The Wilderness

A couple of weeks ago, we spent a nice relaxing weekend at The Wilderness in Wisconsin Dells.  After all of the emotional ups and downs and everything my family had gone through over Christmas and New Years, it was really nice to just get away and relax for a weekend.  And Rylie was so excited to swim in the Winter time.  We have been doing Fall and Spring swimming lessons, but take a break over Winter, so she was ready!  She was a little apprehensive of a couple of the water parks...which unfortunately happened to be the ones that had the most activities for toddlers.  She didn't care for the giant bucket of water that tipped every three minutes...even though it didn't get anywhere near her. It was too loud and she would sit with her ears covered.  So we spend the majority of our time on the lazy river, which was fine by me, or in the big kid waterpark with the wave pool, which was also fine by me.  There was a smaller kid area there with a couple of slides and a "shower" so it worked out well for us.  And since the big kid slide rules prohibit pregnant women from going down them (darn!), Dan had to convince "Dawner" to ride with him.

Cruising on the lazy river

"Mommy, I taking a showder!"

Rylie and Gamma

"See my birkini?"

Rylie and Papa

The bucket- not a fan

Rylie and mama

The family picture...baby included in this one!

Still a big kid...crashing through the wave pool

And Baby Makes Four!

We had our 20 week ultrasound last week and found out that Rylie is going to have a little sister!  We are very excited to be expanding our family and for Rylie to have a sibling to interact with.  We can already picture her dressing her sister up like one of her baby dolls.  And I love that she'll be at an age where she'll want to help mommy while we're at home :)



16 weeks



20 weeks

Rylie loves to say hi to baby whenever she sees my bare belly.  She gives her kisses.  She puts her ear up to my stomach and says "Good idea baby".  She tells baby she loves her.  I asked her what she's going teach baby and so far she has said she'll teach her "Mickey Mouse Clubhouse", "the Here We Go song" (Fresh Beat Band) and gymnastics. One of the weekends we were at my parents, Rylie was talking to my dad about the baby as she was playing in her little kitchen.  She said something to him about the baby being in my tummy and Ppapa said, "What's it doing in there?"  Rylie's response, "Making me lunch!". 

We are excited and nervous to be parents of two. I'm looking forward to getting out all of Rylie's teeny tiny clothes.  And most of all I'm looking forward to spending the summer with my girls.  Lots of swinging and swimming and just being together.  Maternity leave is the only way I get to be home for this amount of time, so I'm looking forward to all kids of activities with Rylie and bonding with our new little peanut.  While I did my best to tell myself to just enjoy my time at home with Rylie and not worry about cleaning and laundry because I knew it would fly by, I didn't always let myself do that.  So I'm excited to sit back and enjoy this one even more and not worry that I'm doing everything exactly "right".  We feel so blessed and can't wait to meet this baby girl.

As for Rylie, she just had her 2 1/2 year appointment.  She is tipping the scales at 26 lbs and is 35 inches long.  I think she has yet to make it past the 20th percentile for either.  She continues to amaze us with her vocabulary, manners, imagination and her awesome little personality. 

At this age she loves singing...more of mommy and daddy's music than her own. She is very independent and likes to do things herself.  She loves changing her monkey or babies diapers. She grocery shops and goes to Target...in her little red car.  She has conversations on her phone. She loves to build with Trio blocks and legos.  Her Little People have conversations.  She gives them birthday parties and sings happy birthday to them.  I overheard her scolding her Little People the other day...something about them being naughty.  I said "Rylie, are your Little People being naughty?".  She responded with "ONE of my Little People's is being naughty".  She likes to dress up in tutus and be a princess.  She loves to get ready with mommy and get a little hairspray in her hair.  She gives us compliments like "Good job daddy" and "Mommy, you look pretty". She loves to steal my camera and take pictures of everything.  She even says "cheeeese" to inanimate objects while they takes the picture.  She is actually pretty good about getting our faces in the frame though. It seems like she just has to hear or see something once and she somehow remembers it, which is just amazing to Dan and I.  We give and get lots of kisses and "I love yous" in this house, which melt my heart every time. And it breaks my heart when she tells me not to go to work in the morning.  I would love to spend the day with her whenever she asks.  There are so many more stories to share that I can't think of.  I wish I carried a a video camera with me to keep track of her conversations and all of the silly things she says as I know I won't remember them all.

Before the baby gets here, we wanted to make sure that we got Rylie in a few activities. She's currently taking a class called Soccer Tots. It's great to see her interact with other little kids.  She listens very well to her "teacher".  They do some soccer, but also some other physical activities.  We also have her signed up for another swimming class after this.  We'll take a couple month break after the baby gets here and hopefully we'll get her in gymnastics while I'm home with her this summer.

My Grandma

In what seemed like a short four months after my Grandpa passed away, my Grandma joined him in heaven.  We picture them dancing together again, gliding effortlessly across the dance floor as I had seen them do so many times.  While we were sad to lose Grandma so quickly, this is the way we had always pictured it would happen.  He took care of her.  They were married for 61 years and inseparable.  As my friend Elaine called it "a true love story".  She was lonely without him.  We are sad to lose her, but happy they are together again and thankful for the many memories we have of them both.  We knew that Christmas was going to be different this year without Grandpa, but didn't expect to spend it without Grandma as well. I'm glad I was able to spend some time with her in the hospital and to tell her that I love her before she passed.  I got to see her on a really good day, which was nice to see her laugh and smile and look like my Grandma again.  Rylie also got to give her hugs and tell her she loves her too.  Even in the hospital, she brightened Grandma's day. 

