Obsessions

A couple weeks ago, I finally cracked and uttered the words that, as a mother, I promised myself I would never say,

"No more books Meili!"

I am not exaggerating when I say that we read for probably AT LEAST an hour everyday...and she's 16 months old. I feel like she has quite the collection of books for being 16 months old.

And of course, she doesn't want to read all of them. She wants to read the same ones over and over and over again. I think she's actually doing pretty well for her age. She's kind of grown out of board books already, and her favorites lately have quite a few words, and she'll actually sit and listen to a good chunk of the book. But she doesn't like it when Josh or I try to get through the book quicker by just telling her about the pictures. She wants the real thing!

And if we haven't read enough that day, she will go in her room and get her favorite book at the time, and chase us around until we stop what we are doing and read to her.

So, yes, in a moment of weakness, I cracked. But I have repented and continue reading to her all day everyday.

I can't figure out why she likes the books that she does. Josh and I will buy a book for her for whatever reason, thinking that she will love it...and then nothing.

Brown Bear was what I consider her first favorite book. I think it's funny because Josh really liked Brown Bear when he was young. His parents said that they used to say, "Purple kitty, Purple kitty..." and for some reason Josh changed that to "Purple dubba, Purple dubba..." So then, when Meili got the book, for some reason she became obsessed with the Purple cat, and would laugh when she got to that page, and didn't want to turn to the next.
Then came December, when we had to read this multiple times a day, to the point that I still have it memorized.
This was the one that absolutely baffled me. This book is really wordy, and the pictures are mostly black and white and pretty detailed. But she loved it.
My sister gave Meili this one, and promised that her girls loved it. It's a silly book, but I totally didn't think Meili would understand the humor. Sure enough, she chased me around with this one for a couple weeks.

Now I know that Meili can't really be blamed for her obsessive behavior. She may have gotten it from at least one (if not both) of her parents.

One day, Josh came home with these shoes. I thought they were SO cute.

Then he found a really good deal on these two pairs.

I told him that Meili really doesn't NEED that many pairs of shoes-especially all tennis shoes, because she will only wear them for a couple months anyway. Josh said he agreed.

Then these ones came in the mail.

And yes, this is my watch collection. I could have taken pictures of all the clocks in my house, but it would have taken too long.

I just don't know where Meili gets her obsessive personality from :)

Valentine's Day-4 days late

My grandma made Meili this outfit last year, and I waited patiently for it to fit her. Then I kept waiting for a day with snow on the ground to take some super cute pictures. Well, as we all know, days with snow on the ground have been few and far between this year. So the day I finally decided the time was right- Meili had already grown too tall for the pants, and she was not in a picture-taking mood.

She quickly became very demanding talent. I would give her M&Ms and she would look up-not smile-but look up for ONE picture. Then she would look down until I gave her more M&Ms.

The outfit is still cute though! Thanks Grandma!

Yes, I know, lowriding.

As I've mentioned previously, she has developed quite the shoe fetish. This is a regular occurrence in our house these days. The only bad news: she thinks that she gets to leave every time she puts shoes on.

For Valentine's Day this year, Josh and I made a bet on the Superbowl. In my defense, I knew it was a bad bet, and was sure I was going to lose from the start. I spent a good amount of time figuring out exactly what I wanted the terms to be, and I had it figured out so that we both had a fair shot at winning. Then, Josh said that the spread was 2 1/2 points for the Patriots, so he talked me into betting on the spread. I told him that I knew the Patriots weren't going to win, if only for the fact that I was rooting for them, but he said that I was getting the better deal, because they were the favorites-whatever. Well, as we all know, they lost, and the stakes of our bet was that the loser would plan our Valentine's Day date.

I was actually kind of excited about that part.

I wanted to do something fun, and lighthearted, that Josh and I had never done together before. My first choice: paintballing. But I didn't plan far enough in advance, so we didn't have a group of people to go with and I wasn't sure how that would work. Plus, it's winter. So I found a place online-Toad's Fun Zone. They have go-carts, laser tag, mini golf, batting cages, etc. etc. Josh had Friday off, so after eating yummy crepes for breakfast, we asked his parents to babysit and headed to Ogden.

I realize now that it wasn't logical for me to think that a place like that would be open in the middle of the day, in February, on a school day. But in my defense, we looked at the website after the fact and it says that on Fridays from November-March it opens at 10:00, and we got there at 10:45-so I don't know what the deal was. But needless to say, our Valentine's date consisted of a 2 hour detour to Ogden and back, to give his parents a short visit. I felt like a complete idiot, but Josh was really nice about it. I have promised him that we will do my date someday.

We ate lunch at Center Street, came home long enough for the baby to have a nap. Then went bowling at the Fun Park-which was pretty much as expensive as Toad's would have been and less fun. But it was still fun.

Then we came home and I made our Valentine's Day dinner-which was my favorite part of the day.

Meili got a pillow pet for a valentine-but was more interested in the paper bag that Josh's tie came in.

The benefit of celebrating Valentine's Day late is that everything is on sale. I got her heart-shaped cup for $.99

We had spare-ribs, rice, vegetables, rolls, and (of course) sparkling cider. After the fact, Josh said that the green beans tasted funny and I told him it was asparagus. Yep, we're fancy in our house!

