A Sad Blogging Year

Oh the neglectful blogger that I am... the only consistency that I have about blogging this past year is the lack of it...

never mind that since I jumped on the facebook bandwagon, blogging fell by the wayside. I only had time for one...and the fb instant and quite short status update is so much easier (besides all the other time-sucking apps and things on there to do).

I'm sorta sad that I don't have the blog to go back and read upon. But that's what happens to me whenever I get busy with life or pregnant... I don't blog and then I don't have the entries to go back and read. What I DO have is a ton of photos though. It'd be practically impossible to share them all. This week I've been going through Jarom's birth and made a little memory book from it, and now I'm going back to Hannah's birth photos and going to make her a little memory book from it. Shutterfly has so many promos that I got with all the random baby stuff, that I just can't let those promos pass.

I haven't been able to write anything for awhile. And when I did get the motivation or when something cool happened, I'd think, I should blog about this, but then I'd be like, but I haven't blogged in soo long, I need to catch up. Which then psychologically it became this daunting task, and so I'd just not do it at all.

I know I should write about Jarom's birth. It was too fresh and too psychologically tender to write about the first month...Last week it was 6 weeks...and this upcoming week is 2 months. I feel better about it overall, but it'll probably take me awhile to write about it. I mean it took me over a year to finally write about Hannah's birth! You can read about that here. (oh and I as I reread that one...I left a lot out...it was the clean, happy version...but one day I'll fill all the gory details in)

So tonight, even though I'm tired, and I was going to go to bed, I came into the office b/c I was actually closing the linen doors, walked by the computer...and lo and behold, it sucked me in. I just HAD to turn the screen back on, and get on. First it was the neurotic checking of email that I have - even though I may not get anything new of import (besides retail ads). It's the rush of hoping for something new. And to check on the new liu-anderson.com website to see if it's fully propagated (been accessible to me intermittently)...and then that led to checking statcounter for the 1st time in over a year. And then amazingly...I started checking stuff I hadn't checked in a long time - like the blog! I did change the baby counters right after Jarom was born (instead of having this floating baby thing on the side saying I was like 45 weeks or something... anyways... I've decided to blog.

Another thing daunting on me was I've been wanting to start a whole new blog - a family blog (I've been wanting to for over 2 years!) not just a Hannah blog. But setting it up...well, haven't gotten around to it - of course I can just use a template one..but I'm so weird about stuff like that. It's the perfectionist in me, I have to have all these things just right before things "go public". and the procrastinator in me - which can find all sorts of reasons NOT to start something.

Like the liu-anderson.com website...(it'd been forwarding to the photo blog for a long time)
We'd paid for a flash website design and had been hosting of the website for a year and I hadn't gotten it close to going public at all. And even though I'm still up in the air about how much work I want to take on...I didn't want to just throw away the chunk of initial monetary investment and NOT renew the site. When I 1st got it I worked on it, then got busy, then sorta worked on it again, but after pregnancy... it all fell by the wayside. I HAD wanted to do all these projects when I was pregnant, but basically it didn't happen. ANyways, of course the perfectionist in me couldn't just let the sucker "go live" without all of the tiny details taken care of... well, after obsessively working on it last week to completion, it's now live! of course, there are still a lot of things that I feel need to be done on it, but it's live.

Now that we have 2 kids...Hannah's blog should just be her blog... for updates about her...and we should have a family blog b/c well, now we are 4. Plus I've felt that having so many blogs spreads me thin. I had the H blog, then my musings blog, and then the photo blog. And I'd post on each at different times. I've been wanting to consolidate... And make it maybe just a G blog, where it's everything that I care about - all in one place - so much easier. But of course, I have to ponder & mull over it for a long time before I take any action.

Before I forget in this long stream of consciousness post. The Links on H & J's names on the side go to their new shutterfly sites. Jarom's birth and Hannah's birth photos are both up. They are password protected. So you can email me or leave a comment to get the pw and sites if you want.

