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Here’s Girlie doing her new ’stunts’ all by herself…with no stunt double help at all!
This crib isn’t one of those weird European round cribs…she’s really supposed to be on her back and not turned sideways. It’s a bit hard to see with her blanket covering it up, but her foot is actually sticking out of the crib, too. She must have been pretty comfy because she took a long nap sleeping this way!
Ms. Girlie has learned to clap her hands. Lisa (one of her God Mamas) and Devin (her future Mr. Right) taught her how to clap her hands yesterday. Whenever she sees us clap or when we say “Yea Jannah” she claps her little chubby hands and gives the best smile ever. She gets so excited her little feet clap together, too.
Crawling is coming….aaaaahhhh. I can see it will be arriving to the SusQ household very soon and it’s scary knowing that soon enough I’ll put her down in one place, turn my back for a minute and before I know it she’ll be in the next room drinking out of the toilet. Which reminds me….I’ve gotta start leaving the lid down!
Bathtime fun! Trying to drink the tub water is this silly babe’s specialty. Oh, and getting both her parents soak and wet from her crazy splashing is high on her priority list as well.
And to end this post we wanted to show our new/used toy. Erik and I enjoy a little old school ‘Mario Cart’ once in awhile. Currently, I suck at this game- big time….I’m afraid to play against Girlie for fear of getting my butt kicked by her, too!
This is hard for me to write about, but I want to get some stuff out and the SusQ blog, besides chatting with the hubby, is the best place for me to do it. So here goes.
I’ve been thinking and overanylizing and mumbling to myself about a lot of things lately. It’s about everything and anything, but lately it’s been focused on my faith and myself and who I am. While I think everyone really needs to examine their lives from time to time, I’ve been at this for quite a while now. I’m getting a bit tired of it. My brain needs a vacation. Actually, all of me could use a nice sunny beach and a margarita, but that’s just a result of living in freezing cold snowy Wisconsin.
Maybe this is happening because of the arrival of motherhood and my great sense of responsibility to Jannah, who knows. So…here’s what’s troubling me and making me over-think and pull out my hair. (Did I mention that this kinda sucks….)
#1: I have a problem accepting compliments from people and in general seem to have an issue with believing the positive ones while focusing on the negative and/or critical ones. Is the answer to this that I have a problem with letting myself feel too guilty, or do I have low self esteem or just faulty brain wiring? It’s like I can logically make sense of what is being said and realize the truth in it, but somehow I can’t let myself accept it. I’ve never thought of my self esteem as terribly low or unhealthy, but each time someone compliments me (especially about how I look nice, or seem to have lost some weight or something like that) I seem to freeze up and deny myself the thought of, “yeah, I guess they could be right about that.” So…mommies and women and sure, I guess men, too…well, anyone who seems to think you’ve got some advice for me….advise on, please!
#2: Maybe this is all just connected to number one, but I’m reading a book that’s talking about grace. It’s all about how God loves and accepts you how you are and no matter what you do that is bad or good nothing can change the fact that He loves you. While I believe that, I’m still feeling like I need to do something to earn God’s love. I think this is normal and something that just needs to be worked out, but anyone else out there relate to this issue? Any great ideas?
Welcome to the inner workings of my mind people. Sorry to have put you through that, but it just needed to explode from my typing fingers. Any wisdom, advise, thoughts and prayers for my mind to start working correctly would be appreciated! Thankfully I’ve got today off (whoopee) and I’m planning on enjoying every bit of it. I’m getting a haircut today and hoping to do some relaxing and no more un-fun thinking.
Looking forward to hearing from you….
Usually when I go searching for a new childcare family I spend a few weeks looking around and begging people to spread the word that I’ve got an opening available. Not this time. I’m all set…already! I can’t believe it happened so quickly. I’ll be caring for 14 month old Isabel part time. I met with her Mom this morning and it all seemed like it should work well for both of us. She starts on Wednesday. One quick thing to share that I thought was so cool is that her Dad is Mexican and the family only speaks Spanish at home. I hope I learn a bit from her, should be fun to see her learning both languages. Now I have an excuse to use the word lechuga (Spanish for lettuce…isn’t that the most fun sounding word ever…just say it, you’ll see what I mean…only really exaggerate the ‘u’ sound.) Looking ahead I think the most difficult thing will be getting her to feel comfortable at my house and getting her to fall asleep at nap by herself. I think after the transition period it’ll work out great. Phew…that’s done with.
Well in news from the home front, Girlie has learned another new trick. This one is not so fun. It makes me freak out. Usually at nap time she sort of scoots around and plays and talks and then falls asleep. Now, she’s added another item to her routine- rolling over onto her stomach. I found her snoring away this morning sideways in her crib, on her tummy with a foot sticking out through the crib slats. I’m working on trying to stop being paranoid she’s going to suffocate and I’m especially trying to stop flipping her over onto her back. I figure this is a new phase and she’s past all the scary SIDS stuff now anyways.
