Big Girl Bedroom

It took us about 4 months of gradual work, but we finally got Rachel moved into her big girl bedroom last week. The transition was pretty seamless. She slept straight through the night the very first night she slept in her new room. She seems to think she isn't supposed to get out of bed without us, which makes me feel better that she won't be wandering around the house in the dark.

All we have left to do is some of the detail work in painting stencils on the wall. My brother designed some flower and bug stencils for us to use on the walls, and I need to get the paint matched against the bedding, and we will paint those on the walls. I also have some of the wall phrases that a friend gave to us when Rachel was born, and I have been saving them for her more permanent room. And obviously some window dressings. But this is the incredible transformation from a blue room with airplanes to a pink room with flowers and butterflies!

Happy Holidays!

I haven't blogged since we made our major announcement, so in case you don't know, The Wood family is expecting a new member in July 2011! We are NOT finding out the gender until the baby is born, so until then, we will affectionately refer to him/her as Baby Bean. My pregnancy has been quite different from the last one so far. The morning sickness was vicious at first, but it leveled out and has been far more predictable since. So long as I keep the baby fed, it doesn't bother me much. I also am surprised that with as much as I have been eating, and as big as my stomach is already swelling, I haven't gained much weight. I have basically gained back what I lost when I started Weight Watchers a few weeks prior to getting pregnant. I am aiming for a lower weight gain this time, but we will see where Baby Bean takes me!

That was the major news from November, although we did have a lovely holiday season all around.

Winter came early to Ohio, which I love. Though my dear friend Kim isn't too fond of the white stuff, I enjoy the 3-4 months a year where I can bundle up and see the beautiful snow on the ground out there. I am by no means a hot weather person. It will be interesting to see how I do with this pregnancy, which goes much farther into summer than I did with Rachel.

Rachel actually began to understand Christmas this year, though I had a difficult time explaining the difference between Santa and Jesus. The two seemed to intermingle in my Christmas talk. She loves the lights and the decorations, and she now requests Christmas songs with her normal lullabies (which include Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star; the Alphabet Song; the OSU fight song; and Carmen Ohio). She had a great Christmas overall. Santa brought her a lot of learning games, a new Toy Story pull-out couch/bed, a motorized Quad (that goes a whopping 2 mph), and some dress-up clothes. She also got a lot of stuff for her new room, which I am happy to say is almost finished. We have her bed in there now, and she has been sleeping in there the last couple of nights, with no major episodes. The coolest "decoration" she received for her room was a new aquarium with two goldfish, which she decided to name "Dora" and "Boots."

Duane and I both have been off this week with Rachel, and we have really enjoyed the extra time with her. Duane especially enjoyed being able to take her to the doctor with me on Tuesday for her 6-month check-up. She went from the 10th percentile in weight to the 50th! She now weighs 29 pounds and is 34 inches tall. The doctor was really impressed that she knows all her letters and colors. In the car yesterday, I was amazed to hear her counting from 1 to 9...in SPANISH!

For NYE, we decided to stay in and relax. We had the hooplah last year, and although it was fun, it seemed more appropriate this year to kick back and be lazy without all the fuss. Next year we are trying to organize something kid-friendly, since most of our friends will have two kids by that time!

Happy 2011 to everyone! I am really looking forward to a new year!

Scenes from a Two-Year-Old's Life

Rachel got ahold of my small digital camera a couple weeks ago, and it has become her favorite hobby to take pictures of everyone and everything. It is actually really cute watching her, because she will tell you to smile or say cheese, and yet the camera is pointing in the complete opposite direction from you as she takes the picture. Sometimes I try to dive into the picture at the last second so she will get a picture of me, but she usually dives when I dive, so that hasn't worked out too well!

In addition to that hobby, Rachel started her gymnastics last Thursday. For the first week, it was a challenge getting her to understand that she needed to listen to the instructions and do the activities that the instructor was telling her to do. With all of the different activities in the gym, she wanted to do what she wanted to do -- not what the instructor wanted her to do! However, when I took her back the second week (this Thursday), she did SO much better at listening and following instructions. She still gets a bit restless, of course, as most 2-year-olds do when being asked to follow instructions, but I was very happy with how she did. She loves to do anything involving flips and sommersaults. If she seems to continue to enjoy it throughout the next 5 weeks, I will probably sign her up for another session in January, since the weather will still be cold and she will need a good outlet for her energy. I also realized I haven't had many pictures with Rachel lately, so I tried to snap a quick one with her, but she wasn't happy I borrowed "HER" camera.