So again, I would like to record some of my memories of Grandma growing up. They're all very random things and some very small details, but it made her my Grandma.  She always played with us.  Whether we were doing puzzles or playing ball in the back yard, she was always willing.  We played many rounds of croquet.  Any time my cousins from Colorado came to town, out came the cardboard house.  I remember her giving us baths and lathering on the pink Johnson & Johnson baby lotion that smelled so good.  She would wrap us up in a big towel and snuggle with us.  When we would stay over for a night or weekend, we always had "candle light" dinners.  Which meant we just lit a big pillar candle in the middle of the table.  And we could have been eating mac and cheese for all I remember, but we felt special either way.  She would take us for rides in the "beach car", which was an old brown car that was parked behind the house.  It's the car that we would actually take to the beach, hence the name, so we wouldn't get sand in Grandpa's Buick Riviera.  Anyway, she never actually drove us anywhere (Grandpa always did the driving), but we would sit in the car and she'd take her foot on and off the brake really quickly for a bumpy ride, which we loved. 

She loved to sew.  She had a special machine that would make little symbols and write words.  They made tennis towels for me with my name and a little blond tennis girl embroidered on them.  They attended my basketball games in middle school, tennis matches in high school.  They came to my graduation from my Master's program and out for drinks to celebrate.  They liked to fill up my car with gas when I'd come home from college and always offered me to come over or go out for dinner.

I'm so happy to have had them a part of my life for so many years, especially later on when I appreciated them so much more.  I'm happy they were able to know Rylie and what a special little girl she is.  She always put a smile of their faces as she does with everyone.  And now she knows that she has two special angels watching over her and keeping her safe. 

Christmas 2011

This is the first year that we spent all of Christmas Eve and Christmas Day with the Wille side of the family.  It's also the first time that Rylie has had Santa bring her gifts to her house!  We spent Christmas Eve at Dan's parents house starting with the kids decorating cookies.  We went to a church service where somehow Dan and I ended up in a row with the two of us and all 4 kids.  We're sure Chris and Leslie were having a laugh behind us.  After church we returned to Jerry and Trudy's house to open a few gifts, have dinner, and hunt for the pickle on the tree.  I was the big winner for the third time. 

Sprinkles!





We took the opportunity since we were all dressed up!

Christmas morning Rylie woke up and saw that Santa had left a few bites of his cookies behind, so she finished them off for him.  We dove into the presents. Dan and I didn't exchange as our gift to each other was a new washer and dryer for the new basement...very exciting we know.  Rylie LOVED the microphone from mommy and daddy.  She got some new accessoriesfor her kitchen and the big gift that she had asked Santa for...a dolly house.



 

We spent the remainder of Christmas morning at Carpenters exchanging gifts with them and Dan's parents. There are 4 kids and 6 adults, so it gets a little crazy and I had time to take very few pictures.   We were thankful to have a little downtime before we headed back to the Wille's for dinner and had so much fun just sitting in our jammies and playing with the kids and their new toys.  We spent Christmas night at the Wille's with Carpenter's and the Hansen side of the family for dinner, a few more gifts and the Packer game.

Rylie LOVED her new tutu from Uncle Earl and Auntie Sarah

Since we spent all of Christmas Eve and Christmas Day with Dan's side of the family, we had planned to take a few days off work and head to La Crosse for 5 days to celebrate there over New Year's weekend.

The good news is...we got to wear our Christmas dress twice!

Dan played Santa and grabbed the perfect first gift under from under the tree...
a very well disguised bottle of Maker's Mark from my brother to my dad.

Patrick's "bonus" gift to Dan was a big hit

Rylie doing trick shots in her new hoop from Uncle Patrick

There were a few big surprise gifts this year...a new TV for Patrick, a new diamond pendant for me, and a big gift certificate to a local kitchen and bathroom supply store for my mom (to start a project she has been waiting for)

The aftermath

I guess she thought she was the little baby this was intended for...

While this Christmas was a little different for us...we made it through.  It was our first full Christmas away from La Crosse, but a first that we spent the morning just the three of us.  We received news that my Grandma went into the hospital Christmas Eve day, so my parents spent the majority of their holiday with her.  Things were crazy at work for Dan and I this time of year and projects are in full swing at home.  But we somehow pulled everything together and had our Christmas with both sides.  Little did we know that we would be spending this Christmas without Grandpa AND Grandma, but are thankful for the many years we had with them.

Our Little Rock Star

We have quite the little performer on our hands.  Rylie loves to sing and seems to catch on to the words of songs fairly quickly.  She started out with numbers like Twinkle Twinkle, Row Row Your Boat, etc.  Her more recent favorites (and still age appropriate) are "Daisy, Daisy", "Jesus Loves Me", and "Take Me Out to the Ball Game". She also likes "Here We Go" by The Fresh Beat Band. However, in the last few months she has really expanded her taste to songs such as "If I Die Young" by The Band Perry and "Drink in My Hand" by Eric Church.  A fairly depressing song and one promoting drinking...probably not so appropriate, but it works out ok for us as we get these kinds of requests in the car rather than "The Farmer in the Dell".  We have the CMA awards saved on our DVR and she repeatedly requests her Eric Church song and stands in front of the TV with her guitar copying all of his actions.  It's so fun to watch.  I'll get a video of this posted eventually.

Here are a few videos:

Daisy, Daisy:

If I Die Young: