March 31: We had a really quiet Saturday today, which was a nice thing. Yesterday Andrew and I visited Olbrich and saw the conservatory in its newly pruned loveliness. Andrew has the best time running around, looking at the fish, pointing out the water falls, and navigating the stairs.
I was hoping a bit for sunny, warm weather so we could work on some new garden beds, go biking, and in general play outside. Mother Nature had other plans in mind, though, and a soft rain has been falling off and on since morning. So we hung out around the house. Andrew helped me set up a new composting bin that I finally acquired, and he got to wear his new froggie rubber boots for a quick romp around the yard between showers. April is here tomorrow, and it really feels like spring. Speaking of April, this will be our first April without our pooch April. It’s been 10 months since we put her down. I was thinking about her with all the storms tonight. Sweet doggie. We sure had fun having her in our family.
Pictures of Andrew playing in the back yard are in the gallery.
A day at the farm
March 25: The weather today is stunning! The temperature is in the 70s. Wow. Yesterday we pulled out bikes out of storage, got them ready for the new year, and took a little trip down to a playground. I put away all my snowmen and winter decorations, and now bunnies and eggs fill our home.
This morning we went to the Pancake House for breakfast. Andrew loved his blueberry pancakes. He also ate most of my sausage patty:)
We took advantage of the lovely weather today by taking a trip to the A-Z Farm just outside of Madison. Andrew has been on the somewhat fussy/unhappy side recently, and I wouldn’t say that he had a terrific time at the farm. It was packed, and he was very overwhelmed. Sometimes he wanted to get down, but as soon as he was on his own, he would start sobbing. I took lots of pictures and video, and I imagine that we’ll spend a lot of time in the next week reviewing al the animals we saw in the safety of our own home. One perk of our visit was seeing my friend Lucy and her daughter Isobel while we admired the sheep. Pictures of all the adorable animals and of a worried Andrew are in the gallery. What a great way to spend some time. I LOVE the farm!
We’ve passed the equinox
March 23: I have a hard time believing a week has gone by. I’ve been so busy, having fun and hanging out with my siblings and cranking away at work. I hope this weekend gives me a few moments to find some quiet. I’ve just uploaded two new photo albums to the gallery. The last one in the Winter 2007 album, and the first one in the Spring 2007 album. At some point here, I also hope to find an easy way to post video. I take lots of video clips of Andrew with our camera, and I’d like to share those too.
A quick synopsis of some of the fun activities in the past week: Last Sunday, I helped host a baby shower for my good friend Liza. She’s expecting a baby boy in early May. I finished knitting her baby blanket just in time for the shower! Maretta and Joe watched Andrew on Monday morning, and Monday afternoon, I took off work to hang out with Michael, Maretta, and Joe. The five of us (including Andrew) celebrated Michael’s birthday at Pedro’s, and then we went to a walk down to our neighborhood park. Andrew was just delighted to get to play on his beloved swings and slide again! Pictures of the baby shower and the park fun are in the gallery.
The rest of the week has been an utter blur, but today Joe and I took Andrew to the Vilas Park Zoo for the first time since last October. We met up with my co-worker Vicki and her son Alex as well as Budgie and Wyatt, along with their dad’s, Benson and Steve. Andrew loved the rhinos, we got to hear the lions roar, and I was happy to see some active polar bears. Pictures of our time at the zoo are in the (spring!) gallery.
Sleeping late
March 18: I woke up this morning with a start. It was 7:35 am, and both Bryan and I were asleep in bed. Since Andrew normally wakes up sometime between 6:30 and 7:00, and since I don’t believe he has ever in his life slept past 7:10, I kind of panicked that something had happened to him. I leapt out of bed and raced into his room, and there he was, soundly sleeping at 7:35 am. He was bunched into a corner and had his “bankie” tucked under his arm. What a sweetheart. Tiptoeing out of his room, I thought I’d pop on the computer as long as I was now wide awake!
Fifteen minutes later, I still have a lot of adrenaline pumping through my body. I can hear that he’s woken up now, and he found the books at the foot of his bed. He’s reading them out loud to himself. What a sweetie.
Hope your St. Patrick’s Days was a good one. What a fun and happy holiday. It will be such fun to share the excitement of holidays (especially St. Patrick’s Day since it is my favorite) with Andrew as he grows. Pictures from the last few days including some of his daycare pals and a big Babler family celebration are in the gallery.