Looks like we have some ideas for Santa Claus already!!

Speaking of the big guy, I was trying to explain God and Baby Jesus to Rachel yesterday to prepare her for the holiday season. Duane and I really excited this year, because she seems to be able to understand more abstract concepts now, so we are excited to watch her open her presents and realize what she got! However, I don't want the meaning of the holidays to be completely lost on her, so I have been trying to explain the extremely abstract concept of God to her. Not much luck there, but she very much enjoys the choir singing in church, and I am really excited to teach her some Christmas carols!

Today, I am headed to my second Buckeye game of the season with my mommy! We are going down to do a bit of pre-game drinking and then going to cheer on our Buckeyes! College GameDay is down at the 'Shoe this week, so it will be a madhouse, but I am really looking forward to it!!

October!!

I love October. Not quite as much as I like November and December, but it sure beats August and September. I am definitely a fan of the cooler weather, and even though I never particularly cared for Halloween (at least not since I turned old enough to stop trick-or-treating), I am starting to enjoy shopping for pumpkins, buying costumes for Rachel, and all the fun stuff that comes with this very odd holiday.

Duane bought a 50 cc dirt bike from a friend of his, and he took Rachel for a ride a couple of weeks ago. She LOVES it. She is definitely her father's daughter. We had to go out and buy her a Dora the Explorer helmet because whenever Duane has that thing out, she wants to be on it with him. Duane is determined to get her into road racing.

This weekend, we went to Pigeon Roost Farm to take Rachel pumpkin shopping. This was our second attempt, but it was definitely a beautiful day to go. It was cool, but not cold, and the sun was shining. Rachel seemed to enjoy all the pumpkins, but she especially loved the animals. She stared at the billy goats for a long time, and I think we will have to take her back so she can go through the fun center and play on all the slides and interact with some more animals.

This week, I will continue working too much (freelance) and my best friend is having her second son on Monday!! I am taking Tuesday off to visit her in the hospital, and then Friday is another day off to go to the Circleville Pumpkin Show! I remember going to the Pumpkin Show when I was pregnant with Rachel. I was so excited to think that one day I would be taking my children to the Pumpkin Show and sharing the excitement of Fall with them. I hope she enjoys it!

We also get our new carpet in the next week or so! We ordered new carpet for Rachel's new room (pictures to come soon!) and our family room, which has had the same dirty white Berber carpet for far too long. Given the fact that we have a messy child and a dog that tends to pee a lot, we ordered longer shag carpet to hide the messes. I am so excited to be getting some of our house projects done!

MY GIRL!

From the moment I found out I was having a daughter, I wondered what I would do when her hair got long enough that it would need to be styled. I am a bit bit handicapped when it comes to hair. I have just never had the skill to style my own hair. So I was a little worried about doing Rachel's. And until recently, that wasn't much of an issue, because her hair wasn't really long enough to style! But I decided a couple of weeks ago to try to put her hair in twin pigtails, so I asked her if she would like that and she agreed.

The first attempt was a challenge. The pigtails weren't even, and her hair is still too short in some spots, so she had a lot of bangs. I ended up buying a new brush for her, as well as a bottle to spray her hair and wet it down before pulling it back.

The latest attempts are pretty impressive! Rachel actually has become quite interested in styling her hair. She tells me, "I look pitty momma." I let her choose one thing at Target last Thursday because she was well-behaved, and she chose headbands. I guess her cousin Caden was fighting over those today.

And speaking of Caden, he is going to have a little sister! My sister-in-law Jen and brother-in-law Phil got confirmation yesterday that their baby is a little girl! We are so excited for Rachel to have a girl close to her age now. I have been teaching her how to say the name, and I am excited to go through all our baby clothes to see if anything will work for them.

This weekend I am looking forward to relaxing and watching football on Saturday. The weather has started to turn toward Fall weather, and I love that! There are good things in store for this Fall -- I can feel it!

Remembering

It was 9 years ago today. I woke up, got my newspaper, prepared some breakfast. I started reading my paper in preparation for my first class of the day. This was a news media class, and the professor would quiz us on the headlines of the day.

