thepedersons.net

For all you mother’s (and dad’s) in the beautiful, challenging role of parenthood, here is a book that sounds like it’s worth checking out.

http://simplemom.net/steady-days-a-journey-toward-intentional-professional-motherhood-giveaway/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+simplemom+%28Simple+Mom%29

I’m hoping to win one by posting it on our blog!

Eric is going to a birthday party for Wyatt, our next door neighbor, this afternoon.  Eric drew a card for Wyatt and flipped it over to write Happy Birthday.  He made it all the way through Happy without any problems.  He then started on Birthday and made it through Bir when Deb made the “th” sound.  Eric shot a look at Deb and said, “I know!”, then finished “Birth”.  The only help he needed was adding y to day.

We’ve been very busy this summer.  Here is a quick list of the things we’ve done so far (in no particular order):

• Camping in the La Crosse area with our MN friends
• Visiting with my cousins, the Andersons, in the Dells
• Camping in the Dells for the AmFam company picnic
• 4th of July party at Deb’s Dad’s place in Dousman
• Bob-n-Bud’s annual fish fry in Lake Mills
• Julie O’s wedding in Spring Green
• Concerts on the square in downtown Madison
• Gathering with friends to catch up on our lives (3 gatherings so far!)
• Eric played t-ball and was in a soccer camp
• And more!

All of this and we are already in August.  There is a lot more coming up, too.  Last weekend was nice because we were home and got a chance to start working on Eric’s bed.  It is primed now and hopefully it will have a coat of paint on it soon.  Deb has a good color scheme picked out for his room and it is going to look REALLY nice when it is all done!

I did post this picture on our photo website, but I thought I’d also post it on our website to explain the situation. Eric went into the bathroom to do his usual business. He was in there a while, which is normal, so I didn’t think anything of it until I heard some weird, albeit quiet, grunting noises. I called out to ask if he was ok, and in a sort of scared, quiet, whine he said, “I have a problem”. So I went into the bathroom to see this:

except when I went in, he was still sitting on the toilet, no pants, no underwear!

I asked him if it was hard to get that over his head. “Yep.” So I busted out some veggie oil smeared the seat, and with some coaxing & tears, it finally came off. I don’t think he’ll be doing that any time soon again! ;b

Yes, hard to believe she is already a year old! Yesterday she actually walked across a room for the first time. She’s taken a few mini sprints of 4 or 5 steps the last month or so, but I think we can now say she’s officially walking. She stood up from the floor without pulling herself up on anything, turned around and walked across the room to daddy without throwing herself into him the last few steps — all this without being prompted!

What else is she doing? She plays peek-a-boo, she does itsy bitsy spider, pat-a-cake & little teapot. She likes head-shoulder-knees and toes, although she usually only pats her head. She likes to chase after Eric when he runs down the hall. She’s blowing kisses and started making the smack sound, instead of just saying mmmmmmwa. She’s climbing up the stairs and climbing on all of Eric’s stools - I foresee an emergency visit in our future, as she hasn’t figured out how to get down gracefully! When she gets hurt, no matter where it is, she rubs her head. She’s also started swimming lessons - I think we’re going to have another fish in our family, as she loves it!

What is she saying? Da-da (daddy), ni-ni (night night), aaawww-daaa (all done), nana (banana), uck (truck), mom-mom, ka-ko (cracker) - sometimes she says kkkkk for cracker, cookie, cereal, or any other food she likes for that matter (pronounced like the back of the throat ch in Christmas).  She also uses that sound to drive Eric’s cars around. She says ahhhh-doe for a lot of things… Eric (although his name has an ever so slight different pronunciation from the rest), Spencer, Grandma, Grandpa, etc., etc. Dog also has a slightly different pronunciation - ahg-dog. One day it sounded like she said cha-cha for her pacifier. I figure if she’s going to be addicted to it (only at sleeping times) it might as well have a cute name, so I’m trying to make that one stick!

She keeps us laughing and definitely on our toes. You can see pictures on our family photo website.

Hard to believe she’s coming up on 11 months!

The other night we were having dinner all together. Kendra looked at Curt and said, clear as day, “da-dee, all done. Ny-ny”, which is “Daddy, I’m all done eating and ready to go night-night” in Kendra speak. Does this count as her first sentence?!?

Then on January 14, she took a few steps unassisted! She’s REALLY not too sure about that. She was pretty proud of herself at the time, but every time we go to “practice” more walking, she won’t stand on her own, so I can let go of her hands… she just tries to plow into me holding on before I can pry away her fingers. Oh well… it will all come too soon!

Last thing is that when she wanted to let us know she didn’t like something or didn’t want something, she would shake her head from side to side (as in ear to one shoulder, then ear to the other shoulder), like she was bopping to some music. Her whole upper body would really get into it. Now she’s starting to get the true “no thanks” head shake, side to side, looking over one shoulder, then the other. Of course she’s doing it before I captured the other one on video.

This is the weekend that Caroline (Curt’s college friend) is getting married.  We had some grand plans to head down to Rockford on Friday to meet up with Cindy and David (Curt’s friends in Rockford) for dinner, then head to Joliet for the wedding on Saturday.

Mother Nature had another idea.  She decided that Friday was a good day to dump some snow on the region, which caused us to cancel our plans for Friday night.  We got up Saturday morning, packed up the dog, kids and ourselves and headed out.  We got to Janesville (about 1/2 an hour south of us) when Mother Nature started up again.  The roads were glare ice and cars were in the ditch everywhere.  We pretty much stopped and were lucky if we hit 5 miles an hour after that.  There was a semi in the ditch and an SUV that got the worst of it.

After seeing that and testing the road a few times (it was so icy, it didn’t take anything more than a tap on the throttle to cause the tires to spin) we decided it wasn’t worth the risk and turned home.

It was a really tough decision.  We were really excited to see Caroline get married and party it up with all of our friends.

Peek-a-Boo!

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In the past few weeks Kendra has learned some new skills:

• Saying Uh-oh (over and over and over) after she drops something, someone else drop something or she sees something on the floor she doesn’t think belongs there.
• Crawling (started on Sunday Dec 28th)
• Pulling herself up on things (started Dec 31st)

She is really good at cruising around on our furniture and getting into everything that she shouldn’t.

For those of you already on facebook, you’ll probably agree with me.  It is addicting!  I got sucked in by a friend at work.  We were chatting one day about social networking sites and he sent me an invite to facebook.  I created an account out of curiosity, and within 10 min, I was hooked.  I got Deb interested, and she had the same experience.

It is a pretty remarkable site, however.  Within minutes, I was reconnecting with old friends from college as well as relatives that I’ve not seen in years.

I can see why it was such a sensation when it started up.