Sabrina is 3

Sabrina turned 3 and celebrated in her usual style with parties in Wisconsin and Boulder, and set a new standard this year by having Mr. Scott, the Music Man come to her party!  He was a major hit, as you can see in the photos.  Sabrina and all of her friends sang and danced like crazy, especially Bailey and Celia who were front and center the whole time with the birthday girl.  True to Sabrina's wishes, I made a strawberry birthday cake, complete with pink frosting, vanilla cake and strawberries inside (it even had Crisco in it) and I promptly decided that buying a cake next year sounds just fine to me.  We ordered empanadas from our friends' Karly and Christian's new restaurant and they were wonderful.  The Loft was an indoor playplace at the 29th St. Mall in Boulder that closed the day we had Sabrina's party, so we took advantage of their very last day in business and we ran the place into the ground!  All the kids had a blast playing on the bouncy castle, running through the maze tunnel, and climbing around the playhouses and climbing walls.  It was all but impossible to get photos of them, but Brent did a fantastic job capturing the kids' faces during the music performance.  Sabrina was a sweet hostess and had a great time with her friends.  Thanks everybody!



And now, like every year just after Sabrina's birthday, we're home and exhausted after all these activities.  Time for a new year - bring on 2013!

Pumpkin Patch!

Munson Farms Sweet Cow

Fall is in the air!  Sabrina and Celia decided to don their halloween costumes and check out Munson Farms in East Boulder.  We picked up some pumpkins, lots of squash, and some fresh produce.  We also got to ride on a tractor around the farm.  The weather was amazing and is finally starting to feel a lot like fall.
Sabrina and Celia continue to operate more like siblings than friends.  They are as tight as ever, but they are still 2 and 3 and it leads to some spats over very silly things.  At the farm they fought over a tiny pumpkin and once either of them gets going, it's usually impossible to stop the meltdown.  We're working on all the logical arguments we can and trying to talk to them before and after the battles to see if we can avoid them and learn from them, but sometimes we feel like we're just flapping our gums.  I still believe that our words are sinking in, but it can get exhausting.  The funny part is that as soon as the meltdown has ended and one or the other has gotten over that particular issue, they go back to being sweet and adorable together.  They were particularly adorable riding the inflatable cows that "live" on the lawn outside our favorite pizza / ice cream place in Louisville where we went after the pumpkin patch.  Lucky Pie and Sweet Cow are owned by two guys who were old friends in high school who bought the building then tore up the parking lot, put in sod and a fence around it, then put in about 10 raised bed gardens where they grow a lot of the ingredients they use in the restaurants.  It's a great concept and they make really delicious food and ice cream.
We're planning a big feast soon with all of our harvest purchases.  Yum.

Denver Zoo Carousel

Denver Zoo Sept 2012

On Saturday morning we were sitting at lunch and Brent said "Maybe tomorrow we should go to the Z-O-O" and Sabrina chimed in immediately to say "Yeah, we should go there" Us: "Go where?" Sabrina: "To the Zoo!!"  Yikes!  She's learning to spell.  Trouble.  So of course, we had to go to the zoo.

I promise that we DO see the animals when we go to the zoo, but Sabrina continues to be a magnet to the carousel.  This trip was actually a breakthrough because, despite all of Sabrina's love of the carousel, she always gets nervous and serious right when it comes time to get on the ride.  This time, however, she jumped right on her animal of choice, smiled and waved on every lap and genuinely looked like she was having fun!  It's amazing that after all the times we've gone to various carousels, Brent and I both noticed how different it was when she was relaxed and truly happy to be on the ride.  What a funny girl.

