This Little Piggy. The 2009 Version

Annika LOVES when I do the Little Piggies with her toes. Her toes are so ticklish that by the time I get to the pinky toe she is already cracking up and wiggling so hard that someone might think she was having a seizure.

Recently when doing the Little Piggies, Annika stopped me after the first piggy (The one who goes to the market) and informed me that the piggy does NOT go to the market, in fact the piggy goes to get gas instead.

So this is how we do the Little Piggies in the Null household:

1 – This little piggy goes to Starbucks

2 – This little piggy gets some gas

3 – This little piggy eats some chicken nuggets

4 – This little piggy takes a bath

5 – This little piggy goes "Wee wee wee wee wee" all the way home

I am hoping to get a video of it here pretty soon. It is just too cute.

An Update on Us...

Since it has been a while since I updated my blog and a lot of my family has been connected to the interwebz, I figured I might as well take advantage of my awesome blog and write some stuff down…

Our Business

We are moving!! After 8 wonderful years at our current location we have decided to move on to bigger and better things. A developer in Seattle found us online, was impressed with our experience & credentials and offered to build us a brand new facility! The location, although it is a ways away from our current location, is wonderful. We are minutes away from the highway and right smack dab in the middle of high class housing.

Our new location should be done building in 2 weeks. Until then we are hanging out in a temporary location. It’s really nothing pretty as it is a huge warehouse, with no insulation, and lots and lots of room to echo. Our sound sensitive mama’s REALLY can’t wait to move outta there! Actually as we speak (write?) Jim is at the new location installing tile with our awesome friend Loren. I however, am not helping out because I am home with a sick kid.

Annika

Speaking of, Annika has been doing awesome! She started Taekwondo officially back in August. She is absolutely adorable.

She does a really good job at following directions and getting along with the other children. She is little miss social so everyone wants to be her friend, and she wants to be everyone’s friend. Life should be interesting here in a few years, I think my house might be the hang out place.

Last week (2 Fridays ago) Annika came down with a fever of 102*, but no other symptoms. This has happened a couple times in Annika’s life. She has a great immune system so she hardly ever gets sick, which we are very thankful for. But when she does get sick her first symptom is a fever, so we knew something was coming. Long story shorter she ended up having H1N1. She never got tested but the nurse diagnosed her symptoms perfectly over the phone and said the worst symptoms would last 3-5 days and she would be all better in 7-10 days.

By day 8 she still had a fever ranging from 100.5 - 101, it was low, and it would go away if I gave her ibuprofen, but there was still a fever present and that’s not normal. In combination with the fact that her cough seemed to go deeper in her chest, I figured a call to the dr. was in order. Which was pretty useless. They basically said even though the fever has lasted 3 days past what it should, she’s fine until it hits 104*. I really wasn’t convinced and neither was my mom who urged me to take her into urgent care.

I had the best trip to Urgent care ever! We walked through the doors, got checked in, got seen by the dr, got a prescription, and walked out in less than 20 minutes! That’s better than seeing a regular dr! The urgent care doc said the long lasting fever was unusual and most likely the H1N1 turned into a sinus infection and the drainage down her throat was most likely causing the cough. So we got bubble gum flavored antibiotics and are on our way!

I am amazed at how well they work! She went from looking like this

To this

Er... well.. you get the idea, all in 24 hours.

We are hoping this is the end of her illness and we are making a routine of vitamins to keep her healthy for the rest of the winter because it seems like it might be a hard one!

Jim and I

We are doing really good, trying to stay healthy! I have been bouncing from one cold to another to another for about a month now. My poor nose hates me and the company that makes Theraflu LOVES me. I am also jumping on the vitamin wagon because I would really like to stay healthy during this move & the rest of winter!

We are also keeping very busy with the move, since I have missed out on an entire week at the school, I have A LOT to catch up on when I get back this week.

I have a couple more blog ideas stewing around in my head… so stay tuned!

Yes, I'm Still Alive

I suck at this whole "blogging" thing. I have nothing fun to talk about. When I actually DO have something fun to talk about I type it out on Facebook, KTT, MySpace, and tell everyone in person so when I do get down to typing, everyone I know has heard it already. On top of that I never take pictures so I can't even rely on that... I am a horrible blogger

Ok so i'm going to update you on some things, if you're already heard it, i'm sorry, my memory sucks.

Annika is taking Taekwondo!!! I have pictures but I, yet again, misplaced my camera and it (still) has the pictures on it. I know Jim uploaded them onto his Facebook, so if you're interested, go look there :-)

But ANYWAYS! She is doing awesome. I am SO glad that classes are only 30 minutes long because in the first 10 minutes she is a GREAT listener, has loud "Yes Sir!"s (<---- I know it's grammatically incorrect, please don't tar & feather me), and her technique is pretty good.

the second 10 minutes, you can tell she's starting to get tired/bored because she's starting to wiggle and I have to direct where to go more.

During the last 10 minutes, i'm about ready to kick her little booty off the mat! She truly shows her two year old-ness. But all in all she is a great kid and it melts my heart when she call's Jim "Master Null" :-)

hmmm.... What else has happened???

