Snow day!

This weekend, like most of the other inhabitants of our hilly, icy, overlooked-by-snowplows neighborhood, we were snowed in.

Despite being midwesterners most of our lives, we've fully adopted the South's "stock up on groceries and hide at home until it's all melted" mentality when it comes to snowstorms (or even flurries), much to the annoyance of our family. After all, they only come once or twice a year, at most, and couldn't we all use a snow day once in a while? We sure could.

It started on Friday. We knew the storm was coming and spent the day running errands and cooking so we'd have plenty of food prepared in case the power went out. And sure enough, Saturday morning we woke up to a winter wonderland in our front yard. We were out playing in it by 8:30.

We would've been out by 8:20 had it not taken a full 10 minutes to get Kalina appropriately bundled. She patiently and even happily sat on the steps as we subjected her to a snowsuit, hat, mittens and, worst of all, boots. Surprisingly, by the time she was fully geared, she still wanted to go outside and play in the snow.

Kalina has been in snow before, but we're not sure she's ever actually walked in it, mostly because of the dreaded boots (she actually hates any new shoes, much to her mommy's dismay). So playing outside was going to be tough, especially since Matt and I were out of practice at snowplay (not to mention devoid of snowpants). We did our best, but Kalina had the most fun when we treated the yard like a beach and helped her fill buckets full of the powdery stuff. Standing in one place the entire time, she filled buckets, helped us dump them out, and watched us as we threw snowballs at trees and built forts and penguins (guess who built which).

We were intrigued by the idea of having a sedentary baby once more, and took the opportunity to place Kalina on top of our cars, on landscaping and in several small snow banks. We covered her with snow. And she loved it. "Are you ready to go inside?" we'd ask her. "No?" she'd respond.

When Mommy's feet got too cold, however, and Kalina took her first of two or three face-plants into the snow (after all, it's hard to catch yourself when you're wearing a poofy snowsuit and are unwilling to step), we figured it was time to take a temporary break from snow-play. That, and Matt and I were running out of ideas. Ten minutes later, the toddler was un-bundled and pointing at the snow through the window

We made it outside quite a few times this weekend. During the fourth snow adventure, Kalina gave in and finally consented to shuffle around in her boots. She found it tricky to navigate the lumpy landscape, though, and soon was asking to be carried.

When finally the snow reached the right consistency to make a snowman, we decided to show Kalina how midwesterners have a good time in the winter. Matt rolled out a gigantic snowman as Kalina and I watched, helped, filled buckets and ran inside to get Lamby because we really, really needed Lamby. We put together the snowman's face and Kalina rehearsed her facial anatomy as we added eyes, a nose and a mouth. As she pointed out, all of us have eyes, noses and mouths. Who knew?

The highlight of the snowy weekend, however, was a cutting from a cardboard box, looped with rope for a handle, that our neighbors brought over. The two toddlers rode around for a good 15 minutes on the makeshift sled, and then Kalina happily rode another 15 minutes, wearing a hole in it and being forced to go inside. After all, Mommy's toes were quite cold, so how would Kalina's be holding up?

Interestingly, although Kalina was stoic-faced through much of her outdoor adventuring, she never wanted to go inside. Maybe our Carolina girl is as tough as a midwestern girl after all? Let's hope so. Come again next year, snow! Maybe then we'll own a sled.

P.S. "Ha ba Unc Ta!" as Kalina would say ("Happy Birthday, Uncle Tom!")

A day without Mommy

Just a short year ago, when Kalina wasn't sleeping and required Mommy's constant attention, I longed for the day when I could escape her clutches. Her cuteness, while magnetic, occasionally couldn't surpass her neediness and frankly, I needed a break.

On Tuesday, it came, in the form of a business trip to visit a new client: Grandfather Mountain. Had the client been a dreary one, I don't think I could've torn myself away from my little cupcake, who is far easier to manage now, but the North Carolina Blueridge area is tough to pass up. I committed to attending.

