The Chicago Way

Here in Chicago we headed to the polls today to elect a mayor and neighborhood Aldermen.

After her first parent teacher conference we made our way to the poll. Not to digress but parent teacher conferences for a two year old, that is funny. We were not told that Amelia is the class bully, steals from other kids or is disruptive to her class so I would say it was successful.

Back to voting. I told her we were headed to vote. To which she said, "burp? say scuse me." I then tried to correct her by telling her, "no we aren't going to burp we are going to vote. But yes if you were to burp you should say excuse me." Her response, "I want to go with mama to ride a boat." Third time was a charm and she did walk into the polling place saying, "I go vote."

In the city where the deceased historically have voted and the presumed winner wasn't even cleared to be on the ballot until the day after they started printing ballots Amelia figured she could cast a ballot. She LOVED the touch screen ballots and proudly left with her "I Voted" sticker.

Feeling the Love

Surely Amelia felt lots of love this Valentine's Day. Her holiday started with a trip to Midway to pick-up GranAnn. We normally make our airport runs during nap time so Amelia thought it was pretty cool to get to go with me to the airport. Amelia and GranAnn spent lots of time in the kitchen making homemade play dough (a vintage recipe from Raintree where Merrill and I spent our young years), sugar cookies and washing lots of dishes. I really am beginning to think we could get Amelia a job washing dishes as she could spend all day long in front of the sink and we could use the extra money.

The hired help in action (with my flowers).

I LOVE LOVE LOVE french toast topped with a berry compote which I typically get homemade for Mother's Day, birthday, Valentine's Day and the like. Of course there could not be activity in the kitchen without Amelia helping out. Oh, and don't forget Elmo and "Monster Cookie" who are never more than an arm's reach away from Amelia.

One of Amelia's many Valentine's gifts was some kiddie kitchen gear from GranAnn. Here she is testing out her new giraffe whisk.

We do have utensils in our home and you can even see the one she had been given to use. When the goal is to eat nothing but syrup for breakfast I suppose licking the plate is more efficient than a spoon or fork.
Loving her sugar!
Our little fashionista loaded up on new clothes from both her Grandma's this Valentine's Day. This is a good thing considering she recently has started going through no less than three outfits a day. The outfit changes have nothing to do with potty training but are all about fashion. She takes her clothes picking out seriously.

Amelia got her first flower which came all the way from Papa in Phoenix and is still proudly displayed in a sippy cup.

Baby It's Cold

We've spent a lot of time at home since the first of the year. Between the lovely gray Chicago winter and my nesting instincts I have come up with all kinds of projects. We have been busy getting our master bedroom and bathroom done (finally), turning Amelia's room into a room for two, putting shelving in many of our "undershelved" closets and other miscellaneous projects. Mark and Amelia have been very patient putting up with many weekend mornings of Home Depot, Pottery Barn, West Elm, Target, etc. I think their patience and our credit card need a break. We are almost done with all the projects so now we can focus on our last weeks of a family of three.

Amelia has been working on perfecting her makeup applying skills. I don't think brown eye shadow is the best color for her cheeks.

Last week Amelia's new toddler bed arrived. We decided to get it and let her warm up to the idea of a bed instead of her crib. She was so excited and from the moment it was put together she has insisted in sleeping in her, "big girl bed."

Amelia has been very helpful with all the projects. She spackled holes in her closet, unfolded all the clothes that had just been organized and lost screws that were to be put in her new bed.
A happy girl playing on her new bed. She gets so excited to go to sleep in her bed but she has had some trouble falling asleep and waking up at night. We wondered how long it would take her to realize that if she wasn't happy in the bed she could get herself out of it. Well during nap time today we heard some drawers closing and when we went into her room she had taken out a bunch of baby toys (that I had just put away) and was pulling her wipes out of her dresser. I asked her what she was doing and she said, "Mama I blow my nose." There is nothing Amelia hates more than having her nose blown so I highly doubt that was what she was doing. Mark was proud of her as he thought that her comment showed that she can think on her feet.

