Easter 2013

There, I'm living up to my mid-year resolution to blog more often! For once I didn't have to work on a holiday (even though I don't care so much for Easter, our families often have activities planned and it's nice to spend time with family). First this morning we hid some Easter eggs around the house for Mira to find. Long story short she was in a bad mood to start off and this was just too much stimulation so it ended with me putting her candy away and her having a massive meltdown. After some calm-down time we snuggled on the couch watching Toy Story and after her nap she felt much better.

Before the meltdown

Then this afternoon we went to my Dad and step-mom's place for brunch (although since it was in the afternoon I guess it's not technically brunch but brinner), then we went to Mark's parents' for dinner. There was another Easter egg hunt and Mira did better with this one, maybe because she's happy when she's outside and she had a full tummy.

She shared two of her eggs with the dog

We've still been spending lots of time at Discovery Gateway and she gets so excited when I tell her we're going to the children's museum. She can barely contain herself when we get there and as soon as I let her loose she runs off with her hands up in the air yelling "Yaaaaaaaaayyy!!!!" Mark was finally able to come with us last week, which was great. I finally got some pictures of Mira because someone was able to occupy her long enough for me to get a good shot or two. This is one of Mira's favorite parts of the museum, the medical helicopter on the roof.

Mira is becoming very musical. We were driving in the car the other day and listening to music by Cirque du Soleil, and Mira started totally jamming out to it!

I love it! Between her music and dancing we'll have to start saving for her tuition to Jiulliard! :)

And here are some random pictures of her eating some Jello, just because I expected this to be a total mess and of course she barely got messy at all so I got some cute pictures anyway.

And in the middle of it we played that same piece of Cirque du Soleil music and she immediately went at it again!

And finally, just for total randomness, some pictures of our cats.

Wally and Neo and definitely warming up to each other... I think. Neo looks a bit upset.

Wally proving he's a cat by using my purse as a cushion

Changes

Seriously, I do feel bad that I haven't been posting much lately. I'm blaming the fact that I'm still having to work a decent amount of overtime at the hospital plus try and keep up with Mira plus try and pay attention to Mark plus try and get up to Park City to ski every week. I just can't believe the ski season is almost over!! It feels like it just barely started. I'll be sad when we can't go skiing anymore, but it will be nice to have that extra day every week back to get things accomplished again.

But in some ways it's been a good thing that I've been working overtime because we have a new addition that we need to afford. Since I graduated from college 5 years ago (dude - it's really been that long?) I've driven a 2007 Toyota RAV4. I bought it for myself when I had my nursing job set up, I was graduating and was fairly certain I was going to pass the NCLEX on the first try, and it was really the first car I'd chosen for myself. I'd had a couple of clunkers since I got my license that were able to get me from Point A to Point B fairly consistently but I wanted something more reliable and nicer-looking and not as prone to breaking down every few weeks. So, I found this RAV4 and I've been in love with it ever since I got it.

However, it hasn't been without some issues. A big reason why I got it was so that when I was driving to and from work I would actually be able to drive to and from work. I've said this a million times already but I'll immortalize it again here: Who in their right mind thought it was a good idea to put a Level I Trauma Hospital halfway up a mountain side in freaking Utah??? And not just a Level I Trauma Center, there are actually two Level I Trauma hospitals right next to each other halfway up a mountain side in Utah, and one of them is the only freestanding pediatric hospital for 5 states. I mean, come on. You really couldn't think of a better place to put these hospitals? It was almost bad enough this winter to make me consider transferring to a different hospital that's in the middle of the valley right off a freeway exit. Anyway, I figured a Toyota would be great for this mountain snow driving. Well, most of the time it was, except that we discovered the 4WD shuts off if you go faster than 25 mph. I still don't know why. And I'll admit that I like creature comforts and techie gadgets and stuff, so I was starting to think it'd be nice to upgrade to something newer, but when I've basically had to do zero maintenance on the RAV4 since I got it (besides oil changes and tire rotations, all that car has ever needed from me was a new set of tires once and new brake pads once), well, it was hard to think seriously about getting a new car.

But it's fun to look and it would be nice to get a car Mark wouldn't be embarrassed to be seen in. (He has a Ford F150 pickup - we got it for towing trailers, which is great, but for commuting around town and such it really isn't practical, so we always used my car.) Mark did a bunch of research and we test drove a few cars (a couple of BMWs and a Lexus) but we just weren't sold on them. Then a couple weeks ago we came across this:

Originally we weren't thinking very seriously about a Mercedes because they're so expensive, but to make a long story short, we got the deal of the century on this car. It was definitely in our price range, all the reviews we could find on it raved about how well it handles off-road and in sub-optimal conditions (bingo!), it definitely had plenty of creature comforts and techie gadgets... And oh my gosh, it drives like a dream! I'll still miss my RAV4 but man, I sure do love my new car!! The only problem is if/when it breaks down it's going to be really expensive to fix... But we're hoping since it's a Mercedes it won't break down that much. Now I look forward to driving places! Love love love.

Our 2008 Mercedes Benz ML550.

