A Lesson Learned

Danielle is now mobile. She's not crawling yet, but she gets around. She scoots around on her tummy, and she turns herself around in circles when she's sitting. She also half-crawls, half-scoots as she's trying to get to something that she wants on the floor. She is sooooo close to crawling - I bet she has it down in a couple of weeks!

So Peter must have left an orange highlighter out on the floor the other day. He also must have left it open. Danielle must have found it. If you look closely enough, you can see lovely orange marks on the legs of her sleeper. She looks mighty proud of her first art project!!

Note to self: Do not leave ANYTHING on the floor that Danielle shouldn't have!!!

Tropical Storm Hermine

You may not know this about me, but I absolutely love following the weather. Meeting our local weatherman would be the equivalent of meeting a movie star in my book. When we had cable, I would watch the weather channel for hours on end. Peter knows that we turn on the news to watch the weather. I diligently followed the track of Hurricane Earl as it headed toward the east coast. Fiona was next, and next came Tropical Storm Gaston. Another tropical wave was close behind but still closer to Africa than the US.


Um, so where in the world did Tropical Storm Hermine come from? I didn't even get to follow its formation. It wasn't there one day, and it was bearing down on the Texas/Mexico border the next day. Then, here in Austin, in the middle of Texas, we are hit with a tropical storm. It has been raining for almost 24 hours. I have enjoyed all of the weather coverage of the storm. The weatherman keeps interrupting America's Got Talent to show the current radar and talk about flooding. Now this is interesting television!!


Apparently Peter doesn't get the same enjoyment from watching the weather as I do. He was getting antsy this afternoon, so I let him go out on the porch. He stood close to the front door for a little bit, but I could tell he was itching to get out into the rain. Since we had not seen any lightening, I told him that he could go out and play in the rain. He was sooooo excited!!! We don't have gutters on our house, so the rain falls pretty heavily off the roof right in front of the door. He kept running through it, laughing the entire time. He wanted me to run in the rain with him, but I was trying to distract an exhausted Danielle from remembering it was bedtime. I didn't want to make matters worse by getting her all cold and wet. Peter played until Daddy got home from work. Then it took major convincing to get him inside for dinner. He had a blast!

To Tropical Storm Hermine -

Thanks for the excitement with the weather coverage, and thanks for giving my son an enjoyable afternoon. :)

Look Mommy! I made a "P"!!!

I've been debating lately when to start "preschool" with Peter. With my work schedule, I can't put him in a traditional preschool program. At this point, my plan is to do preschool-type activities with him at home. Although he's picked up on some basic letter recognition and math skills, I haven't really done anything formal with him. Peter's birthday is at the end of September, so he misses the cut-off for starting school by less than a month. If I start preschool with him now, he still has three more years before starting kindergarten. Quite a few of the kids that will be in his class just recently turned 2. Anyway, it's just been a debate I've been having with myself lately - start preschool now or wait another year.

Until today.

The debate ended today.

Danielle and I were sitting on the floor when Peter came to show us this.

Peter: Look Mommy! I made a "P"!

Mommy: (honestly not really expecting to see the letter P) Let me see. Wow! You really wrote a "P"! Good job Peter!!

Peter: Now I'll make a "T".

At that point, he went off and "wrote" some more. It wasn't really legible to me, but he said he wrote his name.

Um, so I'll be starting preschool with him in October. We'll spend 26 weeks focusing on all of the letters of the alphabet. I better get started finding letter activities. :)

Future Raiders

Thanks to a former coworker, today we had the chance to visit Cedar Ridge High School, the newest high school in Round Rock ISD. We have watched them build the school from the very beginning, and Peter has been asking forever to go inside. Well, today he got his chance.

He was SOOOO excited to finally be going inside. Here was our conversation as we pulled into the parking lot --

Peter: The new high school!!

Mommy: Yes. Would you like to go inside?

Peter: I can go inside today? Is Ms. McLinden here?

Mommy: Yes, and she said we can go inside.

Peter: (excited) OK!!

So we walk in, and Peter acts like he owns the place. Karen took us on a mini-tour of the campus - I think it would take forever to actually see everything! Peter LOVED running down all of the hallways. It's so new that they are still installing things. He loves "workers", so he was so excited to see some of the workers still working on the building.

