Fiona is 4

Once upon a time, after a long and fairly traumatic labor, the loveliest baby was born.

















And now that baby is four years old. FOUR.

Four.

My brain can't quite adjust to that fact, so I won't dwell on it.

For the last month (at least) every morning she has asked us if it's her birthday yet, and why her birthday takes SO LONG! You can imagine her joy that today was the day.

We began the day with some presents and then Ben went off to work and we had pancakes.

Then after pancakes came brownie making.

After pancakes and brownie making came baths. Anything involving chocolate and syrup is pretty much guaranteed to lead to a bath.

Then we headed to the library with some awesome friends. Fiona's friends Annabelle and baby Penelope have been out of town for a couple of weeks so it was great to see them.

Adele enjoyed this Garfield book.

Library was followed by lunch at target. Then we braved the downpour and sprinted to the car to head home so Adele could take a nap and Fiona could work on one of her presents - a paint-your-own piggybank.

Masterpiece!!

We also chatted with Granny and Grandpa and Aunty Ali on Skype, which was fun.

After that Adele got up and we headed off to our second social engagement of the day.

Another favorite baby friend - Ethan.With favorite adult friend Tanya.
















We brought some cookies and the aforementioned brownies and my super talented friend Gena and Fiona's friend Aubrey made these awesome martini cookies! (Does not contain actual martini.)

THEN we headed home for birthday Pizza and... CUPCAKES!! All Fiona wanted for dinner was cupcakes so after declaring she was done after a few little pizza bites I gave up and we lit the candles.

Yum.

Yum.

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.


















Then a few more presents, and a couple of scooby doo episodes before off to bed.

I don't know about Fiona but I am completely exhausted!

I feel so lucky to get to spend time with this little girl who seems to be growing up so fast. She is smart and quick and kind and loving.

Here's a story. The four of us went for a walk together a week or so ago and decided to stop on the way home and share an ice cream cone, one of Fiona's favorite things (can you tell the girl is a bit of a sugar fan?). After we got there we discovered that Ben had forgotten his wallet and I had not brought mine. Fiona thought it was funny at first in an "oh, silly Daddy" kind of way until it dawned on her that this meant no ice cream, at which point she burst into tears. A very, very kind person, seeing how upset she was, gave us $2 to get her some ice cream, and she was very happy and grateful. On the way home, while licking the strawberry cone that she chose, and shared with Adele, she told us that next time Daddy should be sure to bring his wallet so that we can give $2 to someone else who forgot theirs so they can have ice cream too.

And that's the Fiona I love so much. The part that walks backwards singing "Peppa Pig" to encourage Adele to get from A to B with her walker. The part that cheers for her when she arrives. The part that wants to help and share and learn and is so excited about new things, and really disgusting things and things in general, like looking up different kinds of dogs and spiders and snakes and dinosaurs and baby birds hatching out of eggs on the internet. That's the Fiona I love to snuggle with. Happy Birthday my sweet big four year old girl.

Fiona's 3rd Birthday Party

This afternoon Grandma, Grandpa, Cathy, Erik, Ryan, Emily and Andrew came over to celebrate Fiona's 3rd Birthday! She'll be 3 on Tuesday so today was the family party day.

Side note: Happy Birthday to my brothers David and Robert whose birthday is today! I counted on my fingers and I guess they are 26, which seems like it could not possibly be true! Well, Happy Birthday anyway! ;-)

Now a random assortment of photos will follow.

Grandma and Grandpa gave Fiona a castle tent and she was so excited! Here she is crammed in there with all of her MN cousins...

Cathy and Erik and their kids gave Fiona a really cool glow in the dark drawing toy which she had a lot of fun playing with inside her tent.

Adele got a present too and was really excited about it!

I made a rainbow cake... Fiona likes rainbows a lot right now and was really happy about the cake! I was happy that I managed to get it all baked and assembled in time despite the 45 minutes of unplanned sheltering we did in the basement due to the nearby nearby tornado.

I didn't make enough frosting to cover the whole thing (turns out 6 layers is a LOT of cake), but on the plus side you could see the rainbow on the outside too :-)

It was so fun inside!