*gulp*

Swallowing my true feelings, I commenced writing a 3-page, single-spaced document about Kalina's care, feeding and napping (which required a whole page all of its own) during the 10-hour period she'd be in the hands of her grandpa and her Aunt Nancy. They laughed, but committed it to memory, I'm told.

I was to leave for the 4-hour journey upon Matt's arrival home from work Tuesday evening. On Monday, Kalina was a perfect angel, sweet as sugar sweetened with honey. (Yes, it would've been much easier to leave if she'd been disagreeable--I'll admit it.) On Tuesday morning, she said her first sentence: "I love you," to me, with a smile and a hug, and I felt like the worst mommy in the world. During naptime, I tried to think of every excuse I could to get out of the trip. At snacktime I burst into tears and Kalina tried to cheer me up by waving at me before breaking down into sobs and needing a hug herself. And on Matt's arrival home, I reluctantly left a crying Kalina with her Daddy.

That evening, while I was sitting in a car with 3 coworkers, trying to make light conversation through a sore throat and congestion, Kalina was visiting the mall with Daddy. They played upstairs in the food court before heading back home for bedtime.

My bedtime came much later. And to my dismay but not surprise, the peaceful full night of sleep I'd dreamed of for a year and a half was not forthcoming, as the temperature of my room escalated to at least 85 degrees and my head cold didn't allow me to breathe very well. I think I slept worse than when I had a 7-month-old. Amazing.

However, I was cheered by the knowledge that Kalina was up long before I was (my alarm rang at the sunny hour of 7:00), as well as an email from my dad that showed Kalina tolerated the hand-off from Daddy to Grandpa quite well and was already gleefully breaking rules Mommy had set only a day before.

While I toured the mountain, enjoying lore as amazing as the views and braving strong, cold winds to cross the mile-high swinging bridge, all the time wondering whether I would die first from frostbite or from being blown off a cliff, Kalina relished the sole attention of her grandpa and her Aunt Nancy. The little ham was on her best behavior, and managed to put on quite a good show for them as well as she enchanted them with smiles and sorted blue objects. She also learned a new two-syllable word: out-side.

At naptime, I was engrossed in discussing the future direction of the organization's marketing with half my brain and using the other half to calculate whether we'd make it home before bedtime (yikes, what if we didn't?!?). Kalina was undergoing her nap routine, as carefully outlined in a full page of my Kalina Kare document, at the hands of Aunt Nancy. Despite a few self-proclaimed potential slip-ups (do I turn out the light before or after Kalina is in the crib?!?), Aunt Nancy managed to get Kalina down for a successful nap. Fortunately, Aunt Nancy never had to use the suggestions under the bullet points: "if Kalina talks for 45 minutes and then starts crying..." or "if Kalina wakes up early...."

My afternoon was spent enduring carsickness and dry contacts on the way back home. Kalina's was spent at the park with her Daddy, who took off early since he'd worked a lot on the weekend, Grandpa, and a friend she saw there.

The one mishap of the experience happened around 5:30 when the day had already been long for Kalina and Daddy mentioned the "M" word in the most innocent way: "We haven't seen Mommy for a while, have we?" Oops. The tears flowed, but fortunately Kalina was able to bottle them back up.

I was thrilled to see that my homecoming wasn't met with the nonchalance or misbehavior several books had warned me could happen. No, instead I was greeted by a little girl so joyful that she couldn't help but practically skip toward me as fast as she could, toddler-style, arms open wide. Kalina spent the rest of the evening exuberantly pulling me around by my finger.

Photo: Kalina and her mommy's cousins girls, ages 3 and 5, whose visit to the area last weekend Kalina thoroughly enjoyed (as did the rest of us).

Pediatrician visit!

Today Kalina had her 18-month appointment. In a somewhat futile attempt to prepare her, I adopted Lamby as my patient this morning and examined her eyes, ears and heart (which, in case you didn't know, goes "thump-thump, thump-thump" quite hilariously, to Kalina, anyway). I've read this can help ease anxieties.

And so it was with a somewhat hopeful spirit that we all, Lamby included, headed into the office and faced the receptionist. Who finished her long, drawn-out phone call about nothing important before checking us in. However, we quickly forgave her the wait since she was in a good mood--she's much easier to work with that way. We whiled away the few minutes in the waiting room by watching the fish and reading a boring book.

