Easter pictures

My aunt Ann has been visiting and since she takes such awesome pictures, I asked her to take some of Will and Kalena in their Easter clothes. Here's a little preview.

Throwing rocks was the only way to get her to smile.

She loved all the jewelry. That may be bad news for us when she's older!

By the time we moved on to pictures of the two of them together Kalena was done. Ann only got to snap 2 shots before Kalena took her hair down.

Big smile! I think these turned out better than his 3 months pictures, so it's too bad he's wearing the same thing in those.

Bundled baby.

Can anyone look at this picture and not feel happy? Didn't think so.

There are more pictures on my facebook page if you just can't get enough:)

It's time

Did you know Farmer's Almanac lists best days to potty train children? Well, they do. And this Thursday, April 1st, is one of them. I think Kalena is ready. In fact, I probably would have been better off if I'd just done it when she was super interested, but that whole "about to have a baby" thing sort of distracted me. I suppose "I have a 3 month old baby" could also be an excuse, but I'm not going to use it.

My dad has offered me $100 if I can get her trained (one accident per day, not night trained) in a week. Think I can do it, or is that just crazy talk?

Anyway, I want to hear from you, lovely readers- best potty training tips, tricks, or stories. Spill 'em!

Try again Spokeo

I'm subscribed so Snopes.com because I like to know what rumors are true. It's good to be informed. SO, this morning they had this post about the website spokeo.com. Spokeo is an aggregator website. It gathers information from various websites and puts it all together in one place. People like to get freaked out about sites like this because "ohmygosh all my personal information!" Here's the thing though. Everything on that website is already online somewhere. (The real lesson here is be careful what you post online.)

I have some stuff online, facebook, myspace, this blog (obviously), so I thought I'd go see what spokeo says about me. I put my name in the search and here's what it says about me:

First of all, our last name is spelled wrong. They have it as "Vandeboogaard" instead of "van de Boogaard." It says I am a male- WRONG, a virgo- WRONG, a homeowner- WRONG, have lived here for 3 years- WRONG, and have only a high school education- WRONG. Also, it gives an estimated home value of over a million dollars (it's a nice house, but I'm pretty sure it's not worth that much) but says the neighborhood is "below average." I don't know about you, but in my mind "million dollar homes" does not usually mean "below average neighborhood."

My profile based on the information they got correct reads like this:

I'm a Caucasian in my mid-20s who is in a relationship, has kids, and lives in a house. Really personal huh?

That's what you get if you search my name. If you search my e-mail it says I have 21 blogs (seriously? I barely have enough time to blog here) and I'm on 7 social networking sites- wrong again. If you search my other e-mail it says my name is elshag and that I'm on 41 social networking sites. I wasn't even aware that 41 networking sites exist.

I would say "nice try spokeo" but really? It's like they didn't even try. I can get more accurate information if I google myself. You can pay a monthly fee if you want more information but based on the free "information" I'm going to take a wild guess that it's not worth it. I guess the moral here is, if you're interested in becoming a crazy internet stalker, spokeo is not the way to go.

Things to remember

Just some things I want to remember about Kalena at this age.

She'll "count" but she only says "two." Doooo, doooo, doooo.

She'll say "a" and "b" but then she just repeats them as if they make up the rest of the alphabet as well.

She's started saying "please" in addition to signing it (and sometimes instead of signing.) It's pretty cute, but I'm going to miss her over-enthusiastic full body "please" sign when she gives it up all together.

She has a favorite shirt and she insists on wearing it anytime it's clean.

She LOVES eggs. Cooked every way you can cook them. She requests them almost every day.

She always wants diaper cream. This one is my fault really. A couple months ago she kept bringing me the diaper cream and wanting me to put it on her hands like it was lotion. So I kept telling her it wasn't lotion, it was cream for her bum bum. It took a couple days for her to get the idea, then for a few weeks she didn't say anything about it. But then she started pointing at it when I changed her diaper and saying "Mum mum! Mum mum!" and I asked if she wanted some cream for her bum bum and she got all excited. Now she asks for it pretty much every diaper change.

If she thinks I'm going to say no to something she wants, she'll answer for me. For instance, if she wants to watch Finding Nemo she'll say, "Ish? Uh huh." Or if she wants to go to the store or the park, "Buh bye? Yah." It's pretty cute. Doesn't stop me from saying no though.

I'll miss this.

Randomness

Kari and Jonathan came down to visit over spring break and brought miss Amelia of course. Kari posted some cute pictures of the kids here, so I thought I'd post some pictures of our night out. I wanted to get a cute family picture before we left, but Kalena was not so very interested in looking at the camera.

Here we are at the restaurant. No Coast, in case you're wondering. Sushi.

Kari and Jonathan and Kari's friend. Who works in a tanning salon. In case you couldn't tell.

Eric and Amy deciding what non-sushi items to order for Eric. Eric doesn't like sushi. Not because he has a problem with raw fish, but because he doesn't like nori. Weird huh? Raw fish is fine, but seaweed is too gross. He even tried three different kinds because we kept insisting. But too much nori taste in all of them. Pretty much the opposite of one of my college room mates who bought and ate packages of nori plain.

