Yay for Yummy Food!

It's been a pretty nice week here. There have been lots of projects as always, and we are continuing to work on getting Gretl trained to be the good doggie that we know she will be. No accidents in the house, and we're working on leash training while on her walks. I'll take it.

Harmony Smurf Mega Blocks - Charlie knows the way to my heart!

This last week, I got to celebrate my birthday over the course of many days. On my birthday itself, we had a nice relaxing family day of chilling and watching movies. It's not quite the exciting birthday that I would have had 15 years ago, but I couldn't have imagined a more perfect day. Friday, we continued the celebration by going out to dinner with Dad and Lynn at the Hungry Peddler and then enjoying some dandelion wine while sitting out in their back yard. Again - fantastic. (Plus, Gretl didn't even have an accident when we lost track of time and left her for way longer than we normally would.) We totally love the fact that we are close enough that Elska can have grandma and grandpa snuggle time, and when she gets a bit older, we can arrange for sleepovers at their house. 

Bananas!!!

Elska had a checkup last week, and she's doing fantastic. She's clearly been eating well because she has definitely been growing. At 14 pounds 5 ounces and 25 3/4 inches long, she is has moved to 48% and 86% on the growth chart. (From 9% and 74% at her last checkup. It's nice to know that at least she's making good use of all those nighttime feedings that she's had lately.) She's able to sit up almost unassisted now too. While it's all very exciting to see how she is growing up, it's also a bit hard for her Mama to see how fast it's happening. At the risk of getting all sappy, how can this be happening so fast? Aren't babies supposed to stay babies for a while? We even got the go-ahead from the doctor to let her start trying some solid food! Since she's been incredibly interested in everything that we have put in our mouths for weeks now, and she can sit pretty well as long as it's in a chair, we started letting her experiment with table food. So far, she's gnawed on some pickles and maybe gotten a bite of banana down. Mostly, she's been just happily playing with and studying what had always been just outside of reach. Lucky for me, a very small percentage of her food has actually ended up on the floor. It's more of accidentally dropping it than throwing it on purpose like a certain little sister of mine used to do to feed the dogs.

Charlie's first ever Kornfest!

Finally, we did actually have a family outing this last weekend. This seems like it should be a given, but sometimes it's hard to actually make the time to get out and do something new or different. Sure, there's errands, church, and occasionally a meal away from home; we just have a tendency to be rather boring homebodies unless we make a point of getting out and doing something. We met our dear friends (and Elska's godparents) at Kornfest up in Holmen and got to eat some delicious sweet corn. For those of you unfamiliar with this delicious tradition - roasted sweet corn with butter painted on it (Litterally. With paint brushes. I'm not kidding.) and sprinkled with salt from Mason jars hanging from strings. It's one of the few places where you'll see them have to put stuff on the grass to try to keep it from being so dangerously slick from all of the butter. My flip flops are still a little greasy from it. It is, in a word, amazing and totally worth the pirate prices for the corn. (Buck an ear. Get it? Ha!) When we discovered that the ice cream tent was shut down for the night, enjoyed a stop at DQ for the ice cream that we had all decided that we absolutely NEEDED. Some people might question how much we really NEEDED ice cream. #1 Nursing mama's sometimes NEED things just like preggo ones do. You shouldn't question it. #2 You try walking around a hot, dusty fairgrounds for half an hour trying to find ice cream and then be like, "oh, never mind I guess I don't want any." See? NEEDED. And you thought that I was exaggerating. 

This week, we have a lot more projects that we are hoping to accomplish. Let's just see how much I can finish getting ready in the kitchen before a certain little girl wakes up from her nap......never mind. I hear her in there now.

"This here's my little buddy Dan. I'll just rest my arm on his head.

Road Trip 2014

Think that it's crazy that we would consider going on a two week long road trip with a 4 month old baby? How about if I say that we picked up a 25 pound 14 week old puppy along the trip? What can I say? The Sheffers love an adventure! I'm just going to need a few days (or longer) to recover from this one!

For years, friends and family all over the country have been asking us to come and visit them. This summer, with Charlie having some time off, we decided that we really need to start doing just that. The first draft of travel plans had us hitting locations from Pennsylvania to Florida and even hitting points west of the Mississippi over the course of a month or more Now, we might be crazy (ok, we probably are crazy), but we're not stupid. We made some adjustments to the plan and arrived at a much more reasonable 14 day trip that had us visiting friends and family in 7 cities in the northeastern and central states. We hit the road not exactly sure what we needed to travel with an infant and completely unsure of how she would handle the trip. Part of me was worried that we would have to head back early because a little girl was unwilling to play along with us. Fortunately, it turns out that we have a good little traveler.

