The Baranko Family

Tuesday, December 17, 2013

Sledding

Last weekend we got a bit of a dump of snow, which meant sledding!! While the snowflakes fell we were lighting up Donna and Emil's new backyard sledding hill. They've been told that it had been used as a neighborhood sledding favorite in the past, and now we know why. It was a perfect hill, just enough steepness for some thrill rides, but not so steep that it is awful to trudge up again and again. Plus, you have those gorgeous views of the ravine to enjoy.

Luke was a little daredevil.

Claire's first time really bundled up, and definitely her first time sledding. She loved the sledding part.

Now that's a snow angel

Donna even got in on the fun. She says she hasn't been sledding in probably 20 years!!

A couple quick updates:

- I'm not sure if I mentioned this, but Luke apparently has developed a strong friendship with a little boy at school named Shale. Isolene says that when she drops him off at school Luke runs up to Shale, or vice versa, and they hug each other in greeting. How cute is that?

- Claire has always seemed to love music, but lately she has started "dancing" when she really gets into what she's hearing. This usually involves her standing up while holding on to a piece of furniture and bending her knees up and down to the music. She sometimes gets her hands involved by banging on the furniture. In all cases it is adorable and funny to watch.

- In the same theme, she also loves the piano. Matt set her up to have her first lesson the other day and they did a few duets:)

And a few more pictures from the week to close:

Matt took Luke on his school field trip to the Botanic Garden's Winter holiday train display this week. Matt said that Luke followed the train around the display again and again, and they even alerted the conductor volunteers of an issue with one of the trains.

Mom's attempt at the snowman pancake concept

This is her Cher impression

She looks like such a big girl in this chair!

Love this weird expression on her face, like it pains her to try and smile at me. Actually, looking at this picture more closely it looks like she's constipated! Ha!

That acrobatic elf has some impressive abs!

Luke is freakin' amazing at building elaborate train track routes all by himself. This one pictured has a lego tower/tunnel that it goes through and then winds around the bar to the other side of the basement.

Poor little missy got her first goose egg last weekend after taking a header into the living room coffee table.

Rebuilding the truck engine with Grandpa before sledding. Grandpa teaching him "Righty Tighty" :)

Meanwhile, Claire can't get enough of this singing and dancing decoration.

This sweatshirt came from Aunt Kathy & Uncle Bob, so was my cousin Doug and/or Warren's at some point. I'm pretty sure that my Aunt Penny painted this. Luke likes Little Foot too.

Luke and I also hit our nearby sledding hill last weekend. After going down again and again and again, basically getting a self-induced face wash every time by bailing when it got too fast, Luke decided he was done by climbing straight into the stroller and almost falling asleep before I even had time to collect his abandoned sled and meet him down there. One pooped kid!

More Elf antics

Tuesday, December 10, 2013

Meet "Elf" our Elf on the Shelf

Many of you may have heard of the new-ish phenomenon of the Elf on the Shelf. Our little elf came to us last year as a Christmas gift from Katie and Joe to Luke. Here's how it works - the elf watches the children in the house all day long and then reports back to Santa every night whether or not the children were naughty or nice. Then each morning the elf returns and keeps watch in a different spot. The kids are supposed to name "their" elf a special and unique name. Luke chose to name his elf "Elf". Hmmm, the creativity wasn't really demonstrated in that naming. Even when pressed he insisted that his elf's name was "Elf". So there we have it, Elf it is. Luke is very concerned that Elf is watching his every move. He has really been smart about thinking through this whole thing. When we remind him that Elf is watching so he can't be naughty he's quick to say "Elf is in the family room, not in MY room, so he can't see me being naughty right now." Another time when he tried that line and we told him again that the Elf sees everything that goes on in the whole house, he became very disconcerted and finally said, "Why don't we move the elf OUTside so he can't see me throwing toys or playing with the ornaments?" (two things he had been chastised for doing already that evening). Finally, if he does something he's not supposed to he'll quickly say to us "Don't tell the elf!!!"

That little elf finds ingenious places to appear every morning! Luke loves to run and look for where he moved when he wakes up.

Luke wrote a letter to Santa (helped along by Isolene) and helpfully cut out and taped to the letter everything he saw in catalogs that he wanted for Christmas. The "letter" was four pages long. We have been trying to set expectations about how many things Santa actually brings to kids (1-2). The one consistent thing that he's been asking Santa for is a pogo stick. Strange thing to ask for, in my opinion, and I'm not really sure how he's going to actually play with this thing - but that is what he wants.

Considering his options in a toy catalog.

This week St. Nick came to our house, too. I was talking to Kristin about this, but trying to explain the difference between St. Nick and Santa is very difficult. After a sort of long, vague description Luke had a takeaway that St. Nick brings treats and Santa brings real presents. Hmmm, not sure if that was what I was trying to communicate, but even at this very moment I don't know what else I should have said. This was the first year Luke was into it, and Matt and I learned that we had different traditions growing up when it came to St. Nick. I had my stocking filled, and he had his shoe filled. Apparently the shoe thing is a Chicagoland tradition, because my friends at work all do the shoe too. I tried to tell Luke that St. Nick brought him gifts in his stocking and his shoe (also probably didn't help with the confusion factor), and he really hooked on to this shoe idea and ran to put Matt's shoe by the fireplace because it was bigger than his shoe. So St. Nick brought him a few things, and hands down his favorite thing was the dum-dums. We could have just had a couple dum-dums in there and he would have been in heaven.