One of the dishes he ended up ordering. Looks yummy.

Yes, I'm posting pictures of our food. Apparently there isn't anything interesting going on in my life right now.

All in all a good night.

Do people really use those?

It's getting nice around here- 60 degrees today- so I'm getting a little antsy staying in the house all day. I'm still shopping for a double stroller. I'm having a hard time choosing, mostly because I'd like to actually try one out. The selection of double strollers in stores around here? PATHETIC. I've seen exactly ONE. Which means I'm going to end up ordering online, without actually having SEEN it, and that annoys me. Also, it annoys me a little that I'm going to end up ordering a stroller that doesn't match my car seat because even if I get a graco stroller (to go with our graco car seat), they don't carry the same pattern as the car seat. I don't actually WANT a matching stroller, but it still annoys me.

ANYWAY, all this to say, I noticed something as I was shopping online for strollers. There are like a million options for rain covers for strollers. RAIN COVERS. I don't even want to walk from the car to a store when it's raining, let alone go for a walk! Who uses those? Are there really people out there so dedicated to walking (or running, most likely) that they feel the need to bundle up their kids and put a rain cover on the stroller and head out? Crazy.

Favorites

Kalena loves her Ba. And my dad has trained her to let other people know that. When you ask her, "Who do you love?" She'll say, "Ba!" Brian has been trying to train her to say "dada" instead, but it only works sometimes. Usually the conversation goes like this:

Me: Who do you love?

Kalena: Ba!

Me: Who else?

Kalena: Ba.

Me: Who else?

Kalena: (Looks at me like I'm stupid) Baaaaaaa.

Me: Who else?

Kalena: ummm, dada.

But the other day the truth came out. My dad had just given Kalena part of an ice cream bar which she was happily eating when we started having the "who do you love" conversation. We had just decided that the reason Kalena always says "Ba" is that my dad was bribing her with ice cream and Brian only bribes her with cookies. So this time we asked, "who's bribes do you love?" and, with her face covered in ice cream, Kalena smiled a huge smile and said, "Ba!"

Entertained

What I've always hoped for.

The smile

Finally caught the smile on camera.

The nap window

If you aren't aware, Kalena isn't much of a sleeper. (Anyone who watched her as a baby is saying, "DUH.") This has always been the case, but it hasn't usually caused much of a problem. Sure, it wasn't very fun when she was transitioning to one nap and she would get super tired in the afternoon, but typically she does fine on the amount of sleep she gets. Recently though, I've discovered a problem with the sleep thing. The nap window.

Kalena will only nap if you put her down during her window. If you don't put her in her crib sometime between 10:15 and 11:30 am? No nap. I've assumed (wrongly) on a few occasions that putting her down anytime AFTER 10:15 would mean a nap. Nope. If it gets too late she just cries. And cries, and Cries, and CRIES. It doesn't have to be hours late either, today it was 11:50 and that was too late. Sometimes she'll cry herself out and be quiet for 20 minutes or so, but that's it. She still NEEDS a nap so those no nap days are bad news. I don't really have a point here. But if you want to hang out with me these days? It's gonna be lunch time or later. Just sayin.

Required reading

Kalena loves books. She loves looking at them by herself, but she also loves to be read to. I don't mind reading to her, but I do have my preferences about what I read. Since she's not old enough to be really interested in the STORY part of reading, I prefer to read her books that are fun to read out loud. I like books that rhyme and that have a good rhythm to them. Not only are those more fun to read, they're easier to memorize which is good when Kalena wants to turn the pages at her own pace (aka much faster than I can actually read them.)

I've mostly stuck to Dr. Seuss with some Sandra Boynton thrown in for good measure. (We have other books, I just avoid reading them most of the time.) But last time Kirsta was here, she had a couple library books for Patrick that we both LOVED. The first is this one:

Not only does this book have a cute story with a nice moral, it rhymes AND it has lots of animal noises! And, even BETTER, it comes in a board book! (A board book that isn't missing any of the story.) My mom was nice enough to buy us each a copy of this one (well, she's still working on getting a copy for Espen- B&N only keeps one in stock at a time.)

The other one is this one:

This book is WAY fun to read because he rhymes everything with "track." Plus he's very dramatic in his storytelling, which is cute in a children's book. I ordered this one online.

Kalena seems to like them both. Yesterday she made me read "I Saw an Ant on the Railroad Track" five times. And then she got mad because I wouldn't read it again. (Any book gets old after 5 times through. In a row.) Seriously though, fun books. What are some of your favorites?

Hello March!

March already? I guess January and February just got lost in the sleep-deprived haze of life with a newborn.

We're closing on the house tomorrow. I'm glad to finally have it all over with. This whole experience has made me pretty much never want to buy a house again. Ever. Also? Made me believe that realtors make way, way, WAY too much money.

This isn't to say I don't want to OWN a house again someday, and really buying the house was fine. But selling? Sucked hard. Part of the problem was obviously that we weren't planning on selling, we just got thrown into a situation where that was our best option. And by "best" I mean "less bad."

Anyway, house is sold, we lost money on it, and equivalent houses in Grand Junction cost twice as much. Alright 2010, can we get on with the good stuff?