Salida, CO Road Trip

CO Road Trip Sept. 2012

Our friends Rachel and Glenn had a wedding party in Salida this weekend (they got married on a hike in Alaska, but wanted to celebrate with friends) and we turned it into a good excuse for a family road trip to see the fall colors throughout Colorado.  We headed up and over Kenosha Pass on the way there and stopped for a quick hike.  We had Pongo with us and between him and the two kids, frequent stops were helpful.  Pongo hurt his leg about a week ago and has stitches in his leg so he had to take it easy, but it's a good thing we were planning on bringing him anyway since we couldn't have left him with anybody else this weekend.  We found a great hotel in Salida that allowed dogs and Pongo behaved very well the whole weekend.
On the way home we went through Canon City (prison city, USA) and stopped to see the Royal Gorge.  We must have been about a week past "high season" at the Gorge because the entire place felt like an abandoned amusement park!  It was a very weird scene.  But, a very cool thing to see as well.  Even Pongo got to walk over the big bridge.
It was a lot of driving over 2 days but the girls did great.  Sabrina has figured out how to completely zone out in the car by watching shows on the iPad.  Her favorites are still Dora the Explorer & Olivia.  She still gets a little grumpy after watching too much TV, so it's still not our favorite mode of hers, but it has kept her from getting carsick several times now and she'll hang in there for a long car ride so we're going with it.
Sabrina is an incredible "Daddy's Girl" these days and is pretty much attached to him at the hip.  It's somewhat necessary since I'm dealing with Kali so much (and Brent's pretty bad at nursing, it turns out), but it's also getting to be a bit of a problem.  After a long day in the car Sunday without a nap, Sabrina had a pretty major meltdown and was downright nasty to me before going to bed.  I try to tell myself that she's just a silly 2 year old, but the fact is that it's pretty hard to feel like I can't connect with her anymore.  She seems angry with me almost all the time and I'm thinking that it must have to do with Kali, but she just can't verbalize that yet.  However, Brent is probably more fun and more patient than me too, so that certainly contributes!!  So we're addressing it and trying to even things up a bit if we can because neither of us want another blow up like we had Sunday night.  I hope it's just a phase that will get better once Kali is a bit less time consuming, but perhaps by changing a few things on a daily basis will help.  Brent has been taking Kali to daycare this week so I can take Sabrina...just trying to split things up differently when we can instead of always defaulting to him with Sabrina and me with Kali.  I've also noticed that Sabrina and I do just fine if Brent's not around, but as soon as he's there, she only wants him and treats me much worse.  Like I said, we're working on it and I hope it's just a phase.

Kali has really gotten over her hatred of the car these days.  She was a great sport all weekend and only had a few stints of persistent crying.  Usually if she cried it was because she was hungry or tired and she was easy to soothe.  A few times it went on for a while, but nothing like her early days of flipping out in the car.  We're so glad that phase seems to be behind us.  Kali is also an amazing sleeper right now.  I can't believe that I can put her in her crib, all swaddled up, and she'll look up at me, smile and turn her head to the side and go to sleep for the entire night.  Are you kidding?  It's awesome.  I'm sure it won't last forever, but I'm enjoying every single night that it does!

Hot Chicks Dig Obama

This weekend we got to attend an Obama campaign rally in Boulder.  Sabrina picked out her own pin for the day "Hot Chicks Dig Obama" (ok, fine, she chose it because it was pink, but we ran with it).  The crowd was huge - so huge that it took us hours to get into the venue, but when we did, Nana and Poppy were waiting for us with a NYTimes Sunday tent for Kali and a spot to run around while we waited for Obama to speak.  You can see where he was by the bright light in the picture.  Not exactly close, but it was still cool to be in the same place as he was and to have Sabrina get some exposure to politics, as crazy as it may be.  

Hiking takes on a different form

McCullough Gulch Sept 2012

One of our favorite hikes just outside of Breckenridge is McCullough Gulch.  It's close to the condo, a fairly short distance to a beautiful waterfall, and has great fall colors when the trees change.  However, we haven't made it to the waterfall in over a year, I think.  We're slowly realizing that hiking is harder and harder with Sabrina these days.  She will hang in there in the backpack for a little while, but then she wants to hike on her own.  We love that, of course, because she finds everything interesting, but it also means that we move at a snail's pace.  The last 2 or 3 times we've hiked this trail, we've turned back because of weather because the hike took so much longer than we expected!

Kali is still a great trooper and she'll hang in there in the Ergo carrier for a long time, but our frequent hikes that we loved to do with Sabrina during her first year might not happen the same way for Kalira.  We still have many other ways to spend time outside though...just a matter of finding the right activities for keeping a toddler entertained and an infant comfortable.  We love new challenges.

USA Pro Challenge 2012 in Boulder

Our fam watching the riders come through

on the first lap of downtown Boulder

Today we were treated to a really amazing day in Boulder.  After watching the Tour de France for years and learning a lot about professional cycling from Brent, it was truly awesome to see some of the best riders in the world in our hometown racing on roads that Brent has ridden regularly for years and even I have riden in the past (though when I rode a section of today's race course a few years ago, I'll admit it...I cried...literally).  These guys are really good.  It was a beautiful day and we got to share it with Natalie, Kurt, Celia, Della, and Poppy.  Brent's office on Pearl St. served as a great home base where we found some relief from all the crowds throughout the day, a spot to watch the finish up Flagstaff Mountain (on live video stream on the computer), and provided a nice, private restroom for the potty training two year old.  Here are some photos from our day!