Today at lunch Girlie may have began another new trick as well. Oh, I’m prayin’ she hasn’t figured this out yet. Right before lunch she was ‘examining’ a safety lock on a cupboard…you know, to just double check it and make sure it was baby proof enough, it wasn’t. Anyhoo, she’s playing with it, I take it away and try distracting her with squash, sweet potatoes and peas…I figured food is a good distraction for me, I’m sure it’ll be a great one for her, too–WRONG! All through lunch she was arching her back to look behind her at the safety lock and all through her meal she yelled, complained and mushed her food…well the mushing’s normal I guess. It was almost…oh no…please no….a tantrum!! For my sake and hers let’s just hope she hasn’t figured out how to demand something and cry when she doesn’t get it. I’m sure you will all be updated with any new tantrum discoveries I make. And by updated I mean you’ll get to read about me whining and complaining and crying with despair while pulling out my hair.
Sounds fun, huh! Stay tuned…
Well, I guess Mother Nature decided to give us a break….or…..the weather people were WAY off like normal! We got around one, yep as in o n e inch of snow. Erik was very happy to spend about two nanoseconds shoveling this morning, compared with the one hour from the past couple of storms. I’ve got an interview with a family tomorrow for possible part time childcare (yippee). We’ll see what happens. Nighty night blogland.
We had a great weekendwith Erik’s parents and our soon to be sister-in-law Juli visiting. My brother-in-law, Luke, is in Scotland doing research for his dissertation and is coming home in less than a month….he was sad to miss out on our fun weekend together and we missed him being here with us. Here’s a picture of the lovebirds being all cute and lovey dovey….hold on while I gag….phew recovered….but seriously, all kidding aside, they’re great for each other and very much in luuuvvvvv. Our whole family is very excited for them both.
There was so much that happened, here are some of my highlights from the visit. Everyone tagged along to the parent/tot swimming class we go to on Saturdays. Yes, I let half my family see me in the middle of the winter in a swimming suit, it was a bit humiliating and I tried to ’sink’ down in the pool a lot as you can see from the
picture below. Girlie’s sporting her very cool tankini polkadot swimsuit and chopping away at the toy balls. She’s been a big chomper lately due to her new teeth coming in. Over the past two weeks four new teeth have come through bringing her new grand total to six sharp teeth!!
The other highlight for me was bridesmaid dress shopping for Juli and Luke’s wedding. I’m very honored to be in their wedding this August and probably had the most fun I’ve ever had picking out a dress. Juli decided to let all the girls in the wedding pick any dress they wanted, as long as it came in the color apple red. Juli, my mother-in-law Jo and I set out for David’s Bridal and I tried on about 8 to 10 dresses. I still can’t believe the one I got! It’s strapless…and I’ve always said I don’t do strapless because no one needs to see my dress fall down to my waist and besides I’d just plain die and go stark raving mad if that ever happened to me and never ever ever recover. Yeah, yeah, I know I’m a drama queen. Well, of all the dresses I tried on I was shocked to see that the best fitting and most comfortable were two strapless dresses. So I went for it and chose the va voom oo la la strapless dress that fortunately Juli loved and hoped someone would choose. I’m praying I find a very talented tailor who will keep the sucker up while I carry around a one year old Girlie and somehow still let me breathe throughout the day. When we got home from our big trip we told Erik that the dress I chose was strapless and his eyes popped out of his head….it was a funny sight, I think he was a bit surprised by my boldness 
Note: The model in the dress below is probably a freaking size zero…feel free to hate her for that. Just don’t throw anything too big at your computer screen–wouldn’t want you to break it or anything.
After our big shopping trip we celebrated Juli’s birthday by giving her a little surprise party complete with presents, dinner out and an enormous Dairy Queen ice cream cake…oh yeah baby. We also spent a lot of time relating this weekend. This is the Brekke word for chatting about anything from theology or politics (the deep stuff) to general things- like our summer vacation plans. Juli and I did a lot of relating. We enjoyed sipping some wine and chatting late into Saturday night. It’s so great to have gained this new friendship, I’m looking forward to getting to know her even better. It’ll be so cool having a sister!
Jannah’s looking like she’s going to go after Juli in this picture. Even though Grandpa Chris reassured her that she’s still the ‘wonder baby’ and he’ll take her picture later, she was a bit jealous about sharing the spotlight with Juli. She quickly recovered after eating some tissue paper from Juli’s gifts.
My last highlight of the weekend was our weather on Sunday. It was a steamy 30+ degrees outside and it felt a bit like spring with all the melting ice puddles everywhere. Erik and I took Girlie on a walk in our new/used backpack carrier and chatted about how fun our weekend was. Ah….spring, we had a glimpse of it. But, in a cruel twist of mother nature fate we’re under a snow storm advisory today starting at noon. Southern Wisconsin can expect anywhere from 4 to 10 inches of snow starting this afternoon and ending tomorrow morning. Crap. More stinkin’ snow.
