Kitchen Work Starts Next Week

That's right folks.  The long awaited 2010 Weidner Kitchen Remodel is about to begin.  Stay tuned.

Willa's first haircut

This week Willa had her first haircut.  It was basically a trim but it was still a pretty big deal.  She started off kind of timid, but warmed up pretty quickly.  By the end, she was ready for her glamour shots!

Happy Birthday to Willa!

We haven't been very good about updating the blog lately. A toddler, two full-time jobs, a houseguest for 2.5 months, and an upcoming major home project have all taken up our free time these last few months.

I couldn't let this day pass without acknowledging our favorite little girl's birthday. Willa turned three today and it was a wonderful day. She has shown a new sense of maturity in just the last few weeks - she's willing to play independently which allows Markus and I to get a few extra things done (or done more quickly), her language continues to explode, and she's bouncing and balancing and hopping and skipping and jumping around. She's so much fun right now!

There are some tantrums, but not like we experienced a few months ago - and even those were mild. She's a good listener, which she's proud of, and overall seems to be a happy little girl.

Occasionally our patience is tested, but on days like today, Markus and I are both reminded of our lucky we are to be parents of such a beautiful, caring, smart, energetic, healthy, funny little girl.

Happy 3rd Birthday, Willa!

This kitchen won't last

Yes, we are finally doing a kitchen rehab... after only 5 years of talking about it.  It's going to be awesome:

Liebherr 30 inch refrigerator
Bartazonni 36" dual fuel range
Bosch dishwasher
GE Monogram Advantium Speedoven
and a wine fridge... TBD

I'm also hopeing to do a cool AV system with speakers mounted outside for entertaining!

Here's the old kitchen in case you forget how we still rock the 80s hard.

Willa's first visit to the dentist

Here's Willa before the dentist...

Here's Willa AFTER the dentist!!

Note from Christie: Please excuse how awful I look! It's allergy season and I was still half-asleep. We wanted to share the photos of Willa's visit, so I'm taking one for the team. :-)

December - February Photos

We are long overdue on some posts, but it's been a hectic few months.

The holidays are always hectic. In January, Christie's travel picked up as she prepared for her project launch. January and February were heavy work times, while Markus did extra daddy duty to pick up the slack.

Willa has had the normal winter colds, the occasional bad day (whining, tantrums, no nap or any number of things), but is mostly having a great winter. She's fully potty-trained now, which is wonderful! Her vocabulary and language are both pretty impressive. I'm her mom so I'm supposed to think that, but the pediatrician commented that she has "sophisticated language skills". Perhaps all of my over-talking is paying off for her! She loves to sing and likes to play pretend games now. Her mind is growing. Often times, she's Gunner or Cole (my parents' and sister's dogs) and I'm the other, or she'll say "I'm making pizza dough, who wants some" and we all pretend to eat the pizza.

She loves to sing - actual songs and made-up ones. I get lots of special requests at bedtime ("Mommy, sing a song about Coley" or "Mommy, sing a song about Curious George and the Bunny"). I'm no singer or songwriter, that poor child, but she seems to like whatever song I come up with no matter how poorly I sing or what the words are.

The other thing that makes us laugh a lot is also language-related. She's started understanding past tense but doesn't conjugate verbs correctly yet, or get the pronouns right (everyone is a her), or get the prepositions quite right. I love it because it's been fascinating to hear her language develop and it's so cute and funny to listen to. See below for examples:

"The squirrel flewed!"
"I tooked the cup and blah blah blah"
"I sawed the XXX"
"Zachary put it in her foot" (instead of on his foot - poor Zack!)

Now that she talks in 8-9 word sentences, all of these mix-ups make us laugh out loud. The other thing is that she's very particular about her clothing. She picks out her underwear (organized by character because she has so many pairs courtesy of her Aunt Zee, and just like Zee, Willa is indecisive, so Mommy is trying character piles to help...maybe if she can narrow down to Dora underpants, we'll pick underpants faster...experiment results forthcoming!), and usually her whole outfit - pants and/or skirt (she loves skirts with leggings), socks or tights, shirt, and shoes. She knows what she likes, and she definitely likes to mix patterns (see NYE photos - plaid, hearts, pink, purple, a bit of everything).

Following are lots of albums from the past few months. We post a lot on Facebook now, so maybe we can convert all of the 5 blog reads to Facebook readers. We post video there, too - it's easier than posting here (I can't figure out how to do it). Work has finally calmed down for me - I get 5 whole weeks at home after 6 or 7 trips Jan-Feb. We should be able to post photos more frequently now. Oh, and a kitchen renovation is forthcoming so we'll post those photos, too.

Look how big Willa is now:

New Year's Eve



This album includes a video of Willa swaddling her Baby Marketa. Click on the picture to see the photos and the video:

2010-01-23

This is another album that has 2 videos in it from our Snowpocalypse in February. Click on the picture to see the album and the videos.

2010-02-06 Snowpocalpyse I

Fireplace Install

2009 Holiday Slide Show

Enjoy!

Willa and Abby watch T'Choupi