Spring

We've had some lovely weather recently, highs in the 50s and 60s. Clearly if it's 60 in the middle of March, it's time to play.

Maisie has really come into her own with her scooter.


Ella is getting out and experiencing the neighborhood.


There's so much to see: trees are budding, birds are twittering (tweeting?), the wildlife is all waking up and starting to forage.

Happy Spring!

A quick update

An update on what we've been up to, since we last posted...

Ella's diet has been expanding. Her latest food, which she loves, is pasta with tomato sauce. Yum!

She likes to keep a finger or two in her mouth while she eats to help keep the food in there. Right now she only has two teeth - bottom front, they appeared together recently, which is ahead of Maisie, who had a single tooth on her first birthday. But pretty soon Ella will have more teeth, and having your fingers in your mouth while you eat won't be an option for her!

On Friday, Maisie's school was closed for parent-teacher conferences. (Maisie, by the way, is doing extremely well at her preschool. Her teachers enjoy her presence in the children's house, and find her bright and capable. Yay!) So I took the day off, and after our conference in the morning, we all went to the zoo.

We rented a double stroller, since Maisie sometimes likes to ride, and Ella gets heavy and squirmy after a bit. It was a great choice! Both the girls really seemed to enjoy riding together. I'm sure that will last, right?

And finally, because nothing's cuter than a sleeping baby...

except a sleeping baby with her butt up in the air!

Story time

At our house, we all like to read. (Big surprise, eh?)

Last weekend, first Dylan read a story to me and Maisie. Go Dylan!


Then Grandma Liisa read Ella a story...


looks like it was a pretty good one!


Then, Maisie wanted to take a turn. She can't read yet, so we all paid attention while she told us a story.


Maisie was actually so cute in telling her story, that my mom and I kept dissolving into fits of giggles, which Maisie did NOT appreciate. She kept saying "Please be quiet. Please give me your attention. Please listen now. Thank you." I think I know what she hears at school from the guides in her children's house!

Chinese New Year

On Friday, Maisie and I went to the Chinese New Year Celebration at Midtown Global Market! We decided it was pretty much the best holiday celebration, ever.

The first thing that happened when we got there was that Maisie got a gift:

a little red packet with a lucky coin inside! She was really excited about that.

Then, we saw a whole bunch of kids with balloons, dancing and playing in front of a stage. Maisie had to have a balloon and go join them.

One really fun thing about Maisie is that she makes new friends wherever she goes. She will just go up to some kids, start playing with them, and refer to them as "my new friends." The girl Maisie is playing with in this picture is named Tariah, and she really did become Maisie's friend! Maisie's balloon came untied from her string, and Tariah gave Maisie her balloon. It was incredibly sweet.

I sat by Tariah's grandmother and chatted with her, as the area filled up with lots of people...

They were waiting for the lion dance to begin!

It got full pretty quickly, so much so that the girls couldn't even dance and run around any more. We passed the time taking pictures of each other with my camera. Tariah took this picture of me and Maisie, which I quite like!


So after a while, the music started...

The big drum was really LOUD! It symbolized the lion's heartbeat, and got him up and moving around...

and that lion can really MOVE!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Happy Valentine's Day, everyone! Aaron and I had a date night on Friday night, with babysitting courtesy of Gramma Liisa (thanks Mom!). So today was a family Valentine's Day.

We started with Maisie and I attending our friend Sophia's birthday party - she is 4! (Aaron and Ella stayed home for Ella's naptime.) There were about a zillion kids there. It was fun, if somewhat exhausting, in the way that only a child's birthday party can be.

Maisie really enjoyed the delicious cake! And yes, that's frosting in her hair. She also enjoyed playing dress-up with some of Sophia's dress-up clothes. I enjoyed the delightful company and delicious food. All in all, it was a really good time.

Later this afternoon, after "quiet time" (a.k.a. Mommy needed a nap), we all headed down to the Midtown Global Market for some indoor play time.

Maisie especially loved this little car that ran on a small rollercoaster-like track!

We managed to find dinner there, too - Maisie and I shared egg rolls and Vietnamese noodle salad from Pham's, and Aaron got a falafel pita from Holy Land. So tasty! Then we came home, put Ella to bed, and watched the Olympics with Maisie. The luge was on. Maisie was very impressed by how fast they want and said, "When I grow up, I do that?" I said, "No, why don't you play hockey instead?"

We'll see how those negotiations go.

There's a party in my city!

Yo Gabba Gabba is touring!

Faithful readers may remember that we got to see them last summer at the Target Children's Book Festival for free...


