Enjoying the Sunshine

While the sun made a brief apperance, even though it was freezing, we decided to take advantage. First we went to Skateland with Jeramy's family (Uncle Sean, Cousins Andrew, Tessa, Alex, Anessa and Great Grandma Yvonne) Sage loves going around in her stroller with her Dad, as Mom refuses to put skates on. Sage also put on her first pair of skates...they were so tiny...she is a much better skater than her Mom!! She didn't want anyone to help her.

Pa and Ma and us went to the zoo. It was so much fun...Sage LOVED the walrus' and did her Pee Wee Herman laugh whenever they would surface. She hated the octopus, but who blames her, those things are gross.

Then on Sunday, Jeramy took us up to Mt St. Helens. Along the way we stopped at resturants we haven't gone to for breakfast and lunch which was fun. Sage spotted a playground while we were there and had so much fun going down the slide, it was hard to get her to leave the slide and Jeramy away from the bino's looking at the hundreds of elk in the valley. On the way out we stopped at one of the center's and enjoyed the view. I have to laugh at Sage in our new Ergo on Jeramy's back...she looked like a frog stuck on his back.

All in all a GREAT weekend, now comes the rain, so we can't wait for summer to be here for good! This weekend we are off to the beach for the clam tides!

Winter Olympics 2010

Now that I am doing these posts as a tangible thing for Sage to have when she grows up, I want her to have as much information as possible.

My dad got her this Vancover Olympics hat when he was up there for work. We are about to watch the opening games. I have been lucky enough to see 2 Olympic Stadiums in the world in Seoul Korea and Barcelona Spain, I look forward to taking Sage to see her first Olympic Stadium in Canada someday. I think I heard that Canada has never won a winter medal before and just heard that there are more people in California than in all of Canada, and that 90% of their population is next to the American border. Although it is off to a bad start with the death of a 21 year old luge'er from the country of Georgia, during practice. There has been much speculation on this course as being the fastest in the world with dangerously steep turns that many deemed as unsafe and questions were even raised before training even began...the last death at a Winter Olympics was in 1992..even the gold medal favorite has crashed during training..many are saying they are being treated as crash test dummies. On the bright side we are realizing how many Olympian's are from Washington and think it is pretty cool. And that Apollo Ono could become the winningest Winter Olympics medalist if he gets 2 medals on the speed skating short track. One to tie, two to hold the record. Plus he won the discoball trophy on Dancing With the Stars, and I believe he is also from Washington. So that is pretty neat!

Sage's vocabulary has been growing so much every day. She is doing her ABC's and will try and say any word you ask her to. She put her shoes on today for the first time. She is becoming quite the helper with giving the dogs their dog food and 9 o'clock treats, helping me with laundry (well taking out the folded laundry I put in the basket) and the dishes (well taking the spoons out of the drawer after I unload the dishwasher and hides them in various places around the house like my pillow case). She is funny too...she has this PeeWee Herman laugh that is hilarious, I will get a post up of a video of her doing that. She is constantly asking questions.."What's That?" and is very inquisitive. You can't really read a book to her, because she grabs it from you and starts reading aloud to herself. She loves going to the park, and I can finally sit on the bench and just let her go, because she climbs up and slides down all by herself...but she cries and cries when she has to come home. We really need to get her in some children's groups as she does not like the gym anymore and cries the whole time, and is very clingy when we go to the Children's Museum. We are still working on getting her into her own room, potty training, and ditching the pacifier...I was so happy to find extras of her favorite blanket at an outlet mall that I bought every one they had so I could substitute while I wash one, and save some if she uses them for a while, even though we tried really hard for her not to have a security item. And of course like every 2 year old, really tests us lately and spends alot of time on her time out turtle. But we are having fun! You really realize how fast all of this goes, I can't believe how big she is getting and how fast is has gone by. I need to remember to blog all of these things so she (and we) can look back and see how far she has come. My friend has a really sick child and knock on wood, and praise God that we have been so lucky so far because I think it is going to be so hard on me that I will probably fall to pieces, but then I think, we made it through the NICU, and bringing home a baby that weighed less than 4 pounds...and like my cousins have told me, the challenges don't end with age, they just change...I can't wait...but Jeramy and I are the very definition of a Helicopter Parent, who constantly hover over her...I call her my Golden Egg since we can't have any more kids, and we fought so hard to get her here safely...that of course we are HUGELY overprotective. Even though when she was a baby we didn't let her out of the house for 2 months, selective people could see her, and we were compulsive on hand sanitizer when she was so small, but now, I saw her sucking on her shoe, eating stuff off the ground, playing in dog food and I am now like...ehhh...but I still issued a shellfish warning the other night and sent her with benedryl, and every other medicine we had like incase she skinned her knee, got stung by a bee, needed mosquito repellant, had tooth or stomach pain. LOL