Sabrina was getting excited this morning at breakfast

(sorry for the near "oops" on the outfit here)

Kali has her biking onsie on - she's ready for the day

Celia and Sabrina had a blast in the Chariot

with a crazy driver (Kurt) who did lots of off-roading (including into some trees)

Brent in his happy place

Sabrina on "the Daddy horse" watching pro cycling a block from his office!

Catching lunch in town with Aunt Nat between laps

Chilling out in the grass before the racers swing through on lap 2

Watching the riders come back through Boulder a second time

Chillin' at daddy's office with fruit snacks and Celia - does life get better?

 We couldn't end the day without a cowbell!

(who cares if the race was over for hours by this point??)

 And then somebody gave her another cowbell!  

MORE COWBELL

Kali was in a great mood all day!

Happy Birthday Brent & Happy Wedding Luke and Jess

Seattle Visit Wedding August 2012

On Brent's birthday, we attempted our first 2-kid-no-grandparent family vacation, this time to Seattle.  Our friends Luke and Jess were getting married in Tacoma which was the original reason for the trip, but I had never spent much time in Seattle, it was Brent's & Ashley's birthday and Ashley and Dante made plans to come up from Portland, so we made it a long weekend and packed a ton into those few days.  We stayed with Harriet (in her green house...Sabrina is big on house color these days) and it couldn't have been more comfortable.  Harriet shares her house with friends Twit and Leslie (yes, Twit) who were out of town, so we got to use the entire downstairs of the house.  Sabrina made a carpet bed and slept like a champ.  Kali hung out near the front of the house in her pack and play and we had a separate bedroom in the back of the house.  What a score!  Harriet's place upstairs is full of great trinkets, many of them seals and sea lions which she studies, and the best part was that even the fancy looking items were completely unbreakable.  Sabrina played with everything including a very tall giraffe that looked delicate, but was made from recycled paper.  She put him to bed several times during the weekend and found rugs to serve as blankets.  And even Kalira found a (really disgusting) spider that she played with for hours.  It was so wonderful to have a comfortable spot to stay that wasn't a hotel.  And the company was wonderful too.  Harriet kept threatening to go to work and leave us on our own, yet each day she just kept hanging out with us!  We spent several hours throughout the weekend watching Kali wiggle on the ground trying to FULLY roll over and we're fairly sure that she's got it now.  I think she'll be rolling all over the place within the next week.

We spent Friday touring around Seattle, visiting Pike Place Market, a classic old carousel, and Harriet treated us to a ride on a huge new ferris wheel over the water.  The night we made a trek down to the rehearsal dinner party, but due to traffic between Seattle and Tacoma, we missed most of the party and Sabrina was so sad that most people were ready to leave right when we got there and she couldn't dance!  They had a great dance floor set up and she was totally raring to go, but the enormous mosquitos scared everybody away early.  That was a lot of extra car time and we got home really late, but the girls were great sports yet again.  When we got home that night, Harriet met us with the line "Wow, you're the WORST parents in the world.  But you have the BEST kids!"  She's probably right!

Saturday morning we visited the Ballard Locks where the boats can travel between the Sound and the lakes of Seattle.  They also have a great viewing area where you can see the salmon running up the stream.  Very cool.  Sabrina got a new sea otter there she loved and carried around for the rest of the weekend.  Saturday night was the wedding down in Tacoma on an old historic Washington State Ferry boat.  It was beautiful and we got the best weather ever for the sunset cruise right after the ceremony.  It was also wonderful for Sabrina because many of our Boulder friends were at the wedding too, including Casey and Allison who she cruised around with the whole night.  There was lots of laughing and dancing.  At one point, Lynn (Allison's mom) came around the corner to find Sabrina and Casey sitting on a bench talking and she said that the look they gave her was exactly like the middle school-age girls that Lynn works with as a middle school vice principal.  We got a glimpse of the future, we're afraid.

Sunday we got to go into the secure area around Harriet's office at NOAA where they have an abundance of blackberry bushes that were hanging on the ground with ripe berries.  They made an excellent dessert that night!  We also visited the Sound Garden (inspiration for the band name) that is an art installation that plays music with wind coming off the Sound.  Next we got to meet up with Ash and Dante who took the bus up from Portland and they brought a special surprise!!  Nana flew to Portland on Ashley's birthday, then came up to Seattle with them.  Mom's birthday is the 14th, so we got another Leo birthday girl to celebrate that night.  We had a wonderful party at Harriet's house that night and our friends Zoe and Batya from the Ranch came over and we had delicious salmon, salads, appetizers and cupcakes.  Sabrina officially LOVES salmon and ate a ton of it.  Glad she got that from her dad instead of my poor taste in food.

