Milestones

So I haven't blogged in a while because for a while my life was boring (especially after going from having a full house to an empty house). Nothing really exciting was going on. I did the single-mom without a job thing for three weeks and almost went crazy. I don't think I can ever not-work unless I have school or something else to entertain me. I love the kids, but being around the house all day with them (except for short walks with Shellie) them was exhausting. I don't know how you moms do it. But now Kurt is home (yeah!) and school has started (yeah!). I'm excited about my classes this semester, but the workload is going to be a lot more than last semester so I'll have to find some discipline from somewhere. Wish me luck.

Enough about myself, and onto the kids. Well there's not much to say about Micaela except that she's doing awesome. All her school progress reports are outstanding and she seems to like school. Right now math is even her favorite subject (a big change from last year). I'm excited that she's almost to the stage where she likes finishing longer books because there are so many good kids books that I remember. Maybe I'll have to go back and read some with her. On to Jon- today is a historic day. Today I learned that Jon is captivated by Baby Einstein (yeah!). I hadn't put on any baby movies since Mari left because frankly, I watched them more than the kids and was burnt out. But this morning Jon got up earlier than normal and I thought I'd give it a shot. He loves it. This is the first time that he'll sit and watch for more than a few seconds at a time. While I don't want to raise a kid who sits on the couch and watches tv all day, it's nice to have the option, especially so early in the morning. Other developments include learning to pull himself to standing using the furniture (and getting bumps and bruises when it doesn't work) and crawling. Now with the crawling, he was getting up on his hands and knees a lot, mostly to climb over things, but he wasn't actually crawling for me, he preferred the Army low-crawl to get around. But one day I went to the YMCA to work out and took him to their daycare. There's a window from the cardio room upstairs that looks down on the daycare so I got to watch him play which was really cool. You can imagine my surprise when I saw him crawling all over the place down there! I took him home to see if he would do it at home and he did for a little while (Shellie got to witness it), but now he's back to low-crawling. Maybe his big belly is weighing him down? I don't mind the slower crawl for now, it makes him easier to chase after. He loves standing up on the furniture and I'm sure will soon earn the nick-name of Jonny Monkey Chang. Fun times are in my future I'm sure. Okay, he's trying to climb on the fireplace, I should go. Adios.

Giving in

Yesterday I was at Costco filling the prescription for my strep throat medicine when the lady in line behind me said "you can tell she's going to be tall like her mom". I took a look at Jon, he was wearing a white onsie with baby blue trim that said I love mommy on the front in different colors with brown and baby blue pants. Now I know that it's impossible to tell baby boys and girls apart based on looks. That's why you take a guess based on the clothes. I didn't hold it against the lady, but when I went to dress Jon today I put him in a brown and white striped onsie with brown stretchy pants. Brown in definitely boyish. Then I went to Walmart where the cashier told me that "she needs a bow in her hair". WTF!!! I was seriously perplexed. Maybe it's because I bought some baby girl socks for a friend? But I also bought boy socks for Jon, so that's not really a good excuse. I guess it's time to give in and put away the onsie outfits and start dressing Jon in all the real clothes (jean/khaki pants, button up shirts, polo shirts, etc) that I've gotten from various friends and relatives. Ugh. :)

On another note, today Micaela had a "snow day". When I saw this on her school calendar I thought it might mean a day off of school since that's what it means in Mammoth. But no, not in Southern California. While the rest of the country freezes, we just pretend it's freezing by wear snow clothes to school. For Micaela, that meant matching a scarf and boots with her mini-skirt and t-shirt outfit. I made her put on the jacket too so she didn't look completely ridiculous. I have to meet her when school ends to give her money for a snow-cone. I'd bet quite a few of the kids in her class have never actually seen real snow. Weird.

And sort of random - I took this picture at the hotel we stayed at in Arizona. Kurt told me that he felt like he was pooping in the middle of an old-west town (which I still think is funny).

Beach Bonfire... almost

Since Tuesday was Kurt's last full night here before heading out to PA we decided to do something special - go to the beach and roast hotdogs and marshmellows over a fire. Mari and I packed a cooler and had everything ready to go, the kids all had their naps, and Micaela finished her homework really fast. Since it's January we didn't have to compete for a fire ring and we found a nice spot away from everyone else. It was perfect. We got there early enough that the kids were able to run around and play on the beach and eat the sand (Anabelle seems to really like it). Kurt was in charge of starting up the fire. He looked at what I had packed and then said "where's the kindling? Haven't you ever made a fire before?" Oops. I guess I thought about kindling and then just hoped that we could use a lot of cardboard instead. I guess it doesn't work that way. We ended up cooking the hotdogs at home and roasting the marshmellows over the fire in the living room fireplace, but the time spent playing on the beach and watching the sunset was still work the trip.

Trips

I've been so busy here that I haven't really had time to blog. Before Christmas I went on a weekend trip to Arizona with Kurt. We went skiing at the Sunrise Ski Resort (not as good as Mammoth, but the snow and weather conditions were perfect) and then went to Sedona (which has absolutely beautiful landscape) for two nights. It was a great break, thanks to all the family for watching the kids!

We've spent most of the time since then here at the house or at the park, but one day we took a trip to the Santa Ana zoo and got some great pictures.

This is Caroline's way of telling Mari she wants to ride the elephant

Elephant poo

Kurt and his niece Anabelle

Micaela didn't want to ride the elephant so we made her :)

Fight On!

I could have put Merry Christmas or Happy New Year as the title, but the Rose bowl game was just so great! My favorite part was actually walking to the game behind the bands and watching the B-2 Stealth Bomber fly over, but it was nice that we won too :)

Christmas was great. In true Erdman fashion I would descibe it as organized chaos. For the past few years I've gone to Kurt's parent's house in PA with Micaela being the only child, so this year took a little adjusting but was really fun. It took ALL DAY for the kids to open their presents and mom, Shellie, and Kris did a great job of feeding everyone who came though.
New Years was just how I wanted it - early. We watched the daredevil truck and motorcycle guys do crazy stunts at midnight (EST), popped some noise makers outside, and I was in bed at 10pm. I'm definitely getting old.

The Rose Parade and Rose Bowl were awesome! I hadn't been to the parade in years so I was really excited and surprised by how easy it was to get there and see everything. The floats weren't quite as impressive as I thought they were when I was little, but it was cool none-the-less. Like I mentioned earlier the Rose Bowl was awesome. Kurt, Mari, Grant (Mari's brother-in-law) and I all got tickets to go. We left the parade early so that we would make it to the game in time to tailgate. We ended up having just enough time to park, grab some hot-dogs, watch the band, take some pictures, and then find our seats. I was in a section that had both SC and Penn State fans. I have to admit, Penn State has better fans than we do. They were energetic the entire game and seemed to have a lot more fun tailgating. But I got to cheer the most with a 38-24 win! Fight On!

This picture doesn't do the B-2 justice, it was HUGE!

Fight On Pete!

Taken at the parade