TuTu

Today we played dress up, and unlike my husband's camo print request, Mommy dressed her in her little tutu. When she had it on she went flying towards the mirror to say "Side to Side" and twirled. She really likes looking at herself in the mirror lol...

Then in the last picture I asked her to show me "The Face" and here it is...she scrunches up her little face and lips...and lately she will do the face and cross her arms across her chest in a grand gesture that starts above her head and then slams into her chest and says "Hmpp". Some times a big, "NOOOOOOO" comes out...Boy are we in trouble or what? Timeout Turtle has been getting alot of use these days...I dont' know where she gets this from (wink wink).

Lazy Dayz With The Jernigans

Today was a very lazy day at the Jernigan household (for some)...and tho I thought she was done taking naps, Daddy came to the rescue and got her to sleep. He has always been great at getting her to go to sleep...me not so much...I took advantage of Jeramy and Sage falling asleep before 9pm and got a bunch of stuff done, so much that I forgot to go to bed! Then I utilized Jeramy being home to catch up on everything while he entertained her. My washer and dryer have not stopped since yesterday morning. Still have not gone to bed yet, but Jeramy keeps laughing at me as I type this saying "your eyes aren't even open" Lol...between not sleeping since Monday night, and doing a marathon laundry, housecleaning sprint while I had someone to help with Sage...I am officially exhausted,

By the looks of it so are Lami and Sage...Lami always has to be right next too Sage no matter where she is, she has always been like that, and it is very sweet. Also, in the mornings Sage's new thing is running back and forth yelling "Mom and Dad" and giving us great big hugs on our legs...Then she gives great big bear hugs to Toby and her buddy Lami..

Ok I am off to take a nap!

Greetings from my sick bed

Sage after eating her lunch

Jeramy went back to work a couple of weeks ago, which has taken us a bit to get back into our grove. So needless to say the timing of my illness wasn't the greatest. The back of my throat was all white and I was sick and felt like my brain was floating...yuck...Jeramy luckily didn't have work yesterday so I have been quarintined in the sick room all weekend. He didn't make it without any fun though...he made me this happy face lunch for me...what a sweetheart!

Other than that, just being a stay at home mom to a very fiesty 2 year old. They weren't kidding when they say a switch goes off at 2. Any other ages I should be aware of?

Also, I sent away to make my blog posts into a book (thank you Julie and blog2print.com). I took all of my posts and hardbound it like a yearbook. There are over 100 pages and I think it only cost me around $87. It is going to be such a great thing for Sage to have when she grows up, or we are not around. I plan on doing it every year. You should check it out. You never know how long this blog thing will be up for, and I wanted to make sure I had a hard copy.

2 Years Old!

Hard to believe our baby girl is now 2 (well not really as we are experiences the terrible two's)! Harder yet to belive is that at her UW appointment and Dr's Apointment she weighed 21 pounds with a diaper on, So she finally passed the 20 pound mark! Everything went well. Of course she is not on the percentile charts for her weight, but is in the 50% percentile for height (can't complain for being tall and skinny) and has a bigger head and feet than most premies. During the psychologicall evaluation, she passed all of the tests and exceeded some as well. She just needs to work on her verbs. I was surprised, she even hugged the doctor...I think the doctor was taken aback as she said "no kid has ever hugged me before." After that we got special attention!

