I spoke too soon...

Of course, after I posted last, Marlena stopped doing well in terms of sleeping in her "big girl bed". I started putting her back in her crib, and while that worked OK at night, at naptime it turned into an extended play session. So I watched Super Nanny... And what does Super Nanny do? She just puts the kid back into bed everytime the kid comes out. So that's what I've been doing with Marlena.

It's required a lot of patience. At night, when we - actually I should say "I" since Don goes into his lair to smoke cigars and work once he's given Marlena her bath - tried this, it took us - me - 1.5 hours until she fell asleep. Last night it took maybe half an hour or so. An improvement, but the trick is patience and no emotion and not saying a single word. Basically, showing no reaction you pick the child up, plop her back in bed, walk out and close the door. Of course, in the Super Nanny shows it seems to work much more quickly that in real life. Anyway, night time has been easy. Naptime is a whole different story. On Monday, there was no nap. I think that was my fault because I didn't start soon enough. Yesterday I started at 1pm, today same time. Yesterday it took 1.5 hours. Today about 45 minutes. I view it as a mental training for Marlena - the bars for the crib were physical, and she couldn't get out. Now I need to help her build mental bars for her big girl bed. Once I accepted that it'll just take time, the frustration disappeared and I was able to show no reaction. Of course some of the stuff she gets up to while we're doing this causes me big internal smiles, but that's where they stay. Or when she said "I need to play a little bit" yesterday, that was just too cute - but she got no reaction from this mommy.

Other news is that our place is finally coming together. Don and I agreed on an entertainment console, which will be delivered tomorrow. Our TV will no longer be sitting on the floor. We also bought a slightly larger desk for in our bedroom and the one we previously bought is now Marlena's craft table/couch table because there was no other place to put it that not only leave little Wolfie a place to play, but would also allow us to sit with Marlena at the table and play with her. Once the entertainment console is in place, the table will no longer block the TV and all will be hunky dory.

Pregnancy news - knock-on-wood, the pregnancy remains uneventful. Within the next few weeks we'll be bringing the admission papers to the hopital so we don't have to do that while in labour. I'm visiting the ob every 2 weeks at the moment - and at the end of March that will turn into every week. I was having trouble sleeping so we bought a memory foam mattress topper from Costco. We've slept on it 2 nights and it's made the bed more comfortable for me, but the bed feels quite a bit higher.

Other than that, nothing new is going on here. The weather is sunny and Marlena and I try to get outside every morning. And hopefully once her naps settle down, I'll be able to get a bit more done during her naptime.

Getting ready for the new arrival...

So it's been a while since I've posted... Looking at the date of the last post, I must have gotten pregnant shortly thereafter, and now, we're about 2 months away from the expected due date of our next child.

What have we been doing since Christmas? Well, I've been torturing Don by re-arranging our bedroom and living room. He's had to move our old entertainment unit our of our bedroom, then help move it so the house of the people who bought it off us. He's also had to move some shelves, again to people who bought it off us. He also was responsible for putting together Ikea shelves... with some haranguing from me, I'll admit. Putting Ikea stuff together is a true test of your relationship... Fortunately ours survived and our bedroom is much nicer for it. In fact, I'm sitting at the little desk in our bedroom and typing this while Marlena wipes down the crib for Wolfred - well the Pack'nPlay.

I managed to get that set up today, a huge relief. I'm not nearly as prepared for this little guy as I was for Marlena. But, now that I have a place for him to sleep, all I really need to do now is wash the bedsheets I have and the clothes I have.

Marlena has experienced some changes in her life too. She has moved out of her crib, quite successfully, I might add. I let her pick out the sheets she wanted from the huge selection I used. Did have to buy fitted sheets, tho', the ones I had, the elastic was done for. Anyway, she decided not to go for the brightly colored bedsheets, no, she has to choose the black and white geometric patterned one. And is pleased as punch with her new bed. Going down in the evening was easy-peasy. Getting her to not to look at books, open and close shutters, and just generally play, when being put down for her afternoon nap wasn't quite a easy. What did help, though, was that she caught a cold and didn't sleep very well one night. The next day she was ready for her nap and when down without too much trouble. Since then I haven't had to move her from her big bed back to the crib for her nap. After her nap, or when she wakes up in the morning, she opens the door to her bedroom and comes to ours and asks to climb in. Only once has it been too early. I'm sure it'll happen again, but until then, it's really kind of cute. She brings her dolls and a few books, and if it's the weekend, Don gets to entertain her.

Here's another picture of Marlena in her big girl bed...

Thank you OxiClean!

What a morning! By 9am this morning I was exhuasted and just wanted to crawl back in bed... instead I took Marlena to the beach and now she's sleeping... hopefully for another hour...

We had quite a morning - I think it affected me more than it did her. She was up at her regular time, 6:30 am and we had breakfast at about 7am. Once Marlena has had her breakfast I get to eat mine. This morning my breakfast was oatmeal with frozen blueberries (can you see where this is going yet?). Marlena has a new habit (thanks to Don) of crawling onto our laps to check out what we're having for breafast. She seems to like Don's fried eggs on Saturdays and Sundays. She seemed pretty interested in my oatmeal and so I sat down with her on a single chair. At some point she lost her balance and grabbed for my oatmeal, or else she grabbed for my oatmeal and then lost her balance - either way, she, and the oatmeal with the now melted blueberries went flying backwards. She landed on her back, on the biege carpet and with blueberry oatmeal on her and all around her. Then a glob landed on her right eye. Fortunately I had already mixed the blueberries into the oatmeal so the oatmeal wasn't that hot. And the blueberry juice was not concentrated... still it was a mess. Once I couldn't take care of right away because I had a screaming daughter on my hands who needed to be comforted. So I hugged her, rinsed her off, peeled off my own blueberry oatmeal-stained pjs, showered, set her in front of the TV with a Baby Einstein video and surveyed the damage... Chair and carpet. Purple oatmeal and blueberries, not quite everywhere. Not on the wall, only the carpet. So I scraped off the oatmeal. Mixed up some OxiClean in a spray bottle, but then the sprayer didn't work. So I liberally sloshed it onto the carpet. Many squares of paper towels later, the carpet looks pretty clean. Fortunately it's also really warm at the moment, so it dried pretty fast, too.

