Meeting Minnie Mouse

Minnie Mouse

Rapuzel

Merida

Chewbacca

Darth Vader

Last week was the first day of C's last year of preschool.  In 2013 she was a Tadpole, 2014 she was a Polliwog and this year she is a Frog!  She will go to school three days a week.  It's a small class this year with just eleven kiddos.

This will be an interesting and historical year for Steele.  Steele Cooperative Preschool has been at it's current location for 33 years.  In July we lost our lease.  The company that owns the house we use as our preschool has decided to sell.  If you have heard anything about the Denver Front Range real estate market you know how crazy it is right now.  It's not unheard of for houses to sell in a day with multiple offers (and that's if it even makes it to the market).  The availability of houses on the rental market for the month of August was 0.04%!

The parent board made a separate Development Committee in order to explore options on how to continue with this amazing preschool.  We got lucky in that one parent on the committee is a realtor and was able to find another house just seven blocks away.  And it was zoned for both residential and commercial!  And thanks to some financial responsibility of previous parent board members we had a down payment!

So we bought a house!  In September, renovations will begin to make it a one room school house.  The wall between the living room and one of the bedrooms will be removed to make a large room.  The back yard will also be transformed into a playground that is suitable for the 3-5 age group.  It's a lot of work and a lot of money!  We are hoping to have these renovations completed by the end of October and be moved into our new school by November 1.

Steele parents are hosting A TON of fundraisers this year to raise money for the stage one renovations.  (Stage two involves some kitchen and bathroom work).  Stage one renovations are what we need to do in order to have school in this location.  One of the fundraisers we have going is a CrowdRise page.  CrowdRise is like gofundme, except we have it set up as a charity.  Steele Cooperative Preschool is a 501(c)3 charity which makes all donations tax deductible.  If you are looking for a great non-profit to donate to, please think of Steele.

Happy Monday Friends!

Holly Baby has been in my life for 44 years.  I got her when I was two years old.  My parents were in a Coast to Coast hardware store when I latched on to her and wouldn't let her go.  My parents each told the other "I'm not going to take it away from her.  You do it."  Neither of them took her away and I still have her.  She is a 1968 Vogue doll.  She has a cloth body and plastic arms, legs and head.  She has gone through countless body replacements.  She traveled with me EVERYWHERE.

There was one incident when we had gone out to eat.  My mom had taken me to the bathroom and my dad paid the bill and was heading to the car.  He picked Holly up by her head and threw her under his arm, like a football.  Some lady ran after him accusing him of child abuse.  Imagine her embarrassment when she realized it was a baby doll.  My dad still gets a chuckle from that one!
Miss C has started playing with Holly.  I also have a bedraggled suitcase full of baby clothes for Holly most of which were mine (some were my brothers).  The suitcase was mine too.  So it's all ancient... or at least 40-something years old.
Sometimes I worry about how fragile Holly is and that something will happen to her.  Miss C does try to be careful of her though.  Although, I"m sure I can find another doll repair hospital if I needed to!

Last weekend in an attempt to control some toy clutter in Miss C's room we decided to build some shelves.  We live in an old house so space is kind of at a premium.  We used this Ana White design as our template.  I totally thought I could make these by myself, but it took Bryan less than an afternoon to put them together in what would have taken me all weekend.  Miss C and I painted them the next day.  (We hadn't added the backboard yet and I should have painted it, but once the toys were in there you can't see it's not painted).  And when the paint was dry, Bryan carried it to C's room (it's heavy!) and she arranged her toys. Toy storage problem solved.  (For the time being!).

Miss C's eye surgery last Friday went really well.  She was the first one of the morning that her Dr. operated on.  She was in surgery for about an hour and then in the recovery room for 90 minutes.  She threw up a little bit in the recovery room but not enough to keep her from going home as soon as she was awake enough to leave.   She fell asleep on the way home and then stayed asleep after we got home.  All those drugs will do that... After lunch she complained she didn't feel so good, but just laid on the couch.  Her Oma and Papa came over and she threw up all over herself and Oma.  We got her cleaned up and she promptly fell asleep again!

Sleeping away the day was the perfect way to recover.  We didn't have to worry so much that she was going to rub her eyes, which we didn't want her to do.  The nurses said she would feel like she had grains of sand in her eyes.  We put antibiotic ointment in her eyes (with a small battle over doing it!).  Her eyes were super red and swollen that night and the next day.

