Swing!

Not much time today but I had a few pictures I wanted to post.

Josh finished his compost bin, and it's the most deluxe compost bin ever. Linda said it could be a fort for Willow.


















Is this the look of someone who's about to get into trouble, or what? If she were a cartoon, she'd have little puffs of smoke behind her, and parallel lines to indicate speed!















In the past week, we've taken Willow to the neighborhood park three times. She loves the swing!!













Have a great week everyone!

Danger, Will Robinson!

"Danger, Will Robinson! Willow can climb the stairs!"

That's the note from Linda that we came home to on Tuesday. Willow can now get a knee up and get up the first stair. Josh's project this weekend (or one of them; his other project is our compost bin) is to get that baby gate up at the bottom of the stairs! Linda says that Willow hardly even wants to be held by her anymore- she just wants to crawl laps around our house with Linda following her. When we're home, we hold her a lot more often because we're always rushing around trying to get stuff done. I guess that's how it is when both parents work.

Willow has decided that she doesn't really like pureed food anymore. She prefers to feed herself. She's finally sort of starting to catch on to chewing. She's not quite ready for, say, cheerios yet, but I did take some cereal and soaked it in breastmilk until it got a little soggy. She liked that a lot. She loves those yogurt bites they make for babies. She loves regular yogurt and blueberries too. Here she is with a food she does not like very much: cauliflower.















Here are some other things that Willow likes and doesn't like right now, other than food:

likes: "The Itsy Bitsy Spider", her toy motorcycle (she can even make motorcycle sounds), walking while holding on to your hands, her pop-up dog book, any book with pop-ups, flaps to lift or other activities, taking off her socks, getting tickled.

dislikes: her vitamins, getting her face and hands wiped, the doctor's. She is scared of the pop-up cow in one of her books, and also the dragon puppet on her exersaucer.

Here are some pictures from Easter out at the camp. The Easter bunny got Willow a little easter "basket" with some gifts.















One of her gifts was a cute pair of shades. They have a strap on them so babies supposedly can't take them off. That was not effective on Willow.



















Can anyone guess what my parents are doing in this picture? If so, you win the contents of the bag:















Last weekend Josh and my dad's big project was transplanting Willow's willow tree. Josh planted it last summer when we brought Willow home. It seemed to like the spot just fine, but after doing some reading, and from what people have told us, willow trees love water so much that as they grow, their roots search out your pipes and find any tiny crack. Then they go into the crack and wreak all sorts of havok. The place where Josh planted the tree was right by our main water and sewer pipes. So we decided to transplant it out at my parents' camp, in the swamp. It'll be nice and wet there and will hopefully thrive with no pipes to damage. Here's Josh taking out the tree...



















...and here it is after being planted in its new home:




















Willow's been enjoying the nice weather. She loves to be outside and loves to play with the grass, rocks, flowers, etc. You have to watch her like a hawk though, or she will try to taste whatever it is she's playing with.


















I sent out another two coolers full of milk last week. I can't believe it - I still have over a chest freezer left. It's hard to imagine what a milk machine I was a year ago. I'd fill up a gallon zip-loc bag (and sometimes more) every day. Now, supply is much more in line with demand. I pump once in the morning before I go to work (while Willow is still asleep), and then once at work. I'm not freezing any - we use the milk I pump for Willow to eat the next day. We usually have to add a little frozen too.

Shipping the milk is quite a production. One of us has to take an hour or so off work. We have to go to this place that sells dry ice, pack up the milk, bring it to the shipping place and ship it overnight. Shipping something overnight that weighs 85 pounds is not cheap! Of course, the recipients pay for it. Before, I stressed about the fact that my milk is reaching, and some has passed, the year mark. But the guy I shipped this batch to is fine with that, and he's a doctor, so now I feel better about it. I asked him if it'd be OK to post their photo on the blog and he said OK. They are just the cutest family.