Tickets to the current tour are expensive. Dang! But, don't lose hope: the blog Minnesota Mama's Must Haves is giving away 4 tickets to the show! If you're interested, details on how to enter are here!

Threat level: Orange as an Oompa Loompa!

She crawls! And pulls herself up to standing! A triple threat (she's stinky, sometimes)!

Busy busy

Let's see, what have we been up to:

Rock the Cradle: Maisie, mommy and our friends Liza and Emi all decided to attend this annual event, which included dancing, yoga and an instrument petting zoo.


Birthday Party: Maisie and mommy once again ventured out to brave the insanity of Edinborough for our friend Jack's birthday party. Giant maze-like complexes of sweaty obstacles, slides and ladders. A germ incubator, in other words. Also, a gymnasium with scooters, balls of all shapes and sizes and a bouncehouse. And don't forget giving toddlers cake at 9am. That's important.


Being Cute: Ellie boo is cute.

Happy new year!

From our family to yours...

wishing you health, happiness, and hugs in 2010!

(now pretend that this is printed on some nice cardstock, and you got it in the mail at your house, maybe even up to 3 weeks ago, and it was in a festive envelope, probably either red or green. Isn't that a nice holiday card? We'll totally send out real cards next year when the girls are 1.5 and 4, because life will be less hectic then than it is now with a baby and a 3 year old, and we'll totally have it ALL together. Right? Right?? Riiiiiight.)

New Foods

Ella has been watching everyone eat like a hawk since Christmas, so we decided it was time to try her out with some finger foods.

A note: diced bananas may seem like a good finger food idea, but apparently their texture is too funky fun, and they are too squishy and slippery to make it into a mouth; after seeing two cups of bananas squished into Ella's clothes, the carpet and, worst of all, me, we have given up on diced 'nanas.

Next: cheerios. Yes!

We love Cheerios! Mmmm, cheerios!


Wait, nooooo!

Ella learns to talk

Jumparoo

Our friends Bethany and Patrick loaned us their old Jumparoo...

Holidazzle

In Minneapolis, from Thanksgiving through the New Year, there is a parade every Thursday through Sunday called the Holidazzle. It's short, but it's sparkly.

I'd never been, and neither had Maisie. So last night we went to check it out, and we had a lot of fun!

We got there about half an hour before the parade started. There was a person selling light-up wands, so we had to get one of those while we waited.

A person sitting next to us took this picture, which I thought turned out really well, especially given that Maisie is totally not into posing for pictures.

So anyway, we had a lot of fun!

Holidazzle is all about Christmas-y lights, and all the floats are covered with lights. The city actually turns out the street lights along the route, to better illuminate the floats.

This is the Christmas train. It was like a zoo train - there were children wearing lit-up animal costumes in the cars! It was very cute. Cinderella was the grand marshal, and Santa in his sleigh was the last float in the parade. Maisie was very impressed with both of those, as well as with the Wizard of Oz float in the middle - there was a wicked witch riding a bicycle! Very scary and cool.

All the floats were really sparkly and fun, and the parade was short, so it was over right around the time that Maisie started to get bored with it. We had a really good time, and I think we'll go again!

The next generation of Vikings fans

I don't know if you can tell, but both Dylan and Maisie are wearing their Vikings jerseys in this picture from last Sunday, when we watched the Vikes beat the Lions!

Ella has Vikings gear too, but she wasn't wearing it.

Skol Vikings!

Thank you

Maisie and I had a very crafty weekend! I love being able to do these kind of projects with her.

On Saturday, we made thank you cards (somewhat belatedly) for her birthday gifts.

As you can see, this is serious work. Maisie loves doing "stamping work" and really enjoyed the activity - she chose the cards, the stamp, and the stickers.

I think they turned out beautifully.


Her hands, though, were a different matter....

(and yes, that's a big ink splotch on her upper lip!)

We also had a crafty Sunday, but that'll have to wait for the next post.

Right now we need to say WELCOME! to Maisie and Ella's new cousins Sullivan and Ryley!! and yay for their mommies and daddies. We can't wait to meet you two!!

The Ella Report

I feel like we talk a lot about Maisie here, so I want to take a moment to get you up to date on Ella.

She's now completely recovered from her hospital stay. She's a fully healthy almost five month old baby, smiling and cooing and trying like crazy to be mobile!

Her big sister is one of her favorite people. Here, Maisie was running circles around Ella's bouncy chair singing DING DONG THE WITCH IS DEAD! DING DONG THE WITCH IS DEAD! Ella was trying so hard to watch Maisie that she almost flipped out of her chair!

