Canadian Dr. Seuss at our house

I thought I'd let you in on a recent reading of "Dr. Seuss's ABC" at our house. Rob was reading it to Meredith as follows:

"Big A, little a, what begins with A?
Aunt Annie's alligator, A, A, A"

"Big B, little b, what begins with B?"
(etc.)

"Big Y, little y, a yawning yellow yak
Young Yolanda Yorgenson is yelling on his back"

"A B C D E F G
H I J K L M N O P
Q R S
T U V
W X Y and.... ZED!"

"Big Zed, little zed, what begins with zed?
I do. I am a Zizzer Zazzer Zuzz, as you can plainly see."

(addendum by Rob)
"That's a silly one Meredith. It doesn't rhyme."

Fashion Statements

Meredith has been looking pretty adorable lately. Thought you might enjoy a few of her latest looks!

First, her feet finally got big enough to wear the shoes to go with this awesome outfit from our cousins Kyle and Robin!


Second, it has been chilly here (OK, in the 20s, I know that's not too bad). The other day we had to go out and run some errands. I got Meredith all dressed up in her new hat, mittens, and scarf from Grandma and Grandpa. Had to get a picture before I covered it all up with her coat...her outfit was very color-coordinated!


Finally, you may be aware of the important football game that happened recently - the Gators won ANOTHER national championship! We are pretty sure it was because Meredith was cheering them on in this outfit. The top is actually a Vikings jersey (from our cousins Katie and Craig) and the skirt was made by our friend Krista - it is an official Gator print (see close-up below).

I have one other photo that is off-topic but it cracks me up. How crazy is our daughter? She is so crazy that when attending her first wedding (congratulations Anita and Saul!) she walked around so much that when we got home, we discovered one shoe had been rubbing her wrong and, even though she had thick tights on to protect her, the back of her heel was just about bleeding! She had to wear a bandaid for a week. Look at that poor little foot! And I thought she'd be older before she started having to deal with this...

And for those interested in updates of what's going on, here are some highlights:

* Meredith is getting better at putting food in her mouth - still quite behind, but making progress. She is also a scavenger - if we are eating anything while she is walking around, she comes over to try it out! She's very open-minded about food, which is fantastic. She just really likes to be fed by someone else. We are on a waiting list to see an occupational therapist to get some hints to help with fine motor skills.

* Meredith really started walking a lot on her own this month. She loves walking anywhere - doing laps around the different parts of the house, walking around the block, and sometimes almost running! She also can turn in circles and make herself dizzy, which she seems to enjoy.

* Meredith is doing really well with her glasses. People are very curious about them and think she is so cute! We have a follow-up appointment this week so we'll see if we get any new information. I am guessing they will just want to know if she is wearing them regularly (yes) and if we notice anything different about her apparent eyesight (not really).

I'll post another update soon - thanks for reading!

Christmastime!

We had a wonderful time up north for Christmas. We spent several days in Minnesota, then several days in Ontario, and also a couple of days in Michigan for my dear friend Anita's wedding. The trip was very relaxing, though I've now learned that little ones do need to be watched even while I'M on vacation :)

Here are some favorite photos from our trip. I'll start with our trip to my parents' place in Minnesota.

Ready to open presents on Christmas Eve!

Meredith figured out how to open gifts pretty quickly. Especially the bagged ones!

My mom made Meredith this amazing fleece blanket with ducks and frogs on one side, and gators on the other! Meredith LOVES ducks (it is still one of the two words she says - "duck" and "balloon", along with some additional names like mama and dada). She also, as it turns out, loves sucking and chewing on fleece fringe. So this was a real winner!

We had to take a "halftime" to let Meredith get ready for bed. We thought she might fall asleep, so we were going to save the rest of her presents for later. However, she had other plans. So she came back out to continue in the festivities! She sat on Grandma's lap in her new fuzzy pajamas. She was only sort of interested in the clothing she got...

...but was VERY interested in my brother's cat, Nora!

My brother (Benny) got a book on cats, and Meredith was very interested in reading it with him. I love this picture!

Though she doesn't understand Santa yet, Santa knew that Meredith was a good girl this year. He brought her something he knew she would love: balloons, balloons, and more balloons! I think there were about 30-35 of them. She had a great time batting them around! I'll try to post a video if I can later.

I love this picture of Meredith all dressed and ready to start the day!

Daddy couldn't resist demonstrating static electricity with the balloon and Meredith's hair.

Meredith really loves puzzles, and since we are trying to work on fine motor skills, we got her another one for Christmas. It has provided hours of entertainment since then! She really likes it if you let her throw the pieces and you try to put them back in before she has them all out again.

Our coy little girl...still loves to tilt her head to get a response.


We were excited that Meredith would get to go out in the snow, probably for the first time in her life (given the amount of bundling of babies in Russia in summer, we don't think they probably bring them out in winter much). My dad and Rob got her all bundled up for a fun but short outing to the yard, while Mom and I were having our annual day-after-Christmas shopping fun :)

We went to my extended family (Mom's side) on the Saturday after Christmas. Meredith liked the other kids, but most especially loved the dog Sammy!

Kissing a new Christmas bear!


After all of our fun in Minnesota, we hopped on a plane to Buffalo (thankfully non-stop). The next night we had Christmas Eve all over again!

Ready for present time!

Meredith had mastered the art of gift opening by now (sort of).


Me and my girl.


You can see the shock in my eyes in the picture below as Meredith opened a special gift from her Oma (Rob's mom). It is a crocheted duck! This is special because Oma re-taught herself how to crochet after 20 years and managed to find a duck pattern to make this for Meredith. So cute!