Thank you OxiClean.

Marlena on the Drums

So we're up in Vancouver and are missing the weather of Southern California - does the sun ever shine here?

Marlena has seen two of her cousins, Caitlyn and Lucas and is loving them! We were over at their house yesterday and Marlena gave Lucas lots of hugs and gave Caitlyn lots of Eskimo kisses (nose-to-nose). She also love it when Saks (their dog) gave her a big wet on on the mouth.

She also discovered a set of drums in Lucas' bedroom and had lots of fun playing them. Here's a video of her on the drums:

Being Jane: Projects Completed

So, I finished installing the tip out trays in front of the sink. The 2nd project was successfully complete. The end result doesn't look as nice as the faucet because the staining on the cabinets didn't take sink trays into consideration. But I did take a video of the finished projects.

Being Jane....

So I decided to embark on two home improvement projects today, and has it been an adventure!

Our kitchen faucet has been leaky for quite a while. The water sprayed out the back of the faucet everytime it was swiveled while running and Don didn't want to call a plumber to fix it because they're so expensive. His solution, in the meantime, has been to put a plastic yogurt container in a larger glass container under the drippy spot to catch the water. Needless to say, it wasn't a solution that pleased me. Don did try to fix it while I was in Vancouver, but he got a little intimidated by all the hoses and tubes, so he left it.

After Don told me about his abandoned attempt, I told him I could probably fix it, maybe by getting a brand new faucet all together. Actually Don did go look at new faucets but thought it a good idea to wait and get my input before buying something.

So today we finally got around to buying a new faucet. It's similar to our old one, with a single handle, but the spout pulls out and becomes a sprayer. I started by disconnecting the cold water line - thank goodness! - and shutting off the water. Righty tighty, lefty loosey, right? Well no, and that's when my problems started. I thought I hadn't turned the cold water valve all the way off so I attempted to turn it more to the right and first there was a little spray, then a HUGE spray and all this cold water came gushing out, right at my face, soaking me. It was chilly and I called for Don and tried to shut it off.... couldn't get close and water continued to gush out. Don finally came, Marlena was napping and woke up as I was calling Don, so she started crying. Don used his thumb to stop the water and I tried, but couldn't manage it, to turn the knob. Don finally managed it, and I scrambled to get towels to mop up all the water. It was all over the place! But the water kept leaking. Don tried to find the water shut-off valve, but couldn't. We finally called the management company, were told where the valve was, Don shut it off and the management company called the plumber. A side note, when Don shut the water off, he shut it off for all 6 units in our building, so no one had any water from about 4:30 pm onwards...

The plumber eventually came. We all thought the valves under the sink were leaky, but it turned out to be more complicated than that and the plumber had to cut into the wall under our sink, refit both pipes (because the 2nd valve busted too as he was checking what was going on) and put on new valves, which are way better than the old ones anyway.

Two hours later the plumber was done - by the way, while we were waiting for the plumber I continued with dismantling the faucet. Figured, why not, the water's shut off now, may as well do it now. Now it was my turn to install the new faucet and it didn't turn out to be that hard at all. According to the info I found on the Internet (great resources for replacing your kitchen faucet) it should only take an hour, barring unforseen issues. Well, we had issues, but the installation of the faucet itself was pretty easy and now we have a new faucet that no longer leakes, has a pull out spout, and is easier to move around. Hooray for me!

The 2nd project will be tackled tomorrow - installing a front tray in front of the sink so we can store out scrubbies there rather than on the sink. Don has already removed the face board, we just need to screw on the hardware and the little tray thingy. Maybe once it's all done I'll take a picture to show off my handy work.

Happy Birthday to Marlena

Here is a little video of Marlena's birthday. We had a bbq down at the beach and chocolate-zucchini cupcakes for the birthday cake. Please excuse the angle at which the video was taken - Marlena's friend's dad took the video.

Hier ist ein kurzes Video von Marlena ihren ersten Geburtstag. We haben am Strand gegrillt und danach cupcakes gegessen - chocolate-zucchini cupcakes. Das Video hat der Vater Marlena ihre Freundin gemacht und deshalb muss man sich auf der Seite liegen um den Video zu sehen.

Merry Christmas (belatedly) and Happy New Year

Stacking Rings...

Rockin' in front of the Christmas tree...

Visit with Santa

What you've all been waiting for...

video of Marlena walking!

Marlena meets a box of Kleenex

The sun, the surf the sand on November 20, 2006

Part I



Part II

Daddy and Marlena Moments

from November 19, 2006

Some silly moments from November 17, 2006...

New skills that aren't so new anymore...

Neue Fähigkeiten die nicht mehr so neu sind...

From November 16, 2006

A Winter's Day...

Took Marlena out for an afternoon stroll at the beach. A little chilly, was in the high 60's. Had to put on a long-sleeved onsie.

Two Videos from November 12, 2006...

Part I / Erste Teil



Part II / Zweiter Teil

Marlena is still sleeping so....

I'll post some more pictures... These are from October. We didn't dress Marlena up for Halloween, but we did take her to a pumpkin patch. Maybe I'll also load another video.

Da Marlena immer noch am schlafen ist werde ich die Bilder von Oktober auf laden. Und vielleicht auch noch ein Video... Viel Spaß daran!