But probably the biggest milestone she has mastered is that she went to the bathroom 3 times on her big potty! If you would have told me 5 years ago this news would excite me beyond anything else you could have told me, I wouldn't have believed you, but no words can explain the way you feel. (sorry to my non-parent friends as I know we talk about poop and pee alot lol)

She cried the ENTIRE time during this shoot. We brought the bearsskin rug and sheds, and of course Mommy had to throw in a tutu, but I kept telling the photographer to keep shooting, if she was crying that is ok because we wanted to capture the 2 year old moment and I think we got it!

Christmas, Birthday's and Some Pretty Ugly Sweaters

The spoiled 20 pound Birthday Girl

Her train village set from Halmoni and Paw;
She also wanted lots of tonka dump trucks
but no dolls...hmm

My Girls and our Memorable Poses from THS
and this year's sweater competiton

All of the ugly sweaters and all of the good

sports who played along..and the winner was

Uncle Nick, with Auntie Malea a close 2nd. Auntie Jessica

bought Sage her first purse, which ironically

matched her sweater perfectly!

Sage on her podeum, being Little Miss Priss

Chuck E Cheese aint got nothing on our living

room!

Sage waiting for her guests to arrive, eating her

favorite...PIZZA

So since Sage's birthday is on Dec 30th we really had a marathon Christmas and Birthday Parties for her...We did 4 different houses for Christmas and then turned around and hosted another 3 birthday parties for Sage. She LOVED all of the gifts from everyone, but I am sure she got a little overwhelmed with all of her great gifts! She even got up during opening presents and stood up on the table and shh'd the kids, and then half way through she decided to enjoy a movie in her room..lol.. One of her favorite gifts was the trainset my parents got for her on it's own table and it is like a village, she spends hours in there playing with that. So I am going to do a half birthday in the summer maybe the 2nd or 3rd Saturday of June every year (if it doesn't interrupt Sturgeon season) so that we can space it out, and have a BBQ or something and enjoy being outside, and going to the park by our house or our backyard. Plus with the dates set for the same week every year, hopefully it will provide a good excuse to get together with family I don't usually get to see during the holiday's because of the weather and Mountain Pass. Also, fitting 35 people including 15 kids was a little much in our house the way it is laid out, plus all of the toys, it made it seem like Chuck E Cheese. Aside from our usual Christmas stops, we also hosted 2 different birthday's for her. The one at our house was Dora for the kids, and ugly Christmas sweaters for the adults! Everyone was such a good sport and Uncle Nick won the award with his disasterous sweater that came with finger warmers...it honestly looked better inside out...lol. I have been lucky enough to have the same core of girlfriends since elementary, middle and high school, and I can always count on them to participate in themed parties. I actually dug out a bunch of our old highschool dance pictures and we recreated one with our most embarassing poses...such as underware showing, tounge out, and Jessica and my favorite slumpy big butt picture...LOL. We get togetether alot for girlsnights and now husband and kids nights, which is always fun!

All in all we had a wonderful holiday/birthday season with family and friends. We are so blessed to have you all in our lives and knowing that you love our daughter so much. Incase we didn't get a chance to thank everyone for all of their great gifts, we really appreciate them and you all. One thing we learned to tell "Santa" next year is to assemble before hand out of the box so you can deal with all of the annoying twistie ties, or the plastic that you need a chainsaw to get through, and to make sure we have all of the necissary batteries!

Hope you and your families had a wonderful holiday season, I can't believe our baby girl is 2 (well I get reminders when she throws a fit or does her "terrible twos" outbursts. lol). I will post some more pictures soon!