Finally we visited the neighborhood of Freemont on Monday morning and saw the famous troll under the bridge.  Sabrina has been talking about trolls ever since.  It was a wonderful weekend with so many different people.  The girls were excellent travelers and we had a great trip.  Looks like we'll be able to travel with two kids after all.

Boulder County Fair

Boulder County Fair 2012

We met up with Aunt Nat, Uncle Kurt, Celia and Della for the Boulder County Fair in Longmont.  Sabrina's favorite part was clearly the facepainting!  It was an unusually hot day so there were some melting moments (I think I was worse than the kids!) but it was great to visit the fair and see some farm animals.  Unfortunately, the girls weren't tall enough for the ferris wheel, but there was a carousel!  Sabrina also participated in her first carnival game by picking up a rubber ducky and winning an orange frog.  Yup.  Everybody has to do that once, right?  Good times.

Sabrina gets a short haircut!

Sabrina's Short Haircut

After our week in the sun, sand, sunscreen in MN and a summer of pool time, we decided to admit defeat in the battle for keeping Sabrina's hair untangled and we cut it short.  Yikes!  Brent is still "getting used to it" (he says).  But it's SO easy to style now.  I'm a big fan.  She looks so much older all of a sudden!  Where is our little girl?

Minnesota Family Trip

We had a wonderful trip to Minnesota with tons of family!  Aunt Deedee has had a cabin on Elbow Lake, outside of Cook, MN, for over 30 years.  We spent time there when we were Kali and Sabrina's age and it was an amazing treat to get to take our girls there this year.  Cook is quite a drive from Minneapolis, so it was a long day getting there.  Thankfully we had Nana flying and driving with us, and we all survived despite several stops on the way, but I'll never forget Sabrina clawing at her straps on the carseat the minute she saw Poppy at the lake and as we unclipped her, she leapt out the WINDOW of the car, into his arms, stripped down naked and jumped right into the lake.  We had arrived!  It was classic. The setup couldn't have been better.  We had two cabins side-by-side, right on the edge of the lake.  We were about a 5 minute walk to the lodge where they had a small restaurant, a bar, ice cream (!!), and a swimming beach and dock.  Also, half-way to the beach was a great swingset which, for reasons still unknown to us, Sabrina nicknamed "her office" and she had to spend LOTS of hours at the office during the week.  One day she even "hired 6 coworkers"...where does she come up with this stuff?  We had Grandma Gail and Grandpa Rich in our cabin with us and Nana, Poppy, Tim, Erica and Baby Lindsey were in the other cabin.  Deed bounced back and forth from her cabin (about one mile across the lake) to ours.  We spent one full day out at Deed's cabin where we fished, canoed, napped, read, swam, and pumped water!  Sabrina loved pumping water and we got several great pictures to add to Deed's collection of all of us pumping water at the cabin when we were Sabrina's age.  Great continuity!  We spent one rainy day driving into Ely where we had lunch, played at a park, and shopped around the cute little town that serves as the gateway to the Boundary Waters.  Most of the other days we let the little babies wiggle on a blanket, we went swimming at the beach, we went out on the boat (Deed's boat and one that we rented) and enjoyed the down time.  We didn't do great fishing on this trip (pretty skunked, really - you can see the photos) but Grandpa Rich brought Sabrina a Dora fishing pole and they had a few good sessions down at the dock.

Sabrina made more progress on her potty training while we were there - and impressed us all by doing a great job without diapers all the way there on the plane and in the car.  She held it while driving, ran to the bathroom right when we stopped, and didn't have any accidents all day.  Phew.  We had a few accidents throughout the week so we're not quite there yet, but making progress.  Sabrina slept great there too.  This was our first trip since she's been in a big girl bed and she had a twin bed in her room and she didn't miss a beat.  Just jumped into her bed and fell asleep on the first night.  She did wake up once in the middle of the night and woke EVERYBODY up she was crying so hard.  Poor girl couldn't figure out where she was!  But other than that, she did really well.  

Kalira turned 3 months old while we were there and is SO close to rolling over!  Lindsey was moving all over the place so it was fun to see where Kali will be pretty soon.  It was really great to see the two girls together - they grabbed each other's toys, grabbed each other's hair, punched, swatted and kicked each other - I see a lifelong friendship ahead.  :-)  Can't wait to get them together again soon.  

