Good Things

Just a quick note to share a few awesome facts. Today after returning from quite a romp in the park Otto pooped on the potty. TMI? Too bad, I am going to mention it anyway. He was naked in an attempt to cool off and allow him scratching access to a bug bite. I noticed he needed to go and offered the potty. He took me up on it and SUCCESS! He was also pretty excited and seemed pleased by the transaction. I will not be slowed down by the fact that later he peed in the kitchen. One step at a time.

Then this afternoon Mette clearly was sleepy but having a hard time admitting it to herself. I took her upstairs with the intent of rocking her, offered her the green blankie we stole from my mom's by accident this week and she went to sleep immediately. She literally pulled the blanket up to her face, closed her eyes and went limp. Mom, you are not getting that blanket back, sorry.

Good Day!

Sweet Potatoes

Speaking of food experiences, here is Mette with her first taste of sweet potatoes. She seemed to like them a fair amount. Certainly more than peaches. They are also quite good for the skin if anyone was wondering why she has rubbed them all over herself. I will say one thing about this series of photographs. I have always know she had a little chunk to her, but these pictures really give you a new look at her rolls. It is quite impressive. This could explain why she is so good at sitting up already. She has a good center of gravity. In the past two days she has really gotten good at NOT crashing head first into the ground when sitting and she is starting to babble. And when I say babble I mean yell her opionions at you with great purpose. We will try to get it on video tomorrow as it is a stage not to be missed!

Good Eats

Forgive me Alton Brown for stealing your tag line. My guess is you won't ever notice.

Good food is a plenty here this time of year and we are enjoying all nature has to offer us. Part of dinner tonight was roasted beets and potatoes with goat cheese, one of Otto's favorites. It was to beautiful to pass up sitting in the roasting pan waiting for the oven to heat up. Roasted beets are one of my favorite vegetables ever. I love the way they smell as soon as you cut into them. It's like you are digging in the fresh dirt right on the kitchen counter.

With all the good veggie goodness of fresh beets, tomatoes, greens and beans we have been stocking up on lately it seemed only right we make some cookies. This week Otto and I made some cookies for eric's non-birthday. He refuses to acknowledge them anymore. Cookie dough is another one of Otto's favorite foods. What can I say, he has good taste! Not only does he like the dough, he likes just eating the flour. Can't say I agree with his taste on that. This time as he was licking the flour off the table he got some stray brown sugar too. To which he responded "oh mommy, this sugar is GOOD!" Sure beats the heck out of flour.

We don't want to hog all the fun food experiences so we have been including Mette too. She tried peaches this week and hated them!! We will have to try them again later. She made the funniest faces and was not interested in anymore. Who would have thought! She really seems to want to hold her food and have "big" things to eat. I am wondering if she will take after her uncle Racer and Ben, or was it Matt?? who refused to eat much baby food and insisted on feeding themselves. To give her some satisfaction in that department we gave her a teething biscut to try. She seemed to like it quite a bit and enjoyed making a big mess of it for sure.

She was so excited at one point that her whole little body was shaking with joy.

girls

So eric just got an iPhone 3GS (just for you Ben . . . remind me, does yours shoot video?) and he took this candid shot of Mette and I to test out the camera. I think it is adorable and had to share.

Mette Feta

Mette,

You are 5 1/2 months old and there have been hardly any posts all about you. Otto has a good 22 months of solo posting to his name. I am setting out to change that. You are quite the jolly soul. For the entire trip to Chicago and I can hardly remember you crying. There was that one night where you were miserable at bedtime and wouldn't stop but I think I should have given you Tylenol for you teeth so you are excused from that. Pretty much you just like to watch the world around you and laugh at it. You especially like watching your big brother. So much so that I think he must have been so bored as a baby since I was not nearly as entertaining for him as he is for you! When he runs by you while you are in the Exersaucer you laugh so hard I think you are going to explode. You love it when he gets close enough that you can grab him and put what ever part of him is closest in your mouth. Luckily he also thinks this is a fantastic game and laughs uncontrollably. The two of you are really so much fun to watch. You are really starting to be able to interact with one another. You are already working on perfecting the commando crawl in an attempt to get to him or toys, yours look good, his look better. Your technique cracks me up. You throw your head down on the floor, wiggle up your butt until you get your knees up then push with one big thrust moving you slightly forward. Then you look up to see how far you have come and throw your head down again repeating it all over again. While not the most efficient way of traveling you sure do get around. You are also a master roller. Otto rolled once to prove he was not developmentally behind and never really did it again. You on the other hand don't stop. I already fear having you on the changing table. You are also really close to being able to sit up on your own. You can do it for short periods of time now before you cream into the floor. I give it two more weeks and you will be sitting all by yourself, maybe less.

While your sleeping as of late hasn't been as good as it was, you still are doing quite well. In fact the last few days are getting back closer to where we were. If you could figure out how to nap for longer than 30 minutes that would be SA-WEET! I have faith you will, but sooner rather than later would be my first choice. Still the fact that you will sleep in your crib, without being held all the time and on some occasions have put yourself to sleep is awesome. I am not complaining!

