Monday, November 30, 2015

Gingering a Gingerbread Cookie

Grandma Jergensen bought a fun gingerbread cookie kit and asked Hudson if he would like to decorate a gingerbread man with her when he came to visit for Thanksgiving. He of course was so excited and talked about it often.  However, he referred to it as "gingering a ginger gingerbread cookie" or something along those lines each time.  It was pretty funny.  I compiled the clips I took of them doing the decorating (gingering) and put it into a fun video. 


"Gingering a Gingerbread Cookie" from Katie Heiner on Vimeo.

Wednesday, November 11, 2015

Hudson's Getting Smarter

Hudson's getting much too smart for our sneaky parenting. Colby skipped several pages during bedtime stories in an effort to speed up the process. After being tucked in, as Hudson was flipping through the pages on his own, he quickly realized he had been scammed. Multiple pages had been skipped. He sat in bed for quite some time saying "dad, you skipped this page. You skipped this one too. And this one! Daaaaa--ad!" Eventually he climbed out of bed and found Colby out in the garage to set things straight.




Monday, September 14, 2015

The Story of the Nighttime Visitor

Last night, I was having a crazy dream where I was with Hudson, and we were running around a parking structure trying to avoid some crazy bees that would kill you in an instant if they stung you.  It was pretty intense.  Once I started to come to and I realized that it was just a dream, my heart started to calm.  But then I heard what I could have sworn was a bee landing on the foot of the bed.  It sounded like a bug dying mid flight and landing on the covers.  I was so confused, because I had just convinced myself the bees were only in a dream, so I rolled over and went back to sleep.  

But, then I thought I felt moving at the foot of the bed.  Was Hudson in bed with us (as unfortunately has become more of a frequent thing)? No, just Colby. I couldn't see Hudson. Back to sleep.  Then I FOR SURE felt something at the end of the bed.  I looked up and saw a dark figure. Smallish--smaller than Hudson for sure--so it couldn't be Hudson, but definitely bigger than anything I would want moving on my bed!!! I grabbed Colby. "Wake up!  I think there's a CAT on our bed!" I had never seen Colby jump up and turn on the light so quick, yet still be 3/4 asleep.  Sure enough, there was a disgusting cat sitting on the foot of our bed and it was starting to walk toward me. A got as close to the headboard as physically possibly and told Colby to hurry and grab it.  Heaven knows I wasn't touching it.  As far as I was concerned, we had a grizzly in our room!. Thank goodness Colby is a thinker and knew he could easily grab it by it's neck, and carry it outside without much fight.  Holy Cow.  We had a cat on our bed, and in case you thought you missed something, WE DON'T OWN A CAT! (and can guarantee we never will)

As to how it got in, we have two thoughts. Hudson and I went for a walk yesterday evening, and left the front door open as Colby was in the kitchen right there doing dishes.  We passed a similar (or identical!) looking cat on our walk and Hudson jumped off his bike and started chasing it.  It ran in the direction of our house and may have snuck in the front door.  Option 2: The garage door was up from when we got Hudson's bike out for our walk, and I didn't realize we had left it open for awhile.  The cat may have been in the garage when we closed it, and we later had the door from the garage to the house open and unoccupied as we carried laundry in from the dryer (oh, hudson wet OUR bed the previous night when he joined us at 6am, lovely, so we had change the sheets...meaning yes, that mysterious cat was on our newly CLEAN sheets. gross.) Either way, this cat was in our house for sure from 11ish till 5 when it thought it could join us in bed and was kicked out.  There was no other way for it to get in.  What it was doing and where it was for those 6 hours is beyond me, and kind of creeps me out to think of.

Hopefully this is a one time occurrence, and if nothing else, left us with a good story to tell our kids and future grandkids someday. I swear I have found cat hair around the house already and that doesn't make me too happy, but nothing too damaging so far.

Well there you have it...the exciting story of the Nighttime Visitor at the Heiners.

Monday, August 24, 2015

10 months-Hallie, and Bow Photoshoot

Since Hallie is almost 11 months now, and I realize I never finished her 10 month post, here it is in simple bullet point form. :)

  • 3 teeth, of which she got all in one week.  2 came in before Havasu, and she got the third while there.  Like Hudson, she didn't really have any behavior changes to getting teeth.  However, she has discovered she can BITE with them, and it's quite painful.  
  • She is back to sleeping through the night!  At Havasu we were all in one room and I was worried about her waking Hudson, as she's been waking occasionally in the night.  Because it is so hot there, and our hotel room had poor air conditioning circulation, we also had a fan blowing in the room.  The fan created white noise for both me and Hallie, so it either helped Hallie sleep, or helped me not hear her and she went back to sleep on her own.  Either way, she now 100% sleeps through the night consistently since Havasu.  Hallelujah for vacations altering sleep schedules...now that's something you don't hear everyday!
  • She is cruising on the furniture
  • She enjoys her walker, but unless we put her outside on the back patio with it, she can't really go anywhere with it.  She mainly has hallways to walk in our place and she doesn't have the control to not just crash into walls. 
  • She is now on formula just over half the time.  She nurses in the morning, sometimes followed up with a little formula, has 2 5-6 oz bottles (11:30/3:30) and nurses/has a bottle of freezer breast milk in the evening before bed.  This has been a great change for us and I am not sure how we would have made it through Havasu with her nursing as my supply was dropping and she really doesn't enjoy nursing, especially when it hot and covered. 
  • She was given fish for the first time...salmon...and loves it.  What's not to love, right?
  • She also has tried a few other table foods, including diced watermelon and cantaloupe and likes those too.
  • She is sitting awesomely since havasu.  I think she learned this skill while in the little kiddie pool we had for her and Natalie on the dock.  She of course sits in a "hurdle" position, with one leg out, the other bent back.  Funny girl.  
  • She loves the water...pool, bath, toilet (gross)
  • She sits in the tub now, and never lays down. 
  • favorite toys: currently the cylindrical kitchen storage containers we had in the garage unused that I brought in to store some of Hudson's toys.  I have left the unused ones inside and hallie loves grabbing them and throwing random toys in and hauling it around the house.  She also loves her little stacking cups.  She sticks them over her fists.  Apparently cups are her thing. 
  • She has started chatting a lot while in her carseat.  She will just babble on and on, or blow "raspberries."  The carseat is the most consistent place for this to happen, but she does it frequently throughout the day. 
We had some fun this month doing product shots for a bow company, and I loved having sweet Hallie as my little model.  Here are a few of my favorites. And by "a few" I mean a ton...but then again, I started with over 600 images on my camera, so narrowing it down to this was tough!