We also had a great night and morning in Duluth at Deed's house before we flew home.  We saw the Aerial Bridge, we visited a beach on Lake Superior, Sabrina and Deed baked cupcakes, we cooked a wonderful meal at her house, watched the Olympics, then spent the next morning on a boat tour in the Harbor of Lake Superior.   Our drive back to the airport and flight home were long, but thankfully we had Nana and Poppy with us for that trip so it made it easier.  We all came home happy and tired with great memories from the Land of 10,000 Lakes!  Thanks for a wonderful week, Aunt Deed! 

Now we are looking forward to another trip to Seattle next week...without grandparents!...I hope we can manage.  

Minnesota July 2012

Goodbye Maternity Leave and Happy Anniversary

The last week of my maternity leave has been great - today Sabrina, Kali and I really enjoyed ourselves as I said goodbye to my days at home with the girls.  We started at a local farm where we can pick our own raspberries and buy fresh produce that's just been picked there.  Today the black raspberries were in season so we mostly focused on those.  Sabrina is getting fairly disciplined about not eating every berry that she picks, but..let's be honest, eating is the best part.  Today she decided it's best to lean in and eat it right off the bush without any hands.  Not a bad idea with all those thorns on the bushes!  The farm also has several dogs running around, about 5 chicken coops with a lot of chickens in each one, and the owners who were out there picking as we were so we got to talk to them.  Sabrina even got the first cucumber of the season!  It was small but delicious.

She also learned how to do a "nature pee" and instead of having an accident (like last time we were there at the farm), she is getting good at going in the grass but it's still tricky not to pee on herself!!  Definitely a learned skilled...we're working on it!  I never thought about this aspect of potty training.

After that we met up with Cara, Casey and Cody and went to the pool.  We had a fun time with the older girls and the babies there.  Sabrina is so comfortable at our pool now, it's just wonderful.  I feel like I've finally gotten to the point of being there with both girls without too much worry!  Kali does great in the pool, so I can hold her with one hand and still have another hand free for Sabrina so we can play together.  Of course, it's best when Nana shows up, as she did today, and then Sabrina can really have some fun.  She loves to jump off the stairs into our arms, jump off the side of the pool and even go into the big pool now.  And, she always end a good pool session with a soak in the hot tub (even when it's 90 plus degrees!).  Thank you to my wonderful hubby who worked while I stayed home these past 3 months.  It's been a treat.  I'm so glad I married him four years ago today!

Tonight, we are off to a Colorado Rockies game in Denver with the girls to celebrate our anniversary.

Kali at 10 weeks

In the black raspberry bushes

Walking through the farm

Making friends with the dogs and chickens

Pool time with Casey - good sandwiches, Cara!

Pool tummy time

Taking a rest after a great day in the sun

Happy Fourth of July

Our Fourth of July celebrations started early this year with an invitation to our friends' private lake in Firestone, CO on Saturday.  The gravel pit of Karly's dad's cement plant has been turned into a lake where they have created quite the perfect set up.  Karly's husband, Christian, is from Argentina and roasted a lamb on the beach, similar to an Argentinean asado.  Karly's parents showed up with their speedboat and took us out waterskiing which was a really fun treat for me and Brent.  We haven't done that in years and we both managed to get up and take a few laps around the lake.  Unfortunately I wasn't in the boat when Brent skied so I missed photos of him but he got a few good shots when I was skiing.  Karly's dad also had two huge sand deliveries come over from the cement plant to lay a new beach for us so we had pristine sand for the kids to play in.  The water was perfect, the food was wonderful and plentiful, and we loved having a little beach vacation right here in CO!  It also gave us a chance to get Sabrina excited for the week in Minnesota when we'll be staying right on a lake.  She's getting so much more comfortable in the water this summer, so we're really excited for that week!

On the Fourth, we participated in the 17th Annual Drexel St. Parade - which only goes around our little block...twice...and only has people from our block in the parade.  It's wonderful, tiny, and perfectly manageable for us these days.  Nana and Poppy came over so Nana could "spectate" with me and Kali (and Pongo), and Poppy could participate in the parade with his motorcycle.  Sabrina decked out her tricycle and did a great job pedaling.  Brent helped Sabrina along, ever so slightly.

That evening we had a BBQ at our house with the Baumgartners and the Carmichaels.  It was a great impromptu event!  While the fireworks for the Fourth of July were canceled all over Colorado due to the recent wildfires, we still managed to have a very fun holiday.

