Princess parties and petting farms

Wow, I have quite a bit of catching up to do before I can get up to the present! I'm not even ready to post Easter pics. Anyway, this post is going to focus on two fun events Kerensa did in April. The first was a princess party. Kerensa hardly knows who the Disney princesses are, but she certainly caught right on to the dress up part. Someone lent me a dress for the event and was sweet enough to let Kerensa keep it. She talked about that dresss for days afterwards!! So here's my princess (and a glimpse of a little prince too!):





We had a few nice days in April, and on one of those I was fortunate to be able to take Kerensa to a petting farm. They also offered pony rides, and I was just sure Kerensa would not want to get on the horse. Turns out, I was wrong. She didn't even hesitate! It was really fun to watch her riding and trying to feed the animals. She was so excited!






Since this post is about Kerensa, I have to share 2 big accomplishments of hers. First, we are done with pacifiers. Yeah, she's almost 3, but since somewhere around age 2, she's only been allowed to have a pacifier at nap/bedtime or in the car. They actually proved to be quite useful tools in getting her to stay in bed at night. We went through a period where nothing seemed to be working to get her to stay in bed. We tried all the suggestions you read about to no avail. Finally we decided to take away her beloved pacifiers for 10 minutes if she got out of bed after bedtime. I know I'm a cruel cruel person, but it worked! Now I'm not saying she never gets out of bed anymore ("I have to go potty" became a whole other issue!), but it's not near the problem it used to be.

Now where was I, oh yeah, getting rid of this addiction. We've been planting the seed for months that she'd be saying bye bye to her "fiers" when she turned 3 or broke them all, whichever came first. She has 4, and they were dropping like flies over the last few weeks. It was actually pretty cute to be tucking her in and her showing me which pacifiers had holes. Finally, the last one gave out on Saturday on her ride home from the grandparents house. Ryan and I geared up for a rough night, but she was fine! She acknowledged that all of them had broken, and it was a total non issue. She even told me that she was a big girl now and didn't need her pacifiers anymore. Woot!

Accomplishment number two is on the potty training front. We have moved from pull ups at night to underwear! I nonchalantly asked her the other night if we should get her pull up on, and she told me "no, I want to wear undies." Now you need to know here that her pullups have been consistently dry for months. I can only think of 2 times it hasn't been. It's obviously much more fun for Kerensa to get out of bed and go potty than it is to go in her pullup, but I still hadn't planned on moving her out of them until she started preschool or something. But she asked, so I took a deep breath and let her independence take flight. So far so good . . .

One last thing I want to mention is her complete adoration of the phrase "no thanks." She thinks it has magical powers or something. Granted when she first started saying it, I encouraged her because she was being polite, right? Then she began bringing it out when I'm not asking a question, but am asking her to do something. I suppose I can't blame her for thinking she can make things optional just by adding "thanks." So funny!

Bath time

Kerensa has always loved bath time. Fortunately Brennan does too, but he's definitely getting too big for his infant tub!

What can I say - I just haven't felt like blogging lately. I feel like I'm continually moving from one thing to another, and computer time has moved to the back burner. I haven't even been on facebook in ages. To sum up the last month and a half, I've settled over 1/2 my caseload at work, which is a good thing. I believe that lawyers are better served making peace among people, so even though I do litigation, I aim toward resolving matters on parties' own terms rather than submitting the case to 12 random people. Not only that, but trials are expensive - plain and simple. With that said, I have 2 matters coming up this summer that don't look like they will settle. Should prove interesting . . .

On the homefront, we spent the 3 of the last 4 weekends working on our master bathroom shower. I thought I liked tile showers before having to help Ryan regrout and recaulk ours. We'll have lived in this house 5 years next month, and during that time, I had never used either of our guest bathroom showers. I had to do that recently, and it was quite eye opening. For starters, I couldn't even get the shower in Kerensa's bath to work. If I've ever stayed at your house, that might not surprise you because I seem to have difficulty figuring out different showers. Anyway, the problem with ours seems to be corrosion where one would turn on the shower. Ryan had run to the hardware store with Kerensa, and Brennan was sleeping. So I went downstairs to try our other shower. We put it in after we bought the house, and while we didn't buy the highest end shower, it wasn't cheap either. The water flowed quite suitably, and I enjoyed it just long enough before I heard Brennan stirring. I'm glad I now know what guests to our house can expect when it comes to showers, and we've already bought a new spout for Kerensa's bath.

I haven't posted about Ryan for awhile. He's doing well. We settled his case with our insurance company in January. It would've been better had the other driver been insured, but we were pleased with the results. In the two months that have followed, we've managed to kick Sallie Mae partly out of our house, thanks to that settlement and an unexpected bonus from my work. It feels great to be partway out of the abyss that is our college loans. Thankfully, Ryan doesn't seem to have any lingering cognitive difficulties. His biggest complaints are his scars, particularly the one on his lip which continuously peels.

Kerensa and Brennan are doing great. The temp is finally starting to eek toward 50 degrees, and I can't wait to be able to get outside more. We've already gone out 2x this week after work, and Kerensa is working hard learning to pedal her tricycle. Brennan is already 5 mos old! At his 4 mo appt, he weighed 16.4 pounds, which I don't think Kerensa attained until she was almost a year old. He continues to be the most laid back baby ever and smiles frequently. He's started deep belly laughing, which just makes me melt. I've included a video of it below, along with some much needed recent pictures (I hadn't downloaded them for ages and had 90 new ones!)

