In the News

So I guess since I've been absent from Blogland for so long I should give a little update on what's going on around the Schap house.

On the girls:
Greta is a walker. It's true. She still crawls if she wants to get somewhere quickly, which is most of the time, but she'll just stand up and walk around for long periods of time. It's really cute! She kind of walks like an old lady looking for her walker though... and then of course, she falls down. Since she is coming up on her first birthday, she's a lot more sturdy than she used to be and Anja is really loving that. They wrestle all the time and they're starting to actually play together, which is ADORABLE. She is also a hilarious eater, stuffing her face and being really messy. I'm much more laid back with food, regarding my choking phobia, mostly because I couldn't keep Anja from sharing her food with her sister, but it's great because now I can give Greta lots of fun things (like graham crackers!) and not be so afraid while she's eating. I guess it helps that she has four ginormous teeth, unlike Anja, he barely had one tooth on her first birthday. It also helps that Greta took control from the beginning and has never let me feed her, while Anja still prefers to be spoon fed by her parents. Greta is also really into dolls now and if you give her one, she will make the cutest cooing noises at it. She talks to the cat the same way. They are very happy sounds.

Oh, Anja. She is learning more words, which is both good and sad at the same time. Her words are still more like sounds than actual words, but she is getting better at things like the "b" sound, and not everything starts with "g" anymore. MOST things to (funnily enough, not Greta, who is still "deh") but not EVERYTHING. She's just recently learned to say "ball" and it doesn't really sound like "ball" one bit, but I figured it out and since she's been saying it for a long time without me knowing what she was saying, this is a relief. She is an excellent counter though and sometimes can get all the way to five perfectly! She spends most of her time playing with to her dolls or doing artsy things like drawing, painting, or stickering. My favorite time of the day is during Greta's afternoon nap, when Anja and I do something quiet together. Usually I sew at the dining room table and she sits next to me and draws. I made her a felt pencil wrap for Valentines Day and on Ash Wednesday I made her a little bag so she can carry her things in it. It's a very old-lady-ish bag and it suits her perfectly.

She IS potty trained. She wakes up in the night to go potty. Often she goes, then goes right back to bed without a fuss. I know I am lucky that she doesn't insist on only using her own little pink potty. She will go on any big person toilet, she's not afraid of any of them. She got over her two-day issue with poo pooing not on the potty. The only word I can think of to describe our potty training experience is "magical." It really happened so easily that it must have been magic, there's no other explanation.

Anja ran out of toothpaste the other day. She'd been using the Orajel training toothpaste with Thomas the Tank Engine on the front. (Not that she has the faintest idea who he is.) This time I expected her to choose the same one, or the other Orajel one that has a bear on it (I think it might be Little Bear? I'm not sure.) She didnt want either of those, so I got her out of the cart and let her choose her own from the shelf. SURPRISE? She chose the giant tube of the bubble gum flavored toothpaste that had the Disney princesses all over the front. She LOVES it. She wants to brush her teeth all the time. For being such a weirdo, in some ways, she is a very typical little girly-girl! Have I mentioned how much I love having a toddler?

On Martin:
Martin is really into guns, which is less important than the fact that he's also really into his constitutional right to keep and bear arms. Something interesting that he told me and that I've been telling other people is that out in California a number of coffee shops said that they will no longer allow guns in their stores. When Starbucks was asked if they were going to join in, they said they welcome all people and respect everybody's rights. They can make rules, but they can't make laws. In recognition of this, gun owners across the country are marking this coming Sunday as their day to go to Starbucks, get a coffee, and tell the barista that they appreciate the Starbucks stand on the situation in California. Isn't that nice? Needless to say, we'll be visiting Starbucks on Sunday. In fact, knowing Martin, we'll probably be visiting all nine of our Starbucks' this Sunday.... three times.

On Theodore:
A word to the wise: if you have a wife/girlfriend/BFF/mistress/whatever, who has a cat which she loves almost as much as she loves her own children, one thing you should absolutely NEVER do is call her at 6:30 in the morning during the walk with the dog and say really urgently, "Annie. The cat." Seriously, I had so many horrible visions of my Lovey Boy splattered across the pavement (and that would be a big splatter) that when I hung up with Martin I was actually shaking and breathing heavily. Turns out, Martin was just confused about when we were taking Theodore to the vet and he thought the appointment was at 7:00 in the morning, when actually it was at 1:30 in the afternoon. Silly Martin.

And at the vet, we learned that while it was advertised that he should lose some weight after being taken off of the weight control food and put back on regular food, he actually has gained a few pounds, bringing him up to a whopping 24.7 pounds. Still, he is only the third biggest cat seen at that vet. The biggest is 28 pounds! Martin thinks that when Theodore gets old he'll get even fatter (he is only 3 1/2 ) and will eventually be the fattest cat at that clinic. We'll see! I do have to admit, he's a lifelong member of the Clean Plate Club.

On Me:
While we spent most of our tax returns on boring, responsible, grown-up things, we did each get a little fun budget for ourselves. I spent mine on a shopping spree at Jo-Anns!!!!!!! I got so much wonderful crafting stuff, including bamboo fiber filling, which is great. I had wanted cotton, but they didn't have any. I got some truly adorable fabrics, a few necessities like zippers and threads, and my most exciting purchase: THREE stacks of scrapbooking paper. I've started making little notecards with them, both to use myself, and to list on Etsy. I have always wanted to make greeting cards!! These are just blank, but they have cute cut-out things on the front, like owls, snails and cupcakes. I love them. And you know what? Even if no one else loves them and they never sell on Esty, I will still love them.

The other great thing I got was this laptop. It's not really mine, of course, it's OURS, but I am loving it. Pandora all the time!!

I read the STUPIDEST book in the universe the other day. I actually had a blog post written all about it, but then deleted it because it didn't seem like a very cheery post for my first one with the new laptop. But just believe me. It was awful.

My kitchen is a wreck, but there's no way I'm cleaning it up tonight. I'm going to bed. Maybe the good fairies will visit in the night and I'll wake up to a clean house...