A Very Croupy Christmas

Like the Ghost of Christmas Present, Kelly's Christmas Eve post foreshadowed what was in store for us. Unfortunately we couldn't just buy a big goose and stop the coughing.

Shortly after Audrey put Santa cookies out and went to bed, we heard the neighbor's dog barking. At least that's what we thought it was until we realized that our neighbors are too far away for us to hear their dogs. Kelly and I looked at each other and asked "Is that Audrey?!?"

If you've been following for long, you'll remember that Audrey had a cough last year that lingered for 8+ weeks. We did a lot of reading and the subject of croup came up many times. All of the articles mention that the croup cough is distinctive and sounds like a barking seal. We never thought that description fit the bill previously but when Audrey started up again, it sounded like we were a few hundred miles south, smack dab in the middle of Sea World.

Up at 7:30, a full 3 hours after her Cousin Emma (sorry Brian and Sarah), Audrey did o.k. with her stocking and first few presents. Though, like any sick person, she was a little sensitive and soon little things started setting her off. Us taking away the super sharp pencil from her was the final straw that sent her into her first major meltdown.

These sort of events are interesting with a little one. Even though we know she wont remember it, we still try to make things special--maybe more for us than for her. But like anything with a 1-year old, you are at the mercy of the gods and all you can do is put as many pieces of the puzzle together as you can and hope the rest falls in place. Sometimes things are just not meant to be and that family vacation you have been planning for months, or the visit with the Easter Bunny, or the magic of the first time opening Christmas presents just doesn't materialize like you expected.

We were just about at the point of throwing in the towel, taking a few frowny faced pictures to document the event (see the vacuum picture below), and just letting her watch T.V. all day, but in a last ditch effort we brought out the secret weapons - a change of clothes and some Tylenol. We took a twenty minute break and a whole new Audrey appeared. The smiles came back, the grumpiness went away, and she became interested in all the fun things going on.

The remainder of the day was spent video-chatting with family, eating sweets, and heading out for a drive to see a massive Christmas light display flashing in sync with a broadcast of Trans-Siberian Orchestra-esk music you listen to on your car radio. It was a bit cheesy but Audrey really enjoyed it so it was well worth the drive in the snow. After Audrey went to bed, we partook in the raspberry, chocolate, and almond tart Kelly made. A truly delicious way to finish off the evening.

Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve was food heaven for Audrey. She started off with a breakfast out at a local cafe where she devoured almost an entire pankcake and some eggs. For lunch she enjoyed 1/2 a PB&J and some sauteed zucchini with a lot of garlic. We couldn't feed her dinner fast enough (a roasted root veggie soup). And then there were the sweets.

Audrey got to help decorate her first Christmas cookies today. She had a lot of fun shaking as is evident by the mountain of sugar on the cookies and tray. But they taste delicious and were the obvious choice to leave out for Santa this evening.

We also gave Audrey her first candy cane. Well, we held it while she sucked on it. She did finally figure out how to bite off pieces and then the rest of it was gone in about 5 seconds.

A fun Christmas Eve bath and she is now tucked in bed. Unfortunately, she started coughing this evening so hopefully she gets a good night sleep and is ready for all the fun tomorrow!

Santa's Lap

My company held a sweet kids Christmas party today. There was punch and cookies and a special visit from the guy in red. At least 50 kids were in attendance; each one got to tell Santa what they wanted for Christmas and they each received a present.

As you can see from the picture, a visit with the big guy is serious business. She really does great with strangers but it is sometimes tough getting her to crack a smile.

And fulfilling a personal request from yesterday, I submit for you another comparison between this year's events and last's. I can't believe how small she was! (I apologize in advance for the snobbery, but I also can't believe how horrible of a picture they can get away with selling at the mall. I'm glad I had my own camera this year.) I still remember Santa saying that Audrey asked for "one of everything" last year and judging by the mess we pick up in our living room each night, I think she got what she asked for. If not at Christmas, then throughout the rest of the year.

