Friday, December 28, 2007

Merry Christmas!

The happiest snowman in town
Well I hope everyone out there had a wonderful holiday - Channukah, Kwanzaa, Festivus, whatever floats your boat. We sure did. We spent the week leading up to Christmas with friends and family who traveled from all over the place to be here: my dad & Karen from Miami, Mommy 2.0 and Ronnie from outside Austin, Pam, Eric & Gunther from Houston, Brian and Jessica from Charlotte, NC and my brother John and Angela from outside of Dallas. And of course Jen and Micah were there as well.

We stayed at a wonderful home in Breckenridge that was comfortable and well appointed. It had a hot tub, a game room and a home theater. It was a fun and relaxing week. We put up a Christmas tree, Roan got lots of quality grandparent and aunt and uncle time, and Arwen taught me how to snoboard!!!

Oh but wait I forgot the most fun of all. Remember the nasty stomach flu that our house, Roan's buddy's house and our nanny's house all came down with? We managed to share our Christmas germs with our out of state visitors. I think in all, 11 people came down with some form of it, from mild to merciless. At least it was over quickly and our vacation was long enough that folks were able to get back on the slopes after recovering. Surprisingly, even the 2nd time it reared its ugly head I managed to escape its wrath.

In Roan news, she slept horribly all last week. It proved too great a temptation sharing a room with Mom and Dad. Either that or she was having a growth spurt. She kept waking up at night wanting to eat. There were two nights in a row that I didn't get any sleep at all. She's also had two new teeth break through the surface, one incisor and one on the bottom, giving her six in all. I suspect it's those teeth that have changed her eating habits. Lately she's not been interested in anything on a spoon. So I'm mostly giving her real food now - she likes broccoli, apple, carrot, squash, tomato, spiral pasta, crackers and toast. She is not interested in cheese, cottage cheese or yogurt in the slightest. It seems like she actually ingested much much more when I was spooning it into her mouth. Now that she's in charge of shoveling food in, most of it seems to end up in her lap or on the floor.

She has been making more word-ish sounds lately. She seems to say "ma ma," "da da," "daw" for dog, and "sss" for shoe with some regularity (although Arwen says I've lost my mind). She gets a thrill out of waving hello/goodby, and I *swear* tonight she waved at me from across the room and said "hi." But then again maybe I really am crazy. In the last week she's also started standing on her own from anywhere between 1-10 seconds. She can stand there even with toys in her hands. And then tonight... she stood for about 5 seconds, took one solid step, and stood for about 5 more. Looks like walking is just around the corner!
Roan must've been a very good girl because Santa brought her all kinds of fun things. She got her very own rocking horse that makes horsie sounds, so now she can be a cowgirl. She also got her first kiddie computer, so she can be a geek like mama and daddy. And she also got some happy music to listen to at playtime and lots and lots of new books to read.

There are a lot of fun pictures from the week, and I'm working on getting them posted, but in the mean time here are a couple I hope you enjoy.


Roan & her daddy

Check out my new rocking horse!

Roan & mama

Friday, December 14, 2007

What a crazy turn of events

Well strangely a lot has happened since my post last night. Roan and I had a great night's sleep last night - surprising, considering her diarreah. I awoke feeling refreshed, only to find that everyone in my house has come down with a nasty stomach flu. Arwen is feeling bad enough to stay in bed today. Jen and Micah got the worst of it. It had them both up all night long if you know what I mean.

When we called our new Denver employee (who happens to be married to our nanny) to warn him not to come over, it turned out that both he and Lindsay had been up all night with the same thing! And Roan's little buddy that we nanny share with has it as well. Her mom said yesterday Audrey puked on every sleeper they own, doused all her crib bedding and ended up in the bathtub for emergency cleanup twice. Whatever you do, don't come near us!


So I'm the last man standing, knock on wood. I have four sick babies to take care of today. Plus a software rollout and the inevitable Christmas preparations. Add to that the fact that my dog is wearing a cone on her head to keep her from licking her own nether regions (she had another butt explosion last week).


But the saddest thing of all is that Hallie is the very sickest of all our babies right now. As we speak she's in the animal hospital getting a GI scope. Jen took her into the vet yesterday because she too has diarreah. Later Jen got an upsetting call from the vet saying that the blood test results showed Hallie has an alarmingly low amount of protein in her blood. They're trying to figure out if it's kidney trouble, liver trouble or the big C. Jen and Micah are understandably upset. I ended up having to be the one to take Hallie in this morning though because neither Jen nor Micah could leave the vicinity of the bathroom.


So think good thoughts for Hallie. And keep your fingers crossed for me. Hopefully I can stay well enough to help nurse everyone else back from the brink.

Thursday, December 13, 2007

Overdue for an update

I know, I know. It's been a while since the last update. What can I say, it's a busy time of year. Between deadlines at work, holiday baking, Christmas cards, and keeping up with Miss Thing it's a wonder I get any sleep at night.

Roan's up to more of the same. More getting around, more making noises, eating more stuff... At the moment she has a little bit of a tummy bug. Awww, her first case of diarreah. Yet another precious milestone. She's been a trooper though. She's been crawling around and playing all day, making a squirt squirt sound from her back end. Sick and happy, no problem. Sick and miserable is a heartbreaker.

So here are some photos - I know that's what you REALLY want.

Here's Roan in her hat & coat from Grandma Fifa



Here's us together in our hats & coats



Here's Daddy goofing around with Roanie



Here she is with our nanny Lindsay. It has recently been brought to my attention that our nanny is HOT. Interesting that I didn't really notice before.



Here she is with a squinty smile. If you look hard you can see 3 out of 4 teeth.



And here she is measuring herself with my measuring tape.



That's our little cutie! I'll try to update in the coming week, but I'm making no promises. So if I don't get a chance to post again before Christmas, I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday.

Monday, December 03, 2007

I'm going to eat your face off

Yesterday makes 8 months for Roan! Hard to believe. In a blink this baby will be a year old.

So what's new with her. Well at this *very* moment she's crawling all over the house, pulling up on things, moving chairs out of the way to get where she wants to go and shrieking like a pterodactyl. She has a little more hair coming in, and every day her top two teeth are showing more of themselves, as you can see!

She's been mixing it up a bit lately, keeping us guessing. Napping at all different weird times of the day, going to bed early, going to bed late, drinking only and not eating solids, eating solids and not drinking anything... you know just keeping us in suspense.

Over the weekend just for fun she got 100.6* fever and didn't hardly sleep for two nights in a row. Anything for a laugh.

Here are a couple of pictures from our Thanksgiving. Happy Thanksgiving, by the way. We had a terrific one. Christina and Jan Mendelt were in town from Cincinnati, Charles and Josefa came in from San Fran, and Gavin, Andye & McKenna came over from Lyons (just outside Boulder). We had a fantastic meal, if I may be so bold as to toot our collective horn, with turkey, tons of delicious sides, wine and beer aplenty and killer desserts.


Roan is experimenting with lots of new sounds. Besides the familiar ma, da and ba sounds, she's added puh, fuh, guh and kuh. Sometimes when she looks at us she says mama or dada. But she also says mama and dada while talking to various and sundry inanimate objects. The one word she seems to comprehend and say reliably is "dog," or at least "daw." She says it all the time when the dogs walk in or out of a room. And when you say something along the lines of "doggy says woof woof" she laughs hysterically as if you're both in on the same joke.

Here's a little video of her doing some talking.