OH! I had to buy Rarity #2 this morning. Rarity #1 got sick with fin rot and lost her entire back fin last week. I was very upset and was waiting for her/him to go belly up. He never did and I was a good momma and cleaned out his water everyday and his fins started to grow back! I knew he was gonna recover. Buuuuuuuut obviously that wasn't the case or else we wouldn't have a Rarity #2

I headed out to Petco this morning before Annika woke up because last time I was there they had like 3 fish that looked exactly like Rarity. But just my luck the only color fish they had was Red and White (white Beta look weird BTW). So I grabbed the red one that had a little bit of red on it and brought it home.

After giving the fish a pep talk and telling him that his name was Rarity, he belonged to a 2 year old girl, and to hide if any animal that says "MEOW" comes to play, I was ready to put him to the real test. I brought Annika down and was ready to tell her all sorts of excuses.

She hopped up

She looked into the tank

and she said...

"HI RARITY!!! Mama I wanna feed Rarity now!!"

[jaw drops open]

I got so lucky... so incredibly lucky.

Hopefully She won't see him again tomorrow or something and realize it's not the same fish. I might flub up without my game face on.

I lost my camera....

Granted I haven't looked for it very hard. But it wasn't where I left it, so either someone took it or it grew legs and walked away. I really hope it is the 1st possible option because it had some awesomely cool pictures of Annika taking her first Taekwondo class.

I am going to form a search party tomorrow and try to find it. If I do then expect some AWWWW inspiring pictures later this week :-)

Beach Trip!!!

Team Trials are over!!! That means that the Null family actually has spare time to have some adventures! First item on the agenda? BEACH! It was a rather impulsive idea, being that I thought of it on Tuesday and we went Saturday. We had a BLAST!! Annika is still talking about it and asks when we can go back to the "beesh"

The night before we left the forecast said Seaside was going to be overcast, rainy, winds at 13mph and 60 degrees. So we did what any normal Oregonian would do and grabbed an extra jacket.

We left the house first thing in the morning and when we stopped to get gas in North Plains, Annika was screaming she so was excited.

The car ride was about an hour and a half and Annika did awesome! She read through all her books and started to get antsy when we were about 30 minutes away. Luckily we made it to Seaside without any major drama and headed straight to the aquarium!

We didn't get any pictures but we got to watch the seals jump around and bark. Other people fed the seals but Annika had no desire to touch the smelly fish. Smart girl! Then we went to the touch tanks and Annika was more interested in splashing the water than actually touching the sea creatures. So we didn't stay there long.

When we were heading out we saw a small crowd around the octopus tank. We headed over to see what was going on and the octopus was going crazy! I've been to a number of aquariums and I have never seen the octopus actually MOVE. I have been able to see a tentacle poking out from behind a rock. but this Octopus was swimming all around the tank and trying to jump out. I wish I got it on video.

After the aquarium we headed to the beach and built sand castles!!

This was father/daughter picture attempt #3. I can never get her to look at the camera long enough!!



Annika and her castle (it's very small but it's there I swear)


Our castles (Left to right): Annika, Daddy, & Mama.

After the beach we went to grab a bite to eat
Cheers!!

See? We DO give her juice! it's only once in a blue moon, but we do let her have it.

After lunch we ran over to the Merry-Go-Round. I was a bit weary because when we went last year, Annika was not amused AT ALL. Luckily this year she loved it! She loved it so much we went on 2 times! We would have gone on a 3rd but mommy was getting sick from going round and round and round.While watching before we got on Annika spotted the black cat and was determined to ride on it
Mama had to ride too

After that Annika wanted on Mama's horse because it was "High up in the sky!"

The only way to get Annika away from the Merry-go-round was to point out the nearby toy store. We went in and she didn't quite know what to do. She wandered around and back tracked almost like she didn't know what to play with first! She made her way over to the books (surprise, surprise) when she spotted an abacus. Jim and I were pretty much amazed when she started moving the balls and counted to ten in English first, then in Spanish, then in Korean, and then she counted up to 5 twice in German. She must have played with it for 10 minutes! When I finally said, "lets go buy it so we can take it home with us" she said no, put it back and grabbed a Dora book instead. Maybe when we go back in late August we can buy it (if she's still interested).

After the toy store we wandered our way back to the car and headed home. Annika passed out shortly after reaching the highway.
The day was absolutely magical and we get to go back here in 3 weeks for my birthday! We will be going to Newport instead of Seaside. But I love Newport. It's cold and windy and there's only 2 days a year where it doesn't rain, but I still love it :-)

YAY! Fireworks!!

A little early though... Jim and I will be in Texas on the 4th of July and Annika will be with Grandma and Grand-pops at the beach so we decided to celebrate last night.



Hold on tight and pull!



Nope, nothing left in there.


Daddy's turn!


I'll throw the popper!


OH! It didn't pop, I'll just stomp on it!


Jumping works too!


Ooh! Sparklers!




And one with Daddy too.

Happy 4th of July everyone!

Happy Father's Day!