Meredith likes the duck a lot - she can play with it for a long time....

....especially if she is giving it kisses.

What a happy girl!

Daddy helped open some presents too.

Along with spending time with Rob's immediate family, we saw some cousins. Below is Meredith with our cousin's little girl, Jenna. They are about the same age (Jenna was born in September, which is when Meredith would have been born if she hadn't been a preemie). We had a great time at their house, and also a groundbreaking discovery. After a whole month of trying to get Meredith to walk without anyone hanging on (the magic sweater lost its touch) we learned that what she really needed was (a) a little cousin her size who was walking everywhere and (b) a hallway with a full-length mirror on the end so that she could watch herself walk toward it! She started walking within a few minutes of our arrival and hasn't stopped since!

We also visited with our cousin Matt and his wife Sarah Jane. Matt picked out a special gift for Meredith - a toy robot! Let's just say he knows Rob very well.


Well, hope you enjoyed the photo fest! Sorry it took so long to get it posted. I will leave you with a really adorable shot from my parents' house. Who could resist this smile?

P.S. As you can see in the photos, Meredith wears her glasses most of the time but does sometimes take them off for a bit. On the whole, though, we think it's going very well and are excited that she is so cooperative.

A New Look

Last week we had a follow-up visit with Meredith's ophthalmologist, who had checked her eyes about 3 months ago. The verdict at that time was that she was quite far-sighted and that one eye was weaker than the other. There wasn't any sign of natural improvement this time, and so she wrote Meredith a prescription for her first set of glasses. These should hopefully strengthen her weaker eye, and potentially help both of her eyes. It's even possible she won't permanently need glasses - but without them now, she could actually lose sight in her weaker eye due to the strong eye "taking over." Obviously that would be bad!

The optician gave me a little speech when I showed up with Meredith. It went something like this:

"Children Meredith's age don't have peer pressure. No kids her age can make fun of her for her glasses. So what we need to prioritize are durability, comfort, and effectiveness in staying on."

You can guess what that means...a friend said "it sounds like they could just use goggles." He was joking, but it's not too far from the truth! Luckily, Meredith is so adorable that she even looks cute in her new pink baby glasses:


She has been doing quite well with keeping the glasses on. She obviously isn't a huge fan, but we've found that after she pulls them off we can usually just put them back on and they stay on for a while. They have a strap around the back since her ears aren't really big enough to hold them up!

A game that Meredith has been enjoying lately is tilting her head to the side and having you imitate her. It never ceases to crack her up. This picture turned out really cute...

We will be going up north for the holidays, so we may not post for a bit - but hang in there! We should have a nice Christmas collection of photos for you!

The Magic Sweater

Check this out!! A new milestone for sure....recorded December 1, when all four of our parents were here for the Thanksgiving holidays!

Hooray for a Crayon in the Mouth!

You may remember that we're having issues with getting Meredith to put food in her mouth. She doesn't put ANYTHING in her mouth. We have been working on this with all kinds of various cookies, crackers, etc. If we break off a piece, she will let us put it in her mouth and she'll chew it up and swallow, but then give her a piece in her hand and she just throws it.

Not long ago, our babysitter Jenee had the great idea of Nilla Wafers. She caught Meredith red-handed giving one a little lick:


This is when the excitement began! I found I could get her to do the same with an animal cracker (the kind with the pink and white icing). But still, she wouldn't suck or bite....just lick a little, or even just touch it to her closed mouth and then later lick the crumbs (silly kid!).

Then yesterday, I gave Meredith some big crayons to play with, and she actually stuck one in her mouth - just for a second - and I of course said "no" and she was fine with that (didn't taste too good anyway). But inside I was saying "yes! yes!" because this meant she was starting to be interested in trying to taste things.

And finally, today, was the big breakthrough. The key: a cheese stick. It is one that looks like string cheese, but it's a more delicious mix of mozzarella and cheddar. First I pulled a piece sort of loose off the top, so that when I put it in her mouth and told her to "bite" she would easily get a piece of cheese. (I tried this for a bit yesterday and it had worked, but she wouldn't transition to doing it herself). I have found that she loves this cheese. Then I stopped breaking it up for her, and just let her suck and gnaw a bit while I held it (don't worry, I had her in my lap the whole time in the unlikely event that she bit off too big of a chunk -- she doesn't seem capable of that right now anyway). And then....

.... I gave her the cheese stick....

... and ....

... she put it in her mouth and bit a tiny bit of cheese off!!! By herself!!!

And she did it again and again until she got sick of it - probably 15-20 bites before she wanted to move on! She has quite an ingenious system - since her jaw is apparently not strong enough (or maybe coordinated enough?) to bite off a real piece of the cheese stick, she instead puts the stick pretty far into her mouth, closes her few teeth around it, and then slowly pulls it out, so that she scrapes some cheese off. The cheese stick sort of looks like it was in a pencil sharpener, but I think it is beautiful :)

Classic Fall Outfits

I brought Meredith out on a walk the other day and it was a little chilly, so I took this opportunity to try on a little outfit that Rob's aunt and uncle gave us. It is a little big but just about fits! And in a month or two the matching socks (from Rob's parents) will fit too -- Meredith seems to have disproportionately tiny feet :)

The picture above captures my many efforts to catch a photo of Meredith in this outfit while she crawled like a madwoman back and forth across the couch.

Below are my ultimate successes!



We also just got a bundle of winter clothing from another friend, and this amazing dress was in the box. It is corduroy (I love corduroy!). Here she is sleeping after church on Sunday.

Speaking of which, I hear a little girl waking up, so that's all for now!