Doctor Check Up and Potty Training

Kalira has shocked us all by weighing in at 12 lbs 10 oz at her two month appt. yesterday!  She is 22 5/8" and has a 16"noggin.  That puts her in the 90th percentile for weight (!!), 50th percentile for height and 80th percentile for head size.  Wowsa.  She is doing very well and is right on target with all of her developmental milestones at this early stage.  She's holding her head up now, she loves to "stand up" and look around, and she's very social now.  She smiles and coos and has laughed a few times.  Her most reliable actions right now are smiling at the moon that Dante made for her (which hangs above her changing table) and responding to my voice.  I can often get a smile out of her!  It's really fun.

She's also been sleeping in her co-sleeper in Sabrina's room for about 2 weeks. The heat has been incredible in Boulder this summer (we had 14 consecutive days above 90 degrees, and most of those were above 100!) so we bought an air conditioner for Sabrina's room and moved Kali's co-sleeper in there.  It worked great!  The girls slept wonderfully together and shockingly never woke each other up! Tonight we put Kali in her crib in her own room for the first time and, assuming the monitor is working correctly, she's sleeping quietly as I write.  Big girl!

Speaking of big girls, our other big girl is almost completely potty trained!  For about 2 weeks now she's been out of diapers except for naptime and bedtime.  Her biggest challenge is still #2 on the potty, but she's done it right several times now.  Unfortunately, she's mostly going on a poo strike and not going for up to 3 days sometimes, but she does eventually go and two out of the last three times, it was in the potty.  Brent had to deal with that 1 out of 3...not fun.  We're very excited for this particular phase to be over but she's making great progress.  Hopefully we'll be back to a 1-kid-in-diapers-family soon enough.

Our big hurdle in the next few weeks is going to be my return to work on July 16th.  At the same time, Sabrina will move into the preschool at the Cottage which will come with new teachers, a new playground (she's very excited about that) and a return to being with some of her good friends at school.  All of her friends moved into that classroom awhile ago so we're excited for her to be back in the group with them.  She's very attached to her current teachers, Kelley and Justine (she's been with Justine since she was barely 1), but Justine just had a baby today and will be out for awhile, and Kelley will stay with the younger kids.  It'll be a big transition for her, but hopefully she'll roll with it.

Kalira is going to spend one week hanging out with Nana instead of starting at the Cottage before our trip to Minnesota.  This way she will start at the Cottage around the beginning of August.  It gives her a few more weeks to strengthen her little body before she is exposed to lovely daycare germs.  Thanks Nana!

Valmont Bike Park with Casey

Sabrina and Casey worked on their biking skills at the Valmont BIke Park this morning.  This was the best either of them had done on their bikes so it was really fun to watch.  Next up...the Strider Bikes!

Sabrina habla espanol!

Este semana Sabrina esta aprendiendo contar a diez en espanol!  Bueno!  (This week Sabrina is learning to count to ten in Spanish!  Well done!) - (at least that's what I mean to say, I hope I'm not too far off!)

Kali is two months old and Sabrina is 2 1/2!

The 28th is a big day in our household now with both girls born on the 28th of the month. Today, Kalira is two months old and Sabrina is 2 1/2. Here are some more photos of Kalira from this morning.  

Jason and Cynthia's Wedding

This weekend we attended Cindy & Jason's wedding in Estes Park. Sabrina was a beautiful flower girl! She was wonderful in the dressing room with all the ladies and she even let me braid her hair (pigtails in the morning is a challenge these days, so this was a big deal). Kalira spent time during the wedding with Cindy's cousin in a condo at the wedding venue and she actually took 2 bottles - her first ever! There was a fire that started about 3 hours before the wedding right in Estes Park so there was some nervousness before the ceremony about possible evacuations, but it got contained very quickly (though only after destroying 21 homes) and the wedding went forward as planned. Helicopters were getting water from the lake right across the street from the wedding so it made for a very strange backdrop to a really beautiful wedding. Brent loved watching the helicopters though, so it kept him happily entertained when we weren't running around dealing with our two girls.  Congratulations to Cindy & Jason Howard!  We had a great time and Sabrina loved being part of their wedding day.

Our first month as a family of four

Zoo trips!  Butterfly Pavilion!  A visit from Grandma Gail and Grandpa Rich!

Kalira's First Birthday Parties

Happy BIRTHday to Kalira!  Sabrina was thrilled to have a birthday party for Kalira when we brought her home from the hospital.  We had candles and everything!  We had one party with Nana and Poppy on Sunday and another on Monday with Uncle Kurt, Aunt Nat, Celia and Della once they returned from California.  Already a lucky, spoiled baby!