I turned on Good Morning America to help cover more bases at once. About 15 minutes into my viewing, they cut over to NYC, as there were reports of a small plane hitting one of the World Trade Centers. Smoke billowed from the tower, and I looked on in amazement. How could a plane hit such a tall skyscraper? And as I sat there, horrified, I watched as another plane entered the picture and hit the other tower. It was then that everyone watching realized that this was no accident. We were under attack. I watched throughout the day as efforts were made to save the people in the towers, as we discovered that the Pentagon had also been hit, and that a plane had crashed in Pennsylvania -- a plane that was later revealed to be heading toward the White House, but fell short because the passengers refused to allow the terrorists to fulfill their plan. I watched with friends as the towers fell to the ground, and we cried together, stunned and filled with sorrow.

I had never been to NYC before 9.11.01. But I found myself living there nearly 2 years later, just on the other side of the river. Duane and I visited the site of the WTC a few times while we lived there, and I could only imagine having been there for the events of that horrible day. On September 11, 2003, we saw the lights they projected upward in remembrance of where the towers used to stand tall, and I was filled with pride of my country.

Even when I looked for some pictures to post to this blog, some of the images brought me such sadness that I had to stop looking. We lost so many wonderful people because of a terrible hatred that exists in others. People who went to work like it was any other day; firefighters, police officers, and EMTs who devoted their lives to saving the lives of others; people who got on planes just trying to get home to loved ones. I remember today all of those people and I am grateful for those who are still here with us. I remember what happened on September 11, 2001, and I pray that this world can find peace so that this never happens to anyone again.

LABOR DAY WEEKEND!!

As soon as I found out the Buckeyes would be playing in a Thursday night game for their season opener, I requested the following Friday off of work. Because this was the Friday before Labor Day, that made for a nice 4-day weekend, but since I have been sandbagging my vacation days (due to my heavy work schedule), I was able to also request Tuesday off and create a nice 5-day weekend!

My friend Lawrene made the mistake of telling me she had never been to a Buckeyes game before. Given my fortunate ticket connections, I was able to work up some tickets for us, and we went tailgating and headed to the first game of the 2010 season together. Unfortunately for Lawrene, she had to sit with me. I am quite...spirited...when it comes to the Buckeyes. We were winning by 4 touchdowns, and I was still screaming at the defense to get their act together, still screaming at the offense to make smarter plays, still screaming at the coaches about the special teams blunders...

I don't feel I am a hindrance to others' enjoyment of the game, but I get my money's worth for sure. And I support my team.

My aunt's seats were quite excellent too, so I am hoping we can get some more tickets throughout the year, but I am always grateful to get those that I get. Duane found a nice tailgate connection too--right outside the stadium--so that is going to pay off. And I swear I saw Kirk Herbstreit and his family walking near the stadium! I don't know if I buy into the hype about the Buckeyes just yet, but they are better than last year!

Friday I actually had to head into work for a few hours, and my boss granted me a half-day of vacation time in return. Then I began painting Rachel's new room (pictures to come). It made me pretty excited for finishing it off and getting her moved over! Saturday we did some more housework and painting. Then Sunday we held our fantasy draft at the house. My team turned out okay, though I didn't get all the players I would have liked because I ended up last.

Monday morning, I headed up to Indian Lake to help celebrate my parents' new house on the water. They invited all of their closest friends to see the new place, and it was a great time. Rachel really takes to the water -- she helped her Hoppa drive the boat!

Then all the men left and we began the kickoff to Women's Week -- a tradition where all the ladies party at the lake for a week, with no men around! Lots of good food, cards, games, laughs, drinks, boating, and more. And it is even better in the new house -- we had some boat malfunctions today, but we just sat on the boat parked in the dock and ate and felt the wind and the water blow us around a bit. The new place is really several steps up from the old one. I had so much fun sharing my childhood retreat with my daughter and seeing it through her eyes as my parents must have seen it through mine once. I spent so many weekends at the lake when I was younger, and I just feel so blessed that my parents were in a position to provide that for us and for our family friends, who are more like family than anything. I just wish I didn't have to come home and go to work tomorrow! This is my last short week scheduled until my friend Kim has her baby -- it will be rough working 5-day weeks again!

But this weekend, I am looking forward to the rematch of the 2003 National Championship game (Buckeyes vs. Hurricanes)! And then next weekend I am throwing a diaper/formula shower for the aforementioned pregnant friend. Since this is her second boy, she doesn't need a ton of stuff, but diapers and formula always help! It is also a chance for her to relax for the evening and just enjoy being around her friends for a few hours, with some good food and some good cake!