My big kid

Romelie is 4 years old!

We'll start there.

Romelie was very happy and excited for her 4th birthday. We had a few outings prior to her actual birthday. We went to the MN Zoo the Saturday before. The weather has been unusually warm, which has been amazing, so we hit all the outdoor exhibits while it was still enjoyable. The night before her birthday, we went to the Mall of America to get our annual photo with Santa and to let Romelie use one of her free ride passes. I love our mall Santa, just for the record. He rules at getting kids comfortable and taking a good photo. This year Romelie was just fine with Santa, but Cori was not having any of his presence, so after a couple of tries, we ended up with this pose. Look closely. Notice anything odd?

...Did you see it?

Yup. Those are my feet, my legs, and my hand in the photo. The only way Cori would do the shot is sitting on my lap, with me leaning back out of the picture, which Santa snuck into the background. Hey, it worked, so I'm happy with it. And Rom had a good time on the rides afterwards.

For her actual birthday, we did the same low-key style celebration as Cori's birthday 2 weeks earlier - cake, presents, playtime. "Wow, that kitty cake is amazing!" Thank you. I know. "No, seriously! It looks professional!" Oh, stop. You're making me blush. Romelie loved her gifts and has been playing with each of them in turn ever since. She actually requests naptime/quiet time these days, sometimes as early as 9:30 am; I have to remind her that she can sit in her room and quietly play with her toys anytime she wants!

While on the subject of Romelie's room...we decided to change the kids' rooms around. Cori's room was bigger than Rom's, but it also holds a full-sized bed, so it made sense to leave Rom where she was when Cori was born. However, Rom just needs more space to play. It's hard to keep her room clean, especially during naptime/quiet time, and the bigger space makes that much easier. We still have the full-sized bed in Cori's now-smaller room, for now, so Cori's space is very limited, but she mostly crawls around and plays downstairs anyway, so we're good for now and will eventually get rid of the bed to give her a playspace, too.

Jumping ahead, we had Thanksgiving yesterday with my dad's family. My dad makes an awesome turkey and the best stuffing in the world, and there's always leftovers, so I'm looking forward to more delicious turkey-themed meals in the next few days.

Jumping back...Cori has teeth! Five or six of them! It was crazy...one day I'm thinking, wow, my kid is 12 months old, is she ever going to get teeth? A few days go by without me thinking about it...and then I go to check and there are 3 on top, 2 on the bottom, with more clearly on their way! She definitely is in some pain from time to time, but she actually seems to love using a teething ring (I could never get Romelie to go for one), so that helps a lot.

Cori has also switched over to cow's milk, which has created some serious digestive issues for my poor baby. I don't want to go into too much detail, but her poos are horrifying. Too hard and too large, and she cries for 30 minutes trying to get them out. Aw-ful. Dr. Dukinfield recommended some Miralax, and that seems to be doing the trick - normal baby poos for the past 5 days. Keep those fingers crossed they stay that way, cause otherwise I'm going to continue to blog about baby poop, but in more graphic detail.

Speaking of Dr. Dukinfield, both girls got in their well-kid check ups with him in the last couple of weeks. Cori is 28 inches and 19.4 pounds, so average-to-small for her age (not in a concerning way, of course). Romelie is 46 inches tall and just under 40 pounds, which makes her long and lean. Both of my girls are higher on the height percentage than on the weight percentage, but they do have my genes, so I'm sure that'll change as they get older. For now, they're exactly where they're supposed to be.

And speaking of weight (check out these seamless transitions!), I'm actually on track for my new year's resolution/weight loss goal! If you'll recall, one of my resolutions was to blog an average of 3 times a month, or 36 times in 2011. This...probably won't happen. But I did better than in 2010, so there was at least improvement. I had said my other 2 resolutions were more personal. One, while still none of your beezwax, has been reached successfully. The other I'll go ahead and share cause I'm proud of myself - I resolved to lose an average of 3 pounds a month, or 36 pounds in 2011. On January 1st, I weighed in at 197.6 lbs. Yes, I had just had a baby...2 months earlier. That was a lot for me. My goal, for those who don't care to do the math, was 161.6. As of Wednesday morning, I weighed in at 165. I'm nearly there! A big boost came in the form of a weight loss challenge at my gym. Bally's gave us 6 weeks of free bootcamp (with a $10 entry fee) to lose weight, and the person with the greatest percentage of weight loss won 8 free sessions with a personal trainer. 15 pounds later (lighter?)...I won! Yay. I'll let you know my final weight on December 31. I'm hoping for the high 150s; I can't remember the last time I was in the 150s (middle school? Probably).

And on that note, I'm wrapping this up, because I need to get ready to pick up Grandmommy Diane from the airport! to see you!!

