Laryngitis

*A little background...

I love to SING! I didn't start to truly develop this talent until my senior year of high school. I was in musicals and in choir in high school. Throughout college I sang a few solos, duets and in choirs for church. After getting married, I greatly benefitted from joining a women's choir, Viva Voce! with an amazing conductor Jean Applonie. (My M-I-L was the one that got me to try out and I'm so glad I did!) However, shortly after getting comfortable in this choir, Jean decided it was time to move on to something different and left... leaving no one to take over. :( That was a sad day! Viva Voce was an outlet for me to express myself and continue to develop my voice.

But then something fantastic happened last Fall. Jean started a NEW (mixed) choir which I promptly joined! It's part of the Westminster College's School of Music and was opened for "community" members to join, not just students. It was a fabulous semester getting back into singing in a notable choir with an amazing conductor! We sang great music that was challenging, yet fun and entertaining!

Unfortunately, four days before our Christmas concert (our only concert of the semester) I came down with a cold which developed into laryngitis! I HATE when I lose my voice! Especially when I can't share what I worked so hard on for the last few months! Oh well. I actually kind of enjoyed sitting in the audience and listening. It was a nice date with Dan too. :)

The choir

I would have been standing somewhere around the middle here.

Our Spring concert is in April and I definitely don't plan to be sick this time! :)

15 months old

Stats

Height- 30 in, 50th percentile (1 in increase in 3 months)

Weight- 20.1 lb, 15th percentile (.8 lb increase in 3 months)

Head Circ.- 18.4 in, 60th percentile (.1 in increase in three months)

LOVE THIS BELLY LAUGH!

Accomplishments and fun things over the past three months,

in no particular order:

• Has 9 teeth (including 3 molars- soon to be 4)
• FAST crawler, comes when you call for her, and can crawl up stairs
• Can pull up to standing and cruise, still working on standing alone and walking
• Front facing car seat
• Is fully weaned
• Can fold her arms for a prayer (most of the time)
• Can blow on hot food
• When she gets fussy, singing a song calms her down 95% of the time
• Loves to push buttons on DVD player and VCR- time for a new entertainment center with doors!
• Can blow kisses and LOVES to wave buh-bye
• Don't get between McKenna and her food! If she over stuffs her mouth and you're afraid she might choke, don't even think about trying to take some of that food OUT of her mouth. She gets SO mad! She's such a good eater. :) (But also hates anything with the slightest spicy kick)
• She had a 12 year old babysitter put her to bed
• We started brushing her teeth on bath nights
• Has had a tummy bug and threw up multiple times... yuck!
• Pushes limits when mommy says "no"
• Points to what she wants
• Opens and explores cupboards more- loves to open and close doors in general
• Knows how to point to (somewhat consistently) belly, legs, feet, toes, eyes, ears, mouth, nose, teeth, and hair
• When daddy come home, she waves "buh-bye" to mommy (such a daddy's girl!)
• She's had a HUGE increase in her SIGNING! She knows: cereal, banana (LOVES bananas), book, shoes, eat, water, bath, sleep, please, milk, play, fish, bird, more, daddy, all done, cracker, mommy, and thank you. Still working on: help, friend, ball, drink, apple, story, kiss, airplane, bread, hot, cold, in, out, up, down... and many more! I've tried to get these on video, but of course, she won't perform
• Officially transitioned to one nap, usually anywhere between 11-2pm (which is awful considering our church schedule just changed to 11-2pm!)
• Can "say:" up, bye, hi, mama, and magnet (sort of), and LOTS of other things in her "own language"
• Learned that unrolling the toilet paper is fun
• Can recognize a toothbrush picture in a book and make the motion to brush teeth
• Learned how to make spit bubbles
• Pretend talks on mommy's cell phone
• I always find her socks at the foot of her crib on the floor at the end of her nap
• LOVES the book, "Hand, Hand, Fingers, Thumb"
• Her mullet is out in full force! See pictures below.

Here she is doing most of the actions to "Popcorn Popping on the Apricot Tree"

Further evidence that McKenna is such a daddy's girl!

Here she is waiting outside the bathroom for him.

Here they are watching the Utah bowl game together! Love them!

Mullet evidence

I tried to get a couple pictures of her cute face, but she's so wiggly these days so most of them are blurry. :)

And I had to get some bath pictures. The Band-Aids from her shots. :(

Censored

We love her oh SO much! She's got such a fun little personality that brightens our lives!

Third Bedroom

(Photo dump) Here's our basement before the flooding disaster

Like I said in the last post, we decided while all of our stuff was displaced, why not add a wall or two and make a third bedroom?!?! A long while ago, Dan came up with this great floor plan so someday we could upgrade our condo and make it a more marketable (whenever the time comes to sell). Now we made this plan a reality!!

So it begins

A new wall!

More framing

Here's the closet, before...

After

(our only "walk-in" closet in the whole house now) :)

Hallway right after you come down stairs before...

After

Bedroom (view 1) before...

Bedroom (1) after

Bedroom (view 2) before

Bedroom (2) after

Bedroom (view 3) before

Bedroom (3) after

Office (view 1) before

Office (1) after- a little different angle

Office (view 2) before

Office (2) after- slightly different angle again

Office (view 3)

There you have it! We're pretty happy with how it turned out! We've had to down size some furniture but we're lucky to still have our old master bedroom set to put in the new bedroom.

I didn't mention this in the UDK post before, but yes, thank heavens insurance will pay for the disaster clean up. However, the third bedroom addition was out of our own pocket. Happy New Year to us! :)

Utah Disaster Kleenup

After our basement disaster (check Dec. 14th post), I have to give mad props to UDK!

They had our basement as good as new in 8 days! Here's some documentation of the reconstruction.

The torn out wall that was most damaged

Torn out stuff

LOTS of new insulation and drywall

Some old mold damage they cleaned up too

Putty drying

Paint drying

Almost there

Carpet being reinstalled!

They also came and cleaned the carpet. And there you have it. All done!

Or is it?? We decided while all of our stuff was displaced, why not add a wall or two and make a third bedroom in the basement?!?! Stay tuned for more pictures of that remodel!