If Santa didn't make her smile, the huge ballroom with lots of things to explore did. She spent over an hour running around, investigating every nook and cranny, dodging and ducking between people's legs, and getting in other families' pictures. The present she received was almost bigger than her but that didn't stop her from pushing it around the room. She was definitely more interested in the small pieces of shiny wrapping paper than actually getting to the "good stuff" inside. I guess we have a bit to teach her before next weekend.

Crafty Christmas

Kelly wanted the world to see that when she puts her mind to it, she can actually complete a sewing project. These stockings were started a month before Christmas and they are already done! That means it only took, hmm....let me count. Only 13 months to finish!

Yes, they were started last year, but can you blame a mother of a 2 month old for not finishing a project? Now, the mother of a 14 month old has loads of time, so it was no problem sewing up loose ends.

Kelly just seems to be excited that there are no misspellings and no holes in the seams. I think she should be super proud because they look wonderful!

Annmarie Gardens

Trying to keep up with the Santoki's, we are working hard to fit in our five Christmas activities before the big day. Our first was Christmas on the Square in Leonardtown. Our second was The Festival of Trees at Leonardtown High School (too lame to warrant a blog post). The third was our frigid morning cutting down the Steffen Family Christmas tree at Friendship Forest. And we just completed our fourth, an outing to Annmarie Garden and Lights.

Annmarie Sculpture Garden & Arts Center is, as the name suggests, a sculpture garden and art center. Imagine that! Their outdoor sculpture garden walking path plays host to the local annual "pay $5 to come see Christmas lights" festival. Previously, we have gone to the zoo for such events, but with the nearest zoo over an hour away, Annmarie figured there was a market for an exterior illumination extravaganza down here.

If I was to judge the lighting display alone, I'd give it a 3/10. It was a walking path lined with themed scenes, made mostly from light-bright-like displays of Christmas lights mounted in pre-drilled black painted sheets of plywood. There was probably a grand total of 25,000 imported Italian twinkle lights. But when you factor in Audrey's experience, it was a solid 9/10. Despite the fact that it was extremely cold and past Audrey's bedtime, she was a giggling fool the whole time, pointing out all the objects she recognized (elephants, balloons, fish, etc.). It only took 20 minutes to do the full walk, but that was the perfect amount of time for Audrey. Any shorter and she would have wanted more, any longer and she would have been bored.

We are starting to have more and more "Remember last year when..." nostalgia moments now that Audrey is over a year old. Tonight was a big one. The first picture below is our 14 month old little girl mesmerized by the lights tonight at Annmarie's and the second is our little 2 month old last year asleep on Kelly's shoulder at Hogle Zoo.

Art: The little lights aren't twinkling
Clark: I know Art, and thanks for noticing.

Those Hippy Parents

She's wearing cloth diapers, doing yoga, and has a horrible sense of fashion. Definitely our daughter!

Friendship Forest

Our little girl is sick...again! Another nasty cold picked up from who-knows-where. A few sniffles can't put a damper on her holiday spirit--she dragged us to the Friendship Forest bright and early this morning to cut down the Steffen family Christmas tree. She quickly honed in on this beauty:

It was cold enough to see your breath and we couldn't get this quote out of our head:

Clark: Isn't it a beaut, Audrey?
Ellen: She'll see it later Clark, her eyes are frozen.

We told her we'd come back for that tree in a few years and settled on this one instead:

Rusty: That tree wouldn't fit in our yard!
Clark: It's not going in our yard, Rus. It's going in our living room.

Winter CSA

I admit, I was a little jealous that my sister started taking part in a CSA-like produce delivery program before we did. We have wanted to be involved in a CSA for the last few years but signing up for one involved committing to an entire growing season and reserving your spot with a hefty down payment almost a year in advance. When the probability of moving within a year is greater than zero, it's tough to make that commitment. It was our inability to commit that led us to gardening ourselves as abandoning a small garden mid season was a little less costly. As it turned out, it was less costly, but a bit more traumatic.

Our arrival in Maryland was such that by the time we finished (mostly) with our first priority - unpacking, it was too late to start a winter garden from scratch. We checked around and got on a waiting list for Even' Star Organic Farm's Winter CSA. They eventually called, we jumped, and now we're getting a half-bushel of hearty winter produce every week.

