Kindermusik

This week, Megan started a new class of Kindermusik. We visited one morning with a neighbor, and Megan really liked it -- The Kindermusik "Our Time" class. It turns out that they have an evening class, so we enrolled for the semester! Megan's teacher, Ms. Sheila is very nice and amazing with the room of crazy toddlers and kiddos (18 mo - 3 yr)

As part of her materials, she got a musical instrument called a "Stir Xylophone" which is really cool! It combines cooking and music! She plays it and then pretend sips from the spoon. It is hard to see in my video (which also has some white balance issues!) but the piece in the middle is a wooden spoon. I have also included links above to the Kindermusik site, her class site, and the stir-xylophone as part of their musical instruments!

Biking is so exhausting

After just a few miles, Megan was exhausted! Bicycling can really tire you out.

She fell fast asleep as Chris drug her around the neighborhood, and we transferred her directly to bed after the ride.

PS -- Megan is such a big girl! Megan is officially really potty trained now! She has virtually no accidents (except she still has a diaper on at night), and even gets up from bed to go potty! I bring this up since her "big girl" Mickey Mouse panties are showing in the photo!

Camping

We did a one night trial "Dry run" to see how Megan would do. We went to Cedar Hill State Park which is only about 15 minutes away.

She really loved it, although she had an extremely hard time going to sleep. The last pictures were time stamped about 10PM, but I am sure she was up until midnight. She slept great (until 9:30AM)

She and Daddy had a bike ride and we cooked on the stove. As it cools off we may try some more camping experiments!

Bicycle Pictures

A few photos

Bicycling

With the cooler weather, we are planning some outdoor time finally, and this week, Chris's "Daddy-mobile" arrived. We got Megan a bike seat for Chris's bike. What used to be a nice college guy's mountain bike has now been fully converted to a Daddymobile! Just add one Bicycle Seat and voila!

Then, when I went to the bicycle store to pick up a new bike rack for the car (the old one was totaled in Chris's wreck in the Subaru in 2004, and apparently we haven't been riding our bikes much since then!) Megan found lots of things there that she really wanted!

She was actually able to get on a pedal a kids bike with training wheels almost as well as her tricycle. She wasn't quite tall enough, but I think that she might get one for her birthday! If not, Santa will probably make sure that one arrives under the tree. She also really like a stroller / bicycle trailer which turned out to be so easy to assemble and disassemble that we got it too! So tonight Megan got two bike rides, one in each and had a great time.

Tomorrow I will try to get pictures of the Daddymobile in action, complete with a Dora bike helmet (on Megan of course!).

Thanks to all of you for your well wishes and thoughts and prayers. I am doing well, still recovering from the surgery (my doctor was a bit shocked this week at how low my blood numbers got -- she probably would have given me the transfusion) so it will still be several weeks before that all rebuilds. But in the meantime we are focusing on spending a lot of quality time together. Megan is great, and really helping that healing. Tonight, she even said special prayers at bedtime for "Mommy's tummy" so that it isn't sad anymore. Really she is a sweet and perceptive little kid, and we love her.

Our 100th post -- with news to share

Unfortunately, it isn't the good kind of news to share.

For the last month or two I have been struggling a bit with a complication of the twin pregnancy called placenta previa. Basically the placenta attaches over the cervix in a bad location. Most often it moves as the pregnancy continues and the uterus enlarges. However, with the twins, I have TWO placentas and both placentas overlapped in the previa position, making the pregnancy complicated, and labor dangerous to both me and the twins.

Then on Thursday Aug 28th, I woke up at 4AM having contractions (which at 18 weeks is extremely early) and by the time I got to the hospital I was in labor. Due to the previa they couldn't do anything to stop the contractions (because of risk to me).

I was fortunate to be at an excellent hospital and under the care of an even better specialist. I was unfortunate that this all happened in Michigan while I was away at work and by myself. I was in the Operating Room for about 4 hours, but after all of it, we very sadly lost both of the twins -- one boy and one girl, just as Megan predicted.