Kalira Teal Halsey joins the family

Kalira joined our family early the morning of Saturday, April 28th, which was six days past her due date. I had a very good labor with Kali (approx. 14.5 hours) and she was born at 4:22am (coincidentally, she was DUE on 4/22 - she just got confused). She was a perfect, and very average, 7 lbs., 8 oz. and 20 in. long. Right when she was born, she came up to my chest and we sat like that for almost an hour before we weighed her, cleaned her up, or tested her Apgar scores. It was a wonderful and amazing hour. Brent and Nana (Annie) were in the room along with our fabulous midwife, Kala. Kala had brought in white Christmas lights for the delivery room along with small paper cups of lavender oils that gave the room a relaxing, spa-like quality (it was exactly the kind of atmosphere I love!). We celebrated with the traditional post-natal drink from the Bradley course which is orange juice. After our scary seizure event with Sabrina's birth, we decided to avoid the alcohol and stick with the recommended juice! Sabrina spent the night with Poppy over at their house and she came to meet her sister mid-morning on Saturday. She had a very serious reaction to Kalira when she first walked in and she immediately started telling us what to do. "She needs a blanket" "She needs a hat." When I told Sabrina that the baby had finally come out of my tummy, she looked at me and said "I think there's another one in there." HA! She's lucky I love her so much! Sabrina was very concerned that we didn't have a cake and "fire" (a.k.a. candles) for Kali right away. She is really into birthdays right now, so to hear that it was Kali's ACTUAL birthday and we didn't have cake and candles for her was pretty hard for Sabrina. We had to explain that you can't really have fire in hospitals, but she was unconvinced. To make up for it, we had a great birthday party WITH FIRE on Sunday afternoon when we brought Kalira home from the hospital (photos forthcoming). During our hospital stay we were lucky enough to have visits from Lea and Justin as well as Lee Carmichael (Cara, Casey and Cody made it as far as the parking lot, but the kids had other plans besides coming up to meet Kali!). Nana, Poppy and Sabrina made frequent visits and Sabrina got to know her way around that hospital like a pro. She told everybody who would listen that she was a big sister now. Here are our first albums of photos of Kalira's birth, right up to the point when we brought her home. (there are duplicates...oops...we didn't coordinate this very well) https://plus.google.com/photos/100534016372617912115/albums/5736837205219138785

Happy Easter!

The Easter Bunny arrived in full force this year. Sabrina really "got" the holiday and had a lot of fun with easter egg hunts today. We spent a nice morning at home where the Daddy Bunny set up a couple of egg hunts in the living room and Sabrina did pretty well finding the eggs. She got distracted fairly easily though with the plastic eggs that had treats in them. She kept opening them and saying things like "Dried cherries? Thank you Easter Bunny!" Plus the Easter Bunny brought her a large, hollow, chocolate bunny and that was a big treat for her.
Next we went over to the Yellow House (known to Sabrina as "Liam and Logan's house") where we had a huge egg hunt on their big front yard. There were eggs everywhere! Perfect for little hunters. Celia and Liam definitely had a jump on the "under 3" year olds as they ran out to the yard, but everybody had a great time and ended up with full baskets and full tummies. We filled up even more on delicious eggs benedict, fruit salad and mimosas. We came home mid-afternoon completely sunned out! Brent and I were a little jealous of Sabrina's nap in a cool, dark room all afternoon. But, more baby prepping for us! We're doing very well on our preparations and feeling as ready as we can be. Now just trying to keep up on laundry, picking up around the house, and trying to get ahead on the yard work. Brent is also taking a course on Natural Language Processing through Stanford this semester and he's trying to work ahead in that so he can spend time with the baby (and Sabrina!) once he/she arrives. We're keeping busy, that's for sure.

Liz Connolly and I looked longingly at Cara's wonderfully flat tummy and beautiful little boy all day today...we're both still about 2 weeks away from our due dates and we're ready for the next phase! Baby Cody (Carmichael) is adorable and sweet and spent the day snuggled inside the Moby wrap with Cara or enjoying the shade inside the house. I'm sure Casey and Celia shared all their good "Big Sister" tips with Sabrina and Lily while they were egg hunting. They're the experts now! Sabrina will get her chance soon enough. Although hopefully not until after Wednesday, the 11th, when Nana (aka our birth doula) gets back from visiting Tim and Erica's new baby, Lindsey, in Boston! Thankfully Poppy has agreed to stick around to watch Sabrina in case we go into labor early. Having had a conversation with Gnocchi, we think he/she understands not to come out until at least later this week. Here's hoping!