What grows here in the winter? Greens, and lots of them. Every week we usually get one thing not green (radishes, sweet potatoes, etc.) and the rest is salad mix, stir fry mix, or hearty greens. It's pushing us to eat a little healthier and expand our cooking comfort zone. So, here is Audrey enjoying the homemade arugula and parsley pesto Kelly whipped together for dinner the other night:

13 Month Vocabulary

It's been amazing to watch Audrey's communication skills advance over the last month. She went from saying/signing just a few things to learning something new almost every day. Since this video was made, she learned how to sign "frog", and she has her own sign for "sun" (picked up from the itsy bitsy spider song).

Below we just breezed through as much of her "vocabulary" as we could remember but it is more impressive to see her use all of these things in context. She is constantly letting us know there are squirrels outside the window or that she just heard a dog. And books...she spends half the day going through books pointing out everything she can.

And of course a number of things didn't make it on the video: "bird", "duck", "help", "down", "feet", "toes", "belly", and "belly button".

Post #100

I wish we had a more momentous occasion for this momentous post, but we'll settle for the lighting of the Christmas tree ceremony in Leonardtown Square.

We had a lull in the local events over the last month when the weather was supposed to turn cold. They should have planned a few more festivals because while the rest of the country has been in a deep freeze, we've been flirting with the upper 60s for daytime highs for the majority of November.

The temperature did drop for yesterday's kick off of the Christmas season so we brought out Audrey's snow jacket that Grandma Vicki picked up in Park City on über-sale when Audrey was only a few months old. It was such a good deal that we bought it for the next year's season. It's a little big on her right now but it should be a great fit by the time the cold settles in.

The ceremony was a really neat event. It was put on by a volunteer firefighter association and the stars of the show were the 10 fire engines that took kids on rides around town. They also lead Santa into town with lights-a-flashin'. Audrey signed "More! More!" after each one went by.

This was by far the most attended event we have been to since we moved here. Audrey had clearly reached her limit so we watched Santa ride into town on his tractor-pulled sleigh and then pushed our way through the huge crowd to depart about five minutes before the tree was lit. Completely uncool, we know, but the prospects of sitting in a car with a screaming kid for an hour to go the mile back to our house wasn't very appealing. We made our quick exit and Audrey thanked us. Now that the crowds are gone, we'll take her back to town to see the tree whenever she wants.

Thanksgiving

Wow. Halloween was our last post? We'll follow it up with another holiday - Thanksgiving!

What did we celebrate Thanksgiving with? Christmas eggs, of course! Audrey had her first taste of this Steffen family tradition and surprisingly, the mushrooms were her favorite part.

Next up was another family tradition, ripping up bread  for stuffing while watching Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. Audrey wasn't very interested in the parade aside from the Sesame Street float, which was strategically located at the beginning of the parade for all the young kids with no attention spans. She instead was interested in eating about 3 pounds of the stuffing bread.

After she got her fill of bread, we went on a little family trip to the park for a wagon ride around the football fields. It must be a Maryland tradition for the boys/men to get out of the house on Thanksgiving morning to play football because in our small local park there were three pickup games being played with full teams of at least a dozen players on each side.

We came home from the park, cooked a fairly traditional dinner (stuffing, sweet potatoes, dry turkey, and pecan pie), chatted with family on the computer, and called it a night. All in all, it was a pretty good start to the holiday season!

 

Halloween

Audrey has two crafty grandmothers! Grammy made Audrey's pumpkin hat this year which we have been trying to get her to wear for the last few weeks. We've only been successful a handful of times. Other times we have to result to holding Audrey's hands to keep her from taking the hat off immediately.

Grandma Vicki toiled away on her fancy new sewing machine to make Audrey's Halloween costume at our request. It was our request that she make something, but we left the creativity (and the sweating, stressing, and cursing) up to her. She surprised us with an adorable panda costume on Audrey's birthday.

So, here is your Halloween question: Where do you go on Halloween with your one-year-old in a rural area when you don't know anybody? Well, the Monster Rockfish Festival, of course!