Remembering the weighing incident from last time, I decided to have Kalina walk back rather than carry her. If I could keep her unattached from me until it was time to plop her onto the scale, I thought it might go better (nothing's worse than having a nurse pry her off). No such luck. Although Kalina was completely cool with the waiting room, she recognized the hallway of terror that lead the the exam rooms of horror, and dug her little heels in. I scooped her up and carried her through the rest of the appointment.

Poor Kalina probably could sense my tenseness with the nurse, who is most likely excellent friends with the receptionist, as she interrogated me about Kalina's first H1N1 vaccine, which she got, as you may remember, at a free clinic thing at one of two armories in Durham. Apparently miffed that we hadn't wrangled an official appointment for a nonexistant vaccine back in November, or even a nonexistant appointment for an official vaccine in December (when the pediatrician's office wasn't making any appointments because they were too busy), she informed us that "I don't know about any so-called free vaccinations." Okay, I guess I just made it up. I sulked into the exam room and was glad to be alone with my sweet girl and her toy lamb as the nurse shut the door.

As we waited for the weighing, I decided it'd be a good idea if we "weighed" Lamby. I didn't have a scale in the room so we used the exam table instead. However, Kalina's giggles soon turned into shrieks as I plunked her onto the actual scale. Fortunately, we got a good reading before she got up the nerve to make a lunge for it. How long until she can be weighed on a stand-up scale? She's 22 pounds 14 ounces, by the way--solidly in the 25th percentile.

The doctor was with us at this point, and we had a nice little chat about Kalina's development while she clung to me like I was driftwood and her ship had sunk. After a good 10 minutes she managed a little smile, but that soon disappeared as the exam begun. No amount of preparation could've prepared her for it, but fortunately, her eyes, ears, mouth (easy enough) and heart were duly checked before a minute was up. The pediatrician commented on her strong heartbeat. No surprise there, as the child was pretty worked up.

Then more suffering ensued as the doctor stretched her out on the table to get her height/light her on fire. She's 33 3/4 inches, and now in the 85th percentile for height. Her head circumference remains average.

We discussed parenting because I didn't really have many big questions. He assured me that the best thing for Kalina right now is lots of unstructured play, unless we want to get her into a competitive private preschool or kindergarten, some of which test on skills, in which case we should begin alphabet drills immediately so Kalina doesn't fall behind (or so our culture would have us believe). We don't. He agreed wholeheartedly.

And then the doctor left and shortly the nurse came back in for the vaccinations, of which there were three. We were all more relaxed than we had been previously, and Kalina was intrigued by the idea of a "sticker" with bunnies on it that she would be receiving on her upper arm. I chatted nicely with the nurse to keep the mood light, and Kalina was practically smiling right up to the time her arm was swabbed.

Poor Kalina. She was thoroughly exhausted by the end. On the way out we played in the drinking fountain a bit to cheer her up.

On the plus side, Kalina will now only need an annual flu shot until kindergarten! She will, however, likely have to get weighed at her next visit. Can she at least have a band-aid for that?

Photo: This was taken a while ago (November?) but I haven't had a chance to post it until now, and it's cute. Feeding the geese/ducks.

A baby on the roof?

The other day at the Odegaard home, Daddy was taking a nap in the cradle, Mommy was doing laundry, the house pony was taking a bath and the baby was on the roof with the table.

Don't worry, no one was in danger (nor getting any sleep). Kalina was simply playing with her new toy house.

Now that Kalina is in control of her lilliputian environment, there's always something exciting happening. Whether she's waving hi to the miniature farmer or holding a small horse up to the window to see the truck outside, Kalina gives us glimpses into her sweet little mind through the world of pretend play.