As you spend all of your days watching Otto and wanting to be just like him, you have been very eager to eat. You try to pull peoples hands with food in them to your mouth. You watch with sad eyes when we eat but you don't get to. It has been making us feel bad. So even though we were going to wait until 6 months to start you on food, we caved. You are still getting everything you need from nursing but now you get to play with food too. It is making you very happy so I think we made the right choice. You started out with a little baby oatmeal and have moved onto peas. I think we will try peaches or sweet potatoes next. You are only getting about 1/2 oz. two times a day so it is really more for play than anything but we are all enjoying it. Otto thinks it is really funny how messy you get and you love the different tastes and eating the spoon.

Before you were born I was a bit nervous how I would entertain two small children all day but I am no longer worried. You have become such a joyful member of our family that I can't imagine how we were before. I thoroughly enjoy spending my days with you and Otto. In fact I can't think of anything else I would want to do more.

Let the cooking and freezing begin. Here is the first batch of food for Mette, peas and peaches.

as eric says, the wide angle does not do her justice! :)

Chicago for the 4th

This summer's trip to Chicago was a complete success. Much fun was had by all. Due to ticket reimbursement fun and games and a general need to get work done, Eric stayed in Lewisburg for a few extra days while the kids and I flew out to Chicago. I will admit I was a bit nervous about flying with both of them by myself, but it was great. They were both super good and I would do it again in a heart beat. Otto has been a fantastic traveler since his second flight so I had high hopes he would do well, and he did. Mette is just so laid back I figured even if she lost it I could handle it. She didn't loose it and in fact they were both charming and sweet.

We arrived in Northbrook on the 4th to celebrate with Yia-Yia, Papou, Uncle Matt, Uncle Ben and Shannon. In addition Dee's brother Jimmy and family came for a cook out. Mette charmed everyone with her adorable dress and huge smiles. Otto was so excited to have two uncles to chase him everywhere and an entire fleet of new cars to play with. He was in hog heaven. Poor Ben and Matt's model cars, they have been played to death by a two year old. Good thing he likes taking them to the shop to repair the missing wheels, axels, door, center counsels etc.. that fall off.

One of the first of our many day trips was to the Museum of Science and Industry. Matt came along and preformed some extreme Otto chasing detail. Otto loved seeing all the model trains, exploring the large passenger plane and running like a crazy man in the main atrium.
This picture snuck in here, but it is a good example of Otto smuggly taking Shannon all to himself. Not surprising many people were kicked out of his bed while reading him stories if he thought Shannon was around and might get in instead.
Here is Matt showing Otto how to use the climbing wall at the Museum of Science and Industry.

Uncle Matt's hat makes a fantastic teething toy. Could be a great marketing idea here.

The room full of bubbles was a major hit with both Otto and Mette.

One of the things we were looking forward to in Chicago was taking Otto in the 911 Turbo. Papou found a carseat that would fit in the back and Eric got to take him for a ride. He only wanted to go faster and was not at all phased by the noise. On the way home (the first ride was to dinner) he had a total meltdown because he wasn't allowed to drive home.

Dinner was sushi, one of Otto's favorites. He liked it so much we went twice in one week. The seaweed salad appetizer is always a big hit. The first time we ordered him the kids sushi plate which he ate, but he wanted eric's more. The second time eric just ordered him his own plate.

A trip to the Children's Museum at Navy Pier was also a big hit. Not too surprising.

Even Mette got to play here.

This is the second night of sushi with his own plate. He LOVES roe so he had some of that, a california roll, some eel, some crab and the egg stuff which I can't remember the name of but it starts with a "t". He ate almost all of this and some of eric's soft shell crab salad.
Papou finally got his wish and had a baby fall asleep with him. Not only did Mette fall asleep with him, she took an hour and a half nap!! She never sleeps for more than 3o minutes usually!! The whole time we were in Chicago she didn't sleep much and spent much of the night singing to us. Cute, but sleeping would be cuter in my opinion. This was a much needed nap.

Much needed by both of them:)

Kristin made it out to the burbs to meet Mette and see Otto for lunch on saturday.

They were having a picnic of cherries in the kitchen.

Hanging at the Maddoch's. We took some great pictures of all of us and Mette here but I have to wait to get the pictures from eric's computer. I also will have more pictures from Papou to post as well.
Pitsa and Craig drove over for dinner in their Porsche one day. Otto was playing in the back while they arrived. He went out front and came running back to eric saying "daddy, daddy, I found a porsche, there's a whole bunch of them now!" Of course then he had to drive it.

We took a couple trips to the botanical gardens to visit the trains and the big fountain. Otto had the best ride in the whole place.

Mette modeling her stylin' new hat and dress.

Nothing beats a good sandbox...

Well, maybe a good place to climb....

No, the fountain is the BEST!

After all the fun we had it was time to head home. Eric went to a conf. downtown on Sunday and flew home via an overnight in Hoboken from there. Otto, Mette and I flew home on monday and met him in Harrisburg. Again the kids were amazing and adorable. Here they are snuggling on the changing pad waiting at the gate to start boarding. Otto thinks it is so funny when Mette tries to grab him and she things he is the coolest thing she has ever seen and wants desperately to touch him. It works out really well.

He even volunteered to share his toys with her. Which of course she just wants to eat.