In Claire news, she is doing funny stuff lately like the dropsie game. This game involves her dropping her sippy cup again and again off of her high chair, laughing each time she does it, peering over the edge of her tray to see her handiwork. She also has been making tons of silly sounds by doing some funny tongue actions while "talking". These tongue actions are pretty amazing. We actually asked the pediatrician about it because we didn't think it was normal how she could turn her tongue perpendicular to her lips, seriously it is sideways! (The ped thought it was fine, and confessed that she too could turn her tongue that way. She didn't show us, though, so I guess we have to take her word for it.) We think Claire is doing that with her tongue because she is in the middle of getting her first tooth! It is coming in on the bottom in the middle, so she must be moving her tongue over it again and again to feel it. There's not been any more real walking happening, but her crawling speed is increasing rapidly. You put her down and the next second she's down the hall and around the corner. Babyproofing is back into full effect. She is sleeping through the night now, I'm not sure if I've mentioned that. She'll sleep from around 8pm to around 6:30am, it is a wonderful change. Now I don't have an excuse for why I'm not working out in the mornings, though! I need to get back on the workout horse. Lastly, we had our first real snow this weekend and Claire loved watching the snow fall, she laughed and giggled at it. She really enjoyed it when we took her for a walk outside in it.

Claire is crawling up stairs, and even walking up this step stool, using the oven bar to steady herself.

Getting in some light reading

I haven't talked about work for a while, but I'm happy to report that it seems like I finally have a handle on this working Mom thing again. It has been a very emotionally trying 6 months trying to learn how to do my new(ish) job that comes with so much more responsibility, while balancing the two kids and not wanting to become a workaholic in a corporate environment where it is almost expected that you're "on" 24/7. Knock on wood (I hope it isn't a phase!), I finally feel like I have a good routine going, where I'm proud of the work I'm doing when I'm at work, and totally focused on the kids and Matt when I'm at home. I've set boundaries at work that my boss and peers seem to respect, so I'm going to continue on with this schedule as long as possible. I'm soooo lucky that I have such a supportive and helpful hubby. Despite his full workload with his properties and gig at his old job, he's always doing things to help the household run smoothly like grocery shopping or running errands, and he gets home on time every night to let Isolene go so I don't have to be stressed about it. I'm very grateful! My opinion on this subject changes like the wind, but for today at least, I can say that I like what I do and I don't feel like I'm sacrificing seeing my kids grow up in the process.

Anywho, on that note, here are some pictures from the week.

Luke has been experimenting with wearing Claire's bows and headbands, it is pretty funny.

Claire's hair is getting so long

Single ponytail!

Making sugar cookies

Decorating our cookies (5 hours later! How are these suckers so time consuming!)

Finished masterpiece of 2013

Claire geeking out at the snow. We had to turn her highchair around so she could watch the "show" during lunch.

Walking at the dog park while the snow fell.

Not quite enough snow yet for angels, buddy.

A few hours later and there was plenty more snow so Luke was excited to help Dad with his favorite activity, shoveling!

Hot cocoa after all that hard work

Playing the bongo drums is a new fave activity for Claire. She loves music.

Isolene makes Luke snowman pancakes. So cute. I love the bacon scarf (yummy accessory).

Luke routinely wants Matt to carry him around "like a sack of potatoes" with just his little head peeking out.

Tuesday, December 3, 2013

Santa Meets Baby Claire

Claire is 9 months old now, and as Fraulein Maria says, she's "practically a lady". We had an event free checkup with her doctor, where she told us Claire was on track or ahead of the curve with all the development milestones and was perfectly healthy. Music to our ears, as it is every time a parent hears their kids are healthy.

Here are the stats:

Weight: 21 lbs, 1.5 oz (75-90%)
Length: 28.5 in (75%)
Head Circumference: 17.8 in (90%)

Now that she's 9 months, she's just old enough to meet Santa Claus, we thought. We bundled up the fam to go to the annual tree lighting ceremony in Market Square of downtown Lake Forest, and Santa made a visit to the local real estate agency there. Luke was, in his words, "a little too shy" to meet Santa and tell him his Christmas wishes, but we agreed that he could write him a letter instead. Claire had no problems sitting on the big guy's lap and looked at him quite curiously. At least she looked sharp in her fancy winter coat, a hand me down from Miss Isabelle. Kristin said it makes her look like "a Lake Forest baby". Ha!

This weekend was also Gram Donna's birthday, so we had a nice time celebrating with her and Emil on Sunday. We went to the nearby Winter Wonderland lights exhibit after a nice dinner, which was really fun. We asked Luke if he could count to 67, Gram's age, and he eagerly starts counting loudly, "1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16, 17.....61.... 67!" It was really funny, he was very proud of himself, then when we all laughed he was more proud of himself.

We also got our Christmas tree on Saturday after a quick visit with Dan, Amy and the kids who were in town from Springfield. Luke picked the tree out all by himself this year, and he was a ton of fun to trim the tree with, too. It was just a fun weekend all together.

Before pictures, I'll leave you with a couple quotables & updates:

- After I accidentally knocked over his block tower, "That's ok Mommy, accidents happen."
- Anytime he likes what is said, "Oh! Good idea!"
- Every night he plays in his bed for an hour before falling asleep, during which time his turtle stars night light will automatically turn off and he almost without fail will call "I need more staaa-aars!" until one of us comes and turns them back on. Interesting to us that he still won't get out of bed by himself once he's in bed for the night.
- Luke can officially dress and undress himself independently, no help at all. His clothes usually always match, too. What a big kid. Although sometimes he does walk out with his jeans on backwards:)

Listening to the Christmas carolers and waiting for the light show. Luke was all about going to this thing before we went, but then as soon as he saw the crowds he passionately wanted to go home. Too much hype and excitement for his blood.