomach aches. When it didn't go away by Monday (6/8), I went to the doctor who then sent me to the hospital for a CT scan. Turns out I had a cyst on my ovary rupture...which is apparently no big deal. It hurts, but it's fine once it's happened. At least in my case. Which kind of stinks because if I'd just ignored it, the pain would have been gone by Monday night. Instead, I get to pay for the tests out of my $1000 deductible. Boo. Then the following weekend, my hip started hurting really badly. Like, I limped for two days. I considered going to the hospital for X-rays, but really, I couldn't bring myself to go back less than a week later. So I just ignored it and it got better. I can still feel it a little, but I'm working out again without major incident, so I'm hoping it's okay.

We spent a couple afternoons visiting with my dad, Grandma, aunt, uncles, cousins, and cousin's kids (what are they? First cousins once removed? Second cousins? I'll never figure it out). Managed to get a couple good photos of the cousins' kids (thanks, Dad).

Let's see...ah, the CD incident. Romelie has this one (awful) CD of toddler tunes that she listens to every day. I had taken it out of the CD player for her trip up to Gramma Carol's and I couldn't find it. So I just put a different CD in the player and went to go look for it. Couple minutes later, still couldn't find it, went back into Romelie's room only to discover that she was holding onto a third CD...and that CD was missing a tiny but sharp-looking piece. Searched EVERYWHERE. Couldn't find it. Asked Romelie if she ate it - she said Yes. Debated whether or not to take the toddler's word for it considering she probably didn't even understand the question. Called the doctor. Very unhelpful. But in the end, he said that I could take her in for X-rays but the diagnosis would be the same whether she'd swallowed it or not - wait for her to pass it on her own and watch for obvious signs that it was doing any damage. Opted to skip the hospital. Was paranoid for a couple days (got to dig through a couple poopy diapers for evidence, not fun), and in the end, I believe/assume she didn't eat it. But still don't know where that missing piece could be...mysterious...

More updates: the night out on the town! Woo-hoo! My dad watched Romelie last Friday night (6/12) so Chason and I could go with Crystal to see Lauren's show at the Brave New Workshop. The show was fantastic, and afterwards we ladies went out dancing. Which I've never really done before. It was fun and laid back - not a scary club atmosphere, just a fun, not-too-crowded place with mostly good music. We had a friend Joe take some pictures of us wearing matching hats that were inexplicably in his car. Thanks, Joe. Good times.

More and more signs that Romelie is allergic to, or at least semi-intolerant of, eggs: she vomited Sunday morning (6/14) after a delightful breakfast that included scrambled eggs. I can list dozens of times she's eaten eggs or things that contain eggs with no problems, but I can also list at least three times when she's vomited very shortly after eating them. Any ideas as to what that means? At any rate, once she cleared her stomach, she was just fine.

FINALLY...we've been enjoying the wonderful outdoor weather we've had lately. We got a little plastic pool for Romelie to splash around in. We spend plenty of time playing on her little slide and with her backyard toys. And we've started to attend local festivals, family nights, and other social events in the neighborhood. In this picture, we went to the Fulton neighborhood festival where we ate cheap hot dogs and free ice cream, and then we made a poster of what we love about living in Fulton. Romelie was enjoying seeing all of the dogs in the park, so we made a poster about that. Incidentally, we live in Armatage...but they never really asked, so I didn't figure it mattered!

I could update on the last week (more aunts, uncles, and cousins in town, Father's Day fun, the start of summer camp at The Bakken, and Romelie's first day of music class), but this blog entry is LONG enough. So check back for more updates later!

Romelie's Dedication! (was nearly two weeks ago...)

Lots has happened in the last few weeks, including...

* Lots of visitors including Paul, Crystal, some friends from New York, my Uncle Joe and Aunt Roey, cousins Maureen and Steven, and Maureen’s adorable daughters
* A visit to the hospital (me, not Romelie)
* A “Did Romelie eat a tiny, sharp piece of a CD?” incident (though we may never know for sure, all signs point to “No”)
* A night out on the town (again, me, not Romelie)
* A vomiting episode (Romelie, not me…unrelated to the above bullet point)
* A random hip problem (me)
* Lots of counting (everyone!)
* New words and sounds (Elmo, monkey sounds, and words that sound like swearing but aren't, such as "fork" and "sit," top the list)
* A backyard pool! (Romelie-sized, not grown-up sized)
* Summer neighborhood funtivities
* And much, much more!

Care to hear all about it? Too bad…I’m going to bed! I swear, I’ll fill everyone in on all of the above soon (I have TONS of photos to share). But for now, here’s a video that Paul took of Romelie’s dedication from Sunday, June 7 at Corner Church. My mom and dad, Paul, and Crystal were all in attendance. I was feeling pretty sick that night (see bullet point number two above…more details to come), but it was a good evening.

UPDATE: okay, I've tried to upload this video three times and it won't upload. I think it's just too big. Sorry! I'll try again later...

When you're sittin' in your chevy and your pants are feelin' heavy...

Guess who had 5 days worth of diarrhea? No, it was not me. Gross. But it was Romelie. Which is still gross. She had some hints of it starting on Thursday evening but it didn't really get disgusting until Sunday. Since she has to be diarrhea-free for 24 hours before returning to daycare, I ended up staying home with her on Monday and Tuesday of this week. While I hadn't really planned on missing work like that, we did have two pretty fun days. She wasn't really feeling or acting sick or anything, so we still got to play outside and watch a movie (Bolt - super cute) and she just had to eat the BRAT diet (bananas, rice, applesauce and toast) for about 48 hours which made cooking really easy. I was also able to get a few home projects done that we didn't get to on Saturday (everyone should check out our bathroom if and when you see it - it is sparkly beautiful!). And she's happy and healthy now, so we're in the clear.

Let's see...she had fun at my dad's house Friday night into Saturday. She can now count to five thanks to counting balls and paintbrushes in his backyard (see photo), though she only does it when she feels like it, of course.

Saturday night we went to my friend Darcy's farm in Wisconsin. Romelie took a pretty big spill - went over backwards in a chair, very very scary - but she didn't really hit her head at all and was fine after just a minute or so of crying. She was even strapped in to a booster seat. This kid is so good at falling, I swear, the hair just keeps getting grayer and grayer. On the fun side, Darcy is not only an awesome person and friend, but she also has adorable lambs, a big giant llama named Tony, numerous cats, and two fun dogs that like to play soccer and are surprisingly good with toddlers. Romelie started out pretty cautious around all the animals (and around Darcy, too), but by the end she was trying to body-slam the lambs (we didn't let her, don't worry), throwing the soccer ball to Mindy the dog, and crawling all over Darcy.

And finally, on Monday night we went over to Kevin and Nicole's house for dinner. While we were there, Romelie started wondering where Chason was (he was outside). So she began calling for him. But she didn't call for Daddy like she normally does. It was so funny to me that I decided to try to get a repeat performance out of her the next day, and for once she actually obliged me. So here is Romelie with her new name for Dada. For the record, Chason doesn't think this is nearly as cute as I do. But I'll let you judge for yourself.