Oh, yes we also got a little bit of snow this week. Chicago Public Schools have not had a snow day since 1999 and they had two this week. Here in Chicago we are pretty tough about snow. So what if you get 6" of snow? Put your boots on and get to the train. The 20" of snow that came Tuesday night sure put the City on pause. Both of our offices were closed Wednesday so we had our first family snow day. Amelia woke-up to Dada outside shoveling. She took this photograph of Dada shoveling while giggling hysterically. I'm not sure why she found Mark shoveling so hilarious but I don't think he was laughing at the four foot snow drifts across our driveway. This was the view out our window at about noon Wednesday. The plows had pilled up so much snow that SUV's had snow within two feet of their roofs and the snow was blowing so hard the streets looked like they had five feet of snow covering them.
What else does a girl do on a snow day in February but bake red velvet cupcakes? Our little Betty Crocker loves to pour the ingredients in the bowl, stir the batter and sit and wait for her goodies to come out of the oven.
The proud baker and her fabulous cupcakes!

Christmas Vacation

We started our long Christmas vacation celebrating with the Lang Family in Waukegan. The kids didn't know that we were having a contest to determine who was the best behaved but we were. Charlie won by a long shot as there really was no competition. I think part of where we (and by we I mean Mark) went wrong was getting the girls as hyper as possible right before we sat down to dinner.

We couldn't get Amelia to sit at the table for anything as she kept telling us that she wanted to go play upstairs with Georgia and Dada. She proceeded to spend our Christmas meal sitting on the stairs and crying. It was lovely background noise to our meal.How do you finally get two little girls to behave themselves at the same time? Why of course you put them in front of their Grandma's cookie tray. Seeing how JuJu is infamous for her Christmas cookies there were plenty so the girls didn't have to worry about sharing which probably would have turned a lovely moment into a series of, "mine."The grandkids (and us parents) were all good and spoiled. Amelia didn't waste any time getting to work on her new laptop and cell phone while wearing her new sweater.

We woke up on Christmas Eve and hit the road to Kansas. It was a somewhat eventful drive and after eleven hours on the road in a snow storm, witnessing a spin out accident in front of us and seeing many cars in the ditch we arrived safely in Lawrence. Amelia really could not have been any better. I was expecting a road trip companion similar to LB but low and behold Amelia was happily entertained in her carseat the whole ride.
Of course Amelia spoiling didn't end when we left Illinois. The highlights of her Christmas in Lawrence were her grocery cart from GranAnn and bag of fishy crackers from Papa. She made it clear that the bag of fishies was hers. She was right as the present did have her name on it but you would think she could have shared a fish or two. Auntie M helped herself to A fish and got caught by Miss. MINE.
My mom was so sweet and had a friend show up dressed as Santa on Christmas morning and bring Amelia a keyboard. Amelia FREAKED out. She wailed, tried to climbed me and was an overall mess. This picture tells the story. It really was pretty hilarious.

The excessive sugar didn't end either when we left Illinois. I think we all ate a year's worth of sugar while in Kansas. Thank goodness my glucose test was before Christmas. I asked Amelia what her favorite part of going to GranAnn's house was and she said, "snowman cookies."

We checked out the ceramics studio in Lawrence where Amelia made a serving platter for GranAnn and coffee mug for Dada.

Overall we had a wonderful week in Kansas, caught a game at Allen Fieldhouse, hit up some of our favorite restaurants, drank lots of local Kansas beer (Mark of course did that, not me) and got to spend time with many friends that we miss dearly. I didn't manage to take pictures at any of those get togethers so if anyone has any please share!

After spending New Years at the Meyers we headed back to Chicago and were treated to an uneventful drive. Now that we are back home we are going to be busy working on potty training, home projects we want done before #2 arrives and sharing. "This is mine" has become Amelia's favorite phrase and I don't think her losing her only child status is going to help......

Holiday Spirit

So I was feeling like there was really no reason to decorate for Christmas this year. Between plans to spend Christmas in Kansas and not hosting any holiday functions it seemed like kind of a waste of time to decorate for just Mark, Amelia and I. It isn't that I'm Scrooge I was just feeling lazy. My change of heart can be attributed to two events; (1) waking up the other Saturday to the most beautiful snow and (2) Mark was adamant that we would have Christmas decorations and so he told me that if I didn't feel up to it he would take care of it. There is nothing like Mark threatening to decorate to get me motivated!Amelia seemed to enjoy picking out a Christmas tree and the first snow storm of the season. Then dad had to go and throw snowballs at her which she wasn't too sure about. He claims it was perfect snowball snow so how could he resist......After bringing home the perfect tree it was time for Mark to get to work shoveling. It didn't take long for Amelia to realize what Mark was doing. She pointed to the garage and said "shovel" and insisted on going outside to help. Without Amelia and her pink beach toy I just don't know how Mark would have ever gotten it done.