Nom nom nom nom nom. All that food coloring and sugar and birthday excitement made for a pretty fantastic party! Here we all are (except Ben, who is taking the photo).

Happy Birthday Party Fiona! I can't believe you are almost 3!

Cupcakes

Tonight was poker night in Chocolate Moose vacation in 'Sconsin house, so I have not left myself much time to make my blog o' the day. So here are some pictures of Fiona making cupcakes with her favourite holiday buddy Catherine.

Mmmmmmm cupcakes!

Happy Birthday to Ben!

It's Ben's birthday today! I won't embarrass him by telling you how old he is but let's just say that if you multiply 4 by 9, he'll be that old two years from now. And yes, I double checked that with a calculator...

He took the day off work, and the girls both went to daycare this morning, so we got to hang out just the two of us! You might think that would be a good opportunity for some romance, but instead we went to Target and then I did some work while he nagged me to hurry up so we could go to lunch. And what a lunch it was! There's a sushi buffet next door to where he works that he has been excited to take me to, but it doesn't go well with kids and it's kind of pricey... well today was the perfect day to go!

(I didn't take this, it came from here, but ours looked very similar)

You order what you'd like off the menu and they bring it to your table, and then you just keep ordering more and more food until you're making this happy groaning noise and sneakily unbuttoning your trousers to give your tummy more space. It was so yummy!

Fiona gave him Toy Story 3. She was excited about it - it has a dinosaur on it!

I'm sure she'll be up bright and early tomorrow morning to watch it with him :-)

We had a party at his parents house - jointly with his Dad who is having a birthday next week. We had pizza and.. ICE CREAM CAKE!! Mmmmmmmm YUM!

I think the best part of the day for Fiona was licking ice cream and frosting off the candles...

And the best part for Ben was choosing a new phone for me and then getting to "set it up for me". He's been really excited about it and finding out that it was released today made this the best birthday ever. He's funny.

Happy Birthday Sweetie! We love you!

Trip to Scotland and Adele's Baptism

It's finally here! The post you've all been waiting for! Well, probably not, but I feel we couldn't just let a trip to Scotland go by without immortalizing it in blog form.

In the beginning of May (so we could get there and back before Fiona turned 2) the four of us traveled to Scotland to visit and have Adele baptised. There's a lot to cover, so I'm planning to use bullet points and pictures to get though it all.

1. Flight out.

*Checking in very stressful. Delta dreadful. Lost booking for girls. Almost missed flight.

*Flight great. No problems. Girls very good. Fiona very tired on arrival.

2. Time adjustment. Scotland 6 hours ahead of Minneapolis.

* Not awesome, but could have been worse. Had a few crabby zombie days. Fiona crabby. Me zombie. Also, crabby. Adele did much better. Good baby :-)

3. Trips to Louise's childhood parks and local beach.

* Fiona: "TRAIN!!!!!!!!"

* Fiona: "A BOAT!!!!!!!!"

* Fiona: "SWING!!!!!!" (swing not pictured).

4. Trip to Macduff Aquarium with Grandpa!

*Fiona: "FISH!! FISH! FISH! FISH! STARFISH! BLUE FISH! TINY FISH!"

*Fiona gathered all her courage and touched a starfish

* Fiona: "BOAT!!!" Yep, we found another boat! (It's out there somewhere!)

5. Going on THE BUS!!!

*Fiona loves all kinds of transportation, and her dreams came true the day Ben and I (and Adele) took her on a real live Aberdeen bus. I wish I'd found these half as exciting as she does...

6. Visiting with Family and friends!

*We spent time with some lovely people in Aberdeen, and a lot of people visited to celebrate Adele's baptism day with us. Fiona and Adele really enjoyed hanging out with you all!!

7. Adele's Baptism.

This was a really nice day. My brother Robert and my lovely friend Anna are Adele's Godparents. I wasn't able to take many pictures on the day, so I "borrowed" most of these from Uncle Michael. Hopefully he won't mind :-)

*Adele was very good and was happy and did not cry!