Donating milk is a great feeling. I highly recommend it to anyone who has a surplus. It's more common than you might think- I've had a few different people tell me they had too much milk after reading my last post about donating. The website I used was www.milkshare.com. When I tried to explain to my boss why I needed an hour off work to ship milk, he said "I've never heard of that before...isn't that why they make that Similac?" Ha. Some people don't get it!

Well, I better go. Blogging can suck up half a weekend afternoon if you let it!

Happy Easter

Hi everyone,

Happy Spring! It's Sunday morning and we just put Willow down for her mid-morning nap. The past few Sundays, Willow and I have had a routine where we wake up early and let Daddy sleep (he's a night owl and we go to bed early). We always seem to be sitting on the couch next to the window as the nearby Catholic church is ringing its bells and all the people are making their way to mass. We're not big Easter-celebrators (or church-goers for that matter) ourselves. We're not volunteering for Little Brothers today either - they get overrun with college students volunteering on Easter. Instead, we're heading out to my parents' camp on Big Traverse for dinner a little later.

Willow was happy to get an Easter card in the mail from auntie Jill. She appreciates any sort of cardboard or paper, and she played with this card for several minutes.















Willow is keeping us, and Linda, very busy these days. She is a baby on the move! No more setting her down and running into the other room to grab a cup of coffee or something. If you take your eye off of her for 5 seconds, she's getting into something. We've done a lot of babyproofing the last couple weekends, but we still have a little more to do. She can cruise around on furniture now too. She's rarely content to just sit in one place and play. Even at night, when she wakes up, she's immediately on her hands and knees trying to crawl across the bed. Luckily she sleeps between us so we'd notice if she crawled over us and off the bed. We are going to lower our bed this weekend so she'd have a shorter distance to fall though, just in case.















Last week Willow discovered her nostrils. And the fact that she can put her finger in them. What a fun thing to do! I wish I had a photo, but I haven't gotten one yet. It's pretty funny.















Dinner is a hectic time around here. We have been trying to feed Willow at the same time that we eat. Usually she'll take a few bites and then get restless. Then we give her a kitchen implement to play with to buy a minute or two while we're shoveling in our own food. Soon that thing ends up on the floor, so we grab another. If it's something she's played with a lot before, we might get 10 seconds to eat. If we manage to find something new for her, we may get up to a couple minutes. Eventually she ends up hollering, and hopefully one of us is finished by then and can get her out of her high chair. It's quite a scene. I honestly don't know how single parents do it. Here's Willow and our kitchen after a typical dinner:



















Last weekend was a milestone for both Willow and me. I brought her to the grocery store with me! I know most parents do this all the time and it's no big deal, but when Willow left the NICU, we were warned not to take her out to places like that where she would be exposed to germs. They said if she could just make it through her first winter without getting sick, she should be good to go. Well, I think it's late enough now that I can say this without jinxing it: it looks like Willow made it through her first winter. She never even got a cold or anything. I guess she did have a one-day runny nose way back in early winter, but it didn't seem to bother her at all. She's actually the healthiest baby I know. Must be all that mama's milk. :) By the way, she did great at the store and sat in the baby seat like a big girl.















Speaking of spring, we've had some crazy warm weather here - record highs last week. I think it got up to the mid-70s one day! The snow in our yard is completely gone already, which is very unusual for early April. I captured winter's last hurrah before it was gone:

















We also had a visit last from my friend Ashley and her daughter Vaeda last weekend. Vaeda is about 6 months old. It was kind of funny because Vaeda and Willow are about the same size, but Vaeda (like any 6-month old) is much more like an infant. She can't quite sit up on her own yet and acts so much like a baby, whereas Willow can do so many more things but is so tiny. Here's a picture of the two of them together.
















Here's a video to leave you with. It's a coversation Willow loves to have with anyone who will cooperate. To her, "da - xzxkzxkxxz" is a sentence. It makes perfect sense to her.