Once a year everyone takes a day out of their busy lives to appreciate the special men in their lives. In my opinion, one day a year is just not enough. If you think about it, if my special man wasn't around this silly,

Messy,



and beautiful,

Little girl would not fill my every day with more love and joy than a person can imagine.

Thank you honey. Thank you for being a wonderful husband, and a perfect Dad. Annika and I couldn't ask for more. We love you!

It's 10am and all is quiet

I am still in bed. It is awesome. The reason I am still in bed? It's because Annika is still sleeping. Some mornings she gets a wild hair and decides to sleep until I wake her up.. usually around 10 or 10:30. But since Daylight Savings just happened, it's really 9am, and that is her normal wake up time. So any second now I should hear................................ Nope no screaming yet.

But we had somewhat of an interesting day yesterday, we are potty training.We are doing a modified "3 day and-we-promise-your-kid-will-shit-in-the-toilet" program. Basically Annika runs around all day wearing panties. I make a HUGE emphasis on her panties being dry, like I ask her every 5 seconds if her panties are dry. When she says yes, we jump and shout and say that Annika if the best person in the world, blah, blah, blah. You get the idea. I'm also supposed to wait until Annika tells me that she has to go potty. So here's how the day goes:

"Annika, are your panties still dry?"
"ummmm... Yup!"
"OH YAY! THAT MAKES ME SO PROUD!! YOU ARE-(I'll spare you the rest of it)"
"yaaaay!"
"Annika, make sure to tell mama when you need to go potty ok? that way we can keep our panties dry"
::No response::
"OK Annika?"
::No response::
*******45 Min later*********
"Annika you look like you are doing the pee pee dance. Do you need to go potty?"
"Nope not yet!"
"Ok make sure you tell mama when you need to go potty, ok?"
::No response::

Now I start hovering over the child because I know she has to pee, She knows she has to pee, but she refuses to sit on the potty.

******2 hours later*********
"Annika are your panties still dry?"
"yup!"
"oh good, do you need to go potty? You look like you need to."
"Nope not yet"
"Annika I think we should go sit on the potty"
"Nope I don't need ----- uh oh"
"RUN TO THE POTTY!!!"

Luckily she has started to get the idea that pee goes in the potty. She has hardly any accidents anymore... if I stay on top of her. But I can't stay on top of her until she is 25! Today we go to work.. and we're going in panties... i'll keep my fingers crossed that this works.

SUCCESSFUL!!

Annika came home in the same diaper I sent her over to Grandma's with. I am so proud of her! I hope this keeps up, soon we will be rid of diapers!!! Well until Jim gets older :)

I might be jinxing myself...

But we are on Day #3 of successful potty training. Granted this is our third attempt at this whole thing, but she seems to be catching on. I was scared that she would regress so far from our last attempt that it would just be holy hell trying to potty train again.

Monday was pantie day and Annika wore nothing but panties. We had 3 accidents and 3 pee's in the potty! All in all I think that is pretty good. My poor carpet didn't appreciate it, but whatever. I think the hardest part was that she was watching cartoons and she would space out and pee herself. Once I turned the tv off she did better, for the most part.

On Tuesday, we were at Taekwondo. I didn't have high hopes because she is always on the move with friends or while watching class and the bathroom is dark and.. well it's basically a public bathroom and no one likes spending time in public bathrooms. We changed her first diaper of the day and (here's the cool part) she stayed in that SAME DIAPER ALL DAY!!! No Accidents!!! We made sure to do the pee pee dance after each potty break. Annika really likes that.

Now today she is at her grandmas, so I am not able to watch her.. Hopefully grandma will stay on top of it and we will have another successful day!!!! Wish us luck! Hopefully the next post will be a successful one!

Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss!

And Annika celebrated in her own special way...



Note the book in her hand :)

And this also gives me an opportunity to use the best quote in the world:

“Today you are you, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is youer than you”

Doesn't that just give you the warm and fuzzies??

I should be cleaning...

But I'm not. This is a common occurrence in the house during the day. But we went to the park and I am just wiped out! It was a good trip. The weather has been amazing and today it was almost 60 degrees! We went a little early before all the school kids got out because I knew that the play structure would be filled with "big kids" and the mama bear would have to protect Annika by kicking some snot nosed brat right in the butt. We got there at about 12:30 and there were a handful of kids playing there. Annika latched onto another little boy who was about her age and ran up and down until he got bored with her and ran away.

While we were there there was another boy who was about 8 or 9, way too old to be playing on a toddler play structure and should have been in school. But anyways, he was here, in my bubble, running up and down the structure like he was practicing to be the next Usain Bolt. Annika was watching him fly by and I was having to watch both of them, waiting for mama bear to come out and strike the second he knocked my child over. Luckily nothing happened and Usain jr. left with his mom after she was done eating her McDonalds and then Annika and I had a great time!

While we were there I got a couple good shots which makes me happy since I have been neglecting my camera and I hope to remedy that soon. **After I posted I realized the pictures are all off center.. I will figure that out later. For now click on the picture to enjoy all the cuteness :) ***