Happy birthday, George!

I hosted "preschool" today (just Abigail and her friend Siesa right now), and we made a cake in honor of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln's birthdays. The girls had a lot of fun pouring and mixing and licking bowls and fingers while we talked about who these wonderful men were.
The girls also colored pictures of Washington and Lincoln, and we talked about our flag. I showed them one that I had colored and pointed out the pattern of red and white stripes and the stars representing each state. The girls did their own thing, though, as you can see. And they told me theirs were "much prettier than [mine]." I let them use a little stencil for the star. They included some other shapes from the stencil too, in case you were wondering...
Abigail's cousin Zella also joined us for some birthday cake! They put candles in, and we sang Happy Birthday.

Hanging around Abigail's neck in this picture is the Valentine's Day "pocket purse" she made at Siesa's house last week. So cute!! They made them out of old jeans and filled them with Hershey kisses to give to loves ones. Abigail LOVES her purse. For Family Home Evening last Monday, we went around to all our neighbors and delivered kisses and Valentine cards. It was a lot of fun.

I forgot to mention an important highlight from last month: Abigail learned to spell her name! She loves practicing it, and we find her signature all over the place...

January Highlights

Happy 2011! We've been busy at the Heiss home as usual. Here are some highlights from January:

Snow!

We got some impressive snow (for us, anyway) here in Atlanta the second week of January. Erik left for work at his usual time Monday morning, only to find that all the Emory clinics were closed. So he got to come home! We felt like little school children again on a snow day. And what's more, the clinics were closed until Thursday! We really lucked out. (That's how I looked at it, at least. Erik is a lot more conscientious and responsible...) The girls had a blast having Daddy home all week.
Being sent home from work early was such an occasion that Erik felt justified in picking up some steaks and a Redbox movie on his way home. Part-ee!
Erik and Abigail walked to the grocery store the next day to return the dvd. They were gone for more than an hour.


We spent most of the week indoors. Thank goodness my girls are happy doing stuff inside. All my friends who have boys were going crazy! Here's Abigail making shapes with Erik from her new "foam" equipment she got for Christmas. It's pretty nice--no sticky residue! Erik made the apple tree, and Abigail's making flamingos...
Anne LOVES the new push toy she got for Christmas. She's not walking yet, but she's getting pretty close!

Sleep Study

At the end of the month, Abigail had a sleep study done at the children's hospital. Erik and I have been concerned with her sleep problems for a long time. She has always had enormous tonsils, and she snores and moves around frequently in her sleep. She even wakes up sometimes in the middle of the night or very early in the morning and has a hard time going back to sleep (part of that is just her stubborn nature; she would rather play than try to go back to sleep). We have struggled with this off and on since Anne was born. So we finally got her tested.
Here she is--all decked out. Erik actually spent the night with her. I had prepped her for weeks in advance, telling her about the "stickers" and "magic wires that would talk to the doctors" and help us find out how well she was sleeping. She was very excited about her special "sleepover" at the hospital. Erik said she was perfectly cooperative during the setup. That was a relief.
All ready for bed! The results showed that she does not have sleep apnea, which is good. But we're still searching for some answers/solutions. She has an appointment with the ENT this week. We're hoping they'll tell us a tonsillectomy will solve all our problems...

Preschool

Abigail's wonderful preschool co-op from the fall kinda fell apart this year, as two from our group are having babies and two others are moving. We are very sad. It was a great group, and Abigail loved it.

For the next few months, we're just doing something low-key twice a week with one of her friends, Siesa, until she moves. Then in the fall we plan to participate in a different co-op.

One year ago today...

...we got to bring our Anne-girl home!

Happy birthday, Anne!

We celebrated Anne's 1st birthday last week on November 16th. We can't believe she's already a year old. Time seems to go by much more quickly with your second than it does with the first. But at the same time, our days in the NICU with Anne seem like a lifetime ago.
After eleven months with a healthy, happy baby in our home, the pain and heartache of one year ago have softened into tender memories...and feelings of deep gratitude.
Anne has done wonderfully this year. Despite her prematurity, she quickly gained weight and has been in the fifth percentile for her age for most of this year. That is her weight and head size are in the fifth percentile. Her height is in the 50th percentile! (Maybe some Weiler genes in this one?) Her motor skill development has been more consistent with her adjusted age than her actual age. But she is getting around the house on her hands and knees faster than I can keep up with her sometimes, and she stands up and is starting to cruise around more. She started clapping and waving last week. She gets a lot of positive reinforcement for her little tricks, especially from Abigail.