So, even with my huge oversight, we managed to have a really fun day together with our little family!

On Saturday, we went to the Aggie basketball game. Josh has been to a few games with Meili, without me, and in that time she has become TERRIFIED of Big Blue. Am I horrible mother for just laughing at her? He came down on a rope from the ceiling to start the game off, and all of a sudden she was clawing over me to try to get away from him. And you can see from our seats, that we were pretty high up, and he wasn't even close to her. The rest of the game, her eyes were scanning the stadium for him, and she was clinging to Josh and I.

Oh sweetie, you'll have to get over this aversion someday. I see a lot of Aggie games in your future.

15 Months and such

We are still loving our baby like crazy, and she is getting more and more fun everyday.

-She learned lots of animal sounds: monkey, cow, fish, bunny, dog, lion, and bear.

-She still says no to everything, and I'm sure that Josh and I are reinforcing it because we laugh so often when she tells us no.

-She knows the word "bath" and as soon as I say it, she takes off and stands by the tub until I put her in.

-We went from not being able to get her to keep shoes on, to now, she constantly tries on all of the shoes in our house.

-Meili is still a picky eater, and she goes through stages daily as to what she will and won't eat. She's so funny about the things that she likes though. She will usually eat fruit: grapes, mandarin oranges, peaches, pears, and vegetables: corn, green beans, carrots, cucumbers. But the only foods she has never turned down are omelets and lasagna, and I can't, for the life of me, get her to eat bread. What kind of a kid doesn't like bread?

-Her obsession of dogs grows everyday. Luckily, she lives in an extended family with lots of dogs. She loves being alone with her dad because he will let her cuddle up to dogs, and let the dogs lick her hands. I am a little OCD, and will allow her to love dogs from afar.

-Meili got the flu for the first time this month :( I can't complain too much, though. I'm just glad that we were able to survive 15 months before having to deal with that. I felt so awful. I was sick as well, but I would have gladly had it even worse if it meant that she didn't have to get sick. Josh was great and took care of both of us, and did lots of laundry for a couple days. Even though we were all miserable, Meili was really cuddly, and I felt better at least being able to hold her all day.

Can you believe this winter? We were actually able to go to the park in January!

I tried pretty hard to get good pictures this month-because I've noticed I'm started to slack. But Meili moves too much, so they're usually fuzzy.

She loves this drawer of pens in our kitchen. I'm torn between baby proofing so she doesn't draw all over our walls someday, and keeping something else that will entertain her while I'm trying to do things in the kitchen.

Meili loves looking out all the windows in the house. We have a neighbor dog that lives across the street, and even though he's pretty far away, she can still see when he is outside in his kennel and she points at him and laughs.

This month, Meili finally decided that it was time to walk. Since her birthday, she has been fully capable of taking many steps at a time, but it was just easier to get around by crawling. So, all of a sudden, a couple days before Josh's birthday, it just clicked for her and she decided that it was time. (Then, of course, we went to a nice restaurant for Josh's birthday, and she would not stay in her high chair for anything, because she wanted to go exploring.) I've had many people tell me that I really didn't want her to walk because then she would just get into everything. Nope, I was ready. She was already getting into everything, and now it just means that I don't have to think about how dirty her hands and knees are getting.

At her appointment on Friday, Meili weighed 18 lbs. 10 oz. which is the 2nd percentile :( And she was 31 1/2 inches long, which is the 81st percentile. Still skinny and still long-the story of our lives. At least we still don't even have to debate a forward facing car seat or not-she's still not legal anyway.

Some Things are Better Left Unremembered

I don't know what compelled me, but within the last few weeks, I decided to get out my old journals from Elementary School and Jr. High. Every night this week I have thoroughly enjoyed reading about the very dramatic life of Kaleena. I thought you might get a kick out of a few of the entries (but who knows)-I sure did though....

An entry from when I was eleven

"Today when I woke up I decided to make an egg. So I did. Then me and my dad went on a bike ride... When we came home I ate "lunch." (I don't know why I believed that needed parentheses.) Then we went to the store. Bethany bought notebook paper, I bought a birthday present for my friend, my dad bought a huge plastic container, a tie rack, furniture polish and we rented movies. The movies we rented were: A Kid in King Arthur's Court, I.Q., Canadian Bacon...Then we got pizza. When we got home we cooked it. It was good but really spicy. After that we watched Canadian Bacon. It is now 8:58...Tomorrow we have regional conference and I can't wait."

-Oh 11 year old me, there are some details that just don't need to be remembered.

The mood swings apparently started to set in when I was about twelve...

"Hello! Today was sort of fun but sort of depressing at the same time. It was fun because, well, it just was. But it was depressing because my friends were all being weird and sort of leaving me out but not completely. So it was sort of depressing but not extremely. School was normal. There was a game after school. That was sort of fun, but not really. When I came home, I didn't really do anything. It was sort of boring, in fact. Well, tomorrow's going to be more fun."