I don't know if it is just festival season down here right now or if these festivals are what people do to keep themselves entertained when there is nothing else to do, but there sure are a lot of these sorts of events: Blessing of the fleet, Riverfest, Taste of St. Mary's, Monster Rockfish Festival, Patuxent River Days, Oyster Festival (home of the national oyster shucking contest), etc. They all are pretty much the same thing: parking on a grass field, a few dollar admission, free tours of some old buildings, the same 6 restaurants selling various types of meat on various types of bread (hot dogs, brisket sandwiches, stuffed ham sandwiches - a local favorite), $3 beers (always the same choices), a few tables set up with information about the local environment, a live band, some arts and crafts, one or two things about the actual event (a few of the restaurants had rockfish as an option on the menu), and the fancy events have free boat rides. They are getting a little predictable now, but they are fun, Audrey enjoys herself, and it gets us out of the house.

The remainder of the day was spent playing in leaves, crying, digging into her pumpkin up to her elbow, crying, trying to eat pumpkin goop, crying, heaving her dinner onto the floor, crying, and going to bed early. She was in quite a state after having her schedule turned on its head yesterday, but that was our fault, not hers. She definitely had some fun throughout the day between her manic fits, so mission accomplished. What's the verdict for next year? Can a newly minted two year old go trick-or-treating? We might give it a shot and we'll try not to go to any political rallies the day before.

Now, if you've made it this far, we've saved the best for last. Audrey showed us quite the trick this morning and it was definitely a treat for us (I think 1:05 "counts" for the baby book):

Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear

Yesterday we took a trip to D.C. to attend Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert's Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear. Ironically, it was one of the more insane days we have had since we moved here.

We left fairly early - departing our house slightly before 8am. It was just a warm-up run, however, as we decided to take a 20 minute detour to return home and get her shoes that we forgot. Officially on the road by 8:20am, we had very little trouble getting to the rally. There was a 10 or so minute line to get tickets on the metro station, a 10 minute wait for the train to depart, a 20-ish minute train ride, and a 20-ish minute walk. All told, we had our spot claimed about half way back in the crowd (we know because the MythBusters timed how long it took to do a wave from the stage to the back of the crowd) at around 10:30am.

Getting home? That was a different story. I don't really want to talk about it.

It was definitely the biggest crowd I have ever been in. The scientific estimates put the numbers at 215,000 people on the National Mall. However, there were so many people there that apparently a ton of people got frustrated and watched it in local bars instead (including the one other person I know that went). We were just behind the last TV/speaker setup (there were 3 others between us and the stage). Knowing that we were only in the middle of the group, there were a lot of people who didn't see or hear anything behind us.

A ton of people are making a big deal about how the attendance numbers trounced the 87,000 people who showed up to Glenn Beck's Restoring Honor rally, but D.C. being an incredibly young and liberal city, it doesn't surprise me that a few T.V. stars, some thinly veiled politics, and a healthy dose of rock stars could draw a large crowd to a free "anti-system" event.

I was thinking about spewing off a big analysis of the event, but to be honest, I'm an end-user of politics/politicians. I treat the political system like I treat car manufacturers. When it's time for me to buy a new car, I don't base my decision solely on advertisements or what friends tell me. I do enough research to make an informed decision but I can't quote you the exact oil capacity of the front differential. I don't try to convince the world that my car is better than theirs and I definitely don't pretend that I know how to build cars better than the car manufacturers. For the most part I pay my repair bills without complaining but on the very rare occasion that I feel my local service department is trying to screw me, I'll speak up - but not too loud.  I definitely don't ride around town with those dealer license plate holders or worse - those decals they put on before you drive off the lot. In fact, I pretty much hate all car dealerships and really don't think I'd ever find one I'd be willing to advertise I bought my car from. I don't really enjoy talking about cars with people--I know there are car people out there, but I'm not one of them so please, don't try to talk about cars with me. And unfortunately, until they come up with transporters to do away with cars (I hope they do), I know cars will be part of my daily life. I just accept that and move on - trying to pick the best one I can at the time.