Today was her post op follow up.  The Dr said her eyes are looking good.  While they are still a little bit red and swollen, the important thing is that her eyes are tracking together!  She can do her normal activities now except we have to wait for skiing for another week.

We will go back to the eye Dr in May for another follow up visit.  At that visit, he will check her eyes for the crossing and make the determination whether or not she will continue to need glasses.  I feel like the surgery is already a success, just by watching her eyes move together.  But I feel like she is also noticing things, maybe more clearly or maybe for the first time, I'm not sure.

So.  Thank you for your well wishes.  They were truly appreciated!

Early tomorrow morning we will check into the surgery center where Miss C will have eye surgery.  She has accommodative esotropia which we have tried to fix with her super cute pink glasses.  Alas when we were at her year follow up appointment, the doctor asked me how I thought she was doing with her glasses and I said I could see her eyes crossing with her glasses on, he replied that he didn't think the glasses were doing their job of correcting anymore.   He suggested surgery.  We did a little bit of research, but trusted his judgement, he is a children's eye doctor and does this surgery weekly.

Basically the surgeon will shorten and lengthen eye muscles to keep her eyes focusing together rather than one eye going in one direction while the other eye goes in another direction.  Her eyes will be red and swollen for a couple of days and she needs to be pretty chill so I checked out some movies from the library for us to watch.  It is the beginning of her spring break and she has two weeks off from school.  I didn't want her to play rough with the other kids or possibly have her eyes bumped or get playground debris in them.

When I took her in for her four year old checkup it was determined that she is behind in her fine motor skills.  Not quite behind enough to need therapy, but close.  We decided to wait until after surgery to see if it is just because she doesn't see well enough up close to do scissor work or writing and coloring.  We really don't know what she sees and doesn't see.  And if what she sees is normal or not.

We will go in for a follow up a week after her surgery to see how the surgery went and then we will have another follow up appointment in May to find out if she will continue to need glasses.  I'm torn.  I started wearing glasses when I was 7 and wore contacts fro 25 years before Lasik so I understand her frustration at wearing glasses.  However she is so stinking cute in her pink specs!  But I would love to see her baby blues clearly.

37/52 (9/14)  Snuggling with Winston.

42?52 (10/19) At a friends wedding reception

43/52 (10/26) Carving pumpkins for the front porch.

C's sweater vest is finished!  She wanted to wear it the day it was completed.  It's been in the upper 90's.  I said no and packed it into the drawer for this fall.   It's a little big, but it will be nice to wear over shirts for extra warmth outside this fall when coats aren't really needed yet.
This vest is called "vest with splits and optional hood"  the pattern was sent to me by Jodi from practisingsimplicity.  She had a picture of her little boy wearing one and I loved it.  She graciously mailed me a copy of the pattern all the way from Australia!

The yarn is Cascade Superwash DK that has been dyed with Kool-Aid.  We used black cherry, ice blue raspberry, lemonade and strawberry.  And then we mixed some of those colors together to make some interesting combinations.  It was a very easy pattern to follow, although I did mess up the bottom of the back and when I actually followed the directions on the front, I had to rip back to make it match the back.

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June 2014
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And that brings us to the halfway point of the year!  Wait. What?  The year is half over already?

Have a great rest of the weekend!

 I had wanted really wanted the little white and yellow daisy buttons, but I could only find four of them.  As I was laying out the buttons to see which ones looked better I hit upon this pattern and and loved it.

It's long but not as long as it looks due to the camera angle

She was very excited that her sweater is finished, but she did remark "it's too big."  Which she says a lot anyway (unless I happen to say something is too small).

Corrine at 1 month

Corrine today

In the NICU the day after she was born

A portrait a week for a year.
This week- learning to go down the slide head first.  So very daring!

A portrait a week for a year.
This week:  Climbing on the airplanes at a hangar BBQ party.

A portrait a week for a year.
This week:  Dance like no one is watching!

A portrait a week for a year.
This week:  Corrine's first day of pre-school.

A portrait a week for a year.
This week: The napping essentials- Pat the Bunny, a fleece blanket and green velour Christmas pants.

A portrait a week for a year.
This week:  Feeding lettuce from the garden to the ladies.

A portrait a week for a year.
This week:  Corrine at the park playing on the dragon.  We had just listened to Puff the Magic Dragon the day before.

A portrait a week for a year.
This week:  napping in her "tent" in her room.  Perhaps mama is not the best tent maker?