36 weeks and a Big Gruul Bed!

This weekend marks 36 weeks along with baby "Gnocchi" in the belly and Sabrina's first weekend in her new bedroom. She calls it her "big gruul bed" - I wish I could say it exactly like she does, but it's a long "u" in the middle of girl, if that translates at all. She has been wonderful helping us with every project that we had to do to get her into that room. She pounded in some dowels with a rubber mallet, she held the cordless drill while we screwed in the slats on her new bed, and she handed daddy lots of tools while he was hanging up the new curtains. She even congratulated him when the new curtains were hung, "Nice job, Daddy!" She slept in her new bed last night and did great! It was a fairly normal night (albeit a late one since we enjoyed a great Ethiopian dinner with Nana and Poppy that night, followed by a trip to Target) but otherwise it was normal...we read books, sang a song, put her in bed and then she babbled for about 10-15 minutes and fell asleep. We were in shock. Then today at naptime I did the same routine as usual and she was actually laughing when I left her in there...and she had a great 2+ hour nap. What a trooper!! She seems to completely understand that she's a big girl, so she goes in that new room, and the baby will go in the baby room. She's too big for that room now. It's great to hear her refer to the baby so regularly and comfortably these days. She is convinced it's a little sister too, so her vote has been noted.

Other adorable Sabrina-isms of late include her newfound tendency to ask us to talk to her, "Mommy, can you please talk to me?" or the slightly less cute, but funny line where she grabs one of our faces (if close enough) and says "Daddy, stop talking to mommy!" or my personal favorite when she looked at Brent at the dinner table and said "Daddy, please tell Mommy to stop talking!" I guess my rants about work aren't interesting to her either! Point taken, little lady! The other night I was reading her a story and half-way through she looked at me and said "Mommy, will you just talk to me?" and I said, "But I'm reading you a book" and she said "I want to just talk." So down with the book and I asked what she'd like to talk about and her reply was "Ummm...I...would like...to talk....about...the pool." I had to stifle a laugh at that one!
Also, in the car she has a few new habits, like asking what street we are on all the time and then saying it over and over, "We're on Darley street?" "Mommy, is this Darley Street?" And she knows that we live on Drexel St. and Nana and Poppy live on FIFTH St. Also, she constantly asks for more "fresh air" in the back and she prefers her window open at all times. Finally, I asked her if she wanted to listen to Octopus's Garden by the Beatles (her fave for awhile now) and out pops "No, today I just want to listen to NPR" WOWSA. We've raised a bit of a nerd!
Also, in the past month she has figured out exactly how to spell her name "S-A-B-R-I-N-A"...it has had a couple of unique spellings while she's been learning including "S-A-B-R-I-B-O" and she usually puts an "O" instead of the "A" at the beginning, but she's really figured it out now.

At 36 weeks I'm feeling very good, although my body is ready to be done. I have hip issues when sleeping and sitting on the couch - sometimes I get kind of "stuck" getting up! It's not pleasant. But once I'm up and about, I feel very good and not too uncomfortable during the day. The baby still kicks an incredible amount - I think much more than Sabrina - but it's just nice to feel those little reminders that he/she appears to be doing well in there.

With her room mostly set up now, it frees up her old room for the baby room, so we're ready to start getting out clothes and gear for a newborn. Yikes! We'll see if we remember any of this stuff! I bought newborn diapers today and couldn't believe how tiny they are. It'll be a shock for both of us to go back to caring for such a tiny human.

Having the room situation squared away makes us both feel more ready. Next steps are to install the infant carseat back into both of our cars, pack some bags for the hospital, and study up on the actual delivery process! Entering the home stretch...

Hawaii "Babymoon"

We had an amazing opportunity to go to Kauai, Hawaii before Gnocchi arrives (thanks to Nana and Poppy's willingness to watch Sabrina for 6 days...and Sabrina's willingness to be awesome about it).  We thoroughly enjoyed so many aspects of this trip - to name a few:
Traveling on a plane without a diaper bag or our work laptop bags
Sleeping in in the morning
Having no nap schedule to follow but our own
Seeing amazing sights such as waterfalls, the ocean, canyons, mountains
Going on a helicopter around the island to see the roughly 70% of the island that is inaccessible by car or boat
Drinking fancy drinks (well, Brent did that)
Snorkeling at sunset.
Eating wonderful food and actually talking to each other during dinner!

It was really incredible and, had we not missed Sabrina so much the entire time, was nearly the perfect vacation.  Here are a few of our favorite photos and the rest are contained in the linked album on PicasaWeb.