Maisie loves to give Ella hugs and kisses, and Ella loves that too. She gets a huge smile on her face every time Maisie gets up near her face to say hi and kiss her!

We love our Ella! And it seems like she's pretty fond of us, too.

Maisie's birthday party

On Saturday, 10/31, we celebrated Maisie's 3rd birthday with our friends and family!

We held the party at the Minnesota Children's Museum. It was a wonderful Where the Wild Things Are themed party.

First they read the story, then they did a craft activity.

Here's Maisie (a witch) and Dylan (a vampire bat) decorating Wild Thing vests and terrible eyes. Scary!!

After the craft activity, we had a wild rumpus!!

You can see the Narcum family really got into the wild rumpus, which really comes as no surprise to those of us who know them!

After the rumpus and a hide-and-seek game, it was time for cake.

Maisie blew out all the candles!

We really had a great time. It was so fun to celebrate Maisie's birthday with our family and friends!

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween, everyone!

In addition to the normal Halloween festivities, we held Maisie's 3rd birthday party on Saturday. I will write about it later, but tonight, I'm just too tired... apparently my children didn't get the memo about daylight savings time meaning that everyone gets an extra hour of sleep.

Health care

Normally I try to keep the politics out of the baby blog. But you have to forgive me here. It's just SHOCKING to me that we're still debating whether or not we need health insurance reform, when the costs are so outrageous, and coverage seems so arbitrary. Someone without health insurance for themselves or for their kids - what would you do if you or your kids got sick?? Why should insurance depend upon your employer??

This post, by the way, is prompted by our receipt today of the preliminary statement of what Ella's hospital stay is going to cost.

Yes, that is just over fifteen THOUSAND dollars.

Now, we're fortunate enough that Ella has good insurance. But right now - Aaron is uninsured, because we figured he'd get a job after he finished school, so we didn't add him to my insurance. If it was him with this infection instead of Ella? We would be SO underwater. I don't know what we'd do.


If I didn't have the good job that I do and Ella didn't have insurance, what would we do now, with a fifteen thousand dollar hospital bill? Or would we not have taken her to the hospital at all? Tried to treat her blood infection with baby tylenol?

No easy answers here, I guess. Other than, boy does something need to change.

Photography by Maisie

One of Maisie's favorite things to do is taking pictures with our digital camera. We usually end up with lots of pictures of her toes and tummy, but recently she seems to have gotten the hang of it. Here's some examples of her recent work.

Home!

So, our Ella was really, really sick.

She woke up early Tuesday morning with a high fever, so she and I were off to the ER while Aaron stayed home to care for Maisie. Ella had bacteremia, a bacterial blood infection. It was really scary, but she is much better after 2 1/2 days in the hospital receiving IV antibiotics. As you can see, her whole left hand and forearm were all taped up to protect her IV... she kept sucking on her hand and trying to get the tape off.

She had a really high fever, which is gone, and she finally seems like herself again - she wants to play and have fun, whereas when she was sick, she wasn't playful or laughing at all.

We are all so glad that Ella is home!

Finally!

Ella is HOME!

The Ella Update

As many of you know, Ella was hospitalized on Tuesday morning with what we originally suspected was H1N1... she had a high fever (102.7), cough, and runny nose, and was super cranky.

It turns out that Ella has strep. pneumoniae bacteremia - that is, her blood is infected with the bacteria strep. pneumoniae. She's doing a lot better since we brought her in. She was admitted to the hospital on Tuesday, and is on IV antibiotics which are knocking the strep out like LL Cool J. Mama said knock you out!!

We've been alternating spending time with her at the hospital, me going to work, and someone being home with Maisie... and thank goodness for family - my Mom has picked Maisie up from school and fed her dinner the past 2 days, and I get home from the hospital to find Maisie playing happily with her Auntie Laura at our house. We're also thankful for my understanding employer, and my coworkers who are stepping up to cover my missed court appearances.

So right now we're hoping that Ella will be able to come home tomorrow (Thursday). Obviously we'd rather she were at home, but we want to make sure that everything's under control before we bring her home. The last thing we want to do is have to boomerang back to the Children's Hospital after being discharged!

We'll keep you all posted. And thanks for everyone's love, thoughts, prayers, and support. We truly appreciate it.

Portrait of mommy

Maisie drew this in school the other day.

It's a picture of me! I'm pretty impressed with her drawing skills, for someone not quite 3 years old. She was very proud of it, too. She pointed to the mouth and said, "That your teeth, Mama!"