The night of Halloween we discovered Anne has an allergy to eggs (egg whites, more specifically). I had introduced egg yolk to her around 10 months, and she was fine with that. On Halloween I gave her scrambled eggs for dinner. She instantly erupted in hives. We gave her some Benedryl, and she responded well to that. When I picked her up to go get ready for bed, she began vomiting. Erik took her to the ER that night. She's been fine since then. The inconvenience of the allergy really hasn't hit home yet, but fortunately most kids outgrow this allergy by the age of 5. In the meantime, I just have to carry Benedryl around and get creative with egg substitutes!

I made a chocolate "wacky cake" for dessert--no eggs!
Opening birthday presents...with a little help from Abigail

We had a family dinner on Sunday with my family to celebrate Anne and Uncle Joseph's birthdays (Joseph's is the day after Anne's). Those are always so fun for me. I tend to be a little negligent of my children because I'm always chatting away with someone. Good thing there are so many wonderful aunts and uncles around who love to play with them. The other unfortunate thing is I usually don't take any pictures...

Erik's parents came over for dinner on Tuesday, Anne's actual birthday. Here we are singing to the birthday girl. Abigail even donned her Winnie the Pooh costume for the occasion.


Happy birthday, Anne girl. We love you!

Fall Hikes

Hiking is perhaps my favorite fall tradition. This year for my birthday, Erik and I dropped the girls off at my parents' house and hiked the Jones Bridge Trail along the Chattahoochee. It was nice to be outdoors for a while and to have Erik all to myself. And there's nothing like a long hike to work up a good appetite for dinner...especially at my favorite Chinese restaurant.

We also continued our tradition of hiking around Stone Mountain during General Conference weekend.
Here we are Saturday morning before the first session. I think we stopped for a photo op at this same rock last year.

Erik and I always forget that long hikes aren't very realistic for 3-year-olds. I think we made it about as far as we did last year. Not very far.

Erik and I also decided to have a little getaway for one night during his week's vacation in October. We chose Amicalola Falls. We took Anne with us, and Abigail had another sleepover at Grandma's.

I love going camping with Erik. Half the fun for me is just seeing him get so excited about everything. And when you go camping as infrequently as we do, there's always much more adventure involved. We have always enjoyed the challenge of setting up tent and preparing dinner by flashlight in the past. We were proud of ourselves this time, though, for thinking to set up the tent BEFORE we enjoyed our walk in the woods at sunset. We did eat our silver turtles in the dark, though. We also had to get creative for breakfast after realizing we'd left our frying pan and pot on the kitchen table. We made do. No hot chocolate, though. Bummer.
Anne was a happy camper for the most part. The only time she wasn't smiling was for the first hour after we got up. Perhaps the forty degree weather numbed her cheeks a little?

Fortunately it warmed up later on. Here's Anne minus about five layers and smiling again.

Our only concern about this trip was how Anne would fare during the night. She is used to falling asleep on her own around 6. Erik and I envisioned her crawling around the tent until she fell asleep, which would probably take a lot longer than usual since it would still be light outside.

Things ended up going more smoothly than we'd expected. I bundled Anne up in so many layers that she could hardly move. When I packed all the warm layers, I hadn't really thought about the immobilizing effect! It worked really well. She was asleep by 7 and slept soundly all through the night. Yay!

A fun family project

Last week Erik and I joined my brother and sister-in-law Caleb and Shannyn, as well as my younger siblings who are still at home, in executing a huge project at my parents' house as an early Christmas present to them.

Months ago Shannyn came up with the brilliant idea of redoing this particular room which my dad hated. The dark red, combined with the wood trimming and heavy, wooden blinds, made it an extremely dark room.
At first the plan was just to paint it, but the project soon began expanding, due in part to some unexpected opportunities to get furniture at a steal but mainly due to Shannyn's creativity and thriftiness in stretching our limited budget.

