Our busy summer fun

Wow, it's been forever since I've posted. We've been busy having lots of summer fun and rearranging all the rooms in our house it seems like. Dan and I are finally ready to have a second baby. Fiona is super excited and has generously donated many of her old toys and clothes to the new baby. Since we're still heavily potty training right now, Fiona also talks about how she will teach the baby to use the potty. I hope she makes good on this promise because potty training one has been enough at this point. Things are going along but there are still lots of accidents and frustrating moments. She just gets so involved with playing that she forgets she's supposed to be paying attention to her bottom. So that coupled with the fact that our poor dog is slightly neglected since we're concentrating on Fiona so much right now, it seems like there is pee around every corner. I'm glad we'll be taking up these carpets hopefully this winter when there's nothing much to do outside.

The other really exciting thing is that back in May Fiona and I went to a benefit walk at the Zoo with my mom to raise money for Wigs for Kids (who I donate my hair to every 4 years or so-it's almost time for my third donation, but it's hard to cut so much off all at once). Anyhow there was a raffle there for a play house and we won it!!!! We were so excited. Dan and I have been working for 2 months now on the house. I feel like we could seriously do habitat for humanity now. It's more completed now than the two pictures show, but the first one gives you an idea of the size-- It's HUGE!!! The second is a cute picture of Fiona painting the house. She had a great time helping out.

From blog Fiona in the house-you can see the adult sized back door

From blog The front has a little kid sized door and two windows that open and close

At this point the house is pretty much done, we only have to finish the interior. We're in the process of painting the walls and then I want to put some of that rubber interlocking floor matting down so it's nice to play on. I still can't believe we won this.

The other big fun of the summer was taking the train to Chicago for Fiona's 3rd birthday. Dan, Fiona, my mom, and I all drove to Michigan where we picked up Dan's mom. Then we took Amtrak to Chicago. Fiona had so much fun on the train. I think the three hour ride was the perfect amount of time. She did a lot of playing, we read some stories, got a snack, and watched the scenery flash past.

Some of the fun things we did in Chicago were going to American Girl Place where we had dinner in the cafe and a special birthday cake. We also went to Build a Bear on Navy Pier. I think this was the highlight of the trip for Fiona. She had so much fun picking out her kitty to make and finding clothes for it. Then we took the water Taxi to Shedd Aquarium where we met up with my friend Virginia and her two daughters that are about Fiona's age.

It was such a great trip and I hope we can do something similar someday. Maybe once little baby number two is older. I kind of wish they weren't going to be so far apart in age, but between moving and just starting a new job three weeks ago, we've decided it's best to wait a little bit.

Here are some quick pictures from our Chicago trip...

Tyto the Owl

We adopted a barn owl from Penitentiary Glen (an animal rescue and rehabilitation place) for my mom this past Christmas and, as part of the adoption, we got to meet the owl and also got a private presentation all about barn owls. The owl was Tyto and it was really beautiful up close and so soft looking. The woman doing the presentation dressed Fi up to be a like an owl, where she had to hold up two grapefruits-to demonstrate how large our eyes would be if we had eyes as large as an owl, and Fi also wore an owl ears headband to show where an owls ears are on the head, they are not level with each other and it has something to do with allowing an owl to tell better from what direction a sound is coming.

Fiona also pooped in the potty for the first time tonight!

A little artist

Here's a video of Fiona making a picture of herself at her easel. It was great watching her make purposeful marks with the paintbrush and to hear that she had a picture in her mind and was working at getting it down on the paper.

The end result of her painting was a totally blue piece of paper!

Dan and I started removing wallpaper from Fiona's room this past Friday, it's exciting to finally be making changes to the house, but it's exhausting to think of all the improvements yet to make. Fiona picked out 'French Pink' for her wall. It should look nice when it's all done.

When your toddler is more mature than you...

It's hard to admit when your two and half year old behaves slightly more like a grown up than you do. It started several months ago (before we even moved) when Fiona told me to stop picking my nose (come on, you know you do it too). Fiona has honestly never picked her nose and always politely asks for a tissue and daintily dabs at her nose when she thinks she has a "booga."

Then shortly after I got my contacts I was rubbing at my eye and Fiona told me not to put my finger in my eyes. Well, fine then.

Then, just a few days ago I thought I had lost her favorite turtle (Turt) at the grocery store and I felt horrible. I went into my room and started crying-it's also partially because I'm still stressed about moving and unpacking and therefore I am only slightly more emotional than usual. Turt is very important to Fi and she takes him everywhere. Fi came into my room and said, "it's OK mom, the hard shelled turtle can be my new turtle." The hard shelled turtle is a turtle puppet we found in the attic when we were moving. How can she have more common sense than I do and also be more level-headed. Although maybe it's not that hard to be more level-headed than I am, I hate to admit. She definitely takes way more after Dan in that respect than after me.. FORTUNATELY!!!!