Happy Halloween and birthday and stuff

Okay, many updates are long overdue. But with the updates comes...lots...and lots....of pictures!

Let's go in chronological order. First, a wedding! My high school friend Tim got married early in October and I had planned to go with the whole family to cheer him on. Unfortunately that same day, my grandma Mary fell in her driveway and broke her hip, so I spend most of the day in the hospital with her. I'm happy to report that she had a successful surgery and has since been able to return home, though she is still recuperating, of course. I also managed to stop by the wedding reception for about an hour or so with Romelie in tow and was able to congratulate the couple, have cake and champagne, hear the wedding toasts and dance a bit. The best part was that I got to see Barb, my best friend from school who lives in Arizona and who I haven't seen since my own wedding in 2006. Romelie loved her, of course, and also managed to squeeze in a few dances with Barb and Greg (also a friend from high school, our pediatrician's son, and a doctor himself!).

Next, volleyball is all done for the season. It was a fun year with good players, but I'm quite happy to have my schedule back to normal as, I'm sure, is Chason. Thanks husband!

Uncle Paul was in town! We got to spend quite a bit of time with him and he was kind enough to make me a CD of a year's worth of pictures. After misplacing it for a while (what is it with me and technology?), I now have brand new pictures and videos from Cori's day of birth and beyond, which I will just plug in to the blog randomly whenever I feel like it. Like here.

On October 23, we had a baptism ceremony for both Romelie and Cori at Bryn Mawr Presbyterian Church. Since Romelie had been dedicated at Corner Church but not actually baptised, our pastor Jamie had said we could have the ceremony for both girls, so we did. We went pretty casual for the clothing but I did get matching cotton dresses for the girls because, well, it is a special occasion. Romelie did surprisingly well (pretty rough on the practice day, but great for the actual baptism, even during the water-on-the-head part), and Cori cried. Which is fine...if I have to pick a kid to lost it, crying infant is a bit cuter than tantrum-throwing 3-year old. My mom, dad, brother, and grandma Mary were all able to be there along with Chason and the girls, which was wonderful, especially since we weren't sure if my grandma was going to be home by then, so I felt very lucky to have her there.

Continuing forward...Chason and I have decided to take the house off the market for the winter. We've had very little interest so far, and it's unlikely folks are going to be banging down the door during the winter months, so we're going to take a break and try again in March or so. So much for keeping the house clean...

On October 28, Chason and I went back to Orchestra Hall (we're so cultured), this time to see Herbie Hancock in concert. Boy, than man can rock a keytar. Don't believe me? Check it out for yourself.








Okay, not the most impressive video, but it's what I've got. I'm still working with the internal memory only on my camera, which means I can record about 15 seconds of video at a time, so I did this on my phone. Again...technology...

Moving on, we have...Halloween! Yay! As per usual, we did pumpkin carving/painting at the last minute, saving it for the Saturday before. I carved a sweet Blue's Clues face into my pumpkin, then totally failed to take a picture of it. Trust me--it was awesome. Romelie painted her pumpkin, though it was pretty cold out, so she only painted about 1/3 of it before she decided it was time to go inside.

On Halloween night, we dressed the girls up and did our traditional trick-or-treat around the great-grandparent's neighborhoods. My grandma Ione wasn't home this year (aww), so we didn't get to see her, but we did go to my grandma Mary's house. We had dinner with my grandma and my mom, who was also in town, and went around the neighborhood with the girls. Romelie was great...she held Daddy's hand and was very polite, not candy crazed as I'm sure she will be in a year or two, and Cori just hung out in the background with me getting compliments on her cute mouse costume. We even got home and got the girls to bed at a reasonable hour. Not a bad night overall.

Next big event...Cori's first birthday! I had actually been looking through the pictures my brother had given me and was amazed at how different both of my girls look a year later. Looking at tiny newborn Cori made me a little nostalgic (not enough to make me want another kid, but definitely had some warm fuzzy feelings going on), and Romelie looked more like a toddler than the little girl she is now. Cori had a lovely birthday. She didn't cry when we sang happy birthday (Romelie had cried when she turned one...more nostalgia), and she went mad over that cake. She grabbed big handfuls and crammed them in her mouth; we had to keep an eye on her to make sure she wouldn't choke! She had a quick bath (the clothing was an absolute mess after all that frosting!) and then opened a few presents with some help from her sister. I like our low-key birthdays. We'll have parties for the girls eventually, but for now, cake and a few presents are all we need.

And that's about it for now (whew!). I'm sure I'll have more updates to share soon...Romelie's birthday is coming up...doctor appointments for both girls...pictures with Santa...and a visit from Grandmommy Diane is only a few weeks away!