Here's a few highlights and photos from the adventure:

On top of the steps at the art museum in Philly and standing in "Rocky's" footsteps!

Let freedom ring!

Wine tasting with Auntie Abby

Lots of sight seeing with a big floppy hat

Elska was excited to meet her Mama's friend from Chile!

Seriously Mama and Daddy? You wear me out!

The Sheffers welcomed a Bernese Mountain Dog named Gretl into the clan. She's definitely been doing some shennanigans like a Sheffer.

Elska thought that traveling was better with company in the back seat. 

Scott and Emily took a whole lot of extra time to find us some Cokes with our names on them.

This Post Made Possible By Aldi's

Before going any further, I received no compensation or other incentives from Aldi's....just a really good deal on produce. Ok. On to the post.

Now that the pain meds are out of my system, it might be possible to put together some sort of coherent post. I'm not saying that it will be, but it's possible.

The last couple of weeks have been full as always. Our little girl has continued on her impressive growth spurt. She managed to gain almost 2 pounds in only about 3 weeks and is now long enough that when she's sitting on my lap, I can no longer type on the laptop without her having the range on her feet to kick at the keys and buttons. Not too shabby! Other moments and milestones include: "discovering" her feet and that she can move and grab them, a whole bunch of new (very loud) squawking sounds that are oddly reminiscent of what you would hear from cats yowling at one another, beginning to learn about the fun of splashing in the bathtub, and the beginnings of maybe allowing us to have a somewhat regular nap schedule instead of the "go until you crash and pass out" routine that she's employed to this point. She's getting the hang of assisted sitting and standing and loves doing both, and she absolutely loves to making Daddy's character die on his video games while Mama gets stuff done in the kitchen. (Mama thinks it's pretty funny too.)

In non-baby related events, thanks to some fantastic sales on produce and some cooler weather, I've gotten a chance to get some yummy food stored away without having to swelter to make it happen.

First off, we now have plenty of dried tomatoes for making sauces and other delicious dishes. I know that tomatoes have a ton of water in them, but it's still mind blowing that 20 some pounds of tomatoes that completely covered one of my counter tops don't even fill a gallon plastic baggie. Next up in the dehydrator will be some fruits and possibly jerky.

Even more fun than the tomatoes, I started working this year's jams. So far, we have strawberry, strawberry/rhubarb, and strawberry/raspberry. Yes. Strawberries were on sale, and I wanted to make sure that we had enough jam to get us through until next year. I remembered the number "20" from last year, so I got 20 pounds of strawberries. As I was hulling and crushing them for jam, I remembered that last year I got $20 worth of berries and it was about 9-10 pounds. Oops. So I guess that we're going to have plenty for PB&Js this year. I also was given the mother load's worth of rhubarb. We're going to need a lot of peanut butter.

Charlie had been really nervous for awhile now about taking the compass test for school since it's been so long since high school. While I kept telling him that he was more than capable, we both knew that his test anxiety might mean that he might struggle with the test. However, he was able to calm himself about it and did fantastic on the test. Now all that is left before he can start classes next month is for his high school transcripts to arrive. The program is expected to be full, and they use a first come first served basis, so we'd love prayers that those arrive post haste.

Murphy Strikes Again

It's amazing the changes that can happen in a couple of weeks. Starting about three weeks ago, my stomach started having arguments with my food after I ate it. I was hoping that whatever it was would clear up on its own in time. Looking back, I should have realized that our life NEVER works that way. Murphy practically lives at our house.

The Cliff Notes version is : two trips to ER Saturday, lots of tests, and then emergency surgery Sunday morning to remove what the surgeon called a "really bad gall bladder." Then two more nights in hospital recovering to the point that I could go home yesterday. Apparently, it's possible for gall stones to not show on either the ultrasound or the CT scan but still be jam packed inside that little balloon. I'll get to see/keep them after my follow up appointment in a couple of weeks after pathology and everyone else does their thing.

Elska is still a bit upset about having limited access to Mama and the Milk Things. (We won't even go into how upset her tummy was with the small bit of formula that she got during the turmoil. That won't be happening again if we can help it.) We've been doing lots of extra snuggles to ease her mind about it, and she was thrilled to have both Mama and Daddy to snuggle this morning. Ok, she wasn't the only one thrilled about it. Mama and Daddy thought that it was pretty awesome too.

We are incredibly grateful to all of the folks who prayed for us and who helped with all that needed doing these last couple of days. Thank you for helping get me back on that road to health as quickly as possible!

Heathen No More!