Shannyn spent months planning the colors, furniture, layout, etc., occasionally picking the brains of a few genius interior decorators of our acquaintance. (Unfortunately, there are no such brains in our family to pick.) We planned the project for a week when my parents would be out of town. We had from Wednesday night to Saturday night.

We painted the ceiling first and then taped and primed and taped and primed...and taped and primed some more! I think Shannyn and I primed for about 10 hours one day.

You can't really appreciate from here the fine details of the crowning. We didn't really appreciate them either until we got down to it. We are all agreed that we would have been toast had it not been for the time-saving tip of the century from Erik's mom: spay-on primer! Five bucks a can and worth every cent! (that was just for the crown, of course. All the other priming had to be pure elbow grease.)

Signs of an inexperienced painter: white highlights
The window took forever, but it sure looked good when we were through!

Erik and Caleb did a beautiful caulking job with made a huge difference.

And then came the fun part: painting!
Didn't Shannyn choose a gorgeous color? And the white trim really set things off nicely.

And we're DONE with the painting!

After the painting and touch-ups, Shannyn's younger brother came and cleaned the carpet for us. (Thanks, Parker!) Then we rearranged and redecorated the room (again--all Shannyn's ideas at work here!).

Drum roll, please...

The unveiling!

Shannyn and her mom made the curtains. And the pillow backings. Aren't they lovely? I know. You wish she'd married into your family. Sorry.

Not too bad, eh? We're considering going professional...except that it took us a full week to recover.

And I can't forget our other helpers, who very willingly agreed to paint some frames in the front yard. It was a tough call, but we decided in the end not to use them in the new room...

I must say that we couldn't have asked for more cooperation from the kids during all of this! They were so good.

And so dang cute.

Thanks for letting us have a part in this, Caleb and Shannyn!

And many more thanks to my sweet, wonderful husband for doing this during his vacation week. I love him for it!

Our Little Princesses

We haven't blogged in a while, so I thought I'd give a quick update. We are staying very busy these days. Erik started his second year of residency in July and is now considered an "upper level" with greater responsibilities and accountability. He has been doing really well. The girls and I will occasionally go visit him at the hospital when he has weekend call and hasn't been able to see them much.

Abigail and Anne are growing up, and we enjoy watching their personalities develop. Abigail at
3 1/2 is quite the chatterbox and frequently takes me by surprise with her constantly expanding vocabulary and vivid imagination. She is currently obsessed with princesses (I don't know how it happened...), particularly the rebellious, red-headed variety. She insists on being called "Mermaid" at home and everywhere we go (even in the nursery at church) and badgers me ALL DAY LONG to play with her. I pretend with her for a while until I am either tired of being Prince Eric or can't put off other responsibilities any longer, at which point I try to excuse myself by saying something like, "Abigail, I'm sorry. But I need to start on dinner now. We'll play princesses later, ok?"

That worked a few times. Now she just follows me to wherever I have to go do something and says, "Mom, can you be Prince Eric making dinner?"

Or "Mom, can you be Prince Eric feeding baby Anne?"

"Mom, can you be Prince Eric folding laundry?"

As wearisome as it is, I just can't help laughing on occasion, especially when she starts singing Ariel's song with way more heart and soul than is decent for a three-year-old. Or when she explained to me that Ariel can swim underwater without problems because she has such big eyes. Or when she starts relaying my "Little Mermaid lectures" to other people. For example, during her nursery lesson on obedience last Sunday, she informed her class that the Little Mermaid is not a good example because she disobeys her father. She has also been telling people that we shouldn't dress up as Ariel for Halloween because she is not modest.

I think I'm ready for some boys.
Our sweet Anne girl just gets sweeter. She is 10 months now and is crawling all over the house, army-style. She is getting up on her knees more and more every day, so I don't think it will be long before she's getting around a lot faster. She still adores her big sister, and they enjoy making each other laugh. Anne loves to blow raspberries and gets a great deal of positive reinforcement from Abigail. Ok, and me too. I'm trying to repent, though, because it's not as funny when she does it with her mouth full of mashed lentils and I'm the one who gets sprayed.

Here are some recent snapshots.

Talking on the phone with Uncle Joseph or Hyrum--can't remember

Here's a little video of Anne. (If you listen carefully, you can hear Abigail singing The Little Mermaid song in the background...)