Hannah is now over 2.5 years old. She's had a TON of developmental milestones. So the reason I had to close the linen closet doors is...Hannah wet her bed for the 1st time tonight since being potty trained and sleeping in panties. She's been potty trained since she was 2 years old. I think by March at the latest. Of course the quickness of taking herself to the potty increased through this year, and now she completely runs to the bathroom on her own, gets on, flushes, washes her hands etc. Though we kept her in a diaper at night for most of the summer. once in awhile she'd wet her diaper, (like once a month) but most of the times it was dry in the morning. We had tried going diaperless before and she did well, but kept her in for that rare chance. i didn't want to risk the bother of changing sheets etc. (which we did have once or twice when we tried panties at night prematurely). She woke up around 2am-ish crying and saying she needed to potty and she wanted to potty in the toilet. Daddy took her, and I checked her bed. She had just wet it a little bit, but it woke her up. I changed her sheets...therefore the linen closet...and anyways...

it's led to me blogging again!

She's had so many cute milestones. She's sooo talkative now. She know her ABCs and her numbers. She counts 1-10 great and then it's funny b/c after that she just jumps around in the teens skips some and up to 20. She knows how to read a bit...recognizes easy words and pics. PBS Kids has been my lifesaver this past year - during the pregnancy and now with the new baby. She loves Caillou (tho we dont like whiny Caillou and it's taught her some bad things - like wanting to draw on walls or cut stuff up), Barney (singing & dancing), Elmo (why do all kids like red Elmo?), and Word World. She LOVES world world and wants to watch it and will make words. She likes Super Why & Curious George too. And we check out DVDs from the library - we've chosen to avoid satellite and cable. She really likes Yo Gabba Gabba (which we've decided that we like too b/c she doesn't pick up anything bad from it - but tells her to eat good stuff "party in my tummy", and "I like fish" songs or "keep trying" songs). She has most of the songs and words and sayings from these shows memorized and recites them. She makes up her own songs too. Ever since humming her 1st classical piece...which I blogged about here. In May, I played a concert with CC Cathedral (the Cathedral's Got Talent Concert) with full symphony and choir. One of the pieces was "All Creatures of Our God and King" and afterwards for many weeks, she'd be singing "alleluia, alleluia" while walking around. She now sings whatever songs come into her head.

Regarding music, we acquired a real piano this year (a wholehearted thank you to the Murphys!) Last year we bought a Casio Privia Keyboard Piano, and she played on it a lot, but then she mainly would press all the other buttons and not the keyboard. She liked all the other cool functions on it. Since acquiring the real piano, she's actually been able to focus on the keys and not get distracted by other functions. She'll sit there, play her notes (she makes them up) and also sings (whatever is on her mind).

This summer we also got a little guitar and my mom brought down the little violin. We went to Mexico for the 1st time (Progreso) and bought Hannah this little play guitar (but fully fuctioning) off the street vendor. Hannah loves the guitar, but we had to put it up for a few months b/c she started stepping in it. Hannah fussed for the violin for a long time (b/c I told her a-ma was bringing her a violin). she even climbed on precariously balanced boxes to get it in the room my mom was staying it (it was stored rather high too). She's still a bit young for it though - not that she doesn't enjoy sawing at it, I'm just afraid she'll break it, so we put it away. Last week though, we got out the guitar again, and also the little violin, and my Celtic drum, and we've been "playing music" as a family. Hannah loves it! And I think Jarom likes the noise too. All three of us take an instrument and "play it" and then we switch and play another instrument. Quite fun!

Oh and we watched the movie "August Rush" last week, and that was probably what prompted the musical instruments being brought out. We all really loved the movie - about the little orphan boy, son of musicians, searching for his parents, having music coursing through him, following the music, and wanting everyone to hear his music so he could find his mom and dad. We loved the soundtrack, the guitar playing, and the theme (by composers Mark Mancina and Hans Zimmer - we love good movie soundtracks).

Oh, and this year we also got a Netflix subscription, and between that and Hulu, I spent many hours being entertained during the pregnancy.

Okay...so between sleep deprivation from the end of 3rd trimester, Jarom's birth, then being back in the hospital 9 days later & ICU, his night feedings, diaper changes, almost daily upchucking, the computer (random fb and other stuff), wking on the website, my natural night owl tendencies... why am I up? i soo should be in bed, but here i am blogging... a little loopy in the head...

I don't even remember what else I was going to write about... I know I didn't write much about Jarom, b/c I feel that this is mainly Hannah's blog, but he's so cute! He's grown much faster than her (but he was 40 weeks so 3 weeks ahead of her in growth at birth) and he's bigger. She loves him so...and is a great helper. Though sometimes she can give him too much love. on that note...I'm going to close this post...