{see even more from the shoot over on my photography blog: katieheinerphotography.blogspot.com }










Saturday, August 22, 2015

Hudson--3 years old!

obsessions: Jake and the Neverland Pirates, vehicles, watching movies
food: loves steak and salmon, chicken nuggetts, and rice & raisins for breakfast. Prefers milk over water.

"10 of them" is a phrase we hear very often, and basically means "a whoooooole lot" in Hudson terms.

We finally have figured out the trick to brushing Hudson's teeth.  It has been a battle.  We now count his teeth as we brush, which leads to 10 long seconds of brushing on the top, and 10 on the bottom, with spitting in between.  His favorite is to request the counting in Spanish, german, english or french...the four languages between Colby and me that we can count to ten in. ;)

He loves playing hide and seek. Typically he hides in the same couple places: on his bed under a pillow/blanket, in the living room behind our floor lamp, behind all the decorative pillows on either the master or guest bed, or under the side table in the living room.  They are all excellent{ly visible} hiding spots. Often he will hide and we will find him, then he will tell us to find him again and simply pull the blanket back over his face.

Naps have been gone since July, and he now has quiet time during Hallie's afternoon nap...1:30-3:30. Some days it's great, other days its a complete failure.  He is supposed to be in his room either reading or playing quietly with his toys.

Speaks very well, with the exception of his "L" and an occasional "th" sound.  My favorite speech impaired words he says are "bwanquet" (blanket) and "Kank you"

He is very well-mannered and says "thank you" so often.  Often he will say "thank you" over and over until you acknowledge him and reply with "you're welcome."

Knows his ABCs and sounds each letter makes. Still not familiar with lowercase though. 

Has a great imagination and it's fun to listen to him play alone or with Hallie and speak his imagination. 

Loves watching TV and movies, which is good and bad. If I let him, I think he'd watch from when he woke up to when he goes to sleep. His favorite tv show has changed from Thomas to dinosaur train to most recently Jake and the Neverland Pirates. Colby purchased several of the Classic Disney DVDs and Hudson has enjoyed watching them. The ones he requests most (and some of the few he's seen more than once) are Toy Story, Lion King and Little Mermaid (Ariel as he calls it) 

Finally poops on the toilet (3 yrs 1 month)   

Very talkative and excited about life in general. From the minute he wakes up he's talking and entergetic. He doesn't need time to "warm up" in the morning. 

He has somehow developed a morning routine of "driving away" with Dad. He climbs into the passenger seat and buckles himself in. Colby drives one house down or to the stop sign (we are two homes from the corncer) and I get him. I open the door and Hudson unbuckled himself, tells dad to have a good day my that he loves him, and always points out that "there's still dirt on the sidewalk", and now adds "but they cleaned it up now." (Referring to our neighbor who had piled dirt on the sidewalk for about a month as they slowly.pit in sprinklers. It's kind of a joke now, and we think Hudson actually understands that and continues his line for comedic effect.

We sure love our growing boy and can't imagine life without him. xo!







Sunday, July 19, 2015

San Francisco Zoo

Hudson relates the word "zoo" with Happy Hollow Park and Zoo, which honestly, most of the time we don't even look at the animals.  So when we decided to go to the San francisco Zoo yesterday, we simply said "we are going to see the animals!"  He was so excited.  He now knows that is what a zoo is.  Hopefully when we visit the animals at Happy Hollow next time he isn't disappointed.  He was so excited with every animal.  His favorites were the giraffe (first animal he saw), the zebra, gorillas, the Lion, and hands down his most favorite was the Hippopotamus. Colby was thrilled to see the kangaroos and I personally enjoyed the Polar Bear. He spotted the hippo when we were looking at the rhinos, and ran over with Colby.  It was under water and hudson watched as it came up from the water countless times.  When we finally convinced him to leave, he just kept running back.  He talks now about how the hippo came up to say hi, but didn't really say anything because animals don't talk.  It's pretty cute.  Hallie was perfect, and it was fun to watch her watch her surroundings.  When we were by moving animals, she was totally watching them.  She was all smiles the majority of the day, with the exception of the 5 minutes before her nap.  I'd say the most challenging part of the day was when we were in the "North America" section, they had a train that circled around.  Hudson was determined to watch the train every time.  He wanted to ride it, but thankfully he has recently picked up on the concept of tickets, so we simply explained that we didn't have a ticket, so we couldn't. After 4 hours of watching animals, we ended at the awesome play area.  He was a little daredevil, climbing across plank bridges, flying down the "zip line" type thing and crossing what he called "the crocodile."  He had the best time.  And then it got even better, because then we headed over to the golden gate bridge.