And my favorite...I'll apologize to Bethany and Emily in advance. I'm sure I didn't mean it...

(I was shopping with my family in St. George) "But then I saw it...one of the most beautiful things I had ever seen...It was the most amazing colors and looked so remarkable hanging on it's little hanger! A jacket!!! No! No! Wait! I don't think it should be called just a jacket. It was more than that! It deserves a better name. Something great like...like... Tony! (A guy on tv at the time that I thought was cute.) I guess you could say it was a Tony! Then, when I tried it on, it looked even better! It made me look like a model! In fact, a SUPER model! I tried not to act too needy and I tried every trick in the book to get my mom to buy it for me. And at the very last second she decided to buy it for me but then Bethany and Em had to butt in! Oh! They should die! So, no, I didn't get my DREAM jacket! The best part was that it was originally marked $80 but it had been marked down to...Guess! You'll never guess! It's too incredible to be guessed! $40!!! Can you even believe it? I don't think you can! I think you are in total and complete shock and you're thinking "Why didn't her mom tear all her clothes off and go screaming through the stores because she was so amazed? How can Kaleena sleep at night knowing that she is being deprived of the great privilege of having that incredible piece of craftsmanship for only $40? Is that too much to ask for?"

Oh my! Well, all I can say is thank you to all those who associated with me during my adolescent years-I hope there's a special place in heaven for you. I guess I should say thank you to all those who continue to associate with me because I'm sure a lot of that 13 year old girl is still trapped inside and leaks out sometimes.

Every now and then I feel bad that I don't keep a journal very well anymore, and scrapbooking has pretty much taken the place, but I guess it might be better for posterity not to have some of these memories.

Go Jazz Go!

We went to a Jazz game on Friday. I'm finally getting to the point where I am okay with a Williams-less Jazz team, (but you won't want to talk to me when they finally decide to get rid of Millsap.) It was a really fun game, and I always like watching younger guys play. But I realized it was Meili's first Jazz game-which is surprising only because we used to go to quite a few Jazz games every year and she's already been to an NFL football game, 2 Major-League baseball games, 1 college bowl football game, (I think 2, but for sure at least 1) Bees game, and several Aggie basketball and football games. Not too bad for 14 months! Most of that list took me 26 1/2 years!

Go Jazz Go!

Merry Christmas!

As I've gotten older, I've gotten a little bit more bummed about Christmas. I still love the Christmas season obviously, but it's hard to give up the traditions that you've been used to your whole life. And sometimes it's tough trying to mesh 2 different families' traditions together. But this year, it got pretty fun again! Plus, because of Christmas being on a Sunday, and some other circumstances, we essentially got to celebrate Christmas on 3 different days which was also fun. However, I, yet again, didn't take as many pictures as I wanted-so I didn't get either mine or Josh's family celebrations. Ugh...

But here's Meili's Christmas morning-which we actually celebrated on Christmas Eve morning. I could barely sleep cause I was so excited.

Does that look like a little girl's dream or what?

Meili, of course, was the most excited about her new silverware. These days she's only eating what she can pick up herself with a spoon or fork.

I have a really hard time surprising Josh or shopping for Josh in general and my goal was to make stockings for our family this year. Well, I couldn't really find stockings that I wanted to make, and then as if in a revelation I saw these stockings on Live with Kelly, and I was able to order them just in time for Christmas! Josh had no idea, and I was so excited! Bad news: we don't get to have any more children, because I don't know if we will be able to find more to match-sorry Grandmas and Grandpas!

Meili loved the balls in her castle, but she was hesitant to get in at first. She got the hang of it eventually though.

She loves reading books, and I love that about her!

Her newest fetish: trying on shoes. We can't have another one of THOSE in our family.

I wonder where she gets it from?

We all must have been good in our house because we got quite the haul all around. I think I've been more excited to play with Meili's toys than even she has :)

We spent most of Christmas Eve with my family, then we went to Josh's parents' house on Christmas day. We were with Josh's family for New Year's Eve, and then because my brother was in Arizona with his wife for the holidays, we celebrated Christmas with my whole family yesterday. Add in a few times snowboarding and we've had a good couple of weeks!

I hope you all had a good holiday season, and here's to another great year in 2012!

Bingo Party

The Annual Anderson Family Bingo Party was held this weekend-which is essentially White Elephant. There are always a few recurring gifts that people dread getting, but this year, Justin Bieber was definitely the hot item!

We left our camera in the car, so it was fogged over for this picture, but we had to get Cherilee with her fake mustache and bacon band-aids!

Jake was the first lucky recipient of the Justin Bieber doll-how exciting!

Josh, being the horrible uncle that he is, stole Justin Bieber, purely to torture his niece.

And yes, he got the lump of coal that he really deserves for Christmas!

Alex and his "Romantic Evening Package"

In the end, the ever-deserving Andrea, got to go home with Justin Bieber.

The very exciting news of the night for Josh is that his brother, who is either very gracious, or has too much money, bought a season pass to Beaver-and Josh got it! Geez! A treadmill, a beautiful daughter, and a season pass to Beaver, what a spoiled boy!

Merry Christmas to all! We are so excited at our house!