The nursing staff and doctors were all very kind, and I think that they really felt for me especially since Chris was in Texas trying as quickly as possible to get to Ann Arbor. He called twice, and they actually brought me the phone in the OR so that I could talk to him. My surgeon said that was the first time he operated on someone who was on the telephone.

I am back home now, still recovering. Due to the previa, I lost a lot of blood, so that is primarily what I am recovering from now. That, and a lot of sadness at the loss of our kiddos. But Megan is great, and is really helping us through this. Thanks for all your thoughts and prayers as we work through this.

Chris, AnnaLisa and Megan

New swim goggles

Megan had been wanting some swim goggles, after using a pair of goggles that one of her friends had at the pool! Today we got her a pair. Apparently, they are useful for more than swimming!

Maybe it helps too, that she watched a lot of Olympics over the last two weeks, and really enjoyed the swimming events -- which she called "Racing in the water!" "Look mom, they are racing in the water!"

Making Marinara

MMMMMmmmmmm. Homemade marinara. We made this in April and just recently ate the last of it, so it was time to make it again. Chris and I took a cooking class when we lived in Midland, and this was one of the first lessons. It has been a favorite since then, and now everytime I seem to make the pot of it bigger and bigger.

Note: I am pretty much now limited by my pot size unless we invest in something bigger! So this begins with a trip to Sam's or Costco. There, you buy

a huge bag of baby carrots (3 lbs or more)
a huge bag of onions
A huge bag of celery // I prefer celery hearts
Olive oil
Spices (trust me, you need this size!)

and then the large industrial size of canned tomato products. This recipe has
1 can tomato paste
2 cans crushed tomatoes
1 can diced tomatoes
2 cans tomato sauce
and I think I should have bought a second can of tomato paste. But who could really imagine using that much tomato paste!

So you start by getting out the food processor and chopping up all of the onion, carrot, and celery. You add this to a LARGE pot on the stove, and saute in olive oil with some garlic (I use about 1/3 to 1/2 jar of the minced garlic since I am too lazy to chop this much garlic!) You cook the mirepoix 10-15 minutes (depending on how well your burner heats a crazy sized pot).

Then we transfer everything outside to our propane burner. Here you open and add all of the tomato products plus lots of spices. I use fresh basil and rosemary from our herb garden PLUS a small bottle of dried Italian seasoning, some salt, a little bit of sugar (about 1/3 cup sweetens up this whole pot!) and/or individual bits of oregano and thyme to taste. Cook for several hours. I quit when I can't keep it from sticking! Then portion into small containers or ziplocks (once cool!) and enjoy. We heat this back up for spaghetti, lasagna, etc. It makes an excellent sauce for pennies compared to the jarred pasta sauce (and this tastes so much better!) Freezes quite well!

Note: If you keep making the recipe bigger, you will run into a problem that you don't have aspoon long enough to STIR the pot. This leads to my husband having to get the saw out in the garage and cut me a pice of wood (an extra clothes rod) long enough to stir the pot! Odd but effective. I think by next time, we will try to have an upgraded stirring device!

Just a Swingin'

These are a few of the videos that I found on my lost camera... These are from the 4th of July when we had just gotten Megan's swingset. The music is compliments of my neighbors, and their outdoor pool stereo system (which we aren't always so fond of...)

Megan swinging on her new swing.

On the MegaRider

Climbing up the ladder

Cousins!

This weekend, Megan visted her cousins and went to see baby Lily's baptism. Megan and Lauren had great fun. They swam in the hotel, painted, colored and then ran upstairs to plot and do who knows what! They had a lot of fun together.



Megan also got to see her baby cousin, Lily, who she just adores. I think she would be happy if we just let her play with Lily all day. She gets blankets for her, pats her, and wanted to put her in all the baby toys (exersaucer, swing, etc) just like a baby doll!