Anyway, on to the real reason for this blog. Miss Mira definitely has her moments when she's a total brat but we think most of the problem is she still isn't talking and so she gets really frustrated when she can't tell us what she wants and we can't guess. But otherwise she's so much fun and definitely a little diva. She's already getting into princesses so I've found that if I want her to do something (like brush her hair) and she doesn't want to do it, I can avoid a tantrum by saying we need to get Princess Mira's hair looking pretty so she can wear her crown. So then she's more cooperative and she's even learned how to bow and curtsy - oh my, cutest thing ever! She is convinced she's a princess and is going to have long hair like Rapunzel.

Now that the weather is warming up (intermittently, welcome to Utah) she's definitely wanting to spend lots of time outdoors again, which is fine by me! She loves to try and play basketball or football with some kids that live in the neighborhood (and they're awesome enough to let her try and join in for awhile), and then one day she found a scooter. I think we're going to need to get her a scooter more her size and skill level.

She's also starting to get into make-believe and role-playing, which I think is awesome. I really wish these pictures were better quality.

At least her shopping cart is full of healthy food, right? :)

Better Late Than Never...

I haven't neglected writing because I have nothing to talk about... Quite to opposite in fact. I was ready to upload more pictures a couple weeks ago and we lost our source of internet due to a bulging battery. It took well over a week to finally track down a place that would replace the battery and then in the meantime we decided to get CenturyLink since the speeds would be faster and it actually works out to be cheaper, but we still had to wait another several days for the router to show up and for the service to get activated. So basically we've been without internet at home for a few weeks. In some ways it was nice but my conclusion was that society depends too much on internet these days to do without it for long, if at all. Bottom line, so far we're loving our new internet service!

As you may remember, for her birthday Mira got to pick out a little potty, since she's been showing some signs that she's getting ready for potty training in the near future. She definitely loves to sit on her "throne," but nothing we can do will convince her to sit on the potty the correct way. So for now she has a nice seat.

Now though she's discovered she can close the lid and use the potty as a step-stool to get to stuff on the counter in the bathroom. So now we can't convince her to sit on the potty at all. I guess I need to remember it's a good thing she's so curious, even when it's potentially destructive.

She absolutely loves apples and begs to have one. Hard to discourage that behavior.

And speaking of destructive:

Cheeeeeeeeese!

Since we're all getting some spring fever from being cooped up in the house all winter, it's been very nice to have the membership to Discovery Gateway. I remember going to a children's museum back in Tennessee as a kid and I remember a large stuffed brown bear, a log cabin with pioneer dress-up clothes, a large wooden space ship, and the gift shop. This museum is so much cooler, and even though a lot of the activities are geared towards older kids, Mira loves loves loves going there. She gets so excited when I ask her if she wants to go to the children's museum! The best part is letting her get all her energy out in an educational setting.

Designing her own radio show.

She loves the magnetic toys.

A big thanks to my grandparents for making this gift possible, she absolutely loves it!

Her speech is still behind but her garbled talking still makes me smile.

I took her to her 2-year well-child checkup a couple weeks ago. It's weird to call it a "well-child" checkup instead of a "well-baby" check-up. She really is growing up! But she's right on track with her growing, she now weighs 27.6 pounds (63rd percentile, the highest she's ever placed on the chart!), is 35 inches tall (just one inch shy of 3 feet - eep), and still has a tiny head in the 20th percentile. Besides her speech delay she's hit all her other developmental milestones. My PA didn't seem too concerned as long as I wasn't (which I'm not because everything else is normal) and so we'll just watch it and get Mark's mom involved to do some speech therapy if we need to. Then we finished off the appointment with a couple of vaccinations, which Mira definitely did not like, but as soon as they finished they offered her a sticker and lollipop  and she completely forgot what she had been so upset about. Plus she got to show off her owie to Mark later.

And finally a few days ago the weather has been getting warmer! We can finally see grass in our yard and I can take Mira for walks again, which is great for both of us.

Mark and I have still been doing our ski days, although we're going to really start cramming them in because, much to my disbelief, the ski season is coming to an end. :( I can see now why people take vacations to New Zealand in the summer so they can get more skiing in during the year! Too bad we can't afford a trip to New Zealand.

Just for fun (?), here's a few pictures of that slope I fell down recently. It's still kind of hard to appreciate how steep the slope is based on the pictures but it gives you an idea of how far I fell.

I started to fall about here and didn't stop until just past the bend to the left, in the trees.

Looking up from about where I stopped - I had started to fall at the tree line.

One of these days I'll conquer this slope - once I get over my fear of slamming head-first into a tree trunk and suffering a traumatic brain injury. Sometimes I really feel like my job in a major hindrance.

And now some random pictures of my silly kitty Wallace in his new favorite spot - sitting on the top of the couch so that he's halfway on my head.

Finally, a short video of Mira showing that she definitely knows how to show off and be silly on purpose. One of Ally's (our babysitter) kids recently had a birthday and we joined her and her crew at a place called Kangaroo Zoo, which is a room full of huge inflated slides and obstacle courses and such. Mira had trouble figuring out what she wanted to do because there was so much, but once she figured out she like this one she seriously went on it about 50 times in a row. Enjoy.