Clearly, she was an enormous help.Does anyone know how to get a toddler to wear gloves/mittens? She refuses and her poor little hands were frozen by the time we got inside.

And then there was her daycare's holiday show. Amelia's classroom "performed" to Alvin and the Chipmunk's "Christmas Don't be Late." Hilarious is all I can say to twelve two-year olds dressed in their Chipmunk style initial shirts "dancing" to a song on stage. Our shy little girl kind of hung in the back but danced the entire song with a huge smile on her face.

A Second Birthday, Sunshine Therapy, Family and a Turkey

We have just gotten home from an amazing time in Phoenix celebrating Thanksgiving and Amelia's second birthday.

A Second Birthday,

Amelia started off her special day by making cupcakes with Papa and JuJu.Had JuJu gotten involved in the kitchen earlier I have a feeling that Amelia wouldn't have eaten her weight in raw batter. After feasting on raw eggs she went for a spin around the yard with dad and Poppy. After her exciting day of raw food and being tossed around I got my special time with her when she came to find me just in time to get sick all over the carpet...

Sunshine Therapy (even if it was the coldest T-Day in Phoenix in 80 years),This is proof of the spin Amelia took around the yard after filling up on raw eggs.It is SO easy to waste away a good part of the day while enjoying my dad's yard and the Phoenix sun. As JuJu and Poppy drove in from Palm Desert the sunshine is old news to them.

Oh, Amelia was such a happy,

happy,happy girl feeling the sun on her face. Poor think had no idea she was going to have to go back to Chicago to face the Chicago winter.

Family,

We enjoyed family outing to the Phoenix zoo. Amelia was pretty upset that she couldn't see the gorillas as the exhibit was closed. We told her they weren't home as they were on vacation just like she was. After that she seemed okay.Amelia loves to answer the question, "what does mama do when she goes to work?" To which she replies, "Mama architect, Mama work in high building, Papa architect." Amelia got to show off her design and building skills while building a gingerbread house with Papa.

Are we going to have three generations of architects? It would beat three generations of attorneys, right?

Two of her favorites; bubbles and Auntie M.

She so wasn't into the goats at the petting zoo but Auntie M on the other hand could have stayed all day.

Proof that I'm not depriving the baby of yummy and ample food. This would be Amelia wearing make-up thanks to Auntie M. Sorry to my make-up savvy friends for Amelia's rather sloppy introduction to make-up. She will probably need your help one day.

Amelia has now learned the word trouble as Papa likes to ask her, "should we go get in trouble?"

She was not happy when Papa went to take a shower one morning thus stood outside banging on the door. We realized when we couldn't see her anymore and could hear her giggles that she must have gotten into the bathroom. She couldn't have been happier splashing around in Papa's shower. And no, Papa was not in the shower and was fully clothed when we all went in to smile at Amelia.

How about when Amelia woke up and heaven forbid there weren't any bananas? Well she demanded, "Papa store bananas." It only took about 5 seconds before Papa was up, shoes on, keys in hand ready to take her highness to the store. She arrived back with an enormous smile on her face and an equally enormous M&M cookie. Breakfast of champions. Amelia has to share the birthday month of November with Auntie M. Seriously remind my dad not to buy Merrill a camera again for her birthday. She CONSTANTLY felt the need to take pictures of EVERYTHING; Mark and I sitting on the couch, tigers at the zoo, her slippers, dad's living room, etc. Finally her camera got turned on her!

and a Turkey

Well I think the turkey was good but then again I'm not much a turkey fan to begin with. We grilled the turkey and the meat was great but the skin got a little chared and the drippings were ruined. Don't bring the subject up to Merrill for a few more years as she is still very upset about the lack of gravy......