And it's a nice, happy world. Lamby, for instance, is always ready to perform the motions to The Wheels on the Bus (with Kalina's help, of course), and bath doggies can swim under water indefinitely without needing to surface for air (they're also always dirty and in need of a good scrubbing). Plastic bowls can fry up plastic eggs directly on the toy burner (who knew?), although little cooks still need to use an oven mitt when convenient. Cups and bowls can be filled with imaginary water from the pretend faucet to quench the thirst of a multitude of stuffed animals. In addition to hanging out on rooftops, babies drive tractors and sit on toilets (come on, Kalina, make that connection!) and farm animals are just as likely to take a bath as mommies are. They also occasionally make an appearance at the dinner table, where hay, strawberries and play-dough are the most common meals.

As someone who also (albeit somewhat ashamedly) thinks her stuffed animals are alive, I'm appropriately delighted at this development. It started a few months ago when Kalina first shared her sippy cup with Lamby, and has since blossomed, with the help of Christmas and its ensuing age-appropriate toys.

Frankly, 6-18-month toys had always been a bit awkward for Kalina, anyway. She's not really into shape sorting, and that rules out 50% of toyish stock right there. Stacking, opening/closing and dumping are okay, but, really, there are only so many times you can do that in a given day.

I'm also thrilled to see that the girl has an imagination (although I wish she could be more imaginative than putting Mommy in front of the tiny laundry room for hours on end). And that within Kalina's pretend world, she takes excellent care of her stuffed animals (who are well fed and watered all day long) and makes sure all the people are facing forward at the table. The girl is an orderly little soul.

Of course, all of this pretending is a reflection of our own daily life, a realization that makes us the tiniest bit fearful. What embarrassing family moment will Kalina choose to highlight in her next bout of play? Will she pick the time Mommy let her eat half her snack off the floor? Or the time Daddy appeared in camo in public (inside joke)? However, what did her little family do before digging into their dinner? Prayed. (Kalina narrated with her own specific prayer, which sounded suspiciously like a "baa.") At least we're doing something right.

And the best part? Every night (for four nights in a row, anyway) at 7:40 Kalina, with only the slightest suggestion, puts her mommy, daddy and baby to sleep in her toy house, closes it, places it next to her toy box, and heads upstairs to brush her teeth and rest her own little head. And no, I'm not imagining things.

Photo: Kalina with two toy strawberries. Upon receiving them, they were immediately fed to Lamby, Pony, Mountain Lion, her Little People family, and me. Plus, now she can say strawberry (well, kind of).

Kalina in snowy Minnesota

Kalina just flew in from Minnesota, and boy, are her arms tired! And the rest of her, too. And the rest of us, too.

Although we spent Christmas proper here with my family, we decided back in October, when Kalina was sleeping well and the Christmas spirit was already descending upon us, to book plane tickets to Minnesota to visit his family for New Year's (or, Christmas greater).

It was a brilliant idea--snowy Minnesota and Matt's family held lots of charms for all of us. And then December 28th rolled around and we were all recovering from head colds, and Kalina had been waking up at night and taking short naps, and all of a sudden we realized that in order to reach our destination, we'd first have to conquer the airlines, toddler in our laps.

Hmm. I'll spare you the details of famous flights in our history, but believe me, they're grim.

Needless to say, we packed accordingly, and ventured to the airport with countless little bags of food we could all nibble on and so preserve our strength through the arduous journey, along with complete changes of clothes.

It amazes me, then, that parents of small kids are often the most cheerful passengers our airports ever see. Why? Because if we break down in tears/screams/fits of rage, our children are likely to as well, and we have to solve that mess. We don't want to, and so in that spirit, Matt took Kalina for endless rides on the horizontal escalator, and I opened my book to read. (Secretly, though, I was watching Matt and cute Kalina ride--first Kalina was in Matt's arms, the next time pointing at me and smiling, the next time saying something (probably ball), the next time standing perfectly still next to him, the next time walking slowly holding his hand, the next time patiently watching another toddler walk up to her and get called back to his parent repeatedly, the next time running as Matt chased her and the next time coming back to our seats in Matt's arms.)

We grabbed dinner and boarded the plane. Two diaper changes, endless rounds of Wheels on the Bus and any other game we could think of, and one blessedly sleeping baby later, we were in Minnesota, and Kalina was talking about cats way past her bedtime as the airport bustle woke her up. Take that, airlines! We won! At least this time.