We got to see where the food will be served. Peter's favorite part was yelling down into the trashcans and listening to the echo. It was so funny!

The campus also offers culinary classes. I thought this was very neat because it will give interested students a taste of culinary arts in high school to see if they would like to pursue that career path. Peter loved looking in the ovens and opening and shutting the doors. We saw many classrooms, walked by the campus coffee shop, met the campus police officer, saw one of the gyms through a window (Peter was disappointed he couldn't go in and even tried to find a "worker" to open the door for him), climbed stairs, and ran down many hallways. I think in a word, I would call the school "amazing". It really is a neat building, and I know that the students are going to love it!

The last place we visited was the central courtyard. It's an outside area that is entire contained, so students can eat out there, visit between classes, or even have class outside. Peter found some stairs that led to a little wall, and he said that he was on the stage.

Thanks to Karen for letting us visit. Peter had the best time exploring the school he might attend one day!!! Hope you guys have a great school year!

Art Day With Auntie Em

Auntie Em surprised us today with a visit. We haven't seen her in a while, so Peter was so excited!! He had the best time playing with her.

They started out with play dough. Once Peter was finished, he told Auntie Em to finish making her pizza and then clean up. He sounded just like I do when I ask him to finish what he's doing and then clean up. I guess he does listen after all...While Peter found paper and glue, Auntie Em hung out with Danielle. I'm sure Danielle was sharing some really good secrets with her.

Peter loves glue, so he was very excited when Auntie Em agreed to help him with the glue. Peter and I usually just glue paper - Auntie Em was way more fun! She let Peter glue rice. :)

Peter drew a picture with glue and then used his measuring cup to pour rice on the glue. He had a hard time realizing that he had used enough rice once the glue was covered, so we had quite a bit of extra rice covering the kitchen table!

After playing with glue and rice, we moved onto scissors. Peter has been wanting to use scissors for a long time. He finally got his chance today. Auntie Em tried to show him how to use them, and he really did try. She tried to help him cut hearts at his request - they turned out a bit rough on the edges, but Peter was really proud of himself.

Auntie Em - Thanks for stopping by today! Come visit anytime!!!

***Please note...this post is actually being written on the day it occurred. This NEVER happens anymore - guess that's life with two little ones who almost never nap at the same time. Thanks to the pool this morning, they are both taking wonderful naps at the same time today!!!

Nana's Special Touch

Right around the time Danielle turned 6 months old, I tried to start her on solid food. She wasn't too fond of having something other than formula in her mouth, so it didn't go all that well. I don't think it was the taste that bothered her. I think it was the texture. She absolutely refused to swallow it.
Peter even gave it a try, but it was a no go. She wasn't ready to eat yet. She obviously preferred her bottles.

Thinking that maybe she just didn't like the rice cereal, I even tried apples and pears. I tried several times over the course of a few weeks. She would take a bite, but every bit of it just came right back out. She seemed to play with it in her mouth a bit, and then she would just spit the entire bite out.

Then Nana came to visit. The day before she came, I tried to give Danielle some pears. Once again, she spit them out. She just didn't want to swallow them. However, now that Nana has fed her, she's a great eater!! One day she refuses to swallow anything, the next day she loves eating cereal, pears, prunes, sweet potatoes, cheerios, and peach yogurt drops (which Peter also enjoys!). I think my mom must just know how to feed babies - I guess after having four, she should know. :) Maybe Danielle just needed a new face to convince her to eat. Whatever it is, though, I'm happy. She is finally eating solid foods which means a little cutback on bottles. It also means that she's on the way to eating table food!

Thanks to Nana for helping Danielle learn to like swallowing strange mush that we call baby food! :)

And Baby Makes Five!!!

Baby Hazen #3 - Due March 5, 2011

Yes, we were completely surprised. . .

Yes, Peter won't even be 3 1/2 . . .

Yes, Danielle will only be 14 months . . .

Yes, the doctors will keep a very close eye on me during the entire pregnancy . . .

Yes, I am soooooo excited!!!

God is so good! 7 months ago, I almost lost my life. Today, a new life is growing inside of me!!!