Counting down to spring
March 15: It seems to me that nearly every day Andrew does something that seems worthy of a website post. I file these moments in my mind, but now I am finding that when I sit down to share them with his adoring public that I’m not sure what to say. The snow is melting…that’s a big one. It was super warm earlier this week, and our feet of snow have shrunk to inches of snow. Lovely new daylight savings time has given us more light in the evening, and Andrew is having fun walking through increasingly mushy snow in his “BOOTS!” He’s also counting a lot. “One, six, seveneight, nine, TEN!”
Photos from the last week are in the gallery. They include some pictures of a recent wintry trip to Olbrich Gardens and a visit from Andrew’s buddy Wyatt.
The neighborhood owl(s) continue to hoot, hoot, hoot in the evenings, and it makes for a lovely end of the day. As we leave the house in the mornings, I entice Andrew out the door by encouraging him to go outside to hear the birds sing. And sing they do! Andrew notes that they say “cheep cheep.” He has a cute accent, and I love the way he says, “berds. sing-ing. berds. cheep cheep.”
We’ve been working with him on two-word sentences, but he’s pretty into the one word world. He also alway repeats the last word you say, so if I parrot back something to him, encouraging him to repeat me, he nearly always happily says the last word.
Andrew is still doing multi-person hugs, spreading his arms wide and animatedly saying “Buddies!” What a great way to start or end a day:)
We went to Monore last weekend to visit my grandpa and grandma, and when we visited my grandpa in the hospital, he was in ICU and was all hooked up to tubes and he was in pain and it was all a little scary. My mom and I stood near Grandpa, holding his hand, stroking his head, and generally offering comfort. Andrew was pretty unsure about the situation, but he seemed to understand that Grandpa was someone who we love. So he held his great-grandpa’s finger and even gave him a hug and kiss several times. It really warmed my heart to see my little guy being so kind and compassionate despite being a little nervous.
One other little story I wanted to write down for posterity. When we are driving to Karen’s in the morning, we get in the car and Andrew starts asking for his favorite song, Drip, drip, drop. He gets increasingly worried, saying, “Drip. DRIP. DRIP!” Unfortunately, that particular CD lives in his dad’s car, so we had to make do without it. The big highlight of our three minute drive to Karen’s house is when we get to see Lake Monona. We talk about it from the moment we leave the driveway. Andrew says “lake” in such a way that it sounds a lot like “ick.” As we get close to the lake, he gets increasingly excited. When we see it, he tells me about how it is “frozen” with “ice.” He also may or may not mention “fishies” “snoring sound” (meaning they are sleeping)…don’t know where he came up with that one… “wahter” or “gators.” What a great kid!
Those are some of the stories I can think of today. I look forward to seeing what he comes up with for tomorrow:)
Phase II of website retrieval complete
March 15: To my great delight, the gallery photo albums I made prior to August 2006 have been restored to the Dotzour Family Website. Now the “Peak in the Gallery” images you see on the left may pull from Andrew’s early days. As you may remember, in August the server in which our website had been living met the end of its life. We started a new website from scratch. In January, our wonderful brother-in-law, Ben, was able to retrieve the database that housed all the posts I had made since I launched our family website in May 2005 (see the post from that happy day). Then this past weekend, Ben helped me pull the photo albums from my old site into the current gallery. A handful of the albums didn’t make it, but I now feel like this iteration of my website is running at full steam. Many thanks to Ben for hosting our website for the first year, and special appreciation for helping retrieve our data from the defunct server. Let me know if you have suggestions for how I could make this site more fun or friendly!
Winter Magic
March 5: Bryan was at a conference in Milwaukee all weekend, so Andrew and I had a mom-and-boy weekend together. One highlight for me was the ten minutes we spent looking out the window and listening for our new neighborhood owls. I’d lit some candles, and the sun was setting. Venus was super bright and the white snow reflected the bright blue of the evening sky. We had heart the Great Horned Owls hooting earlier (listen here for their lovely call) in the evening, and as we sat listening and watching the still outdoors, Andrew kept whispering “ooowwlll” “cahndahls” “owl”.
Another new and completely, disarmingly wonderful activity Andrew has taken up is saying, “Buddies!” He spreads his arms out and wants a group hug. For example, “Mama, Dada. BUDDIES!” While we’re all hugging, he often softly repeats to himself, “buddies…” Andrew is really starting to hug where he grabs both of my shoulders and pulls me to him. I was telling Bryan that it is things like that which take all the sting out of the fact that he is growing up. He is becoming such a wonderful little boy.
Pictures from the last week – messy eating, playing with Grandma, and rolling around in the snow – are in the gallery.