We've been enjoying the warmer weather here so much! Today we took a walk to a small pond near our house. We packed a very small picnic for ourselves and brought along Mr. Bunglie and some of his friends and a picnic for them. I'm working on taking photos for a new Bunglie book called "Mr. Bunglie's ABC's" and 'p' is for picnic. In each picture readers are supposed to find other objects that begin with the same letter. For instance with the letter 'p' there is the pond in the background, pizza, plates, something pink and purple, a pear, a plum, a peach, pencil, paper, paints, and Puck the dog. The picture is still on my camera but here is the picture for the letter 'b'.



The text to go with this picture is "B is for bed, sweet dreams and good night." (it will be a rhyming book)
Find these other objects that begin with 'b'-- something blue, something brown, something black, a bear, ball, bottle, bat, bird, book, blanket, balloon, bow, bear. Sorry the picture is kind of small, it will be much much larger in the printed version of the book.

So far I've written all the text and taken pictures for 'b,' 'c,' 'p,' 's,' and 'x.' So it's coming along.

I did just finish two new Mr. Bunglie books this past week, Mr. Bunglie Down on the Farm and Mr. Bunglie's Talent Show. I really like the farm one so maybe I'll try posting it on here in book form at some point.

Animal friends at the "Duck House"

Yesterday, Fiona and I were having a picnic on the dock while Dan tried to figure out how to get the in ground sprinkler system to start working again. While we were watching the ducks swim by we noticed something swimming towards us that was too low in the water to be a duck. We thought it was a turtle at first just paddling around and just as it was coming into sight it dove under water and we could see that it was largish. I thought it might be an otter and Fiona thought it was a cat!

We watched the water for a while and saw the animal come up behind our neighbor's house so we went running over there and discovered that it was a beaver. It was so incredible. I've never seen a wild beaver before.


You can just see the beaver's head as it swims


Beaver chewing on log

Today we saw a wild turkey wandering around by one of the houses. For some reason it looked so out of place. They are super strange looking birds and it's hard to imagine why someone would have looked at one and thought it might be tasty. They have those weird long hairy patches on their chests that look like pony tails and then of course all the extra red bumpy skin on their heads and chests (the wattle). Any how it was still pretty cool to see one. The funniest was when there was one at the library where I work. In the middle of a really suburban place. This turkey was just walking around and then ran across a 5 lane street. Which of course solicited all sorts of 'why did the turkey cross the road' jokes.

Happy in the Duck House

We're finally here and mostly settled. The last two weeks have been chaotic but sort of fun, I guess. We had a lot of great help from my mom (who watched Fi), my dad and his friend to help us load the U-Haul, and the Demkos (Jim helped un-load, and Annie and the boys hung out with my mom and Fi). The unpacking process is still underway. Fortunately, though we are mostly left with boxes of things that never really had a place in the old house. The weird junk that we don't know what to do with but for some reason don't really want to get rid of either.

It's been great here so far (when we're not unpacking or frantically looking for something that is still packed.......somewhere........) We've seen lots of deer (and plenty of deer poop---signs that deer are roaming our backyard as we sleep), and we have a resident duck family that frequents our corn feeding area. Fi LOVES making sure the ducks have corn available all the time. I'm really hoping that they bring their ducklings by when the time is right.




We've all been really enjoying the back porch which is entirely glassed in, including the ceiling. And it's been tons of fun feeding the ducks and exploring the area in general. Even the cats and Puck seem happy here. We set up the huge floor to ceiling cat perch on the back porch and the cats are in kitty heaven. We took Fi to the playground yesterday and Dan and I were commenting on how she seems happier here, in general, than we've ever seen her.

Even daddies need extra special care every so often

Dan and I have been super busy as we pack everything up and get ready to move to our new house (which we are calling "the duck house" since there are lots of ducks in the water). We were packing up our kitchen nook table to take to the new house. I told Fi that we were packing it up to take to the duck house and she said, "so the ducks can eat with us?" I'm really excited about seeing deer and ducks near our new house. It's so exciting, just a week and a half away at this point. Since Dan and I are working so hard we've been especially exhausted lately. Fortunately we have a truly compassionate child. Here's a video of Fiona putting daddy to bed. She covered him up with blankets and then read to him from Minark's Little Bear book.


Dan and I are so lucky to have Fiona around to take care of us!