Hello again,

It’s Feb. 1st!  I can’t believe Violet is over 9 months old now. At her last doctor’s appointment she weighed 20lbs 12oz (75th percentile), measured 29 1/2″ (95th percentile), and her head measured 18 1/2″ (95th percentile).  Apparently, like so many other things, the big head comes from Derek’s side!  In other related news, Violet’s first teeth poked through yesterday!!  The front bottom two finally showed themselves after months of chewing and drooling.  Accompanied by one maybe two slightly whiny days and the tiniest bit of diaper rash.

We are so lucky.  She is such an easy going kid!  She’s been clapping, waving and doing “So Big” for a couple of months now.  Her newest trick is pulling up to standing and walking through the house hanging on to mom or dad or whoever is willing to have a sore back for a little while!

Her other favorite things to do are pulling her socks off, which makes Grandma Suilmann exclaim “You blew a hoof!”, bathtime accompanied by mom’s favorite “towel-head” cuddle time, and telling lots and lots of stories.

Sadly, she has outgrown her jumperoo, but we’ve moved on to her Crawl, Cruise, and Go playgym that she got from her great aunts and uncles for xmas.  She’s just learned how to put the balls down the slide and loves to make the music go so that mom will dance for her–sometimes she joins in waving her fists and shaking her head.

Even though there hasn’t been a post, we did put xmas, New Year and other random photos up on the picasa website http://picasaweb.google.com/derek.d.anderson/ .  Hopefully we’ll get some of the new toofers up there soon, too.

Happy Valentine’s Day to everyone!  Wishing you a day full of love and hugs and kisses and chocolate!

Love Derek, Clair, and Violet

I can’t believe Violet is six months old already!!! Time really does fly when you’re having fun.  She’s now lovin’ her cereal/fruit mix for breakfast and last night for the first time she tried some peas for dinner. She wasn’t too sure at first but she ate ‘em all up.  Grandma was doing the feeding, I think that helped!  Tonight we’re having a little bonfire for friends and neighbors after the trick or treating.  Violet is going to be a goldfish tonight–I will attempt to upload some pics for you of her in her costume.

My favorite things at this point about my little munchkin:  her faux hawk fuzz on the top of her head, her goofy raspberry noises, her ability to get her socks off so that she can have free toes, the back of her head, of course, her big open mouth smile that she gives to EVERYONE, the fact that she still adores Ninja even though he could care less about her, getting her to giggle from tickling her tickle spots, her uber fuzzy eyebrows–a trip to my eyebrow gal may be in order for her 12th birthday….poor thing and her crazy jumperoo jumping, I swear she is going to break that dang thing!!

OOOO…and on a little side note, the hair on the back of her ears has disappeared, it only took 6 months!

Now if only we could get her to consistently sleep through the night…dream on momma!

Love to you all!!  GO VOTE!

Clair

While walking the dog this morning, I saw a mallard perched on a rooftop and a couple patrolling the park.  I think they are staking out the neighbor hood, plotting an invasion.

Hello from pregoland!

Baby Violet is still in the oven, like Derek said. And she’s still movin’ and kickin’ and lovin’ life in her little womb-world. I am also very proud to say that the violets that I received at one of my showers (thank you Carrie) are also still kickin’ on the window sill in the kitchen! I don’t do very well with plants, so I made a goal to at least keep them alive until ‘our’ Violet enters the world–so far, so good!

I also have some more photos to share! The first batch is of the surprise shower at the dance studio–the first two are of the dancers, a young group and an older group, the next one is of the teachers that were able to be there, and the last one is my mom.

The other set of photos are a few from the pregnancy photo shoot I did with Jennifer Glaws a couple of weeks ago–it was way fun, I totally recommend it to any pregnant mommas out there, no matter how big you feel!

I want to give a big thank you and blog-shout-out to all who either attended or hosted one of the fabulous baby showers thrown to welcome our little Violet into the big world!! We are now very well prepared for any occasion with all of the cute outfits, we can change many a diaper, conquer diaper rash, have fun in the bathtub, and much, much more.

We are now 2 weeks away from the due date as of tomorrow. I can hardly believe it, except that I feel more uncomfortable every day! The doctor says everything looks great, very healthy–but little Violet is in no hurry to make her grand entrance. Derek and I separately predicted May 1st, we found out as we were chatting the other night. His theory is very cute–especially if it happens to rain on Apr. 30. April showers bring May flowers (Violet)! I just have a feeling she’s going to be late. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see!

Now for some pictures…

Shower #3 at Columbia Grounds–4/6/08

So, Medtronic has created a campaign to get kids to read and to exercise and stuff like that. My favorite so far is the pitch to keep kids off drugs.

Here is the original image of a girl blowing bubbles:

Here is the image after it has been Medtronicized:

It looks like the poor girl is happily hitting the pipe. I don’t think this was proofed out.

So says the Fat Rooster Squirrel.