8. Grannie!

* Fiona loves Grannie so much! And Grannie loves tea! (And Fiona, of course). Fiona loved getting to spend so much time with Grannie, and in addition to that on this trip, she got to have her first "cuppietea" (as Fiona calls it) with her while colouring a picture of a teapot. Perfect!

There was so much more that we did, and you can see many more pictures and videos on our flickr page, but for now I should wrap up this epic holiday post extravaganza. The final part was the trip home, which went well despite having to be at the airport at 4am.

*Adele: "This sucks. I hate you. What kind of crazy time is this? Grrrrrrr"

* Fiona: "PLANE!!!!!!!!!"

The End!

Fiona is 2!

Wow, things have been busy! We got back from our trip to Scotland last Friday, and haven't stopped since then. The girls took a few days to adjust, but both are doing well now, and sleeping pretty well most nights. I'll write about the trip later, but for now it's all about Fiona's 2nd birthday!

Fiona turned 2 on May 24th. She had a very nice birthday. She has mostly grasped the concept of a birthday, and kept referring to "Feena's happy day". She loves the song "Happy Birthday" on any day, and will request that I sing "Happy Day Granny/Daddy/Brodie, etc." so she loved that people kept saying, and singing, Happy Birthday. She understands presents too now, and gets excited about opening them (usually in the hope that she will find a bag of chocolate buttons inside).

I asked her what she'd like for "Happy Day" dinner and she requested toast and watermelon. So that's what we had.

Then it was time for cake! (And yes, I'm laughing halfway though because the cat fails to jump onto the table and falls on the floor).

Fiona liked the singing and candles so much that we lit them quite a few times...

Then it was time for presents! She liked her tricycle but isn't quite tall enough to pedal it. For now she had daddy push her around and she sneakily hides pacifiers and dish towels in the little storage box on the back. I'm totally onto her though ;-)

We gave her some books and some more duplo too. She loves duplo, and likes to build towers. She also likes people to build impossible things for her, like boats and lions. Impossible for me anyway, I'm only supremely gifted at play-doh creations...

(Thanks for the picture Uncle Michael!)

Here she is working very hard...

Daddy loves Duplo too and was eager to play!

Even Adele loves duplo!

It was a really nice day!

Today Fiona had her 2 year checkup. She weighs 23lb 9oz, which puts her in the 12th percentile for weight, and she's 34 inches tall/56th percentile for height. She's growing well, and learning like crazy. She loves to read stories, talks non-stop and is, of course, a genius ;-)

So there it is. 2 years old already. I know I say this all the time but... time flies.

Girl or Boy? All will be revealed...

Today was the big day! Ultrasound day!! As well as this being the 'are all the limbs in the right place?' test, it was also the day to find out if baby was a girl or a boy. And we got happy news! Everything looks perfect... it's growing great, and has all of the limbs and organs it should. Phew! And we found out what kind it was...

Last time we found out and just called people to let them know. This time I thought we should announce it with some fanfare, because this is the most exciting point in baby's life so far, and the next big excitement won't be for quite some time yet. We planned a cake-reveal party. After our appointment I baked a cake that was either pink or blue inside, and our local family gathered together to witness the cake cutting...

We built the suspense... first we forced our guests to eat pizza and make small talk. They also had to make official guesses beforehand...

(Laurie and Nate were joining us from Utah via Skype, so they got to participate in the fun too.)

We showed the lovely photos that we were given in the afternoon (there are more on flickr)...

(The face is in profile, and the blob by its chin is a hand... it has another one on the end of the other arm too. Yay!)

We gathered everyone together for the grand finale. Ben was busy holding the 3-D picture up to the webcam for Laurie to see...

He wanted to be sure Laurie could see the picture, so seconds before the big cake moment he asks "can you see her?"

Yep, you read that right. Her. It's a girl. Oh well, so much for fanfare. Lets just cut the cake so we can have dessert.

So Fiona's going to have a little sister. Ben's going to be totally outnumbered and we might need to add another bathroom ;-)

And here's the updated tummy picture... I promise, it's starting to become more baby and less twixes. I had to switch to mini-twixes because it was getting out of control...

Yay for healthy baby girls!