Catching up

I haven't updated in awhile, which is not so unusual for me, but I have been extremely busy with work lately. I'm potentially working myself out of a job because I have been fervently settling cases. Hopefully, I'll have some new ones come in to replace the ones that have settled. While I really would like the opportunity to try a case on my own one of these years, I truly believe my highest calling as a lawyer is to make peace when possible. This is particularly true since I'm paid by the hour, and preparing for and presenting your case at trial isn't cheap.

On the home front, Kerensa had a viral infection all week. She was so miserable, but she did get to watch a bunch of movies, which is a rarity for her. She's been better the past 2 days, so hopefully tomorrow we can allow her some social interaction. I haven't posted on her accomplishments for awhile so here's a rundown:

• I think I can officially say she's potty-trained. We haven't had an accident in over 2 weeks. We let her go out wearing just her underwear, and she only wears her pull ups for bedtime. Even that has been dry a few nights. Before she got sick, she was even getting us up in the night when she needed to go. It's been really freeing letting go of diapers (well, at least for one kiddo)!
• She can count to ten, and she's not just repeating the numbers. The first time I heard her do it, she was actually counting grapes in her coloring book.
• She knows all of her colors (which she's known for quite some time) and most shapes.
• She dislikes saying her ABC's. For the longest time, she would tell me to stop anytime I started singing the song. Here lately we've gotten her to sing along with us (fairly quietly, though, so it's hard to know how many she knows).
• She does recognize the letters. The only ones she occasionally mixes up are W and M.
• She's a computer whiz! A little bit before Ryan started staying home she had mastered using the mouse on her own. Since he's been home and they like to have computer time after nap time (picture Ryan at his desk and Kerensa sitting at mine - it's too cute), I've been amazed at how adept she's become. We bought a new laptop at Walmart at the beginning of the school year when they had a blow out sale that ended at 6 am or something crazy like that. So we've let Kerensa essentially take over the old one. It was running very poorly, but now that we've taken everything off and reformated the hard drive, it works fine for simply surfing the web. We have the home page set to starfall, and this site has her well on her way learning to read.
• As for her language development, it's coming along. It's been neat as a former language instructor to see how the brain works when you are learning to talk. If she wants to hold something, she points to the item or says its name and then says "my hand." Instead of saying "where is it," she says "it's where?" She also repeats bits and pieces of things Ryan and I say. One cute thing she's picked up from me is, "we'll see."

Little mister Brennan is doing great. He can roll over both ways and has been doing that for about 2 weeks. It still surprises me, though. You'll leave him one direction, and he'll stay that way for awhile. Then all of a sudden, you'll look down and he'll have turned himself the other way. He also is already trying to sit up, but I'm assuming we still have quite a bit of time before he manages it. Anyway, he does little baby sit-ups on his changing table all the time. He loves to smile and watch whatever Kerensa is doing. He'll turn 4 months old on the 18th, which means its time for Ryan to go back to work. His first day back is this Tuesday. He has done a fabulous job holding down the fort, even on days I didn't get home until after 6.

Well, I should upload some more recent pics, but I haven't. So I'll leave you with the Christmas pictures we had done. Oh and Happy Valentine's Day!

Christmas & New Year's

We spent Christmas at home, just the 4 of us. Kerensa's big gift was a play kitchen. We were up way too late Christmas eve putting it together. I think we kept Kerensa up too with all the noise, so we all slept in Christmas morning, which was nice. We also got Kerensa a playdoh kit, some duplos, and a couple of games. We were a bit disppointed with the duplos since the set didn't come with that many pieces and all you could really build was a tower (or a very odd looking small house). Instead of paying $20 for a duplo building base, we ended up buying a fairly large lego set after Christmas. Kerensa has really enjoyed making creations with her daddy. We'd take the duplos back, but Kerensa formed an attachment to this little cat that came with the set. So we're keeping it. They are easier for little hands to manipulate, so maybe Brennan will use them. As for Brennan, we didn't get him anything. Considering all the money we've spent on him leading up to and following his arrival, it didn't make much sense for us to buy him something else just because it was Christmas. He still got presents, though, including some clothes and a toy boat that he' s pictured with below.
























On New Year's we decided to go to TGIFriday's. They put one in our area a few years ago, and we were disappointed on our first visit. We figured we'd try it again, and while I think it was better this time, it's just not the same as the ones in the south. We managed to stay awake until midnight, which was actually the time I decided to turn in. One of our neighbors set off fireworks (illegally I might add), which just made it hard for me to fall asleep, and sleep is not something I'm getting enough of these days.

In other news, our snow has almost all melted. Some meteorologists are predicting snow this weekend, but so far we haven't seen any. The kids are doing good. When it comes to potty training, Kerensa earns a piece of play food for her kitchen every day she doesn't have an accident. Recently, she managed to stay dry 4 or 5 days in a row, and then the past 3 days she's had accidents. I'm trying to stay positive and keep moving forward (ala Meet the Robinsons). Brennan's already 3 months old, but he looks to me like he's at least 6 months. He's huge! And he's also fighting sleep, so I've gotta run.