Poor Little Girl

On Saturday, Annika woke up from her nap and complained that her ear hurt. Not a good sign. I gave her some ibuprophen to ease the ache. I also put some garlic oil in her ear; the poor thing came unglued when I began to massage the ear to work the oil in a bit lower. REALLY not a good sign. On Sunday, she, again, mentioned her ear, but wasn't acting sick or truly out of sorts. Then Sunday night hit. She was miserable and in pain; the ibuprophen wasn't doing the trick and her nose was much more congested. After a sleepless night and a call from her day care saying she had a fever, it was off to the doctor. She was reluctant to allow the doctor to look in her ears, but eventually decided it would be OK. After that was done, she wanted the doctor to look in her stuffed bunny's ears. (He was diagnosed with an ear infection, as well.)

Two days of antibiotics later, Annika is doing MUCH better. (Bunny only needed extra rest to beat his ear infection - no meds required. Whew!) We are grateful that she could be seen so quickly and receive the care that she needed.... not to mention, get the right medication that is doing its job in a timely manner.

Our Thanksgiving

The Olson Trio spent Thanksgiving with Eric's parents on Whidbey Island this year. It was a very relaxed holiday filled card games, more food than we could shake a stick at, and lots of fun conversations. Annika had a great time trying to get the new cat in the family (a Maine Coon named Gabe, who my in-laws rescued from a shelter in MT in October). Every time Annika saw Gabe, she insisted on pointing him out and calling to him. "Kitty! Come on go. Kitty. Come." Gabe had no intention of heading her direction and mostly hid on the bookshelves in my in-laws den snoozing and hiding from a 2-year-old who would probably try to love him a bit more than he wanted.

My mom-in-law and I decided we needed rolls to accompany our Thanksgiving dinner. One run to the neighbor's house for Crisco and one run to the store for yeast later, we had the rolls going in the bread machine. It was more of an adventure than we expected, but the rolls did turn out quite nicely. Gotta love Aunt Sally's roll recipe!!

We played numerous rounds of Quiddler and 5 Crowns, both fun card games that our family seems to be quite addicted to. We definitely had a lucky chair and I got booted from it after winning one of the first games.... my victories quickly came to a halt after Eric overtook my seat. Darn him!

A big thank you to the Whidbey Olsons for a wonderful Thanksgiving. (Thanks, too, to their neighbor for the Crisco!)

Soccer Player On Board!

I'm quite convinced that our little guy is going to be a soccer player (or possibly the first male Rockette)! Over the past few days, he has been going crazy kicking the holy heck out of my insides. Last week, his movements were cute little flutters. This week, I can feel his kicks with my hand when I rest it on my belly. He's getting strong!! According to my iPhone app, he's supposed to break the 1 pound mark this week and 8 inches in length. I'm amazed by how fast he's growing! During my ultrasound last week, he (once again) had his head scrunched into me; I think he just might prove to be a cuddily baby ... only time will tell!

Annika Reading

Annika reading Goodnight, Gorilla to herself in the car.

The REAL pronunciation

Apparently, I've been saying the word "manatee" wrong all these years. Annika found a stuffed animal (manatee) that I got at Sea World 8 years ago. I asked her if she knew what it was - her blank stare told me "no." I said that it was a manatee. She replied, "mangahbadee." SO much cuter than how I've been saying it all this time. I think she's on to something. :)

I really haven't forgotten that we have a blog

My goodness, but has life been wickedly crazy for us lately. We spent the last few days of October and the first few days of November wondering if Annika had caught the H1N1 virus. She hadn't, but that didn't stop her from being one sick kid for a few days with a "regular" flu. There really isn't much worse than seeing your own child sick or injured and knowing there really isn't much you can do except try to make them feel as comfortable as possible. We had an adorable lamb costume ready for her to wear on Halloween; instead, she wore her jammies and carried around a cloth diaper so we could wipe her nose every time she sneezed. Most kids run off at the mention of a nose wiping; not our kid! She continually ran up to us with the cloth diaper or a tissue saying, "Yuck! Yuck!" after one of her rather impressive sneezes. Halloween wasn't a complete loss; we did carve our pumpkins, and Annika enjoyed "helping" by putting the pumpkin guts back inside after I scooped them out.

On an up note, she's now back to her practically perfect self - full of P&V and all of the silliness that is a 2-year-old. Her vocabulary is still growing by leaps and bounds. Eric and I have noticed how her language skills are evolving. Just a few short weeks ago (maybe even a few short days ago), she'd say "banna" for "banana" and "are you?" for "where are you?". Now, she's saying "banana" and "where are you?" - still cute, but proof that she's maturing and growing up a bit.

On Halloween, a couple of girlfriends and I took a chocolate truffle making class through the N. Seattle CC's continuing education department. It was a 6.5 hour class that flew by. Since them, I've been working on the skills I walked away with. I see cooking skills much like a foreign language. If you don't use it, you lose it. So, I've been a ganache and tempered chocolate fool as of late. It's been a lot of fun to figure out what works and what doesn't (like the white chocolate and citrus ganace truffles that wouldn't all come out of the mold last night - the evil buggers!) All-in-all, it has been a fun adventure and I'm greatly enjoying the creation process.

Helping Daddy cook


Carving our pumpkin


The take-home goodie box from of my chocolate truffle class


The current view inside our fridge: yes, we really do have 5 plates full of truffles in there!

Our Halloween

We had grand plans for Halloween. On the 30th, Eric was going to bring Annika to my office for the company's trick-or-treating event. We had her lamb costume all set and ready to go. On the 31st, we were going to take her to a few friends' houses to show off just how cute our little girl is in costume. All of that got derailed when Annika spiked a fever Wednesday night and continued into Thursday. Eric stayed home with her and took her to the doctor, who did an H1N1 test on her (we found out a few days later, it was negative). I stayed home with her on Friday. By Friday night, her fever hit 103.4, which started to make us a bit nervous. Her fever didn't break until sometime as she slept Friday night. On Saturday, she was still incredibly congested and coughing, but the fever was hit and miss, and when it was "hit", it wasn't as high as it had been. No trick-or-treating this year for the Olson trio. I'd hoped to get her into the costume for a photo opportunity, but Annika had no interest. We'll try again in a few days, just so her memory book isn't void of a costume picture this year.