Now that we were there, we could actually focus on having fun--and that we did in spades. Everything in Grandma and Grandpa's house was new to Kalina, and so she managed to entertain herself and the rest of us with 7 dice and some coasters for pretty much the entire first day.


And since our first day in Minnesota was slated to be the warmest, at a comfortable 20-something degrees, we took our girl outside into the snow.

Kalina hated her snowsuit, hat, mittens and especially her boots, but all was forgotten and forgiven after Matt took her for a ride down the amazing wooded sledding/luge hill in the backyard. "Again?" she politely requested/demanded in her loudest voice. And again they went, reminiscent of the escalator adventures, except for the fact that 20 degrees is pretty cold for a North Carolina toddler and we had to return inside before any of us, really, were very ready to.

Kalina's adventurous spirit, however, couldn't be entirely shaken by the cold, and we headed to a nearby zoo/conservatory to explore one afternoon. Despite short-ish naps and unsettled night sleep, Kalina trooped among plants and ponds, mostly in pursuit of the plentiful koi fish. Unsuccessful in her endeavors to catch one (mostly Mommy's fault), she managed to have fun anyway in the playroom where she fed large plaster animals plastic food to her heart's content.

She loved seeing her Grandpa Les, Grandma Jan, Aunt Laura and Uncle Brian. All were able to win her over by week's end, and she seemed to win all of them over within the first hour. Kalina tends to have that effect on people, or maybe that's just me.

However, the most marked preference Kalina demonstrated, to those who know her best, anyway, was for Daddy. Thanks to the week's worth of weekends that Daddy was spending with Kalina, he edged out Mommy as most popular parent. It left me ever so slightly floundering, as I rely on my ability to play the "Mommy" trump card as needed (which is to say, liberally). Daddy's elevated esteem did not completely negate Mommy's, though, which merely meant that neither of us could leave the room unless the rest of us were wearing earplugs. [Note: after one day back in the old routine, roles have reversed back to normal.]

To Kalina's credit, however, Mommy and Daddy wanted a dinner date bad enough that we did leave her crying in Grandma's arms the last night of our visit. Within 20 seconds she was fine, or so they told us. :)

As part of the festivities, we visited Matt's relatives an hour south of his house. Kalina warmed up to the crowd rather well, ensuring everyone had plenty of pretend food and drink as she served them out of empty coffee creamer containers. Notably, she also graced cousin Elin with the honor of holding her after only an hour or so of close acquaintance. This event has only happened maybe 1 other time in the past 14 months (hi, Allison!), so it was quite a treat to witness and we talked about it for days.

And of course, there were toys! Some as Christmas presents, and some from Matt's childhood--either way, Kalina was thrilled with them. She proved her little girlhood by pouring tea without instruction from her new tea set, and happily playing with a vintage Fisher Price house, favoring, predictably, the family baby and the family dog, and turning all the people to make sure they were facing forward at the table and in their car.

How did she sleep? As well as could be expected--which means not great. In the end, Kalina redeemed herself by snuggling into Daddy's arms to nap for most of the flight home.

Which arrived on time, believe it or not. The perfect ending to a wonderful trip.

Photo 1: The Odegaard family (notice how Kalina is still, at this point, most comfortable in Mommy's arms)
Photos 2 and 3: Kalina, at this point, is mostly only comfortable at arm's length, or in Daddy's arms. This changes throughout the trip, and each Odegaard family member got to hold Kalina for at least a little bit.
Photo 4: Case in point: a real-life picture of Kalina with Grandpa
Photo 5: Kalina with Grandma at the zoo/conservatory
Photo 6: What a big girl sittin' all by herself like that. *sniff*
Photo 7: My cute new outfit! Thanks, Grandma!
Photo 8: Lamby multitasking as Kalina rocks the baby in the cradle
Photo 9: Sledding with Daddy!
And I'm saving the rest of the photos for another post. Nine is enough, even for the cutest girl in the world, right?