I felt like there were a lot of people with similar viewpoints around me. Sure, there were a ton of vocal people doing their politicking but I couldn't help to think that a good chunk of these people also refuse to put campaign signs up in their yards and probably haven't protested anything in their lives.

But yes, I admit, I do in fact take comfort in that there were 2.5 times more people at the "Sanity" rally than at Glenn Beck's rally.

Last Day of Being Zero Years Old

Tomorrow is the big day. Our little baby girl will be 1! I know I've said it a million times and I know it sounds cliche but I truly can't believe how fast she is growing up. Just to drive home the point, I give you both day 1, day 365, and one from her "almost 1 year old" portrait session the other day:

Baby Food?

Audrey's palate is developing fast and she is starting to acquire a taste for spicy food. We have a recipe for spaghetti squash with grilled onions and peppers, marinara sauce, and spicy Italian sausage. As expected, she gobbled up the spaghetti squash (hey...it does look like spaghetti, thus far her favorite food), but somewhat unexpectedly, she also loved the sausage.

With Italian sausage under her belt, we've been spicing up other food she has been losing interest in. She has been turning her nose up at steamed broccoli recently so I tried sprinkling lemon pepper on it. She loves it.

Tonight, Kelly and I decided to get a rotisserie chicken from the grocery store for a quick meal. Audrey has had plenty of chicken, but only pureed in baby food until now. We decided to pick off a few pieces of meat for her to try and the result? Spaghetti might have a new competitor. I couldn't cut the meat off the bones fast enough for her.

I thought it would be funny to stage a picture and pretend she was eating the chicken straight off a leg bone. By the time I could grab my camera, she was picking the bone clean. We didn't think she would attack the leg with such vigor, and decided to take it away before she choked on a piece of cartilage or bone or who-knows what.

Next came the corn on the cob. We had cut some off the cob and put it on her tray but she didn't show much interest. She did, however, take a liking to my corn, covered with butter, salt, and pepper. I helped her for a while, showing her how to take bites, but she soon showed us that she could handle it on her own.

We finished with drinking water out of a cup. We've done this a number of times and she does o.k. with it but for some reason tonight turned into a giggle-fest. I caught the tail end on the video camera.

Laundry Walker

Who needs fancy walker toys? Not this girl. She makes due with whatever.

St. Mary's County Fair

We're trying to take advantage of every event that comes along to get a feel for our new home and I think we showed up at just the right time for events. I'm guessing this "still warm, but not too warm" time of year is popular for outdoor happenings. Last weekend was the Taste of St. Mary's, where all of about 6 restaurants set up booths and served samples of the local fare. There was a band playing and we had a good time.

This weekend was the St. Mary's County Fair. Even after many years of being away, I am still partial to the Puyallup Fair (if Wikipedia is to be believed, the Puyallup fair consistently ranks as one of the 10 largest fairs). While I didn't expect anything near the Puyallup, the lack of hot tubs, the sham-wow guy, and elephant ears left me wanting a little more. Audrey, however, was fully entertained by the parade (even though it was dominated by candidates for local elections), fire trucks, and animals--the horses, sheep, and chickens were her favorite.

Later today we are going to go to St. Mary's Riverfest. Next weekend is the Blessing of the Fleet and the Riverside Winefest at Sotterly Plantation.

Eleven Months Old

We haven't shared birthday pictures in a while, so here are a few from Audrey's elven-month-old big-girl-tub birthday bath tonight:

Made it to Maryland

Well, we did it. We got everything packed up and picked up and we are now in our cozy new home in Maryland. The garden and piano were two of the more difficult parts of the process. The garden was sad because we were leaving it in the most prolific time of the summer. The piano was difficult because, well, I'm guessing it weighs somewhere around 500 pounds.

Everything and everyone made it safely and luckily we found the box Audrey was packed in as soon as our stuff arrived. If you are ever planning on moving across country, make sure to label the box your kid is in - and be sure to cut lots of air holes!*

*We do not actually recommend packing a child in a box - we thought about it, but our contract specifically stated that we could not transport people or animals in the moving trailer.