The big event from last weekend was that Pastor Dave Hatch baptized Elska at Our Saviour's Lutheran in Green Bay. Elska listened to Pastor Dave explain all about baptism while she played with her dress and looked expectantly at him when he did the baptism - no fussing at all for the entire time. She was definitely a happy little girl up there.

The rest of the weekend, we got to spend time catching up with family and friends - and some got to meet Elska for the first time. Additionally, we were able to spend a couple of days to have fun sightseeing with Elska's godparents. They hadn't even seen the sights of Green Bay, so we some fun touristy things.The guys even managed to get to Cabella's for a couple of hours. (The gals decided that a nap sounded more appealing.)

In other news:

Four generations!

• Elska had her three month birthday last weekend! 
• Our little lambie discovered that her hands can pick things up, move them, and stuff things in her face. She is quite impressed with herself and how much more fun blankets are now. Spoons are not nearly as much. Both Mama and Elska took one to the face while playing at the Pancake Place. We will be finding softer toys.
• We learned that not all hotels have bathtubs nowadays. This was more than noteworthy since it meant a rather significant disruption to the bedtime routine. We will be traveling with a little plastic bathtub from now on just in case. Three hours of screaming until finally passed out is more than Mama and Daddy want to have to do again.
• Our little girl is quite the trooper on the road. She doesn't really like that she can't see anyone's face, but she is starting to get the hang of traveling. On the way home, I did have to pull over at one point just so she could see me and calm herself back down. Not too bad though considering how much of the weekend was spent bouncing all over the place and totally off her routines

Maternity(?) Leave

Chilling at the DMV

Around the time that Elska was born, Charlie and I had some long discussions about his taking time off from work. He could get up to six weeks of leave from work, but it would all be unpaid time off since he was part time and didn't have any vacation time. With the house in Green Bay still unsold, it just wasn't going to be possible for him to take anything more than the few days when she was born and in the hospital. Less than a week after she was born, he was back at work with the hope being that after the house in Green Bay finally sold, he would be able to take some time off before starting school as sort of a delayed leave to spend some quality family time, work on projects around the house, and maybe even go on a family vacation. Last Friday, it all finally came together, and Charlie had his last day at Best Buy.

Daddy snuggles are the best!

This last week has been some fantastic family time for us. (Errands are much easier to accomplish with two adults to tag team the "anti-meltdown" responsibilities too.) Elska loves the change of scenery for her snuggles (and the fact that there's even more of them), and Charlie is getting to spend more time learning her emerging personality. This is one fantastic upside to the delay in his time off....instead of just eating, pooping, and sleeping, she is now smiling, "talking" and even laughing at her own poop and fart jokes. Ok, so she gets a giant grin on her face every time she makes a stinky mess in her diaper. Next up: learning "pull my finger." I'm sure that all of her uncles and gruncles are very proud of her.

This week, Elska went on a "Daddy and me" adventure to Menard's - their first adventure of just the two of them taking on the world. They had fun checking out all the cool stuff that Daddy would love to have at our house. (I'm sure that it was a coincidence that she got her first nightmare that night.) I was left out of this adventure. Poor me. I had to read a book in a bubble bath and then take a nap in a quiet house. It's a tough life, but I might somehow learn to adjust to this sort of thing. I'm going to get spoiled.

Maybe if it ever stops raining long enough to dry things out, we can have some family outdoor adventures.....

Elskapades

What mischief can I cause?

A new word was needed to describe the mischief and shenanigans that are starting to happen around the Sheffer household. One might look to experts' claims that infants don't really know any better. However, they haven't seen the grin that this girl gets when she's being sassy. Think that I'm exaggerating? Check out that look. That's just before she started kicking her Mama's laptop buttons and messing up my attempts to type a post. I just wish that I had photo or evidence from last night's midnight giggle fest or the follow up at 3:30 am. Unfortunately, experience tells me that the lighting is too low for the phone's camera unless I turn all of the lights on and really wake us both up. You'll just have to take my word for it until you visit and can first hand witness it.

Look who's a local celebrity!

Yesterday, we went to the baby shower event at the Children's Museum. A little someone was a bit overwhelmed by the noise (the fact that admission was free instead of $6 each definitely brought a few families), so she was a bit fussy for a fair bit of the time. We got to check out the vendors who had booths as well as a number of info stations from Mayo's baby related departments. The coolest part was getting to see Jamie who did some of our prenatal classes and was one of the nurses up at labor and delivery. As you can see, the reunion was caught by the local news station.

Well, someone has decided that they need completely undivided attention, so I must bid you adieu. It may be a long day....